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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

University of Washington researchers have discovered that large predators play a key yet unexpected role in keeping smaller predators and deer in check. Their "fatal attraction" theory finds that smaller predators are drawn to the kill sites of large predators by the promise of leftover scraps, but the scavengers may be killed themselves if their larger kin return for seconds.

The study, published March 18 in the journal Ecology Letters, is the first to examine carnivore killing and scavenging activities in relation to each other across dozens of landscapes around the world. Patterns that emerged from their analysis could be used to make important management decisions about large carnivores worldwide, the authors said.

"I hope this paper will spur researchers to think more holistically about these killing and scavenging interactions, because currently we're not really getting a full understanding of how carnivore communities function by examining them separately," said senior author Laura Prugh, a wildlife ecologist and associate professor in the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.

Large carnivores such as cougars, wolves and grizzly bears have disappeared from many regions, allowing some smaller carnivores—coyotes, foxes and bobcats, for example—to increase in population. The absence of large carnivores, especially on the East Coast, also has ignited populations of deer and other prey, creating an imbalance in many areas.

But in regions where top carnivores are present, such as the western U.S., their relationship with smaller predators is complex. When they kill deer and other prey, they often leave scraps for smaller predators to scavenge. But larger predators also are known to kill smaller carnivores.

[...] "We initially thought maybe smaller carnivores are scavenging the wolf kills and benefiting," explained Prugh, referencing one of the top predators, wolves, examined in the study. "But then we realized that at these scavenging sites, they might be running into the wolves and getting killed. The scavenging, instead of providing a benefit, could actually be functioning as a trap that's drawing in the smaller carnivores."

The researchers thus developed their fatal attraction theory, which proposes that even though large predators are helpful providers of food, their kill sites ultimately are dangerous for smaller predators, which can then become prey themselves when the top predator returns.

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Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A team of workers at Art Fraud Insights, LLC, has found that all of the Dead Sea Scroll (DSS) fragments housed at the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. are fake. They have published their findings on their company website.

The Dead Sea scrolls are a collection of scrolls found in the Qumran Caves near the shore of the Dead Sea. They were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd in 1946. Since that time, the scrolls have been identified as ancient Jewish manuscripts created over the last three centuries BCE and the first century CE. They are housed in the Shrine of the Book on the grounds of the Israel Museum.

[...] the team [at Art Fraud Insights, LLC] [...] found that the material makeup of the collection did not match that of the original DSS fragments—they appeared to be ancient leather rather than parchment. More importantly, they had found that modern ink had been used to print words on the old material fragments—it had pooled on the old dried leather. The group also found evidence of clay mineral dust similar to that found in the Qumran Caves that had been applied after the inking had been done—evidence of an attempt to cover up the fake materials below. The final verdict: the fragments were not only fake, but had been created for the purpose of deception.

It is still not known who went to such great lengths to create the fake DSS fragments.

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Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

31,000 Chinese students arrive in Australia despite coronavirus travel ban

By travelling to a third country and spending two weeks in self-quarantine before coming to Australia, [more than 31,000] students were able to satisfy the Department of Home Affairs' travel restrictions. After two weeks in a third country those who have travelled from China are then able to travel to Australia.

Figures from Department of Home Affairs show 31,196 Chinese students have now arrived in Australia since mid-February. The students have been arriving at a rate of about 1000 a day, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

[...] A spokesperson for the University of Sydney told news.com.au the institution is supporting their students with counselling services and fee payment plans, and have set up a dedicated hotline to help students through what they called a "challenging time".

[...] "We won't know until census on 31 March how many of our students have been affected but we anticipate it could be up to 12,000."

[...] When the ban on non citizens travelling from China to Australia was announced in early February, 106,000 Chinese students enrolled in Australian universities were overseas.

The local education sector has been hit hard by thousands of full fee paying international students being blocked from entering the country.

In response, some institutions, including the University of Melbourne, University of Adelaide and Western Sydney University have offered grants of up to $7500 to affected students to get around the travel ban.

One Chinese student said she spent nearly $20,000 travelling from China to Thailand to self-quarantine and make it to her classes at the University of Sydney.

[...] Similar travel bans have now been extended to Iran, Italy and the Republic of Korea.

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Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The Signal messaging progam is now the favored messaging program for the European Commission instead of proprietary messaging programs. The decision was made last month, in February, to prefer it for both internal and external communication.

The Signal open source software is written in JavaScript, TypeScript and CSS and published on GitHub under a General Public Licence v3.0[*] (GPLv3). In particular, the clients are published under the GPLv3 license, while the server code is published under the GNU Affero General Public License v3. The software contains the following features:

• Voice and video calls to other Signal users;
• Text messages, files, voice notes, pictures, GIFs, and video messages to other Signal users;
• Group messaging;
• Set deletion timers for messages on both the sender and the received devices.

All communications to other Signal users are free of charge and automatically end-to-end encrypted.

[*] Link in source was malformed (lacked URL). Updated to point to official GNU document. --martyb

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Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow420:

Confessions app Whisper spills almost a billion records:

Researchers who uncovered a data exposure from mobile app Whisper earlier this week have released more details about the incident.

Whisper is an app from MediaLab, a mobile app company that owns a host of other apps including the popular messaging service Kik. It offers a kind of anonymous social network service that allows people to post their innermost fears and desires, supposedly without risk.

Its users post everything from dark family secrets to stories of infidelity. It gathers these up and uses them for articles on its website, including "Naughty Nannies Confess To Sleeping With The Fathers They Work For", "Alcoholism Runs In My Family", and "I Married The Wrong Person".

The problem, according to researcher Dan Ehrlich of cybersecurity consultancy Twelve Security, is that Whisper didn't steward that data very well. He says that he and his colleague Matthew Porter accessed 900m records in a 5 TB database spanning 75 different servers, logged between the app's release in 2012 and the present day. The data was stored in plain text on ElasticSearch servers and included 90 metadata points per account.

The Washington Post broke the story about the app on Monday 10 March, having worked with the researchers.

The Washington Post

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Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

How much is too much? Are these portable computers we carry around that just happen to be able to make phone calls really worth a small fortune? Would you pay over $2000 for a mobile phone that can fold in half?

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip on sale in Australia April 3 for [AUS]$2199

[...] At the Z Flip's [AUS]$2199 price it's [AUS]$200 more than the Galaxy S20 Ultra we told you was too expensive and too big earlier this month.

The Z Flip may be even more expensive but it is at least smaller, and gets even more so when you fold it in half to stash in your pocket or bag.

The new wave of foldable phones are very expensive, but that's also part of their appeal.

"The Galaxy Z Flip is a statement piece and we can't wait to see what Australians do with it," Samsung vice president of mobile Garry McGregor said.

On the other end of the scale, Huawei has announced its new foldable, the Mate Xs, will also be coming to Australia soon.

[...] The phone, a horizontally folding device that opens up into an 8-inch tablet is described by the company as a "high-end, luxury device," which partly explains its massive price tag.

The Huawei Mate Xs is due to go on sale here April 9 for [AUS]$3999, but is already available for pre-order.

[20200318_124615 UTC Update: Booster recovery unsuccessful. I have seen no report, yet, on fairing recovery. Successful deployment of 60 Starlink satellites. Also, I apologize for the very late original posting of this story. --martyb]

martyb writes:

SpaceX will make another attempt at launching Starlink satellites at 08:16 ET today.

YouTube live stream.

Cf: SpaceX Attempts Fifth Launch of Same Falcon 9 Sun 2020-03-15 09:22 EDT - Aborted.

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Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AnonymousCoward:

Mechanical forces shape animal 'origami' precisely despite 'noise':

The reproducibility of form, shape, and characteristic appearance is a key feature of our development that is made possible because their instructions are coded in our DNA. What is perplexing, however, is how this reproducibility is achieved despite genetic variation and developmental "noise" resulting from environmental, physical and chemical fluctuations. Recent work in fruit flies has suggested that "noise-canceling" mechanisms in the embryo rely on a detailed and highly reproducible genetic "blueprint" with specific instructions down to the single-cell level.

Now, in research published in Developmental Cell, an international team led by Yu-Chiun Wang at RIKEN BDR asked whether this blueprint is sufficient to explain developmental consistency, or whether it is helped by alternative noise-canceling mechanisms. Their findings indicate a previously overlooked role for the mechanical forces that sculpt the embryo, as they turn out to be the noise-producing culprit as well as the key to ensuring precision—a true double-edged sword!

[...] The conclusion of this study is that the constancy of animal form requires more than just the deterministic process of genetic inheritance and genetic networks, but also relies on the stochastic and emergent behaviors of mechanical forces. "This work taught us that constancy in biology stems not only from its regulatory complexity, but also from the unique noise-and-self-correction principle of self-organization. This is a missing chapter in developmental biology textbooks," Wang says.

Wang also thinks that by the same token, pathological processes that involve growth, reorganization and changing cell and tissue shapes, such as tumor formation and cancer metastasis, must also contain an element of mechanical self-organization, alongside the well-known factor of genetic susceptibility. "The cephalic furrow is a very pronounced structure," he continues, "yet it forms and disappears about one hour after its initiation. This mysterious, beautiful and yet ephemeral structure of 'epithelial origami' continues to mesmerize us and teach us things that we haven't yet understood about animal development."

Anthony S.Eritano, et al. Developmental Cell (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2020.02.012

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Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

New coronavirus stable for hours on surfaces: SARS-CoV-2 stability similar to original SARS virus:

The virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is stable for several hours to days in aerosols and on surfaces, according to a new study from National Institutes of Health, CDC, UCLA and Princeton University scientists in The New England Journal of Medicine. The scientists found that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was detectable in aerosols for up to three hours, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel. The results provide key information about the stability of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19 disease, and suggests that people may acquire the virus through the air and after touching contaminated objects. The study information was widely shared during the past two weeks after the researchers placed the contents on a preprint server to quickly share their data with colleagues.

[...] The findings affirm the guidance from public health professionals to use precautions similar to those for influenza and other respiratory viruses to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2:

• Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.
• Stay home when you are sick.
• Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.
• Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces using a regular household cleaning spray or wipe.

Neeltje van Doremalen, Trenton Bushmaker, Dylan H. Morris, Myndi G. Holbrook, Amandine Gamble, Brandi N. Williamson, Azaibi Tamin, Jennifer L. Harcourt, Natalie J. Thornburg, Susan I. Gerber, James O. Lloyd-Smith, Emmie de Wit, Vincent J. Munster. Aerosol and Surface Stability of SARS-CoV-2 as Compared with SARS-CoV-1. New England Journal of Medicine, 2020; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2004973

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Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Many genetic and breeding studies have shown that point mutations and indels (insertions and deletions) can alter elite traits in crop plants. Although nuclease-initiated homology-directed repair (HDR) can generate such changes, it is limited by its low efficiency. Base editors are robust tools for creating base transitions, but not transversions, insertions or deletions. Thus, there is a pressing need for new genome engineering approaches in plants.

David R. Liu and his colleagues at Harvard University developed a new genome editing approach, prime editing, which uses engineered Cas9 nickase (H840A)-reverse transcriptase (RT) fusion proteins paired with a prime editing guide RNA (pegRNA) that encodes the desired edit in human cells.

Recently, a research team led by Prof. Gao Caixia of the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported the optimization of a prime editing system (PPE system) for creating desired point mutations, insertions and deletions in two major cereal crops, namely, rice and wheat. The main components of a PPE system are a Cas9 nickase-RT fusion protein and a pegRNA.

Using the PPE system, these researchers produced all 12 kinds of single base substitutions, as well as multiple point mutations and small DNA insertions and deletions at 9 rice and seven wheat sites in protoplasts, with efficiencies up to 19.2%. The efficiency of PPE was strongly affected by the length of the primer binding site (PBS) and RT template.

More information: Prime genome editing in rice and wheat, Nature Biotechnology (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41587-020-0455-x , https://nature.com/articles/s41587-020-0455-x

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Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have created a new, rubber-like material with a unique set of properties, which could act as a replacement for human tissue in medical procedures. The material has the potential to make a big difference to many people's lives. The research was recently published in the highly regarded scientific journal ACS Nano.

In the development of medical technology products, there is a great demand for new naturalistic materials suitable for integration with the body. Introducing materials into the body comes with many risks, such as serious infections, among other things. Many of the substances used today, such as Botox, are very toxic. There is a need for new, more adaptable materials.

In the new study, the Chalmers researchers developed a material consisting solely of components that have already been shown to work well in the body.

[...] "We were really surprised that the material turned to be very soft, flexible and extremely elastic. It would not work as a bone replacement material, we concluded. But the new and unexpected properties made our discovery just as exciting," says Anand Kumar Rajasekharan, PhD in Materials Science and one of the researchers behind the study.

The results showed that the new rubber-like material may be appropriate for many applications which require an uncommon combination of properties -- high elasticity, easy processability, and suitability for medical uses.

"The first application we are looking at now is urinary catheters. The material can be constructed in such a way that prevents bacteria from growing on the surface, meaning it is very well suited for medical uses," says Martin Andersson, research leader for the study and Professor of Chemistry at Chalmers.

Journal Reference:

Anand K. Rajasekharan, Christoffer Gyllensten, Edvin Blomstrand, Marianne Liebi, Martin Andersson. Tough Ordered Mesoporous Elastomeric Biomaterials Formed at Ambient Conditions. ACS Nano, 2019; 14 (1): 241 DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.9b01924

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Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A good indicator of dysregulation in live cells is a change in their RNA expression. MicroRNA (miRNA), a special type of RNA, is considered a biomarker for carcinogenic cells. A team of scientists from China has found a way to amplify miRNA in live tumor cells for bioimaging. As they report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, their assay is based on a robust cellular autocatalytic biocircuit triggered by synthetic DNA and nanoparticles.

Diagnosing cancer before a tumor becomes visible has been one of the long-standing goals in medicine. One of the biomarkers for carcinogenicity in a cell is its RNA expression pattern or, more precisely, the change in RNA expression, which causes metabolic degeneration. There are many types of RNA, among which a short noncoding RNA called miRNA promotes or impedes the translation of nucleus-encoded genetic information into protein. Accordingly, the detection of a changed miRNA expression profile is thought to be a reliable indication of the degeneration of a cell.

However, the detection of a particular miRNA is difficult because it is present in the cell only in tiny amounts and must by amplified and connected to a signaling entity, such as a fluorescence dye, for visualization. A team of scientists at Wuhan University, China, led by Fuan Wang, have discovered a suitable amplification-detection mechanism for miRNA, which relies on an autocatalytic biocircuit activated by synthetic DNA, leading to a strong fluorescence signal that flags tumor cells.

[...] The scientists emphasize that their self-enhanced bioimaging system could be developed as a powerful tool to visualize tumor cells with biomarkers. This is especially promising as many different miRNAs can be selectively targeted to investigate different cancers or other cell dysfunction.

Haixiao Fang et al., Rational Design of a Two‐Photon Fluorogenic Probe for Visualizing Monoamine Oxidase A Activity in Human Glioma Tissues, Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2020). DOI: 10.1002/anie.202000059

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Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Notification of Enforcement Discretion for telehealth:

We are empowering medical providers to serve patients wherever they are during this national public health emergency. We are especially concerned about reaching those most at risk, including older persons and persons with disabilities. – Roger Severino, OCR Director.

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is responsible for enforcing certain regulations issued under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, to protect the privacy and security of protected health information, namely the HIPAA Privacy, Security and Breach Notification Rules (the HIPAA Rules).

During the COVID-19 national emergency, which also constitutes a nationwide public health emergency, covered health care providers subject to the HIPAA Rules may seek to communicate with patients, and provide telehealth services, through remote communications technologies.  Some of these technologies, and the manner in which they are used by HIPAA covered health care providers, may not fully comply with the requirements of the HIPAA Rules.

OCR will exercise its enforcement discretion and will not impose penalties for noncompliance with the regulatory requirements under the HIPAA Rules against covered health care providers in connection with the good faith provision of telehealth during the COVID-19 nationwide public health emergency.  This notification is effective immediately.

A covered health care provider that wants to use audio or video communication technology to provide telehealth to patients during the COVID-19 nationwide public health emergency can use any non-public facing remote communication product that is available to communicate with patients.  OCR is exercising its enforcement discretion to not impose penalties for noncompliance with the HIPAA Rules in connection with the good faith provision of telehealth using such non-public facing audio or video communication products during the COVID-19 nationwide public health emergency.  This exercise of discretion applies to telehealth provided for any reason, regardless of whether the telehealth service is related to the diagnosis and treatment of health conditions related to COVID-19.

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Original Submission

takyon writes:

Intel's Cooper Lake Plans: The Chip That Wasn't Meant to Exist, Fades Away

Following an exclusive report from SemiAccurate, and confirmed by Intel through ServeTheHome, the news on the wire is that Intel is set to can wide-spread general availability to its Cooper Lake line of 14nm Xeon Scalable processors. The company is set to only make the hardware available for priority scale-out customers who have already designed quad-socket and eight-socket platforms around the hardware. This is a sizeable blow to Intel's enterprise plans, putting the weight of Intel's future x86 enterprise CPU business solely on the shoulders of its 10nm Ice Lake Xeon future, which has already seen significant multi-quarter delays from its initial release schedule.

[...] Today's news is that Intel is pulling the plug on Cooper Lake. That's despite being a product that was ES sampling as early as 18 months ago, potentially QS sampling 12 months ago, and should be out already. If you wanted a single socket or a dual socket Cooper Lake server, then bad luck – Intel is set to only sample Cooper Lake to key customers (Facebook) who are driving quad-socket and eight-socket systems.

As reported at ServeTheHome, Intel gave the following guideance. We've split it into several segments to discuss what is being said.

• Given the continued success of our recent expansion of 2nd Gen Xeon Scalable products, in addition to customer demand for our upcoming 10nm Ice Lake processors, we have decided to narrow the delivery of our Cooper Lake products that best meets our market demand.
• Intel's upcoming Cooper Lake processors will be supported on the Cedar Island platform, which supports standard and custom configurations that scale up to 8 sockets.
• Customers, including some of the largest AI innovators today, are uniquely interested in Cooper Lake's enhanced DL Boost technology including the industry's first inclusion of bfloat16 instruction processing support. We expect strong demand for the technology and processing capability with certain customer segments and AI usages in the marketplace that support deep learning for training and inference use cases.
• We continue to expect delivery of Cooper Lake starting in the first half of 2020.

The CPUs were created to give Facebook something with support for bfloat16 instructions.

Previously: Intel to Launch 48-Core "14nm" Cooper Lake and 38-Core "10nm" Ice Lake Xeons in 2020

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Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

New data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite reveal the decline of air pollution, specifically nitrogen dioxide emissions, over Italy. This reduction is particularly visible in northern Italy which coincides with its nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The animation shows the fluctuation of nitrogen dioxide emissions across Europe from 1 January 2020 until 11 March 2020, using a 10-day moving average. These data are thanks to the Tropomi instrument on board the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite which maps a multitude of air pollutants around the globe.

Claus Zehner, ESA's Copernicus Sentinel-5P mission manager, comments, "The decline in nitrogen dioxide emissions over the Po Valley in northern Italy is particularly evident.

"Although there could be slight variations in the data due to cloud cover and changing weather, we are very confident that the reduction in emissions that we can see, coincides with the lockdown in Italy causing less traffic and industrial activities."

Josef Aschbacher, ESA's Director of Earth Observation Programmes, says, "Copernicus Sentinel-5P Tropomi is the most accurate instrument today that measures air pollution from space. These measurements, globally available thanks to the free and open data policy, provide crucial information for citizens and decision makers."

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Original Submission