SoylentNews

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Rutgers researchers have discovered the origins of the protein structures responsible for metabolism: simple molecules that powered early life on Earth and serve as chemical signals that NASA could use to search for life on other planets.

[...] Their study, which predicts what the earliest proteins looked like 3.5 billion to 2.5 billion years ago, is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The scientists retraced, like a many thousand piece puzzle, the evolution of enzymes (proteins) from the present to the deep past. The solution to the puzzle required two missing pieces, and life on Earth could not exist without them. By constructing a network connected by their roles in metabolism, this team discovered the missing pieces.

"We know very little about how life started on our planet. This work allowed us to glimpse deep in time and propose the earliest metabolic proteins," said co-author Vikas Nanda, a professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a resident faculty member at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine.

"Our predictions will be tested in the laboratory to better understand the origins of life on Earth and to inform how life may originate elsewhere. We are building models of proteins in the lab and testing whether they can trigger reactions critical for early metabolism."

[...] The Rutgers team focused on two protein "folds" that are likely the first structures in early metabolism. They are a ferredoxin fold that binds iron-sulfur compounds, and a "Rossmann" fold, which binds nucleotides (the building blocks of DNA and RNA). These are two pieces of the puzzle that must fit in the evolution of life.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Moonchild, the lead developer of the Pale Moon browser writes:

"Dear Web Developer(s),

While, as a software developer ourselves, we understand very well that new features are exciting to use and integrate into your work, we ask that you please consider not adopting Google WebComponents in your designs. This is especially important if you are a web developer creating frameworks for websites to use.
With Google WebComponents here we mean the use of CustomElements and Shadow DOM, especially when used in combination, and in dynamically created document structures (e.g. using module loading/unloading and/or slotted elements).

Why is this important?

For several reasons, but primarily because it completely goes against the traditional structure of the web being an open and accessible place that isn't inherently locked down to opaque structures or a single client. WebComponents used "in full" (i.e. dynamically) inherently creates complex web page structures that cannot be saved, archived or even displayed outside of the designated targeted browsers (primarily Google Chrome).
One could even say that this is setting the web up for becoming fully content-controlled."

https://about.google/: "Our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"

Useful to... whom?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Elon Musk's SpaceX will send astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time in May, NASA said, announcing the first crewed launch from the United States to the platform since 2011.

The tech entrepreneur's company will launch a Falcon 9 rocket to transport NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley in a first for the space agency as it looks to cut costs.

"NASA and SpaceX are currently targeting no earlier than mid-to-late May for launch," the US space agency said in a statement Wednesday.

In March, Musk's Crew Dragon capsule made a round trip to the ISS, which is in orbit more than 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, with a mannequin on board, before returning to the Atlantic after six days in space.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Radiocarbon dating, invented in the late 1940s and improved ever since to provide more precise measurements, is the standard method for determining the dates of artifacts in archaeology and other disciplines.

"If it's organic and old -- up to 50,000 years -- you date it by radiocarbon," said Sturt Manning, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Classical Archaeology in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Manning is lead author of a new paper that points out the need for an important new refinement to the technique. The outcomes of his study, published March 18 in Science Advances, have relevance for understanding key dates in Mediterranean history and prehistory, including the tomb of Tutankhamen and a controversial but important volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Santorini.

Radiocarbon dating measures the decomposition of carbon-14, an unstable isotope of carbon created by cosmic radiation and found in all organic matter. Cosmic radiation, however, is not constant at all times. To account for fluctuations of cosmic radiation in the Earth's atmosphere, the radiocarbon content of known-age tree rings was measured backward in time from the 20th century, for thousands of years.

Tree-ring calibrated radiocarbon started to be widely used 50 years ago. A standard calibration curve was introduced in 1986 and is updated every few years as more data are added.

"A single Northern Hemisphere calibration curve has formed the basis of radiocarbon dating in Europe and the Mediterranean for five decades, setting the time frame for prehistory," Manning and co-authors write. "However, as measurement precision increases, there is mounting evidence for some small but substantive regional (partly growing season) offsets in the same-year radiocarbon levels."

In their study, Manning and co-authors question the accuracy of a single calibration curve for all of the Northern Hemisphere. Using data collected by only one lab to control for interlaboratory variation, they compared radiocarbon data from northern Europe (Germany) and from the Mediterranean (central Turkey) in the 2nd and 1st millennia B.C. They found that some small but critical periods of variation for Mediterranean radiocarbon levels exist. Data from two other radiocarbon labs on samples from central Italy and northern Turkey then provided consistency.

[...] Even small date offsets -- 50 years or less -- are important for building the timeline of the Mediterranean region, which, in the last two millennia B.C., was a hotbed of interrelated cultures.

The adjusted dates confirm previously awkward timelines, where radiocarbon and history did not seem to agree for some historical landmarks, including the death and burial of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen, which is dated around the 1320s to 1310s B.C., according to recent Egyptology.

Journal Reference:

Sturt W. Manning, Bernd Kromer, Mauro Cremaschi, Michael W. Dee, Ronny Friedrich, Carol Griggs, Carla S. Hadden. Mediterranean radiocarbon offsets and calendar dates for prehistory. Science Advances, 2020; 6 (12): eaaz1096 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz1096

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

[20200320_184315 UTC: Update: Made the dept. line longer to better demonstrate space [un]availability.--martyb]

[20200320_202305 UTC: Update: Added topics: "/dev/random", "Code", "Software", and "Answers" topics to better illustrate their use of space in a story. --martyb]

[20200321_175412 UTC: Update: superseded by: Skip to comment(s) -- Second Try --martyb]

martyb writes:

First: Please accept my best wishes to everyone during SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 / Coronavirus pandemic. Please take all necessary precautions to keep yourself and those around you safe!

Second: I should not have been surprised, but I must confess my admiration at how the SoylentNews community came together in support of each other in response to SoylentNews Community -- How has SAR-CoV-2 (Coronavirus) / COVID-19 Affected You? As of my writing this, there are over 300 comments! community++ This is what I had hoped for when SoylentNews started over six years (Wow!) ago, and so validates my giving of my time to this site!

Third: (and the focus of this story) our virus roundup stories are... long. An AC posted a comment: thanks to eds:

Thanks editors for pulling together this summary. SN for the win!

One comment--it is kind of long to scroll down through, to get to the comments. Perhaps next time some of the longer stories could be put inside the spoiler tag?"

This was quickly acted on by a member of staff, but that was not universally embraced as a "Good Idea". Both Soylentils, to my eye, had good points. If I am visiting an active story again, I have already read the story (both the "Intro Copy" and the "Extended Copy"). Why should I have to scroll through a wall-of-text to get to the comments? The suggestion of using <spoiler>...</spoiler> to bracket the contents of each of the merged stories seemed like a reasonable suggestion. But, when you have a hammer... Right idea, but maybe not quite the right tool.

Aside: If I am reading a review of, say, a movie, then a spoiler is an appropriate way to hide plot details from those who have not yet seen the movie. That is not the situation here. Why hide details of a story about the pandemic? Hmm. A good first try, perhaps, but it looks like we need something different in this case.

Idea: what if there were, say, a button at the top of the story that I could click and be brought immediately to the comment section of a story? Hey! I can do that!

Acknowledgements: At this point, I hereby express my sincere thanks to AndyTheAbsurd for constructing some CSS which allowed the conditional display of a button, and to FatPhil for his testing efforts. Thanks guys!

Read on past the break for details on the implementation and a request for assistance before I attempt to roll it out to production.

martyb writes:

Please note the official web site for folding@home is https://foldingathome.org. As a free service, folding.extremeoverclocking.com (FEO) provides a variety of reports based on data it gathers from the official site. This story is from an announcement made on FEO.

Basically, folding@home is a distributed computing system whereby volunteer's machines are issued "work units" to process and, when they have completed their processing, upload their results back tofolding@home. See the excellent write-up at Wikipedia for more details.

tl;dr: When F@H announced they were working on SARS-CoV-19 (COVID-19), the outpouring of support has overwhelmed their infrastructure; their servers are having trouble keeping up with the demand for work units and the subsequent upload of results. Don't give up!

Where did the day go? (03.18.20, 9:32pm CDT)

Important news first! I've noticed this and I know many others have too, yes the official Folding@Home stats seem to be loading slow for people, or it might timeout with an error. Same goes for getting your passkey and work units! There have been so many new people signing up these past few days that you guys are overloading their system!

With that said, one of the guys over at Linus Tech Tips let me know they have created a special folding Emergency Response Thread to Covid-19 that has some up-to-date info on registration / server issues, and are offering direct troubleshooting and support to help people get their clients up and running!

Also, before sending me an email, please check out the EOC Folding Stats FAQ as it answers a lot of the common questions I've been getting!

With so many people emailing me asking where their stats are, and the loading issues with the official site, I'm going to try to expand processing to additional teams & users. My initial goal is to increase processing of Team data from 6,000 to 12,000 teams. Individual data I'm not quite sure how I'm going to handle quite yet, I'm going to get the team data going first and see how many are active and what kind of movement there is.

I was looking over my server's performance charts this morning, and I noticed a considerable peak in the mysql query-per-second. Did some digging through the logs and it looks like the French "Z Event" plea to join folding went gangbusters on Twitter and their team is moving up fast. I noticed PC Master Race has added over 20,000 new users in the past week too!

So, if you have been experiencing problems with your F@H client, this may be the reason why! And, if you were unaware, we have our own folding@home team: "SoylentNews.org", and currently ranked 210th in the world. Go Team! Come join us!

Follow along at home!

• https://apps.foldingathome.org//teamstats/team230319.html
• https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=230319
• https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_overtake.php?s=&t=230319
• https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/extra_page.php?s=&t=230319
• https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_list.php?s=&t=230319

Previously:
Folding@Home Joins Fight Against SARS-CoV-2; New Folders Prompty Drain Work Unit Queue

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A comprehensive review of U.S. social policies evaluated for their health outcomes found suggestive evidence that early life, income, and health insurance interventions have the potential to improve health. Scientists have long known that "social" risk factors, like poverty, are correlated with health. However, until this study, there was little research carried out to understand whether it was actually possible to improve population health by addressing these risk factors with social policies. The findings are published in The Milbank Quarterly, a multidisciplinary journal of population health and health policy published by the Milbank Memorial Fund.

"Since the 1960s, a large number of social policies that have been experimentally evaluated include health outcomes, but these were mostly overlooked. By tracking down these studies, we found a unique opportunity to inform evidence-based policymaking. It was sitting right there in front of us this whole time," said Peter Muennig, MD, a professor of Health Policy and Management at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. "Our goal was to conduct a comprehensive review of experimental studies of social and economic interventions that were not explicitly designed for the purpose of improving the health of participants. Health outcomes were often added as an afterthought and were overlooked." He added, "This is remarkable given the magnitude of expenditures in the nonmedical determinants of health in the United States and the weak evidence base supporting these investments."

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Xbox Series X will be missing the optical S/PDIF audio output that was present on the Xbox One and Xbox 360 hardware lines.

[...] The removal will mainly impact players who use a small subset of high-end gaming headsets and audio systems that rely on the optical audio connection instead of audio sent over HDMI or Microsoft's wireless standard. Some users will be able to use S/PDIF passthrough output from their TV-set as a replacement, though. And Windows Central reports that wireless headset makers like Astro are already working on solutions to make existing Xbox One-compatible S/PDIF products work on the Series X.

Microsoft has also confirmed that the Series X will be missing the IR extension port that was present on the back of the Xbox One and the IR blaster that was present on the Xbox One S. Those features were only really useful in extremely limited circumstances, such as for Xbox users who wanted to use the system's TV remote control functions without plugging in a Kinect sensor.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Cisco Systems has fixed three high-severity vulnerabilities in its software-defined networking for wide-area network (SD-WAN) solutions for business users. If exploited, the flaws could enable bad actors to execute commands with root privileges on affected systems. To exploit the vulnerabilities attackers need to first be local and authenticated.

The three flaws are located in various Cisco hardware and software products running the company’s SD-WAN software earlier than Release 19.2.2 (the fixed release). Hardware includes the company’s SD-WAN solutions: vBond and vSmart controllers (which implements network connectivity), the vManage Network Management system (the centralized management platform) and the vBond Orchestrator software (which performs authentication of all elements in the network). Also affected are various vEdge routers, and the corresponding vEdge cloud router platform.

“The Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team is not aware of any public announcements or malicious use of the vulnerability that is described in this advisory,” according to Cisco’s Wednesday advisory.

Oblig xkcd: Exploits of a mom

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The 2020 edition of curl up has gone to an online-only format this year and will not involve a physical meetup. Many other upcoming conferences have already announced either a complete cancellation or a similar move to an online-only edition for 2020.

curl up 2020 will still take place, and at the same date as planned (May 9-10), but we will change the event to a pure online and video-heavy occasion. This way we can of course also even [more easily] welcome audience and participants from even [further] away who previously would have had a hard time to participate.

Which other relevant conferences, expositions, trade shows, or similar events have been moved to online only for this year?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A few years ago, some studies were published that aroused considerable interest among researchers in genetics. These studies had examined a particular epigenetic mark, or modification of the DNA that influences how the DNA sequence is used in different cells. This mark had not previously been observed in multicellular organisms. The mark, known as "6mdA," is, in contrast, common in bacteria, where it plays an important role in protecting the bacteria against viruses.

Reports from numerous research groups stating that they had found 6mdA in various animal species, and even in human cells, stimulated not only major interest among the research community, but also some questions. One of these concerned the levels of 6mdA detected, which were so low that scientists wondered whether such a rare epigenetic signal could truly have a function. Following these initial reports, some other published studies were unable to detect 6mdA in animals.

Just as many other research groups, Colm Nestor's group at Linköping University started to study this puzzling epigenetic signal. They were, however, unable to detect it in human or mouse cells. Eventually, they detected 6mdA in two samples of human cells, but it turned out that both of the samples were contaminated with mycoplasma bacteria. The researchers suspected that the epigenetic mark came from the bacteria and not the human cells. They treated the cells with antibiotics against mycoplasma and saw the 6mdA signal disappear.

DannyB writes:

NASA to launch 247 petabytes of data into AWS – but forgot about eye-watering cloudy egress costs before lift-off

Audit finds that error could actually mean less data flows to boffins because space agency may not be able to afford downloads

NASA needs 215 more petabytes of storage by the year 2025, and expects Amazon Web Services to provide the bulk of that capacity. However, the space agency didn't realize this would cost it plenty in cloud egress charges. As in, it will have to pay as scientists download its data.

That omission alone has left NASA's cloud strategy pointing at the ground rather than at the heavens.

The data in question will come from NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) program, which collects information from the many missions that observe our planet. NASA makes those readings available through the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS).

To store all the data and run EOSDIS, NASA operates a dozen Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) that provide pleasing redundancy. But NASA is tired of managing all that infrastructure, so in 2019, it picked AWS to host it all

[...] "Specifically, the agency faces the possibility of substantial cost increases for data egress from the cloud," the Inspector General's Office wrote, explaining that today NASA doesn't incur extra costs when users access data from its DAACs. "However, when end users download data from Earthdata Cloud, the agency, not the user, will be charged every time data is egressed.

How many petabytes is SLS worth, I wonder?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Al Jazeera:

Scotland's ability to manufacture (and consume) alcohol such as Scotch whisky may be world-renowned, but Scottish distilleries are today joining the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

Responding to a global shortage of hand sanitiser, which has seen barren supermarket shelves across Scotland and the United Kingdom as demand outstripped supply, some Scottish spirit makers have begun a novel form of alcohol production that, just days ago, would have been seen as laughable.

[...] "This idea was not even 24 hours old," said Andrew Mackenzie, owner of Verdant Spirits, before he decided to switch production from gin to hand sanitiser earlier this week, following requests from local caregivers in Dundee, eastern Scotland.

Don't drink the hand sanitizer, even if it smells delightfully like Glen Alba.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Analysing 2500-year-old teeth has thrown open a window onto life and gender inequality during Bronze Age China.

The University of Otago-led research has cast light on breastfeeding, weaning, evolving diets and the difference between what girls and boys were eating, lead researcher Dr. Melanie Miller, a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Otago's Department of Anatomy, says.

The teeth come from the Central Plains of China and date from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, between 771 and 221 BC. Despite their extreme antiquity (they are as old as Athens' Parthenon and the Old Testament sacking of Jerusalem's First Temple) the teeth's dentin—the bony tissue forming the bulk of our teeth's structure—was full of information.

Using stable isotope analysis, researchers were able to show the types and amounts of various elements in the dentin, including carbon and nitrogen, unlocking information about the individuals' life and diet. That enabled a picture to be drawn of a changing society, Dr. Miller says.

[...] The analysis of 23 individuals from two different archaeological sites shows children were breastfed until they were between 2.5 and four years old, with weaning onto solids—consisting mostly of wheat and soybean—occurring slightly earlier in females than in males.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

An international team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, has found that current estimates of flood risk rely upon methods for calculating flood damage which are inadequately verified and match poorly with observations.

[...] When calculating flood risk—that is, translating modelled representations of the physical of phenomenon of flooding to its impacts—it is common to apply a 'depth-damage function' or curve, which relates a given water depth to a proportional building loss (for example one metre of water equals 50 per cent loss of building value).

[...] The new study, published today in the journal Nature Communications, used commonly applied curves, developed by various US government agencies, and examined how they compare to millions of actual flood insurance claims made in the US.

[...] It found that universally applied depth-damage curves show low skill in the replication of property-level damages, rendering the results of projects where they have been applied (for example the justification of billions of dollars of infrastructure investment) suspect.

[...] At low inundation depths, most damages are somewhat minimal (<10 per cent of building value) with a very low chance of experiencing maximal (>90 per cent) damage. But as depth increases, the distribution shifts and swings towards greater probability of high (>90 per cent) damage and lower probability of low (<10 per cent) damage.

Lead author, Dr. Oliver Wing from Bristol's School of Geographical Sciences, said: "This relationship can be represented with a beta distribution, meaning future flood risk analyses can employ a function which properly captures the true stochastic relationship between depth and damage."

More information: O. Wing, N. Pinter, P. Bates, C. Kousky. New insights into US flood vulnerability revealed from flood insurance big data.Nature Communications, 2020.

Journal information: Nature Communications

Original Submission