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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following stories from CNBC and cnet:

Google's HR head to step down amid tension among employees:

[Eileen] Naughton, who has held various roles at the company since 2006, has led the company's human resources department as the vice president of people operations since 2016. The news was previously reported by Fortune.

Employee headcount has doubled since 2016, when Naughton took the helm, as it's added more than 70,000 employees. The company has faced considerable tension with employees over the last several years, including a November 2018 employee walk-out after employees learned the company had paid departing Android chief $90 million in 2014, despite credible claims of sexual misconduct, as well as protests over the company's plans to work with the Defense Department on artificial intelligence technology and a plan -- since abandoned -- to create a censored version of its search engine for China. In November 2019, the company fired four employees who allegedly shared internal information.

[...] Naughton's departure comes in the midst of a slow-rolling executive shakeup over the last several months. In December, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped down from their roles as the CEO and President of Google's holding company, Alphabet. Sundar Pichai, who had already been Google's CEO for several years, took the helm. The company's long-time chief legal officer David Drummond retired at the end of January.

[...] A Google spokesperson confirmed Naughton will be taking another role within the company, but declined to provide any details on what that would be. She'll work with Pichai and Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat to find another leader to fill her role.

"Over the past 13 years, Eileen has made major contributions to the company in numerous areas, from media partnerships, to leading our sales and operations in the UK and Ireland, to leading our People Operations team through a period of significant growth -- during which over 70,000 people started their careers at Google," Pichai said in a statement the company sent to CNBC. "We're grateful to Eileen for all she's done and look forward to her next chapter at Google."

Google HR chief Eileen Naughton to step down amid employee tensions:

spiraldancing writes:

Discovery of a North American apex predator 16 million years older than Tyrannosaurus rex.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/10/reaper-of-death-t-rex-dinosaur-species-canada:

Scientists in Canada have announced the discovery of a new species of dinosaur closely related to Tyrannosaurus rex that strode the plain of North America about 80m years ago.

Thanatotheristes degrootorum – Greek for "reaper of death" – is thought to be the oldest member of the T rex family yet discovered in northern North America, and would have grown to around 8m (26ft) in length.

"We chose a name that embodies what this tyrannosaur was as the only known large apex predator of its time in Canada, the reaper of death," said Darla Zelenitsky, assistant professor of dinosaur palaeobiology at Canada's University of Calgary.

"The nickname has come to be Thanatos[*]," she told AFP.

[*] From Wikipedia: Thanatos.

Journal Reference:
Voris, Jared T.; Therrien, Francois; Zelenitzky, Darla K.; Brown, Caleb M. (2020). A new tyrannosaurine (Theropoda:Tyrannosauridae) from the Campanian Foremost Formation of Alberta, Canada, provides insight into the evolution and biogeography of tyrannosaurids. Cretaceous Research: 104388. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2020.104388.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Choosing common pain relievers: It's complicated: Researchers examine benefits and risks of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs:

To provide guidance to health care providers and their patients in their clinical decision-making, researchers from Florida Atlantic University's Schmidt College of Medicine have published a review in the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology and Therapeutics addressing cardiovascular risks and beyond, which include gastrointestinal and kidney side effects of pain relievers. They examined the benefits and risks of over-the-counter and prescription drugs for pain relief such as aspirin, ibuprofen (Motrin or Advil), naproxen (Aleve), and prescription drugs such as diclofenac (Voltaren), a non-aspirin NSAID [Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs], and selective cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors such as celecoxib (Celebrex) as well as acetaminophen (Tylenol).

NSAIDs include aspirin, traditional non-aspirin NSAIDs such as ibuprofen, (Motrin or Advil), naproxen, (Aleve) and diclofenac, (Voltaren) as well as selective cyclooxygenase 2 inhibitors (COXIBs), such as celecoxib (Celebrex), and acetaminophen (Tylenol).

All of these drugs have benefits and risks. Aspirin decreases inflammation as well as coronary events and stroke, but increases gastrointestinal symptoms and bleeding, however, without adverse hepatic or renal consequences. Non-aspirin NSAIDs decrease inflammation, but have been associated with adverse major coronary events and stroke with long-term use as well as major upper gastrointestinal and kidney side effects, as well as electrolyte imbalances such as high sodium or potassium and even heart failure.

Cyclooxygenase 2 (COX2) inhibitors were developed primarily because of their more favorable gastrointestinal side effect profile relative to aspirin and traditional non-aspirin NSAIDs, but confer adverse cardiovascular as well as hepatic and renal effects. Acetaminophen has no clinically relevant anti-inflammatory properties and accounts for more than 50 percent of drug overdose related liver failure and about 20 percent of liver transplant cases, as well as kidney disease.

[...] "The factors in the decision of whether and, if so, which drug to prescribe for relief of pain and inflammation, should not be limited to risks of cardiovascular or gastrointestinal side effects. These considerations should also include potential benefits including improvements in overall quality of life resulting from decrease in pain or impairment from musculoskeletal pain syndromes," said Charles H. Hennekens, M.D., Dr.P.H., corresponding author, first Sir Richard Doll Professor and senior academic advisor in FAU's Schmidt College of Medicine.

Journal Reference:

Manas A. Rane, Alexander Gitin, Benjamin Fiedler, Lawrence Fiedler, Charles H. Hennekens. Risks of Cardiovascular Disease and Beyond in Prescription of Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs^$. Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 2019; 25 (1): 3 DOI: 10.1177/1074248419871902

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

One small grain of moon dust, one giant leap for lunar studies:

"We're analyzing rocks from space, atom by atom," says Jennika Greer, the paper's first author and a PhD student at the Field Museum and University of Chicago. " It's the first time a lunar sample has been studied like this. We're using a technique many geologists haven't even heard of.

"We can apply this technique to samples no one has studied," Philipp Heck, a curator at the Field Museum, associate professor at the University of Chicago, and co-author of the paper, adds. "You're almost guaranteed to find something new or unexpected. This technique has such high sensitivity and resolution, you find things you wouldn't find otherwise and only use up a small bit of the sample."

The technique is called atom probe tomography (APT), and it's normally used by materials scientists working to improve industrial processes like making steel and nanowires. But its ability to analyze tiny amounts of materials makes it a good candidate for studying lunar samples. The Apollo 17 sample contains 111 kilograms (245 pounds) of lunar rocks and soil -- the grand scheme of things, not a whole lot, so researchers have to use it wisely. Greer's analysis only required one single grain of soil, about as wide as a human hair. In that tiny grain, she identified products of space weathering, pure iron, water and helium, that formed through the interactions of the lunar soil with the space environment. Extracting these precious resources from lunar soil could help future astronauts sustain their activities on the Moon.

To study the tiny grain, Greer used a focused beam of charged atoms to carve a tiny, super-sharp tip into its surface. This tip was only a few hundred atoms wide -- for comparison, a sheet of paper is hundreds of thousands of atoms thick. "We can use the expression nanocarpentry," says Philipp Heck. "Like a carpenter shapes wood, we do it at the nanoscale to minerals."

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China created a photonic computer that was able to solve the subset sum problem. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their computer and how well it performed.

[...] In this new effort, the researchers propose the idea of a photonic computer by creating one that can solve the subset sum problem.

The subset sum problem [...] is easy for a conventional computer when the list is small—but when it grows large, it becomes unworkable.

To solve the problem using a photonic computer, the researchers mapped it into a 3-D waveguide network etched onto glass using a femtosecond laser. Photons were then allowed to dissipate into the network in search of a solution in parallel. This allowed the researchers to try different combinations at the same time rather than grinding through them all, as is done with a conventional computer. Not only did the approach work, it was able to do so faster than a supercomputer—and it demonstrated that photonic computers are capable of solving such problems and are scalable, as well.

More information: Xiao-Yun Xu et al. A scalable photonic computer solving the subset sum problem, Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay5853

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Molecular 'switch' reverses chronic inflammation and aging:

Chronic inflammation, which results when old age, stress or environmental toxins keep the body's immune system in overdrive, can contribute to a variety of devastating diseases, from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to diabetes and cancer.

Now, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have identified a molecular "switch" that controls the immune machinery responsible for chronic inflammation in the body. The finding, which appears online Feb. 6 in the journal Cell Metabolism, could lead to new ways to halt or even reverse many of these age-related conditions.

[...] In the study, Chen and her team show that a bulky collection of immune proteins called the NLRP3 inflammasome -- responsible for sensing potential threats to the body and launching an inflammation response -- can be essentially switched off by removing a small bit of molecular matter in a process called deacetylation.

Overactivation of the NLRP3 inflammasome has been linked to a variety of chronic conditions, including multiple sclerosis, cancer, diabetes and dementia. Chen's results suggest that drugs targeted toward deacetylating, or switching off, this NLRP3 inflammasome might help prevent or treat these conditions and possibly age-related degeneration in general.

"This acetylation can serve as a switch," Chen said. "So, when it is acetylated, this inflammasome is on. When it is deacetylated, the inflammasome is off."

[...] "I think this finding has very important implications in treating major human chronic diseases," Chen said. "It's also a timely question to ask, because in the past year, many promising Alzheimer's disease trials ended in failure. One possible explanation is that treatment starts too late, and it has gone to the point of no return. So, I think it's more urgent than ever to understand the reversibility of aging-related conditions and use that knowledge to aid a drug development for aging-related diseases."

Journal Reference:
Ming He, Hou-Hsien Chiang, Hanzhi Luo, Zhifang Zheng, Qi Qiao, Li Wang, Mingdian Tan, Rika Ohkubo, Wei-Chieh Mu, Shimin Zhao, Hao Wu, Danica Chen. An Acetylation Switch of the NLRP3 Inflammasome Regulates Aging-Associated Chronic Inflammation and Insulin Resistance. Cell Metabolism, 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2020.01.009

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The tension was high: In front of a large screen at the house near Madrid where members of the Consortium participating in the commissioning of the satellite live, as well as at the other institutes involved in CHEOPS, the team waited for the first images from the space telescope. "The first images that were about to appear on the screen were crucial for us to be able to determine if the telescope's optics had survived the rocket launch in good shape," explains Willy Benz, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Bern and Principal Investigator of the CHEOPS mission. "When the first images of a field of stars appeared on the screen, it was immediately clear to everyone that we did indeed have a working telescope," says Benz happily. Now the remaining question is how well it is working.

Preliminary analysis has shown that the images from CHEOPS are even better than expected. However, better for CHEOPS does not mean sharper as the telescope has been deliberately defocused. This is because spreading the light over many pixels ensures that the spacecraft's jitter and the pixel-to-pixel variations are smoothed out, allowing for better photometric precision.

"The good news is that the actual blurred images received are smoother and more symmetrical than what we expected from measurements performed in the laboratory," says Benz. High precision is necessary for CHEOPS to observe small changes in the brightness of stars outside our solar system caused by the transit of an exoplanet in front of the star. Since these changes in brightness are proportional to the surface of the transit planet, CHEOPS will be able to measure the size of the planets. "These initial promising analyses are a great relief and also a boost for the team," continues Benz.

How well CHEOPS is working will be tested further over the next two months. "We will analyze many more images in detail to determine the exact level of accuracy that can be achieved by CHEOPS in the different aspects of the science program," says David Ehrenreich, CHEOPS project scientist at the University of Geneva. "The results so far bode well," said Ehrenreich.

Original Submission

Coronavirus Roundup

Both c0lo and takyon write in with today's coronavirus collection of stories:

c0lo writes:

Why are children 'missing' from coronavirus outbreak cases?

So far, it seems that youth protects against the worst effects of 2019-nCoV.

The outbreak of a new coronavirus in China has killed more than 900 people, but one group has escaped with minimal damage: children.

Youth can certainly contract the virus. Among the infected are at least two newborns, according to Chinese health officials. But few children are among those sick enough to be diagnosed with the coronavirus, according to an article published Feb. 5 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. According to the data analyzed in that article — and numbers are changing quickly as the outbreak evolves — the median age of patients skews older, between 49 and 56 years old.

It's not entirely clear why children seem to be escaping the worst effects of the virus, dubbed 2019-nCoV. But a similar pattern holds for many infectious diseases, from the familiar, such as chickenpox and measles, to the newly emerged, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), doctors say.

martyb writes:

Wacom Tablet Data Exfiltration Raises Security Concerns:

[Editors' Note UPDATE 200211-14:16]: It has been pointed out that this story is a duplicate of a previous story. The editor concerned will be made to sit on the naughty step for 15 minutes.]

The Wacom digital drawing tablet appears to be silently exfiltrating user data, according to an investigation by software engineer Robert Heaton – and the company responded on Friday, downplaying the report. However, security researchers say the tablets still pose a risk and a privacy problem.

Wacom devices hook up to a laptop or desktop computer as a plug-and-play peripheral device, just like a keyboard or mouse would. It allows users to "paint," draw, create photo montages, sketch and more, all to be digitally rendered on the associated computer. It's aimed at commercial graphics designers as well as amateur enthusiasts.

The downside, according to Heaton's investigation, is that its drivers also silently track the name of every application that users open while the devices are running.

Heaton scoured the privacy agreement for the device and found that in section 3.1, Wacom asks permission to send information to Google Analytics "[including] aggregate usage data, technical session information and information about [my] hardware device."

The phrase "aggregate usage data" gave Heaton pause due to its vagueness. After investigating, he found that Wacom was recording some innocuous operational data, such as timestamps for "driver started" and "driver shutdown." But it was also recording every time he opened a new application, including the time, "a string that presumably uniquely identifies me," and the application's name.

martyb writes:

Breathing may change your mind about free will: Do you think that you are clicking on that button when your mind decides to do so? Think again:

Scientists at EPFL[*] in Switzerland have shown that you are more likely to initiate a voluntary decision as you exhale. Published in today's issue of Nature Communications, these findings propose a new angle on an almost 60-year-old neuroscientific debate about free will and the involvement of the human brain.

"We show that voluntary action is indeed linked to your body's inner state, especially with breathing and expiration but not with some other bodily signals, such as the heartbeat," explains Olaf Blanke, EPFL's Foundation Bertarelli Chair in Cognitive Neuroprosthetics and senior author.

At the center of these results is the readiness potential (RP), a signal of brain activity observed in the human cortex that appears not only before voluntary muscle movement, but also before one becomes aware of the intention to move. The RP is the signature of voluntary action since it consistently appears in brain activity measurements right before acts of free will (like being aware that one wants to reach for the chocolate).

[...] These findings suggest that the breathing pattern may be used to predict 'when' people begin voluntary action. Your breathing patterns could also be used to predict consumer behavior, like when you click on that button. Medical devices that use brain-computer interfaces could be tuned and improved according to breathing. The breathing-action coupling could be used in research and diagnostic tools for patients with deficits in voluntary action control, like obsessive compulsive disorders, Parkinson disease, and Tourette syndromes. Blanke and Hyeong-Dong Park, first author of this research, have filed a patent based on these findings.

[...] More generally, the EPFL findings suggest that acts of free will are affected by signals from other systems of the body. Succumbing to that urge to eat chocolate may depend more on your body's internal signals than you may realize!

Blanke elaborates, "That voluntary action, an internally or self-generated action, is coupled with an interoceptive signal, breathing, may be just one example of how acts of free will are hostage to a host of inner body states and the brain's processing of these internal signals. Interestingly, such signals have also been shown to be of relevance for self-consciousness."

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdf6srnVcM0

[*] EPFL: École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne"

Journal Reference:
Hyeong-Dong Park, Coline Barnoud, Henri Trang, Oliver A. Kannape, Karl Schaller, Olaf Blanke. Breathing is coupled with voluntary action and the cortical readiness potential. Nature Communications, 2020; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13967-9

Original Submission

martyb writes:

British Airways 747 just set subsonic speed record for Atlantic crossing:

Here's a good piece of trivia for you: what's the fastest commercial airliner in operation? As of Sunday, the answer might be "the Boeing 747"—not bad for an airliner that first entered service 50 years ago. On Saturday evening at 6:47pm ET, British Airways 747-400, tail number G-CIVP, took off from John F Kennedy (JFK) airport in New York. It landed at London's Heathrow Airport (LHR) at 4:43am local time—a crossing time of just 4 hours and 56 minutes, and a new record for subsonic aircraft.

Of course, the venerable jumbo had some help. Neither Boeing nor BA have rolled out a surprise engine upgrade, but Storm Ciara^[*]—a weather disturbance currently rearranging British landscapes—gave the plane a helping hand with 200mph+ (320km/h+) tailwinds. G-CIVP set a peak ground speed of 825mph (1,327km/h), although its peak airspeed remained subsonic at around Mach 0.85.

That's a huge improvement over the prior record for a commercial, non-supersonic aircraft of 5 hours and 3 minutes!

The all-time record for any aircraft was managed in comfortably under 2 hours!

I was actually quite surprised to learn they were still in use as passenger aircraft. I'd taken a vacation 40 some-odd years ago to a Caribbean Island. I don't recall what the exact model plane it was that brought me there. But I do recall that all two dozen or so of us who were returning on a red-eye at the end of the week found ourselves as the sole passengers on a 747! Never mind trying to catch a nap with your seat in the reclined position... We just tipped up all the armrests in a center row of five seats and had plenty of space to sprawl out and sleep! If you ever get a chance to fly one before they are all retired, highly recommended to add to one's "bucket list."

*Ciara; pronuounced /ˈkɪərə/ KEER-ə

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Europe and NASA's Solar Orbiter rocketed into space Sunday night on an unprecedented mission to capture the first pictures of the sun's elusive poles.

[...]The $1.5 billion spacecraft will join NASA's Parker Solar Probe, launched 1 1/2 years ago, in coming perilously close to the sun to unveil its secrets.

While Solar Orbiter won't venture close enough to penetrate the sun's corona, or crown-like outer atmosphere, like Parker, it will maneuver into a unique out-of-plane orbit that will take it over both poles, never photographed before. Together with powerful ground observatories, the sun-staring space duo will be like an orchestra, according to Gunther Hasinger, the European Space Agency's science director.

[...]Solar Orbiter was made in Europe, along with nine science instruments. NASA provided the 10th instrument and arranged the late-night launch from Cape Canaveral.

[...]The rocket was visible for four full minutes after liftoff, a brilliant star piercing the night sky. Europe's project scientist Daniel Mueller was thrilled, calling it "picture perfect." His NASA counterpart, scientist Holly Gilbert, exclaimed, "One word: Wow."

NASA declared success 1 1/2 hours later, once the Solar Orbiter's solar wings were unfurled.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Equifax: US charges four Chinese military officers over huge hack:

The US has charged four Chinese military officers over the huge cyber-attack of credit rating giant Equifax.

More than 147 million Americans were affected in 2017 when hackers stole sensitive personal data including names and addresses.

[...]Announcing the indictments, Attorney General William Barr called the hack "one of the largest data breaches in history".

According to court documents, the four are allegedly members of the People's Liberation Army's 54th Research Institute, a component of the Chinese military.

They spent weeks in the company's system, breaking into security networks and stealing personal data, the documents said.

The nine-count indictment also accuses the group of stealing trade secrets including data compilation and database designs.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

SpaceX’s first astronaut mission could take off in May

SpaceX is getting very close to its goal of flying actual astronauts aboard its Crew Dragon spacecraft. After a successful in-flight abort (IFA) test in January, it had basically crossed off all the major milestones needed before flying people, first on a demonstration mission referred to as “Demo-2” by SpaceX and its commercial crew partner NASA.

We now know the working date that SpaceX is aiming for with that crucial mission: May 7. To be clear, that’s very much a working date and the actual mission could slip either later, or even earlier, according to Ars Technica’s Eric Berger who first reported the timeline.

It will be exciting when the United States regains the capability to send humans to orbit and to the ISS.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Easter Island society did not collapse prior to European contact, new research shows:

Easter Island society did not collapse prior to European contact and its people continued to build its iconic moai statues for much longer than previously believed, according to a team of researchers including faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

The island of Rapa Nui is well-known for its elaborate ritual architecture, particularly its numerous statues (moai) and the monumental platforms that supported them (ahu). A widely-held narrative posits that construction of these monuments ceased sometime around 1600, following a major societal collapse.

"Our research flies in the face of this narrative," said Carl Lipo, an anthropologist at Binghamton University. "We know, of course, that if we are right, we really need to challenge ourselves (and the archaeological record) to validate our arguments. In this case, we thought to look carefully at the tempo of construction events associated with large platforms."

The researchers, led by the University of Oregon's Robert J. DiNapoli, examined radiocarbon dates, relative architectural stratigraphy and ethnohistoric accounts to quantify the onset, rate and end of monument construction as a means of testing the collapse

[...] "What we found is that once people started to build monuments shortly after arrival to the island, they continued this construction well into the period after Europeans arrived," said Lipo. "This would not have been the case had there been some pre-contact "collapse"— indeed, we should have seen all construction stop well before 1722. The lack of such a pattern supports our claims and directly falsifies those who continue to support the 'collapse' account.