SoylentNews

RandomFactor writes:

University of Michigan researchers have determined that the class of proteins known as Sestrins mimic the effects of exercise in mice and flies.

The findings could eventually help scientists combat muscle wasting due to aging and other causes.

Flies with increased levels of Sestrin showed increased endurance vs flies without it. Mice without the ability to produce Sestrin did not gain the improved aerobic capacity, respiration, and fat burning that those with it did when exercised.

For three weeks, researchers used a kind of treadmill to train Drosophila flies, which will instinctively attempt to climb up and out of a test tube.

when they overexpressed Sestrin in the muscles of normal flies, essentially maxing out their Sestrin levels, they found those flies had abilities above and beyond the trained flies, even without exercise. In fact, flies with overexpressed Sestrin didn't develop more endurance when exercised.

Additionally it was determined that

Sestrin can also help prevent atrophy in a muscle that's immobilized, such as the type that occurs when a limb is in a cast for a long period of time. "This independent study again highlights that Sestrin alone is sufficient to produce many benefits of physical movement and exercise," said [professor Jun Hee Lee.]

The first question that comes to mind for some may be whether Sestrin might one day come in a handy pill form. Unfortunately Sestrins are large molecules not well suited to supplements, however the team is "working to find small molecule modulators of Sestrin."

Journal Reference:
Myungjin Kim, Alyson Sujkowski, Sim Namkoong, Bondong Gu, Tyler Cobb, Boyoung Kim, Allison H. Kowalsky, Chun-Seok Cho, Ian Semple, Seung-Hyun Ro, Carol Davis, Susan V. Brooks, Michael Karin, Robert J. Wessells, Jun Hee Lee. Sestrins are evolutionarily conserved mediators of exercise benefits. Nature Communications, 2020; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13442-5

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

Guardian

A specially deployed team of remote air firefighters helped save the trees from the giant Gospers Mountain fire

Firefighters have saved the only known natural stand of Wollemi pines, so-called "dinosaur trees" that fossil records show existed up to 200m years ago, from the bushfires that have devastated New South Wales.

The state's environment minister, Matt Kean, said a specially deployed team of remote air firefighters helped save the critically endangered trees from the giant Gospers Mountain fire.

The pines are in an undisclosed sandstone grove in the Wollemi national park, in the Blue Mountains, about 200km north-west of Sydney. They were thought extinct until discovered 26 years ago.

Kean said with fewer than 200 of the trees left in the wild the government had to do everything it could to save them, describing it as "an unprecedented environmental protection mission".

He said the operation by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and NSW Rural Fire Service included air tankers dropping fire retardant and specialist firefighters being winched in by helicopter to set up an irrigation system in the gorge. As the fire approached, helicopters water bucketed the fire edge to reduce its impact on the groves of trees.

A scientific assessment found while some of the trees were charred the species would survive in the wild. Kean said the government would continue to keep the precise location of the trees secret to ensure their long-term protection.

Wikipedia

In both botanical and popular literature the tree has been almost universally referred to as the Wollemi pine, although it is not a true pine (genus Pinus) nor a member of the pine family (Pinaceae), but, rather, is related to Agathis and Araucaria in the family Araucariaceae. The oldest fossil of the Wollemi tree has been dated to 200 million years ago.

A brief blog entry with some photos on how the trees look in wilderness.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

What can we rid the world of, thinks Google... Poverty? Disease? Inequality? Yeah, but first: Third-party cookies – and classic user-agent strings:

On Tuesday, Google published an update on its Privacy Sandbox proposal, a plan thoroughly panned last summer as a desperate attempt to redefine privacy in a way that's compatible with the ad slinger's business.

In a blog post, Justin Schuh, director of Chrome engineering, asked the web community for help to increase the privacy of web browsing, something browser makers like Apple and Mozilla have already been doing on their own.

"After initial dialogue with the web community, we are confident that with continued iteration and feedback, privacy-preserving and open-standard mechanisms like the Privacy Sandbox can sustain a healthy, ad-supported web in a way that will render third-party cookies obsolete," wrote Schuh.

"Once these approaches have addressed the needs of users, publishers, and advertisers, and we have developed the tools to mitigate workarounds, we plan to phase out support for third-party cookies in Chrome."

That's a significant shift for a company that relies heavily on cookie data for its ad business. Google Display Network uses third-party cookies to serve behavior-based ads. And Google partners, like publishers that use Google Ad Manager to sell ads, will also be affected.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Antibiotics could be promising treatment for form of dementia:

Frontotemporal dementia is the second-most common dementia after Alzheimer's disease and the most common type of early onset dementia. It typically begins between ages 40 and 65 and affects the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, which leads to behavior changes, difficulty speaking and writing, and memory deterioration.

A subgroup of patients with frontotemporal dementia have a specific genetic mutation that prevents brain cells from making a protein called progranulin. Although progranulin is not widely understood, its absence is linked to the disease.

A group led by Haining Zhu, a professor in UK's Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, discovered that after aminoglycoside antibiotics were added to neuronal cells with this mutation, the cells started making the full-length progranulin protein by skipping the mutation.

"These patients' brain cells have a mutation that prevents progranulin from being made. The team found that by adding a small antibiotic molecule to the cells, they could 'trick' the cellular machinery into making it," said Matthew Gentry, a co-author of the study and the Antonio S. Turco Endowed Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry.

The researchers found two specific aminoglycoside antibiotics -- Gentamicin and G418 -- were both effective in fixing the mutation and making the functional progranulin protein. After adding Gentamicin or G418 molecules to the affected cells, the progranulin protein level was recovered up to about 50 to 60%.

Journal Reference:

Lisha Kuang, Kei Hashimoto, Eric J Huang, Matthew S Gentry, Haining Zhu. Frontotemporal dementia nonsense mutation of progranulin rescued by aminoglycosides. Human Molecular Genetics, 2020; DOI: 10.1093/hmg/ddz280

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

BBC

At least 60 people, many of them children, were treated for skin irritation and breathing problems.

Fuel may be dumped in emergency landings, but only over designated areas and at a high altitude, aviation rules stipulate.

The Delta Airlines flight returned to the airport due to an engine issue.

Delta confirmed in a statement that the passenger plane had released fuel to reduce its landing weight.

The children and adults treated following the dumping incident were connected with at least six local schools. All the injuries are said to be minor.
...
Allen Kenitzer, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, told Reuters news agency: "The FAA is thoroughly investigating the circumstances behind this incident. There are special fuel-dumping procedures for aircraft operating into and out of any major US airport.

"These procedures call for fuel to be dumped over designated unpopulated areas, typically at higher altitudes so the fuel atomises and disperses before it reaches the ground."

Business Traveler has other details

A Delta Air Lines Boeing 777-200 bound for Shanghai Pudong that was making an emergency landing dumped fuel on six schools in Los Angeles, mildly injuring 60 adults and children, according to media reports.
...
The students and staff members complained of minor skin irritation and breathing problems, but all declined transportation to hospitals, the newspaper added.
...
The Los Angeles Times reports that the plane flew north over Malibu within four minutes after takeoff at 11:32am (local time). After encountering an engine problem, the journey back to the airport, in which the airline said it dumped fuel over urban southeastern Los Angeles County, took a looping route over the San Fernando Valley. The flight, which never flew higher than 8,000 feet, then moved over Griffith Park not long after, heading into southeastern LA County. Minutes later, the flight began making its return to LAX, looping back west.

Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 posted an image on Twitter of the plane's flight path:

Flight path of flight #DL89 that returned to Los Angeles International Airport 24 minutes after departurehttps://t.co/JPER0N19p6 pic.twitter.com/XwJalaZfZq
        — Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) January 14, 2020

...
Several videos of the plane dumping fuel have emerged on social media, such as the one below: [linky]

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

CNN

300,000 jobs lost A report from Moody's Analytics [PDF] says that the trade war with China, which started in early 2018, cost 300,000 jobs through September, based on an economic simulation. While it's hard to know exactly how many jobs losses can be attributed to trade tensions, the Moody's report isn't the only one that suggests the duties are having an effect on US workers. A survey of businesses by staffing firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that trade difficulties were cited as the reason for more than 10,000 job cuts in August alone. And an analysis by the Tax Foundation also suggests the trade war will result to job losses in the long-run.

American importers paid an extra $46 billion in tariffs Trump is wrong when he claims that China is paying the tariffs. The cost of the tariff comes directly out of the bank account of an American importer when the good arrives at the port. US companies have paid $46 billion more in tariffs than they would have without Trump's tariffs, according to an analysis of government data by the free-trade coalition called Tariffs Hurt the Heartland...

Tariffs cost US consumers Several studies show that tariffs end up costing US families. JPMorgan Chase said that the tariffs imposed in 2018 cost the average household $600 a year.
A separate report, from researchers at the NY Fed, Princeton, and Columbia University, estimated that those tariffs would cost households even more: $831 annually. Their research also considered the cost of shifting supply chains to avoid paying the tariffs

....

Manufacturing takes a beating Trump has often argued that his tariffs are boosting the American manufacturing sector, but the industry is in a slump. In December, a measure of manufacturing activity weakened to its lowest point in more than a decade. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that just 46,000 net manufacturing jobs were added in 2019, an increase of less than 0.5%. While there are likely a lot of factors at play, a recent paper from economists at the Federal Reserve showed that the tariffs are certainly dragging down the sector.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Advertising Makes Us Unhappy

The University of Warwick's Andrew Oswald and his team compared survey data on the life satisfaction of more than 900,000 citizens of 27 European countries from 1980 to 2011 with data on annual advertising spending in those nations over the same period. The researchers found an inverse connection between the two. The higher a country's ad spend was in one year, the less satisfied its citizens were a year or two later. Their conclusion: Advertising makes us unhappy.

Oswald: We did find a significant negative relationship. When you look at changes in national happiness each year and changes in ad spending that year or a few years earlier—and you hold other factors like GDP and unemployment constant—there is a link. This suggests that when advertisers pour money into a country, the result is diminished well-being for the people living there.

HBR: What prompted you to investigate this?

[ . . . ] I can't help noticing the increasing amount of ads we're bombarded with. For me, it was natural to wonder whether it might create dissatisfaction in our culture [ . . . ] In a sense they're trying to generate dissatisfaction—stirring up your desires so that you spend more

[ . . . . ] exposing people to a lot of advertising raises their aspirations—and makes them feel that their own lives, achievements, belongings, and experiences are inadequate.

[ . . . . ] we controlled for lots of other influences on happiness. Second, we looked at increases or drops in advertising in a given year and showed that they successfully predicted a rise or fall in national happiness in ensuing years.

So always take two ad blockers before bedtime.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Trump launches fresh attack on Apple over privacy:

US President Donald Trump has launched a fresh attack on Apple.

He tweeted that the company was refusing to unlock iPhones "used by killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements".

On Monday US Attorney General William Barr accused Apple of not being helpful in an inquiry into a shooting that is being treated as a terrorist act.

It is the latest in a series of clashes between the White House and technology giants over access to data.

Mr Trump accused Apple of refusing to co-operate with investigators despite his administration helping the company on trade and other issues.

The president's comments came a day after Mr Barr said Apple had failed to provide "substantive assistance" to unlock two iPhones in an investigation into a fatal shooting at a naval base in Pensacola, Florida.

Also at CNET

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

Gizmodo

The European Parliament is fed up with e-waste—in particular, charging cables. To fix the problem, lawmakers are debating a binding measure that would force gadget makers to use a standardised charging port.

This isn't the first time we've seen this from Europe. One reason why microUSB is so prevalent is back in 2009, the European Commission pushed for it as a universal standard on the continent. Even Apple, the notorious standout in the world of proprietary chargers, acquiesced and made available a microUSB adaptor. (Of course, it was Europe-only).

Once that initiative expired in 2014, European lawmakers tried again to force a common charger, reiterating that it would be not only convenient for consumers, but would also limit e-waste.

The only problem was the initiative called for a "voluntary approach"—a strategy that in a briefing, the European Parliament said has "not yielded the desired results" and "fell short of the co-legislators' objectives." And, while the briefing doesn't specify exactly what port type it has in mind, at this point, USB-C is the likeliest contender.
...
In 2018, European lawmakers conducted an inception impact assessment [PDF] on the idea of a common charger and called for feedback from manufacturers. In January last year, Apple provided it.

In its statement, Apple contends that "regulations that would drive conformity across the type of connector built into all smartphones freeze innovation rather than encourage it. Such proposals are bad for the environment and unnecessarily disruptive for customers."

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The Paris Musées has published over 100k works under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, ensuring that even the digital editions stay in the public domain. At the same time they have published an application programming interface (API) for use in searching and retrieving high-definition, royalty-free images and their metadata.

Users can scroll through the collection via the museum's portal, discovering hidden gems like this photograph of French feminist Caroline Rémy and this beautiful illustration from an early edition of Les Misérables. This collection is a unique treasure trove for anyone interested in French history, art, and culture.

The Creative Commons Zero (CC0) is not the same as public domain but since some countries do not recognize a public domain, the CC0 license fills the gap. The CC0 waives all copyrights and related or neighboring rights in all jurisdictions worldwide. These rights also include certain moral rights to the extent waivable such as publicity or privacy rights, certain protections against unfair competition, and database rights and rights protecting the extraction, dissemination and reuse of the data. In most cases, it would be wise to choose another CC license instead.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:

Sen. Ron Wyden calls for an investigation of the ad-blocking industry:

On Tuesday, one of the Senate's fiercest tech critics, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), called on regulators requesting that they investigate the ad-blocking industry for anti-competitive behavior.

For years now, some of the largest tech firms have paid ad-blocking companies like Eyeo, which owns Adblock Plus, to avoid the software's restrictions and have their ads displayed on devices. In 2015, a report from the Financial Times showed that companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google were paying out ad blockers so that they could be added to a whitelist to avoid the software's filters.

In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, Wyden outlined this behavior and asked Chairman Joseph Simons to open an investigation into the entire ad-blocking industry as a response. Wyden argued that any company that accepts payment to be whitelisted should be "far more transparent" about the process with its users.

In the case of Adblock Plus, the company announced in 2016 that it would be accepting some ads that weren't "intrusive or annoying." The company whitelists these acceptable ads and allows them to run on devices, but Wyden argues that this behavior is "anti-competitive.

The FTC confirmed that it had received the letter.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Lawrence Lessig sues New York Times over MIT and Jeffrey Epstein interview

Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig is suing The New York Times over an interview about the MIT Media Lab accepting money from sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Lessig's defamation suit covers a September 2019 article titled "A Harvard Professor Doubles Down: If You Take Epstein's Money, Do It in Secret." He claims the headline misrepresents his interview, where he condemns the donation, but says that "if you're going to take the money, you damn well better make it anonymous."

Lessig is the founder of Creative Commons and a longtime policy activist; he once ran for president on the promise to pass a single anti-corruption law and then resign. He's also a friend of former MIT Media Lab president Joichi Ito. When Ito admitted last year to secretly receiving around $800,000 from Epstein, Lessig signed a supportive letter and argued that accepting secret donations was better than publicly laundering a criminal's reputation — although he said taking Epstein's money at all was wrong in retrospect.

Times reporter Nellie Bowles interviewed Lessig about the donations and appeared unimpressed by his reasoning. "It is hard to defend soliciting donations from the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law professor, has been trying," she wrote in the article's opening paragraph. Lessig quickly dubbed the piece "clickbait defamation" by the Times. Now, he's turned that accusation into an actual defamation complaint and launched it with a full-fledged multimedia campaign, including a website called "Lessig v. Clickbait Defamation" and a related podcast.

Related:
Lawrence Lessig Considering US Presidential Bid
Wikipedia's Jimbo Wales Joins Lawrence Lessig Presidential Campaign
Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race with his DNA
Richard M. Stallman Resigns
Richard Stallman Deserved to be Fired, Says Fired GNU Hurd Maintainer

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://themindunleashed.com/2019/10/ex-nasa-scientist-convinced-alien-life-was-found-on-mars-over-40-years-ago.html

A former NASA scientist has written that he is convinced that the U.S. space agency "found evidence of life" on Mars in the 1970s, but the data was largely ignored.

The stunning admission by Gilbert Levin—the former principal investigator for the Labeled Release (LR) experiment on NASA's Viking mission to Mars—came in an op-ed recently published in Scientific American.

In the article, the engineer and inventor is clear that he believes he found convincing proof of the existence of living microorganisms on Mars in 1976, but the agency has since been unwilling to acknowledge what he sees as a clear fact.

Levin is hardly a conspiracy theorist or fringe "UFOlogist," either—in addition to participating in that important 1976 NASA mission, he's a respected engineer and inventor who founded the successful research company Spherix.

In the op-ed titled "I'm Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

"On July 30, 1976, the LR returned its initial results from Mars.

"Amazingly, they were positive. As the experiment progressed, a total of four positive results, supported by five varied controls, streamed down from the twin Viking spacecraft landed some 4,000 miles apart."

Continuing, he wrote:

"The data curves signaled the detection of microbial respiration on the Red Planet. The curves from Mars were similar to those produced by LR tests of soils on Earth.

"It seemed we had answered that ultimate question.

Sour grapes from a disgruntled investigator or something worth further investigation?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Oracle has patched 334 vulnerabilities across all of its product families in its January 2020 quarterly Critical Patch Update (CPU). Out of these, 43 are critical/severe flaws carrying CVSS scores of 9.1 and above. The CPU ties for Oracle's previous all-time high for number of patches issued, in July 2019. This overtook its previous record of 308 in July 2017.

The company said in a pre-release announcement that some of the vulnerabilities affect multiple products.

"Due to the threat posed by a successful attack, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply Critical Patch Update patches as soon as possible," it added.

The updates include fixes for Oracle's most widely deployed products, including the Oracle Database Server (12 patches total, three remotely exploitable without authentication); Oracle Communications Applications (25 patches, 23 remotely exploitable without authentication, six critical); Oracle Enterprise Manager (50 patches, 10 remotely exploitable without authentication, four critical); Oracle Fusion Middleware (38 patches, 30 remotely exploitable without authentication, three critical); 19 new security patches for Oracle MySQL (19 patches, six remotely exploitable without authentication); and the Oracle E-Business Suite (23 patches, 21 remotely exploitable without authentication, two critical).

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

martyb writes:

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-philippine-volcano-spews-lava-half-mile.html

A volcano near the Philippine capital spewed lava into the sky and trembled constantly Tuesday, possibly portending a bigger and more dangerous eruption, as tens of thousands of people fled villages darkened and blanketed by heavy ash.

Government work was suspended and schools were closed in a number of towns and cities, including Manila, because of the health risks from the ash. Hundreds of flights were canceled [or] delayed, affecting tens of thousands of passengers.

The restiveness of the Taal volcano and several new fissures cracking the ground nearby likely means magma is rising and may lead to further eruptive activity, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said.

The volcano was spurting fountains of red-hot lava 800 meters (half a mile) into the sky, and the massive column of ash and volcanic debris at times lit up with streaks of lightning.