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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Blocking the Iron Transport Could Stop Tuberculosis:

"The transport protein, which is located in the bacterial membrane, is essential for the survival of the pathogens. If IrtAB is absent or not functioning, M. tuberculosis can no longer reproduce inside the human cell", says Seeger.

Using a combination of cryo-electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography, the researchers solved for the first time a high-resolution structure of the transport protein IrtAB. This analysis was done in collaboration with Ohad Medalia, professor at the Department of Biochemistry of UZH. According to its spatial structure, IrtAB belongs to the so-called ABC exporters, which are typically involved in the efflux of molecules out of the bacterial cell. "However, we were able to show that IrtAB in fact imports mycobactins into M. tuberculosis. It therefore transports molecules in the opposite direction than expected," says Markus Seeger.

[...] "IrtAB is a potential drug target, because its deletion renders M. tuberculosis inactive and incapable of infection. With our structural and functional elucidation of IrtAB, we opened avenues to develop novel tuberculosis drugs that inhibit the iron transport into the bacteria", Seeger concludes. "In view of Covid-19, a disease that also affects the lungs, tuberculosis will likely play a more important role again in the future. It is quite conceivable that patients weakened by Covid-19 will show increased infection rates with tuberculosis," he adds.

More information: Fabian M. Arnold et al, The ABC exporter IrtAB imports and reduces mycobacterial siderophores, Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2136-9

Journal information: Nature

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Asthma patients react even to low concentrations of some allergens with severe inflammation of the bronchi. This is also accompanied by increased mucus production, which makes breathing even more difficult. A central role here is played by cells of the innate immune system, which were only discovered a few years ago and are called Innate Lymphoid Cells (ILC). They perform an important protective function in the lungs by regenerating damaged mucous membranes. For this purpose they produce inflammatory messengers from the group of cytokines, which stimulate division of the mucosal cells and promote mucus production.

This mechanism is normally very useful: It allows the body to quickly repair damage caused by pathogens or harmful substances. The mucus then transports the pathogens out of the bronchial tubes and protects the respiratory tract against re-infection. "With asthma, however, the inflammatory reaction is much stronger and longer than normal," emphasizes Prof. Dr. Christoph Wilhelm from the Institute for Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Pharmacology, who is a member of the Cluster of Excellence ImmunoSensation at the University of Bonn.

[...] The ILCs multiply rapidly during this process and produce large amounts of proinflammatory cytokines. [...] "We have investigated which metabolic processes are active in the ILCs when they switch to reproduction mode," explains Wilhelm's colleague Dr. Fotios Karagiannis. "Then we tried to block these metabolic pathways and thereby reduce the speed at which the cells divide."

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

An Android malware package likened to a Russian matryoshka nesting doll has security researchers raising the alarm, since it appears it's almost impossible to get rid of.

Known as xHelper, the malware has been spreading mainly in Russia, Europe, and Southwest Asia on Android 6 and 7 devices (which while old and out of date, make up around 15 per cent of the current user base) for the past year from unofficial app stores. Once on a gizmo, it opens a backdoor, allowing miscreants to spy on owners, steal their data, and cause mischief.

It has only recently been picked apart by Kaspersky Lab bods, and what makes the malware particularly nasty, the researchers say, is how it operates on multiple layers on the tablets and handsets it infects.

"The main feature of xHelper is entrenchment," explained Igor Golovin on Tuesday. "Once it gets into the phone, it somehow remains there even after the user deletes it and restores the factory settings."

[...] The best thing to do, though, is go a step further than a factory reset, and erase the flash memory completely, including the system partition, and put in a fresh clean copy. "If you have Recovery mode set up on your Android smartphone," said Golovin, "you can try to extract the libc.so file from the original firmware and replace the infected one with it, before removing all malware from the system partition. However, it’s simpler and more reliable to completely reflash the phone."

Even better advice is to avoid downloading any suspicious apps from the Google Play Store, just to be safe, and definitely don't use unauthorized third-party stores at all.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

On March 9, 2020, a Dragon cargo spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station carrying dozens of scientific experiments as a part of SpaceX's 20th cargo resupply mission. Now, Dragon heads home. On April 7, it is scheduled to undock from station, bringing samples, hardware and data from completed investigations back to Earth on its return trip.

Here are details on some of the investigations returning to the ground for further analysis and reporting of results.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:

NASA expands groundwater maps globally to help reveal remote droughts:

The global maps are made possible by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow On (GRACE-FO) satellites from NASA and the German Research Center for Geoscience. The data from these satellites, which took over for the original GRACE satellite mission that ended in 2017, is combined with other data and computer models to show simulations of energy and water cycles around the world.

The results of this are three layers of ground moisture data: surface soil moisture, root zone moisture, and shallow groundwater. With these, experts can monitor groundwater conditions around the world, identify areas that are likely to be hit hard by droughts, and more. This is particularly important for countries that do not possess any of their own infrastructure for monitoring groundwater.

NASA Grace website hosted by UNL

Original Submission

Stealth Quantum Computing Company raises $215M to Build 1M Qbit Computer

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/04/06/palo-alto-quantum-computing-startup-scores-215m-to.html

PsiQuantum Corp. on Monday said it raised $215 million to help it develop a commercial quantum computer more powerful than machines being developed by Google, IBM, Honeywell, and a host of startups and university labs.

Jeremy O'Brien, co-founder and CEO of the 5-year-old Palo Alto startup, told Bloomberg that the company expects to build a computer with 1 million qubits, or quantum bits, within "a handful of years."

[...] "If they are really able to pull this off, it immediately distinguishes them and puts them in a completely different field so far ahead of the competition," Peter Rohde, a Future Fellow at the Centre for Quantum Software and Information at the University of Technology Sydney, told Bloomberg.

CEO O'Brien and co-founders [...] formed PsiQuantum in Silicon Valley to develop a computer that essentially runs on light.

They have assembled a team of more than 100 to build what is known as a silicon photonic quantum computer.

Samir Kumar, general manager of Microsoft Corp.'s venture capital unit who has invested in PsiQuantum, put in perspective what the company says its machine will be able to do: "By the time you get to 80 qubits, you are in a place where the qubits are storing more information than the total number of atoms in the entire universe."

Quantum Computing Startup Raises $215 Million for Faster Device

Anonymous Coward writes:

PsiQuantum's photon-based model is still years away, but the company says it'll be more powerful than Google's or IBM's.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Scientists at Caltech and Occidental College have discovered a methane-fueled symbiosis between worms and bacteria at the bottom of the sea, shedding new light on the ecology of deep-sea environments.

They found that bacteria belonging to the Methylococcaceae family have been hitching a ride on the feathery plumes that act as the respiratory organs of Laminatubus and Bispira worms. Methylococcaceae are methanotrophs, meaning that they harvest carbon and energy from methane, a molecule composed of carbon and hydrogen.

The worms, which are a few inches long, have been found in great numbers near deep-sea methane seeps, vents in the ocean floor where hydrocarbon-rich fluids ooze out into the ocean, although it was unclear why the worms favored the vents. As it turns out, the worms slowly digest the hitchhiking bacteria and thus absorb the carbon and energy that the bacteria harvest from the methane.

[...] "These worms have long been associated with seeps, but everyone just assumed they were filter-feeding on bacteria. Instead, we find that they are teaming up with a microbe to use chemical energy to feed in a way we hadn't considered," says Victoria Orphan, James Irvine Professor of Environmental Science and Geobiology and co-corresponding author of a paper on the worms that was published by Science Advances on April 3.

Orphan and her colleagues made the discovery during research cruises to study methane vents off the coast of Southern California and Costa Rica.

Journal Reference: Shana K. Goffredi et al. Methanotrophic bacterial symbionts fuel dense populations of deep-sea feather duster worms (Sabellida, Annelida) and extend the spatial influence of methane seepage, Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay8562

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Senators raise privacy questions about Google's COVID-19 tracker:

Two US senators want to make sure Google's COVID-19 tracker isn't infringing on millions of people's privacy. In a letter sent to Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday, Sens. Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal raised questions about how the tech giant's tracker is ensuring that the location data it's collecting and presenting stays confidential.

The Trump administration has called on tech companies to provide data for tracking the coronavirus pandemic, hoping that logs of people's locations can give insight on social distancing and the disease's spread. Location data has been used in South Korea and China to help contain and track COVID-19 cases, and the US government is looking to do the same as it deals with the pandemic.

[...] Last Friday, Google announced its own COVID-19 tracker, using location data it's collected from its millions of users to help health officials make policy decisions and measure social distancing effects.

The data is collected from people who have their Location History setting activated on their phones, which is typically off by default. In its announcement, the tech giant said no personally identifiable information is collected for this tracker.

Still, Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, have their concerns with Google using a massive amount of location data for tracking the outbreak.

The two lawmakers raised points about how researchers have easily de-anonymized location data several times, since the datasets are often tied to frequently visited spots like homes, workplaces and places of worship.

"Location data sharing carries with it myriad risks, and while we commend Google's efforts to assist in combatting the coronavirus pandemic, we caution you against steps that risk undermining your users' privacy," the senators wrote in the letter.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Boeing to Launch Starliner Spacecraft for Second go at Reaching the ISS After First Mission Failed:

On Monday, Boeing announced it will take a second shot at sending an uncrewed Starliner to the station as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The program aims to launch astronauts from US soil for the first time since the end of the space shuttle era in 2011.

[...] "We have chosen to refly our Orbital Flight Test to demonstrate the quality of the Starliner system," Boeing in a brief statement. "Flying another uncrewed flight will allow us to complete all flight test objectives and evaluate the performance of the second Starliner vehicle at no cost to the taxpayer."

Boeing and NASA have not yet revealed a date for the launch. Starliner must pass its uncrewed flight tests before NASA uses it to send astronauts to the ISS.

Do not cry too much for Boeing as they are the prime contractor for the SLS (Space launch System) which is currently funded to the tune of over $1 billion per year.

Previously:
(2020-03-07) Boeing Hit With 61 Safety Fixes for Astronaut Capsule
(2020-03-01) Boeing Acknowledges "Gaps" in its Starliner Software Testing
(2020-02-07) NASA Safety Panel Calls for Reviews after Second Starliner Software Problem
(2019-12-24) Boeing Starliner Lands Safely in the Desert After Failing to Reach Correct Orbit
(2019-12-23) Boeing's Failed Starliner Mission Strains 'Reliability' Pitch
(2019-12-20) Starliner Fails to Make Journey to ISS
(2019-11-19) Boeing Provides Damage Control After Inspector General's Report on Commercial Crew Program
(2019-11-06) Boeing Performs Starliner Pad Abort Test. Declares Success Though 1 of 3 Parachutes Fails to Deploy.
(2019-09-03) Boeing Readies "Astronaut" for Likely October Test Launch
(2018-04-07) Boeing Crewed Test Flight to the ISS May be Upgraded to a Full Mission

Click to search SoylentNews for more Starliner stories.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The date August 18, 2006, forever altered the trajectory of SpaceX.

On that day, NASA awarded SpaceX a contract to develop a service for delivering cargo to the International Space Station. This "Commercial Orbital Transportation Services" agreement would pay SpaceX $278 million to design and develop a spacecraft and rocket for this purpose—what became known as Cargo Dragon and the Falcon 9.

[...] Beginning in 2012, SpaceX flew its first cargo mission to the station. On Tuesday, Cargo Dragon completed its 20th and final flight to the station, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. (For future supply missions, SpaceX will use a modified version of Crew Dragon, which has 20 percent greater volume and twice as much powered locker capacity).

Over the last eight years, various Dragon spacecraft have spent a total of 547 days attached to the space station, flown more than 450,000kg of cargo to the space station, and returned more than 35,000kg of science experiments and other cargo back to Earth.

[...] By flying the Falcon 9 rocket regularly for NASA, SpaceX was then able to glean valuable data about the flight profile of the first stage returning through the atmosphere. Through this process, SpaceX tested concepts such as supersonic retropropulsion, which enabled the use of Falcon 9 engines to control the rocket's return to Earth. This experimentation led directly to both land-based and sea-based landings of the Falcon 9 rocket.

In 2014, at least partly because SpaceX was successfully delivering cargo to the space station, the company was awarded a contract to deliver astronauts as well. The first Crew Dragon mission carrying Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken is now likely to occur in late May or June. Moreover, late last month, a modified version of Dragon, known as XL, was awarded a contract to deliver cargo to lunar orbit in the mid-2020s.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Disagreements help team perception, study finds:

Team disagreements might be the key to helping soldiers identify objects in battle, researchers say. While studies on combat identification typically focus on how technology can help identify enemy forces, researchers sought to understand how teams work together to identify armored vehicles—using only their training and each other.

"We wanted to know what factors would contribute the most to their success," said Dr. Anthony Baker, a scientist at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory, who executed the study while a doctoral student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. "While previous lab studies of combat identification have looked at the performance of an individual, this is the first lab study to our knowledge that considers team combat identification, especially without any technological aids like an automated combat identification system. This was key for helping us understand the aspects of the team, and its members, that contribute the most to their ability to understand and identify what they are seeing."

The Human Factors journal published the research, "Team Combat Identification: Effects of Gender, Spatial Visualization, and Disagreement," in its February issue.

[...] Researchers found that teams that disagreed more performed better at combat identification, regardless of whether their disagreements actually resulted in more correct answers. The data suggested that disagreeing with a team member's first guess caused the team to verify why they identified a vehicle a certain way.

"In other words, when the team disagreed, they had to justify an answer by recounting the details of what they had seen," Baker said. "This process of recalling and discussing details caused teams to think more deeply about their original responses, compared to teams with fewer disagreements that may have simply trusted what the other teammate believed."

[...] This research reinforces that to understand how a team does its job, one must consider both individual differences such as spatial skills, and team processes such as communication, Baker said.

Journal Reference:
Anthony L. Baker, Joseph R. Keebler, Emily C. Anania, David Schuster, John P. Plummer. Team Combat Identification: Effects of Gender, Spatial Visualization, and Disagreement. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 2020; 001872082090228 DOI: 10.1177/0018720820902286

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Verizon is one of numerous home-Internet providers offering temporarily free service to low-income households during the pandemic. But a big restriction on Verizon's offer makes it impossible for many people to get the deal.

The Verizon problem is one of several that's been pointed out by advocates for poor people at the nonprofit National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA). Charter, CenturyLink, and Frontier have also been labeled disappointments even as Comcast earned praise. The NDIA is maintaining a list of pandemic-related telecom offers. A similar group called EveryoneOn offers a search tool to find low-income offers by ZIP code.

Verizon on March 23 said it would provide two months of free home-Internet and phone service for current low-income subscribers in the Lifeline program and $20 monthly discounts for new low-income subscribers. The $20 discount lowers the starting price for 200Mbps Internet to $19.99 a month. But the broadband offers are available only on Verizon's fiber-to-the-home FiOS service and not in DSL areas where Verizon never upgraded homes from copper to fiber.

When contacted by Ars, Verizon said "our DSL service does not meet the Lifeline program qualification standard," referring to the 10Mbps to 20Mbps speed standards imposed by the FCC's Lifeline program, which reimburses ISPs for discounts provided to low-income people.

martyb writes:

Google tests hiding Chrome extension icons by default, developers definitely not amused by the change:

Google is testing a user-interface change that will hide Chrome extensions by default, which is not going down well with developers.

Instead of allowing extension icons to appear one after another to the right of the omnibox – the input box for URLs and search queries – the Chrome Extensions Platform team is trying out a design change that hides the graphical buttons in a menu accessed by a puzzle piece icon.

The test is called the Chrome Extension Toolbar menu and can be enabled from the Chrome Experiments interface, which is accessible by entering chrome://flags/#extensions-toolbar-menu into the omnibox.

"Our goal with this new UI is to make it easier for users to see what extensions can access their data," explained extensions developer advocate Simeon Vincent in a post to the Chromium extensions forum last week.

"When the user clicks the puzzle piece icon, the extension menu opens and displays a list of all enabled extensions the user has installed. The extension list is grouped by the level of data access the extension has on the currently selected tab."

[...] The point of the Chrome Extension Toolbar experiment is to make the privacy implications of extensions, and the permissions they request, more visible to users.

[...] Users will be able to "pin" extension icons so they remain visible and available for interaction, but they have to choose to do so upon installation. That's the opposite of the behavior in Chrome 80, the current stable version of Google's browser, where extension icons get pinned by default. Developers of extensions thus can no longer assume that users will be able to engage with their code.

[...] "I completely agree with everyone else's sentiment, hiding icons by default seems like a terrible user experience and will cause many more issues than it fixes," wrote Evan Carothers, founder of recruiting and sales extension ZapInfo. "The excuse of keeping the UI uncluttered makes no sense considering the users are opting to install these extensions."

Carothers argued it would be better to continue pinning extensions by default and to provide users with an option to unpin if they really can't deal with the clutter. To do otherwise, he contended, will limit extension usage and adoption.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Scotland's claim to fame as birthplace of the F-word revealed:

[...] Experts say the origins of the profanity can be traced all the way back to the 16th century equivalent of a rap battle.

An account of a "flyting" duel between two poets, held in the collection of the National Library of Scotland, is said to be its first recorded use anywhere in the world.

The hour-long BBC Scotland programme, which airs on Tuesday[1], sees actress, singer and theatre-maker Cora Bissett[2] trace the nation's long love affair with swearing and insults, despite the long-standing efforts of religious leaders to condemn it as a sin.

[...] [The documentary] In Scotland – Contains Strong Language, [explores] the Bannatyne Manuscript, one of the most important collections of medieval Scottish literature, which was compiled by the Edinburgh merchant George Bannatyne in 1568 when a plague struck the city and he was forced to stay at home.

The collection contains The Flyting Of Dunbar And Kennedy, an account by the poet William Dunbar of a duel with Walter Kennedy, said to have been conducted in Edinburgh before the court of King James IV of Scotland in around 1500.

[...] A spokeswoman for the National Library said: "The Bannatyne Manuscript[3] is a collection of some 400 poems compiled by the young Edinburgh merchant George Bannatyne in the last months of 1568, when an outbreak of plague in Edinburgh compelled him to stay indoors. It is one of the most important surviving sources of Older Scots poetry.

"The manuscript remained in his descendants' possession until they gifted it to the National Library's predecessor – in 1772.

[...] "It has long been known that the manuscript contains some strong swearwords that are now common in everyday language, although at the time, they were very much used in good-natured jest.

[1] Scotland—Contains Strong Language
[2] Cora Bissett
[3] Bannatyne Manuscript

takyon writes:

With day 1 digital distribution of films becoming more prevalent, and movie theater chains going out of business, Hollywood and the MPAA are going to do everything they possibly can to kill or cobble illicit streaming. This could include increasing potential criminal penalties for individuals who operate "streaming piracy" services:

Movie Company Boss Urges US Senators to Make Streaming Piracy a Felony

In the United States, criminal copyright infringers can be sentenced to five years in prison. However, this is not the case for streaming piracy, which is seen as a misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum jail sentence of one year. Millennium Films boss Jonathan Yunger is callling on senators to change this, so the Department of Justice can effectively shut down and prosecute streaming piracy operations.

The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property is actively looking for options through which the US can better address online piracy. During a hearing last month, various experts voiced their opinions. They specifically addressed measures taken by other countries and whether these could work in the US, or not. Pirate site blocking and upload filtering emerged as the main topics during this hearing. While pros and cons were discussed, movie industry insiders including Millennium Media co-president Jonathan Yunger framed these measures as attainable and effective.

After the hearing, senators asked various follow-up questions on paper. Last week we reported how former MEP Julia Reda answered these by stressing the importance of affordable legal options. Yunger, however, takes another approach.

In his answers, which were published before the weekend, he reiterates the power of website blocking. In addition, Yunger also brings a second, previously unmentioned issue to the forefront: criminal penalties for streaming piracy. "The second thing that we could easily do in the United States is close the legal loophole that currently allows streaming – which accounts for the vast majority of piracy today – to be treated as a misdemeanor rather than a felony," Yunger writes.

See also: Movie & TV Giants Sue 'Pirate' Nitro IPTV For 'Massive' Copyright Infringement

Original Submission