SoylentNews

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The drinking water on the International Space Station has been colonized by two hardy species of bacteria, but a new analysis shows they're no more dangerous than those you are likely to encounter on Earth.

The water dispenser on the ISS was originally delivered in 2009, and because lugging water from Earth is an expensive process, it uses specialized filters to recycle drinking water. It also contains iodine, a bacteria-killer, that's filtered out before drinking. However, immediately after the dispenser was installed, an analysis found it to be contaminated by bacteria from the genus Burkholderia, forcing astronauts aboard the station to turn to a Russian back-up water system. 

Two species, Burkholderia cepacia and Burkholderia contaminans, were likely introduced to the dispenser before it rocketed off the planet, but they were able to hold out in the system on the journey to space and survive decontamination procedures. These species can be problematic for human beings with compromised immune systems, such as patients with cystic fibrosis. 

The study, published in the open-access journal PLOS One on Wednesday, looked at both of these species, collected from the drinking water system on the ISS between 2010 and 2014, examining the DNA and physical characteristics of the two bugs. They found 24 different strains of the bacteria but showed they were all very similar, likely stemming from two parent strains growing in the system when the dispenser left Earth. 

Original Submission

Booga1 writes:

WJLA reports: Washington D.C. issued a record $1 billion in traffic and parking tickets in three years

D.C. has long been considered one of the most onerous places in the country for traffic fines, seeing a steady climb year to year in tickets issued and revenue generated. But recently the District broke into stunning new territory, issuing more than $1 billion in tickets in just three years. [...] We asked the District to show us its evidence that D.C.'s cameras, and the high fines, translate to fewer accidents, fewer injuries and fewer deaths. The District told us it hasn't done any studies.
Yet the fines keep increasing, generating more money than alcohol, cigarette, motor vehicle, fuel and estate taxes and all revenue from licenses and permits, and personal property taxes combined.

I don't know another local jurisdiction in the entire nation that has generated as much money from traffic tickets, parking tickets and moving violations," said John Townsend, Public Relations Manager of AAA Mid-Atlantic. "That tells us that things are out of control and out of hand in the District of Columbia."
"No one really believes this is about traffic safety any longer," said Townsend, "which is the reason we're withdrawing support for the automated enforcement program in the District."

That means AAA is likely to declare Washington, D.C. a "traffic trap" (or speed trap as it is commonly referred to) to its 60 million members. In 2005 AAA declared D.C. a "strict enforcement zone," one step below the "traffic trap" designation.

The AAA is the American Automobile Association, also frequently called "Triple A," known for its roadside assistance and other motorist related programs.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Findings from NASA's Juno update Jupiter water mystery:

NASA's Juno mission has provided its first science results on the amount of water in Jupiter's atmosphere. Published recently in the journal Nature Astronomy, the Juno results estimate that at the equator, water makes up about 0.25% of the molecules in Jupiter's atmosphere—almost three times that of the Sun. These are also the first findings on the gas giant's abundance of water since the agency's 1995 Galileo mission suggested Jupiter might be extremely dry compared to the Sun (the comparison is based not on liquid water but on the presence of its components, oxygen and hydrogen, present in the Sun).

An accurate estimate of the total amount of water in Jupiter's atmosphere has been on the wish lists of planetary scientists for decades: The figure in the gas giant represents a critical missing piece to the puzzle of our solar system's formation. Jupiter was likely the first planet to form, and it contains most of the gas and dust that wasn't incorporated into the Sun.

The leading theories about its formation rest on the amount of water the planet soaked up. Water abundance also has important implications for the gas giant's meteorology (how wind currents flow on Jupiter) and internal structure. While lightning—a phenomenon typically fueled by moisture—detected on Jupiter by Voyager and other spacecraft implied the presence of water, an accurate estimate of the amount of water deep within Jupiter's atmosphere remained elusive.

Before the Galileo probe stopped transmitting 57 minutes into its Jovian descent in December 1995, it radioed out spectrometer measurements of the amount of water in the gas giant's atmosphere down to a depth of about 75 miles (120 kilometers), where the atmospheric pressure reached about 320 pounds per square inch (22 bar). The scientists working on the data were dismayed to find ten times less water than expected.

Even more surprising: The amount of water the Galileo probe measured appeared to be still increasing at the greatest depth measured, far below where theories suggest the atmosphere should be well mixed. In a well-mixed atmosphere, the water content is constant across the region and more likely to represent a global average; in other words, it's more likely to be representative of water planetwide. When combined with an infrared map obtained at the same time by a ground-based telescope, the results suggested the probe mission may have just been unlucky, sampling an unusually dry and warm meteorological spot on Jupiter.

"Just when we think we have things figured out, Jupiter reminds us how much we still have to learn," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "Juno's surprise discovery that the atmosphere was not well mixed even well below the cloud tops is a puzzle that we are still trying to figure out. No one would have guessed that water might be so variable across the planet."

martyb writes:

Now Internet Society told to halt controversial .org sale... by its own advisory council: 'You misread the community mindset around dot-org':

The Internet Society's own members are now opposing its sale of the .org internet registry to an unknown private equity firm.

The Chapters Advisory Council, the official voice of Internet Society (ISOC) members, will vote this month on whether to approve a formal recommendation that the society "not proceed [with the sale] unless a number of conditions are met."

Those conditions largely comprise the publication of additional details and transparency regarding ISOC's controversial sell-off of .org. Despite months of requests, neither the society nor the proposed purchaser, Ethos Capital, have disclosed critical elements of the deal, including who would actually own the registry if the sale went through.

[...] ISOC – and .org's current operator, the ISOC-controlled Public Interest Registry (PIR) – are still hoping to push DNS overseer ICANN to make a decision on the .org sale before the end of the month. But that looks increasingly unlikely following an aggressive letter from ICANN's external lawyers last week insisting ICANN will take as much time as it feels necessary to review the deal.

The overall lack of transparency around the $1.13bn deal has led California's Attorney General to demand documents relating to the sale – and ISOC's chapters are demanding the same information as a pre-condition to any sale in their proposed advice to the ISOC board.

That information includes: full details of the transaction; a financial breakdown of what Ethos Capital intends to do with .org's 10 million internet addresses; binding commitments on limiting price increases and free speech protections; and publication of the bylaws and related corporate documents for both the replacement to the current registry operator, PIR, and the proposed "Stewardship Council" which Ethos claims will give .org users a say in future decisions.

[...] "There is a feeling amongst chapters that ISOC seems to have disregarded community participation, failed to properly account for the potential community impact, and misread the community mindset around the .ORG TLD," the Chapters Advisory Council's proposed advice to the ISOC board – a copy of which The Register has seen – states.

Although the advisory council has no legal ability to stop ISOC, if the proposed advice is approved by vote, and the CEO and board of trustees push ahead with the sale regardless, it could have severe repercussions for the organization's non-profit status, and would further undermine ISOC's position that the sale will "support the Internet Society's vision that the Internet is for everyone."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) and Socionext Inc. have designed the world's smallest all-digital phase-locked loop (PLL). PLLs are critical clocking circuits in virtually all digital applications, and reducing their size and improving their performance is a necessary step to enabling the development of next-generation technologies.

[...] The entire all-digital PLL fits in a 50 × 72 μm2 region, making it the smallest PLL to date.

A core building block of SoC devices is the phase-locked loop (PLL), a circuit that synchronizes with the frequency of a reference oscillation and outputs a signal with the same or higher frequency.

PLLs generate 'clocking signals', whose oscillations act as a metronome that provides a precise timing reference for the harmonious operation of digital devices.

[...] Manufacturers have been racing to develop increasingly smaller semiconductors. 7 nm semiconductors (a massive improvement over their 10 nm predecessor) are already in production, and methods to build 5 nm ones are now being looked at.

However, in this endeavor stands a major bottleneck. Existing PLLs require analog components, which are generally bulky and have designs that are difficult to scale down.

Scientists at Tokyo Tech and Socionext Inc., led by Prof. Kenichi Okada, have addressed this issue by implementing a 'synthesizable' fractional-N PLL, which only requires digital logic gates, and no bulky analog components, making it easy to adopt in conventional miniaturized integrated circuits.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

$2.07bn? That's one Dell of a deal to offload infosec biz RSA:

Dell Technologies is flogging its infosec business RSA for $2.075bn as it tries to reduce its longstanding debt.

The sale, rubber stamped today, was made to a consortium led by STG Partners, a private equity investor that specialises in tech; Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board; and Dutch private equity group, AlpInvest Partners.

RSA helps companies confirm user IDs and manage other digital security risks. It serves 30,000 customers ranging from banks to consumer-goods makers. It also runs security conferences, including one scheduled for this month in San Francisco that IBM dropped out of recently.

"This is the right long-term strategy for Dell, RSA, and our collective customers and partners," said Jeff Clarke, CEO and veep of Dell Technologies. "The transaction will further simplify our business and product portfolio. It also allows Dell Technologies to focus on our strategy to build automated and intelligent security into infrastructure, platforms and devices to keep data safe, protected and resilient."

Dell acquired RSA as part of its whopping $67bn deal to buy storage giant EMC in 2016, one of the largest tech mergers in history. EMC itself bought RSA for $2.1bn in 2006 to shore up its security line.

Also at www.securityweek.com

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Russia replaces two cosmonauts on next space station crew for 'medical reasons':

Two Russian cosmonauts have been removed from the next scheduled launch to the International Space Station "for medical reasons," according to the Russian space agency.

In a statement posted to its website on Wednesday (Feb. 19), Roscosmos said that Nikolai Tikhonov and Andrei Babkin will no longer fly to the space station in April, and will instead be replaced by backup crew members.

"The positions of the commander and flight engineer of the Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft will now be taken by Roscosmos cosmonauts Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner," the agency said [In Russian]. "The changes will affect only the Russian part of the crew."

A NASA spokesperson confirmed that U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy will continue to prepare for the mission, which will now see him, Ivanishin and Vagner serve as the Expedition 63 crew on board the space station.

Roscosmos provided few details about the medical concerns that led to the crew change. The agency's director of human spaceflight, former cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, said in a news briefing that the issue involved one of the two replaced crew members.

"Due to personal data, we will not disclose it yet," said Krikalev, according to the Interfax news agency.

Russian media reports, citing unnamed sources, said that it was Tikhonov who had suffered an injury. Roscosmos appeared to support that by confirming that Babkin, along with cosmonaut Sergey Ryzhikov, had been reassigned as the new Soyuz MS-16 backup crew members.

Ivanishin, Vagner and Cassidy are scheduled to launch on April 9 atop a Soyuz-2.1a booster from Site 31 at Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It will be the first spaceflight for Vagner and the third for both Ivanishin and Cassidy.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Late Fall May Be Best Time of Year to Try to Conceive:

The first-of-its-kind study, published in the journal Human Reproduction, finds that, although couples in North America and Denmark are most likely to start trying in September, it's in late November and early December that they have the best chances of conceiving, especially at lower latitudes.

"There are a lot of studies out there that look at seasonal patterns in births, but these studies don't take into account when couples start trying, how long they take to conceive, or how long their pregnancies last," says study lead author Amelia Wesselink, postdoctoral associate in epidemiology.

"After accounting for seasonal patterns in when couples start trying to conceive, we found a decline in fecundability in the late spring and a peak in the late fall," she says. ("Fecundability" refers to the odds of conceiving within one menstrual cycle.) "Interestingly, the association was stronger among couples living at lower latitudes."

[...] season affected fecundability for North Americans by 16 percent, while Danes got only an 8-percent seasonal boost in the fall and dip in the spring. In Southern US states, the seasonal variation was even stronger, at 45 percent, with a peak in quick conceptions in late November. Meanwhile, the relationship between season and fecundability turned out to be about the same in Denmark and in Northern states and Canada.

The study used data on 14,331 pregnancy-planning women who had been trying to conceive for no more than six months, including 5,827 US and Canadian participants in the SPH-based Pregnancy Study Online (PRESTO) and 8,504 Danish participants in the Snart Gravid and Snart Foraeldre studies based at Aarhus University in Denmark. These studies follow women with detailed surveys every two months until they either conceive or have tried to conceive for 12 menstrual cycles, gathering data on everything from intercourse frequency and menstruation, to smoking and diet, to education and income.

[...] "Although this study cannot identify the reasons for seasonal variation in fertility, we are interested in exploring several hypotheses on seasonally-varying factors and how they affect fertility, including meteorological variables such as temperature and humidity, vitamin D exposure, and environmental exposures such as air pollution," Wesselink says.

Journal Reference:
Amelia K Wesselink, et al. Seasonal patterns in fecundability in North America and Denmark: a preconception cohort study. Human Reproduction, 2020; DOI: 10.1093/humrep/dez265

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Exposure to cleaning products in first 3 months of life can increase risk of childhood asthma:

New research from the CHILD Cohort Study[*] shows that frequent exposure to common household cleaning products can increase a child's risk of developing asthma.

Asthma is the most common chronic childhood disease and is the primary reason why children miss school or end up in hospital.

The study was published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. It found that young infants (birth to three months) living in homes where household cleaning products were used frequently were more likely to develop childhood wheeze and asthma by three years of age.

"Most of the available evidence linking asthma to the use of cleaning products comes from research in adults," said the study's lead researcher, Dr. Tim Takaro, a professor and clinician- scientist in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University (SFU). "Our study looked at infants, who typically spend 80-90% of their time indoors and are especially vulnerable to chemical exposures through the lungs and skin due to their higher respiration rates and regular contact with household surfaces."

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow4275:

US natural gas operator shuts down for 2 days after being infected by ransomware:

A US-based natural gas facility shut down operations for two days after sustaining a ransomware infection that prevented personnel from receiving crucial real-time operational data from control and communication equipment, the Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday.

Tuesday's advisory from the DHS' Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, didn't identify the site except to say that it was a natural gas-compression facility. Such sites typically use turbines, motors, and engines to compress natural gas so it can be safely moved through pipelines.

The attack started with a malicious link in a phishing email that allowed attackers to pivot from the facility's IT network to the facility's OT network, which is the operational technology hub of servers that control and monitor physical processes of the facility. With that, both the IT and OT networks were infected with what the advisory described as "commodity ransomware."

The infection didn't spread to programmable logic controllers, which actually control compression equipment, and it didn't cause the facility to lose control of operations, Tuesday's advisory said. The advisory explicitly said that "at no time did the threat actor obtain the ability to control or manipulate operations."

Still, the attack did knock out crucial control and communications gear that on-site employees depend on to monitor the physical processes.

[...] Facility personnel implemented a "deliberate and controlled shutdown to operations" that lasted about two days. "Geographically distinct compression facilities also had to halt operations because of pipeline transmission dependencies," the advisory said. As a result, the shutdown affected the entire "pipeline asset," not just the compression facility. Normal operations resumed after that.

Also at threatpost.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A team of researchers at the University of Toronto has successfully tested a new strategy for identifying genetic resources critical for the ongoing battle against plant pathogens such as bacteria, fungi, and viruses that infect and destroy food crops worldwide.

"As much as 40 per cent of global crop yield annually is lost to pests and pathogens such as bacteria, viruses and other disease-causing microorganisms," said David Guttman, a professor in the Department of Cell & Systems Biology (CSB) at the University of Toronto and co-author of a study published in Science. "In Canada, pathogens of the top five crops cause annual losses of approximately CDN $3.2B, even with no significant outbreaks."

[...] "Effectors play key roles in disease since they evolved to enhance the ability of pathogens to attack and infect their hosts. Fortunately, plants have evolved counter-defenses in the form of immune receptors that can recognize certain effectors," said Desveaux. "A plant is able to mount an 'effector-triggered' immune response that usually stops the infection, if it carries a specific immune receptor that recognizes a specific pathogen effector. This effector-receptor interaction has been called gene-for-gene resistance, and is the basis for nearly all agricultural resistance breeding."

The team started by sequencing the genomes of approximately 500 strains of the bacteria Pseudomonas syringae (P. syringae), which causes disease on nearly every major crop species.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed a tool to monitor changes in widely used composite materials known as fiber reinforced polymers (FRPs), which can be found in everything from aerospace and infrastructure to wind turbines. The new tool, integrated into these materials, can help measure the damage that occurs as they age.

[...] Since the 1960s, scientists have been experimenting with ways to make FRPs lighter and stronger. This has often meant testing the bond between fiber and resin. As reported in a previous publication, the NIST team added small molecules that fluoresce after the impact of mechanical force. These molecules, called "mechanophores," change color or light up, helping identify tiny nanometer-sized openings or cracks between the fiber and resin.

The NIST team has taken this technology to the next level by incorporating the mechanophore throughout the composite resin. Although not noticeable to the naked eye, the newest approach allows scientists to use special microscopy imaging techniques to measure FRP damage. The approach incorporates a minute amount (less than 0.1% mass) of a fluorescent dye called rhodamine that causes no appreciable changes in the material's physical properties.

If the new mechanophore is embedded in structures made of FRP, field testing for fatigue could be done inexpensively and on a regular basis. Structures like wind turbines could frequently be scanned easily for interior cracks, even years after they've been erected.

Journal Reference:
Jeremiah W. Woodcock et al. Damage sensing using a mechanophore crosslinked epoxy resin in single-fiber composites, Composites Science and Technology (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.compscitech.2020.108074

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/02/medical-device-vulnerability-highlights-problem-of-third-party-code-in-iot-devices/

When your family opened up that brand-new computer when you were a kid, you didn't think of all of the third-party work that made typing in that first BASIC program possible. There once was a time when we didn't have to worry about which companies produced all the bits of licensed software or hardware that underpinned our computing experience. But recent malware attacks and other security events have shown just how much we need to care about the supply chain behind the technology we use every day.

The URGENT/11 vulnerability, the subject of a Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency advisory issued last July, is one of those events. It forces us to care because it affects multiple medical devices.

[...] medical device vendors don't always have the flexibility to upgrade their underlying platforms because of the way they license components. Since third-party components are usually licensed for a prebuilt function, the license may only allow for the device's use with a certain version of an operating system or kernel.

[...] addressing the risks means understanding and addressing the value chain for how a device evolves from concept to disposition. We need to also evolve how devices are designed and updated to match the level of support that Samsung and Apple provide. This means there needs to be dedication by manufacturers to use platforms for a longer time and a commitment to keeping the build chains current to be able to consistently deliver patches and updates to customers.

[...] Outside of the major manufacturers, many of the companies that manufacture these devices are smaller businesses, and they have to be able to afford to develop new devices and support what they have at the same time—which is often difficult even for large companies.

We need to partner with our medical device vendors to solve issues like Urgent/11 through better processes. We need to understand how the devices work, and we need to understand that it takes a lot of work to get a patch out for devices that are more complex than a standard PC. Deploying patches to these devices also carries different risks.

The S in Medical IoT stands for Security.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/02/anatomy-of-a-dumb-spear-phish-hitting-librarians-up-for-zelle-cashapp-cash/

Here's a clue for would-be Internet financial scammers: do not target librarians. They will catch on fast, and you will have wasted your time.

Yesterday, the former outgoing chair of the Young Adult Library Services Association's [(YALSA)] Alex Awards Committee (and my wife) Paula Gallagher got a very odd email that purported to be from a colleague within her library system who is a member of YALSA's board. The email asked, "Are you available to complete an assignment on behalf of the Board, And get reimbursed? Kindly advise."

[...] She ignored the message until another member of the committee reached out to her after responding to an identical message. The "assignment" turned out to be a textbook payment scam, and it came from a new email address—"presidentnewboxmailme [at]gmail.com":

Would you help in paying a Merchant and get reimbursed by [name of the board's financial chair]? [He] not available today due to health reasons, But promised a swift reimbursement before Friday. It's imperative and it's $6,980. I was able to sent out $4000 from my daily savings limit. Get back to me if you can send the remaining $2,980 via Zelle & CashApp. It concerns our YALSA's 2020 Young Adult Services Symposium.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow2736:

Hackers can trick a Tesla into accelerating by 50 miles per hour:

This demonstration from the cybersecurity firm McAfee is the latest indication that adversarial machine learning can potentially wreck autonomous driving systems, presenting a security challenge to those hoping to commercialize the technology.

Mobileye EyeQ3 camera systems read speed limit signs and feed that information into autonomous driving features like Tesla's automatic cruise control, said Steve Povolny and Shivangee Trivedi from McAfee's Advanced Threat Research team.

The researchers stuck a tiny and nearly imperceptible sticker on a speed limit sign. The camera read the sign as 85 instead of 35, and in testing, both the 2016 Tesla Model X and that year's Model S sped up 50 miles per hour.

This is the latest in an increasing mountain of research showing how machine-learning systems can be attacked and fooled in life-threatening situations.

[...] Tesla has since moved to proprietary cameras on newer models, and Mobileye EyeQ3 has released several new versions of its cameras that in preliminary testing were not susceptible to this exact attack.

There are still a sizable number of Tesla cars operating with the vulnerable hardware, Povolny said. He pointed out that Teslas with the first version of hardware cannot be upgraded to newer hardware.

"What we're trying to do is we're really trying to raise awareness for both consumers and vendors of the types of flaws that are possible," Povolny said "We are not trying to spread fear and say that if you drive this car, it will accelerate into through a barrier, or to sensationalize it."

So, it seems this is not so much that a particular adversarial attack was successful (and fixed), but that it was but one instance of a potentially huge set. Obligatory xkcd.

Original Submission