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RandomFactor writes:

Science Daily reports on a new study published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports that details how researchers have created a hybrid neural network allowing both biological and artificial neurons to communicate across the internet.

During the study, researchers based at the University of Padova in Italy cultivated rat neurons in their laboratory, whilst partners from the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich created artificial neurons on Silicon microchips. The virtual laboratory was brought together via an elaborate setup controlling nanoelectronic synapses developed at the University of Southampton. These synaptic devices are known as memristors.

The Southampton based researchers captured spiking events being sent over the internet from the biological neurons in Italy and then distributed them to the memristive synapses. Responses were then sent onward to the artificial neurons in Zurich also in the form of spiking activity. The process simultaneously works in reverse too; from Zurich to Padova. Thus, artificial and biological neurons were able to communicate bidirectionally and in real time

According to Themis Prodromakis, Professor of Nanotechnology and Director of the Centre for Electronics Frontiers at the University of Southampton,

"We are very excited with this new development. On one side it sets the basis for a novel scenario that was never encountered during natural evolution, where biological and artificial neurons are linked together and communicate across global networks; laying the foundations for the Internet of Neuro-electronics. On the other hand, it brings new prospects to neuroprosthetic technologies, paving the way towards research into replacing dysfunctional parts of the brain with AI chips."

Article Reference
University of Southampton. (2020, February 26). New study allows brain and artificial neurons to link up over the web. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 1, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200226110843.htm

Journal Reference:
Alexantrou Serb, Andrea Corna, Richard George, Ali Khiat, Federico Rocchi, Marco Reato, Marta Maschietto, Christian Mayr, Giacomo Indiveri, Stefano Vassanelli, Themistoklis Prodromakis. Memristive synapses connect brain and silicon spiking neurons. Scientific Reports, 2020; 10 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-58831-9

[Ed. Note - Original article from the University of Southampton can be found here.]

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Printer toner linked to genetic changes, health risks in new study:

Getting printer toner on your hands is annoying. Getting it in your lungs may be dangerous.

According to a new study by West Virginia University researcher Nancy Lan Guo, the microscopic toner nanoparticles that waft from laser printers may change our genetic and metabolic profiles in ways that make disease more likely. Her findings appear in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

"The changes are very significant from day one," said Guo, a professor in the School of Public Health and member of the Cancer Institute.

[...] "In particular, there is one group I really think should know about this: pregnant women. Because once a lot of these genes are changed, they get passed on through the generations. It's not just you."

On the same days that the researchers assessed the rats' genes, they also measured every metabolite available in their blood.

[...] The metabolic levels that the researchers detected reinforced their other findings. The same health risks that the genetic profiles pointed to were implicated by the metabolic profiles as well.

Building on these results, Guo and her colleagues have since investigated the genomic changes that Singaporean printing company workers have experienced. In many respects, the workers' genomes changed the same ways the rats' genomes did. The results from these workers are included in a manuscript ready for submission to a journal.

"And they're very young," Guo said. "A lot of the workers ranged from 20 to their early 30s, and you're already starting to see all of these changes.

"We have to work, right? Who doesn't have a printer nowadays, either at home or at the office? But now, if I have a lot to print, I don't use the printer in my office. I print it in the hallway."

Nancy Lan Guo, et. al. Integrated Transcriptomics, Metabolomics, and Lipidomics Profiling in Rat Lung, Blood, and Serum for Assessment of Laser Printer-Emitted Nanoparticle Inhalation Exposure-Induced Disease Risks. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2019; 20 (24): 6348 DOI: 10.3390/ijms20246348

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AnonymousCoward:

Boeing acknowledges "gaps" in its Starliner software testing:

On Friday, during a detailed, 75-minute briefing with reporters, a key Boeing spaceflight official sought to be as clear as possible about the company's troubles with its Starliner spacecraft.

After an uncrewed test flight in December of the spacecraft, Boeing "learned some hard lessons," said John Mulholland, a vice president who manages the company's commercial crew program. The December mission landed safely but suffered two serious software problems. Now, Mulholland said, Boeing will work hard to rebuild trust between the company and the vehicle's customer, NASA. During the last decade, NASA has paid Boeing a total of $4.8 billion to develop a safe capsule to fly US astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

At the outset of the briefing, Mulholland sought to provide information about the vehicle's performance, including its life support systems, heat shield, guidance, and navigation. He noted that there were relatively few issues discovered. However, when he invited questions from reporters, the focus quickly turned to software. In particular, Mulholland was asked several times how the company made decisions on procedures for testing flight software before the mission—which led to the two mistakes.

He struggled to answer those questions, but the Boeing VP said the reason was not financial. "It was definitely not a matter of cost," Mulholland said. "Cost has never been in any way a key factor in how we need to test and verify our systems."

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Dogs’ noses just got a bit more amazing. Not only are they up to 100 million times more sensitive than ours, they can sense weak thermal radiation—the body heat of mammalian prey, a new study reveals. The find helps explain how canines with impaired sight, hearing, or smell can still hunt successfully.

“It’s a fascinating discovery,” says Marc Bekoff, an ethologist, expert on canine sniffing, and professor emeritus at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who was not involved in the study. “[It] provides yet another window into the sensory worlds of dogs’ highly evolved cold noses.”

The ability to sense weak, radiating heat is known in only a handful of animals: black fire beetles, certain snakes, and one species of mammal, the common vampire bat, all of which use it to hunt prey.

Most mammals have naked, smooth skin on the tips of their noses around the nostrils, an area called the rhinarium. But dogs’ rhinaria are moist, colder than the ambient temperature, and richly endowed with nerves—all of which suggests an ability to detect not just smell, but heat.

Original Submission

mendax writes:

The New York Times has an interesting story:

The computer engine rooms that power the digital economy have become surprisingly energy efficient.

A new study of data centers globally found that while their computing output jumped sixfold from 2010 to 2018, their energy consumption rose only 6 percent. The scientists' findings suggest concerns that the rise of mammoth data centers would generate a surge in electricity demand and pollution have been greatly overstated.

The major force behind the improving efficiency is the shift to cloud computing. In the cloud model, businesses and individuals consume computing over the internet as services, from raw calculation and data storage to search and social networks.

There may yet be hope for data centers.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Facebook on Thursday filed a lawsuit in federal court against OneAudience, claiming the New Jersey-based analytics company paid developers to install a malicious software development kit in their apps that could later be used to improperly harvest user data from the social network.

In the lawsuit, Facebook alleges that OneAudience paid developers, sometimes shopping and game app makers, to include the SDK in their apps, some of which were distributed on the Google Play store. When a user installed and logged into one of the apps, the SDK allowed OneAudience to collect information, Facebook says.

The harvested information included names, email addresses, locales, time zones, Facebook IDs and sometimes gender information, Facebook said.

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

A new study tells the cataclysmic tale of an explosion 390 Million light years away, the largest ever detected by a factor of five, that tore through the heart of the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster (archive) leaving a crater fifteen Milky Way galaxies wide.

[Study lead author Simona Giacintucci, of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C] and her colleagues think the source was a supermassive black hole in one of the cluster's constituent galaxies — specifically, jets of radiation and material spewing from the light-gobbling monster, which are powered by inflowing gas and dust.

The theory that the massive gap was created by a ridiculously large explosion "hundreds of thousands of times greater than explosions typically seen in galaxy clusters" powered by a black hole and accelerating material outward at almost the speed of light was postulated in 2016 but was not confirmed.

Giacintucci and her colleagues just made that determination, after analyzing additional X-ray data from Chandra and Europe's XMM-Newton space telescope, as well as radio information gathered by the Murchison Widefield Array in Australia and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India.

Researchers indicate that the black-hole-fueled fireworks in Ophiuchus have, however, ended with "no evidence of ongoing activity"

The paper was published February 27th in The Astrophysical Journal
You can read a free preprint of the paper here.

Original Submission

aristarchus writes:

Over at The Conversation, a good explanation of the relation between solar system celestial mechanics and calendars.

Happy February 29! It doesn't come round very often, so make sure you enjoy it.

But why do we have these extra days? Well, if we didn't, the seasons would gradually move around the calendar. Rather than midsummer in the southern hemisphere falling around December 21, it would arrive in January, then February, and so on. After a few centuries, the Australian summer would end up be in July!

And Australians are confused enough as it is. Also, nice to talk about something not scaring the scaredy among us.

The sidereal year
The "sidereal year" is the classic classroom definition. It's the time it takes Earth to complete one lap of the Sun and return to exactly the same place in its orbit, judged by the position of the Sun relative to the background stars.

But one sidereal year doesn't take 365 days. Rather, it takes 365.256 days.

Then there's another problem. In addition to spinning on its axis (which gives us day and night), our planet also wobbles. More accurately, Earth's axis "precesses", spinning around once every 26,000 years or so, like a wobbling spinning top.

Then, there is this:

The tropical year
Fortunately, we have another way to define a year that can fix this problem. Instead of measuring the exact time it takes to orbit the Sun, we can instead measure the time between the vernal equinox of one year and the next.

The vernal equinox is the point in Earth's orbit where the Sun moves from the southern hemisphere of our sky to the northern one. Each year it falls on or around March 21.

The time between one equinox and the next is called the "tropical year", and is slightly shorter than the sidereal year. It comes in at 365.24219 days.

This difference is pretty small (about 20 minutes), but it equates to the amount that Earth's axis has precessed in that time - just under 1/26,000 of a full lap.

Article goes on to compare the Julian calendar, and the (modified) current calendar:

The Gregorian calendar
To fix this very slow drift, a new calendar was devised in the second half of the 16th century. Named after Pope Gregory XIII, the Gregorian calendar was released in 1582.

Of course, given relativity, a flat earth, and the administration's attitude toward science, oh, and Daylight Saving Time, we are lucky just to find lunchtime in any given day. Happy 29th!

Original Submission

Many nations have begun to take special measures to address the problem of the spread of the COVID-19 virus over every continent. It would be pointless to report the details of all such measures; they are limited to each specific country and liable to frequent change as the situation develops. The USA FDA (Food and Drug Administration) have carried out what they describe as a "Supply Change Update", see the link below, but for others we suggest using a bit of web-search-fu to discover a site more appropriate to your own area of interest.

Worldwide, newspapers and other media need to maintain sales and subscriptions — many tend, therefore, to sensationalize their reporting. This has two undesirable effects: firstly it can result in data being quoted out of context to support the report they are making and, secondly, it tends to stress the possible effects of the COVID pandemic, should it be declared as such. In a comment elsewhere, I reported 2 tables which contain the most accurate figures we can find from a reputable source. They indicate the vulnerability of people to the virus by age, and any links to comorbidity (as far as they are known). There is no doubt that the virus poses a serious threat but it is not the same for all ages and many deaths are attributed to a combination of COVID-19 infection and other pre-existing conditions. For the latter it has not be proven that the virus was the sole cause of death; it is possible that the person would have died anyway. As postmortems have not been carried out in the vast majority of cases, the figures are open to misinterpretation. The WHO (World Health Organization) stresses that they will be unable to clarify these findings for a long time to come.

As it stands, for a person below the age of 70 with no other medical conditions, the chances of dying from a COVID-19 infection is less than 1%. That is still a large number of people at risk and the implications for every nation are significant. It is, however, much lower than some of the figures that have been quoted in the press. The figures for people over 70 and with other conditions cause the rate to rise quite sharply, and I would suggest that we all keep an watchful eye on the elderly or infirm members of our family and friends.

The majority of people will only suffer mild flu-like symptoms and will make a full recovery. - janrinok

takyon writes:

Falcon Heavy to launch NASA Psyche asteroid mission

NASA awarded a contract to SpaceX Feb. 28 for the launch of a mission to a large metallic asteroid on the company's Falcon Heavy rocket.

NASA said that it will use a Falcon Heavy to launch its Psyche mission in July 2022 from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The contract is valued at $117 million, which includes the launch itself and other mission-related costs.

Psyche is one of two missions NASA selected in January 2017 for its Discovery program of relatively low-cost planetary science missions. Psyche will use a Mars flyby in 2023 to arrive at its destination, an asteroid also called Psyche, in January 2026. The spacecraft will go into orbit around the asteroid, one of the largest in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The asteroid is primarily made of iron and nickel, and could be the remnant of a core of a protoplanet that attempted to form there before high-speed collisions with other planetesimals broke it apart. Planetary scientists believe that studies of the asteroid Psyche could help them better understand the formation of the solar system.

The Psyche mission is led by Arizona State University, with Maxar the prime contractor for the spacecraft. The launch will also carry two smallsat secondary payloads: Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE), which will study the Martian atmosphere, and Janus, which will study binary asteroids.

Also at TechCrunch.

Previously:
NASA Selects Two Missions to Visit Asteroids
NASA Asteroid Mission -- Metals "Worth" Ten Thousand Quadrillion Dollars
SpaceX Drops Protest of "Lucy" Contract, Gets Double Asteroid Redirection Test Contract
Nasa Contemplates Mission to the Core of a Protoplanet in 2022

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takyon writes:

Tesla "big battery" in Australia is becoming a bigger nightmare for fossil fuel power generators

Tesla's "big battery" utility-scale Powerpack system at the Hornsdale Power Reserve [(HPR)] in South Australia has yielded more than doubled[sic] the savings to consumers in 2019 than the year prior as it dominates fossil fuel generators on quicker demand response for the grid.

Hornsdale Power Reserve saved consumers AUD116 million ($75.78 million) in 2019, a big jump from AUD40 million ($26.14 million) savings in 2018.

The Hornsdale Power Reserve, owned and operated by French renewable energy producer Neoen, is home to the largest lithium-ion battery energy storage system in the world with a 100 MW/129 MWh. Tesla Powerpack [that] has been playing a significant role in grid stability since its installation in 2017, a function previously dominated by fossil fuel generators that bring energy prices high during system faults [or] planned maintenance.

"Hornsdale has just been the best asset for the state, and for us as well, it's a real success story," head of development at Neoen Australia Garth Heron said in an interview with RenewEconomy. We have shown that these kinds of systems can work. It saves consumers a lot of money, and it's something we should be rolling out right across the market."

[...]The HPR also announced plans to expand its capacity by 50%, boosting it by 50MW/64.5MWh. The project is expected to be completed in the first half of 2020 and will provide stabilizing inertia services critical to the shift to renewable energy in the region, and help push Australia closer to its goal of being net 100% renewable by 2030.

Previously:
Elon Musk: I Can Fix South Australia Power Network in 100 Days or It's Free
Tesla to Build 129 Megawatt-Hours Battery Storage System in Australia
Tesla Delivers on 100 MW Australian Battery Promise

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow3025:

Heart Rate Limitations Show Why You Shouldn't Get Your Medical Advice From the Apple Watch:

The Apple Watch is the smartwatch to beat. It's massively popular, has a full range of features, and compared to some of its competitors, leads the way in rethinking how wearables can function within the health sector. During the Apple Watch portion of Apple events, you can generally expect a feel-good reel of real-life users sharing stories of how the watch saved their lives by notifying them of their irregular heartbeat. That said, Apple's own FDA application for its ECG app admits the watch does not detect atrial fibrillation (AFib) for heart rates exceeding 120 beats per minute—a limitation that a Forbes report suggests could leave a large number of Apple Watch users with a false sense of security.

That 120bpm limitation is, as it turns out, significant, according to Forbes. Mayo Clinic says that the heart rate of AFib patients can range anywhere from 100 to 175bpm—meaning the Apple Watch isn't looking at a decent chunk of folks who may be affected.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Hans Wennborg does a deep dive into the history and evolution of the Zip compression format and underlying algorithms in a blog post. While this lossless compression format became popular around three decades ago, it has its roots in the 1950s and 1970s. Notably, as a result of the "Arc Wars" of the 1980s, hitting BBS users hard, the Zip format was dedicated to the public domain from the start. The main work of the Zip format is performed through use of Lempel-Ziv compression (LZ77) and Huffman coding.

I have been curious about data compression and the Zip file format in particular for a long time. At some point I decided to address that by learning how it works and writing my own Zip program. The implementation turned into an exciting programming exercise; there is great pleasure to be had from creating a well oiled machine that takes data apart, jumbles its bits into a more efficient representation, and puts it all back together again. Hopefully it is interesting to read about too.

This article explains how the Zip file format and its compression scheme work in great detail: LZ77 compression, Huffman coding, Deflate and all. It tells some of the history, and provides a reasonably efficient example implementation written from scratch in C. The source code is available in hwzip-1.0.zip.

Previously:
Specially Crafted ZIP Files Used to Bypass Secure Email Gateways (2019)
Which Compression Format to Use for Archiving? (2019)
The Math Trick Behind MP3s, JPEGs, and Homer Simpson's Face (2019)
Ask Soylent: Internet-communication Archival System (2014)

Original Submission

Last week we made fun of Porsche for their optional giant fingerprint printed on the hood.

This week they made (trade magazine) news with something more sensible(?) Taking advantage of the "auto parking" capabilities already built into their SUVs, they've added some cameras around a dealership and service center in Ludwigsburg, Germany. They have also added an "AI" computer and communication between the car and base (also known as vehicle-to-everything, V2X).

Now when you bring your Porsche in for service, it can drive itself into the service bay. Well, not really -- it is directed by workers using a tablet. You leave it in the customer parking lot and there are no more greasy mechanics climbing into your luxury ride!

https://www.autonomousvehicleinternational.com/videos/porsche-tests-autonomous-vehicles-in-the-workshop.html (with video)
https://www.autonomousvehicleinternational.com/news/testing/porsche-drives-autonomously-in-the-workshop.html (no video, different text)

For once, someone decides to test self-driving on their own private property, rather than out on the public roads.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow4275:

An extended interview with Atrus himself, Myst creator Rand Miller:

A couple of weeks back after running our War Stories piece on Oddworld, we took a chance and published an extended cut of the interview with Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning. Readers responded very well to the extended interview, so we're doing it again—this time with Myst creator Rand Miller.

To produce our War Stories video on Myst and its CD-ROM-based design challenges, we spent more or less the entire day at the Cyan offices in beautiful Washington state, where Rand and his team were the very soul of hospitality (they even insisted on buying coffee for the crew while we were shooting). The pastoral setting—everything looked so much like Myst island!—brought out the storyteller in Rand and, as usually happens with these things, we got way more stories and tales of game design out of him than we ever could have crammed into a 15-minute video.

So here we are, with Rand unleashed. Hear more about the creative process behind The Manhole and the magical tool that was HyperCard! See Rand talk about Cosmic Osmo and the transition from black and white to color game design! Feel the... uh... OK, there's no tactile component to this whole deal, so you'll have to come up with something on your own to feel. (Maybe grab a Myst box and give it a squeeze, or, you know, whatever you're into.)

Original Submission