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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

"We're looking how can we study and eventually treat stress disorders by modulating peripheral organ function, rather than doing something highly invasive in the central nervous system," says Polina Anikeeva, an MIT professor of materials science and engineering and of brain and cognitive sciences.

To achieve control over hormone release, Dekel Rosenfeld, an MIT-Technion postdoc in Anikeeva's group, has developed specialized magnetic nanoparticles that can be injected into the adrenal gland. When exposed to a weak magnetic field, the particles heat up slightly, activating heat-responsive channels that trigger hormone release. This technique can be used to stimulate an organ deep in the body with minimal invasiveness.

[...] In the new study, the research team wanted to explore the idea of treating disorders of the brain by manipulating organs that are outside the central nervous system but influence it through hormone release. One well-known example is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which regulates stress response in mammals. Hormones secreted by the adrenal gland, including cortisol and adrenaline, play important roles in depression, stress, and anxiety.

[...] As a target to stimulate hormone release, the researchers decided on ion channels that control the flow of calcium into adrenal cells. Those ion channels can be activated by a variety of stimuli, including heat. When calcium flows through the open channels into adrenal cells, the cells begin pumping out hormones. "If we want to modulate the release of those hormones, we need to be able to essentially modulate the influx of calcium into adrenal cells," Rosenfeld says.

[20200416_143747 UTC: Update 2: Added an Example to make clear what the problem was, and added 2 headings subsequent to the example to better organize the information. --martyb]
[20200416_005831 UTC; Update 1: Updated title and corrected spelling of balanceTags(). --martyb]

martyb writes:

Ooops! Things should be working correctly, now.

tl;dr: Back on March 20th, someone tripped over a bug that appears to be in the balanceTags() routine in our Perl code. I found a way to made a quick fix to prevent its happening again, but the fix was missing a couple steps. I caught and fixed one of them, but only now just handled the other.

Workaround: When writing a comment, writing or editing a journal entry, or when submitting a story, use "DEL" instead of "STRIKE" to make text look like this.

This story is the result of something I learned in the process: properly notify the community of any changes to the site!

c0lo writes:

BBC: Coronavirus: US to halt funding to WHO, says Trump

US President Donald Trump has said he is going to halt funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) because it has "failed in its basic duty" in its response to the coronavirus outbreak.

[...] Mr Trump has been under fire for his own handling of the pandemic.

He has sought to deflect persistent criticism that he acted too slowly to stop the virus's spread by pointing to his decision in late January to place restrictions on travel from China.

[...] The US is the global health body's largest single funder and gave it more than $400m in 2019.

A decision on whether the US resumes funding will be made after the review, which Mr Trump said would last 60 to 90 days.

[...] China gave about $86m in 2018-19; UK gives most of any country apart from the US

[...] The organisation launched an appeal in March for $675m to help fight the pandemic and is reported to be planning a fresh appeal for at least $1bn.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow8192:

GitHub is now free for all teams – TechCrunch:

GitHub today announced that all of its core features are now available for free to all users, including those that are currently on free accounts. That means free unlimited private repositories with unlimited collaborators for all, including teams that use the service for commercial projects, as well as up to 2,000 minutes per month of free access to GitHub Actions, the company’s automation and CI/CD platform.

Teams that want more advanced features like code owners or enterprise features like SAML support will still have to upgrade to a paid plan, but those now start at $4 per month and user for the Teams plans instead of the previous $9, with the Enterprise plan starting at $21 per month and user.

[...] “We’re switching GitHub from a pay-for-privacy model to pay-for-features, what’s typically called freemium — you may have heard of it,” [CEO Nat] Friedman said. “The way I think about it is we want every developer and team on earth to be able to use GitHub for their development, whether it’s private or public development.”

Right now, there are more than 40 million developers on GitHub, and Friedman says the team is projecting that it will get to 100 million by 2025.

[...] Friedman argues that the team didn’t make these changes because of competitive pressure from other players, though it’s worth mentioning that GitLab, for example, offers a competitive free plan with built-in CI/CD features, whereas Atlassian’s BitBucket now has a free offering that looks a bit limited in light of GitHub’s changes.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for both AzumaHazuki and SoyCow8192:

Medical device "jailbreak" could help solve the dangerous shortage of ventilators:

[...] Security researcher Trammell Hudson analyzed the AirSense 10—the world's most widely used CPAP—and made a startling discovery. Although its manufacturer says the AirSense 10 would require "significant rework to function as a ventilator," many ventilator functions were already built into the device firmware.

Its manufacturer, ResMed, says the $700 device solely functions as a continuous positive airway pressure machine used to treat sleep apnea. It does this by funneling air into a mask. ResMed says the device can't work as a bilevel positive airway pressure device, which is a more advanced machine that pushes air into a mask and then pulls it back out. With no ability to work in both directions or increase the output when needed, the AirSense 10 can't be used as the type of ventilator that could help patients who are struggling to breathe. After reverse-engineering the firmware, Hudson says the ResMed claim is simply untrue.

To demonstrate his findings, Hudson on Tuesday is releasing a patch that he says unlocks the hidden capabilities buried deep inside the AirSense 10. The patch is dubbed Airbreak in a nod to jailbreaks that hobbyists use to remove technical barriers Apple developers erect inside iPhones and iPads. Whereas jailbreaks unlock functions that allow the installation of unauthorized apps and the accessing of log files and forensic data, Airbreak allows the AirSense 10 to work as a bilevel positive airway pressure machine, a device that many people refer to as a BiPAP.

"Our changes bring the AirSense S10 to near feature parity with BiPAP machines from the same manufacturer, boost the maximum pressure output available, and provide a starting point to add more advanced emergency ventilator functionality," Hudson and other researchers wrote on their website disclosing the findings.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

takyon writes:

Google wants to dump Qualcomm, launch smartphone SoC as early as next year

A new report from Axios claims that Google has "made significant progress toward developing its own processor to power future versions of its Pixel smartphone" and that a Google-made SoC could debut in a phone as early as next year. Google is apparently teaming up with Samsung, which is providing design support and manufacturing for the project, codenamed "Whitechapel."

The report says the Google SoC is an eight-core ARM processor with hardware "optimized for Google's machine learning technology" and the always-on capabilities of the Google Assistant. The chip would be built at Samsung's foundries on the firm's upcoming 5nm process, and, in addition to being aimed at the Pixel, the report says that "subsequent versions" of the chip could be used in Chromebooks.

Some ARM SoCs from Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek, Huawei, etc. already have some form of dedicated machine learning acceleration.

Also at Wccftech.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow8192:

Over 500,000 Zoom accounts sold on hacker forums, the dark web:

Over 500,000 Zoom accounts are being sold on the dark web and hacker forums for less than a penny each, and in some cases, given away for free.

These credentials are gathered through credential stuffing attacks where threat actors attempt to login to Zoom using accounts leaked in older data breaches. The successful logins are then compiled into lists that are sold to other hackers.

Some of these Zoom accounts are offered for free on hacker forums so that hackers can use them in zoom-bombing pranks and malicious activities. Others are sold for less than a penny each.

Cybersecurity intelligence firm Cyble told BleepingComputer that around April 1st, 2020, they began to see free Zoom accounts being posted on hacker forums to gain an increased reputation in the hacker community.

These accounts are shared via text sharing sites where the threat actors are posting lists of email addresses and password combinations.

In the below example, 290 accounts related to colleges such as the University of Vermont, University of Colorado, Dartmouth, Lafayette, University of Florida, and many more were released for free.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Water quality could change in buildings closed down during COVID-19 pandemic, engineers say:

While restaurants, gyms, schools and other buildings are closed indefinitely to prevent the spread of COVID-19, water left sitting in pipes could change in quality.

It's possible that water left sitting for long periods of time could contain excessive amounts of heavy metals and pathogens concentrated in pipes nationwide, say researchers who have begun a field study on the impact of a pandemic shutdown on buildings.

Stagnant water would not be a problem just for buildings recently closed down. Water could have been bad for months or years in old hospital buildings that cities are reopening to accommodate a potential influx of COVID-19 patients.

"We don't design buildings to be shut down for months. This study focuses on the consequences and could help building owners make sure that their buildings are safe and operational when occupants return," said Andrew Whelton, a Purdue associate professor of civil engineering and environmental and ecological engineering.

[...] Whelton and other researchers across the U.S. have begun drafting recommendations compiled by this effort in a paper pending publication. Collaborating with Purdue in this effort are experts from leading plumbing safety scientists and engineers from Virginia Tech, Legionella Risk Management Inc., Arizona State University, the University of Memphis, the University of Iowa, Northeastern University, and Polytechnique Montréal in Canada.

[...] But since no study has been conducted on widespread, long-term building closures, knowledge gaps remain on how to best maintain stable water quality during a shutdown. The field study led by Whelton's team would be a start to filling these gaps.

"We're not going to have all the science done at the end of this study. But part of what we're trying to do is put energy toward helping others develop guidelines so that they can at least go in and start recovering their buildings," Whelton said.

[...] In addition to observing water left sitting still in buildings, the team will study how stagnation affects water softeners and water heaters. In the lab, the researchers will let the water sit still for long periods of time, watching for chemical and microbiological changes.

"There isn't really any evidence on what prolonged stagnation does to these devices," Whelton said.

Journal Information:
Caitlin Proctor, et al. Considerations for Large Building Water Quality after Extended Stagnation, OSFPreprints (2020). DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/qvj3b

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Tesla's robotaxi fleet will be 'functionally ready' in 2020, Musk says - Roadshow:

Last year during its Autonomy Investor Day, Tesla laid out the broad strokes of its plan for a fleet of autonomous Teslas to operate as a "robotaxi" service. Of course, at the time, this seemed like a flight of fancy, given the fact that no car manufacturer is even close to full, Level 5 autonomy, by the standard SAE definition.

Fast-forward to now, and it still seems like a flight of fancy. Nevertheless, problems of practicality, technology, logistics and good sense aren't things that Elon Musk is worrying about, because he confirmed on Twitter on Sunday that the service would be functionally ready in 2020.

[...] Tesla currently offers Autopilot, which is a very competent suite of advanced driver assistance systems when appropriately used, but it's nowhere near capable of "full self-driving" as Tesla likes to call it. So, either the Big T has been sandbagging pretty hard, or Elon is full of what a certain former Vice President would call "malarkey."

Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Adobe released security patches for vulnerabilities in its ColdFusion, After Effects and Digital Editions applications. If exploited, the flaws could enable attackers to view sensitive data, gain escalated privileges, and launch denial-of-service attacks. Each of the bugs were rated important-severity, based on CVSS rankings, marking an extremely low-volume month for Adobe bug fixes.

Overall Adobe patched flaws tied to five CVEs as part of its regularly scheduled security updates, Tuesday. That number pales in comparison to March, where Adobe patched flaws in an out-of-band update tied to 41 CVEs across its products, 29 of which were critical in severity. In February Adobe patched flaws tied to 42 CVEs in its regularly scheduled updates, 35 of which were critical in severity.

"After several months of heavy and highly critical patches, Adobe is giving us a break of sorts," said Jay Goodman, strategic product marketing manager, Automox, in a statement. "Although the CVEs are only marked as important, it is still a good cyber hygiene practice to get your applications patched to reduce your risk exposure."

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In the wake of reports last month that four US senators sold stocks shortly after a classified briefing on January 24 about the risk posed by the novel coronavirus, Timothy Carambat, a mechanical and software engineer, created a website to make stock sales by every senator more visible.

In an email to The Register, Carambat, who runs a design firm based in Covington, Louisiana, called Industrial Object, explained he was motivated to create Senate Stock Watcher after news broke that Senators Richard Burr (R-NC), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), James Inhofe (R-OK), and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) had dumped stocks before most people in America understood the implications of the outbreak. It is illegal for senators to buy and sell shares using non-public information.

Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been sued for alleged securities fraud, a charge he has denied. It is said he unloaded up to $1.7m in stocks in mid-February, particularly in hotel groups that would be later hit hard by the virus pandemic, all while receiving daily confidential briefings about the impact of the bio-nasty – and reassuring the public everything would be fine.

"As public servants, there are some senators making alarmingly large money movements at what would seem to be very fortunate timing in the market," Carambat said.

"I understand some senators were previously very accomplished businesspeople, but in my opinion, the level of access they have to information currently is highly privileged and it would only make sense to keep their own financial best interests at heart."

Details about the stock sales in news reports prompted Carambat to look into the source of the data, which turned out to be the US Senate Financial Disclosures website.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Scientists Discover Brightest Supernova Ever Seen:

Scientists at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian today announced the discovery and study of the brightest, most energetic, and likely most massive supernova ever identified.

SN2016aps is believed to be an example of a "pulsational pair instability" supernova, and may have formed as the result of the merging of two massive stars prior to the explosion. The explosion energy of SN2016aps was ten times that of a normal-sized supernova.

"SN2016aps is spectacular in several ways," said Edo Berger, Harvard University professor and co-author on the paper. "Not only is it brighter than any other supernova we've ever seen, but it has several properties and features that make it rare in comparison to other explosions of stars in the universe."

The team—made up of researchers from CfA, University of Birmingham, Northwestern University, and Ohio University—first identified the supernova in 2016 using data from the Panoramic Survey Telescopes and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS). A four-year follow-up study tracked its slow evolution and significant energy release. Archival images retrieved during the study revealed a rising light curve dating back to December 2015, allowing the team to better understand the nature and explosion of the supernova.

In a typical supernova, radiation in visible light accounts for just one percent of the total explosion energy of 10^51 erg. In SN2016aps, the explosion energy of 10^52 erg is unprecedented, and the supernova radiated about 50 percent of this energy, making it outshine normal supernova explosions by 500 times.

"The intense energy output of this supernova pointed to an incredibly massive star progenitor," said Berger. "At birth, this star was at least 100 times the mass of our Sun."

Journal Reference
Matt Nicholl, Peter K. Blanchard, Edo Berger et al. An extremely energetic supernova from a very massive star in a dense medium, Nature Astronomy (DOI: doi:10.1038/s41550-020-1066-7)

Just today, I happened upon this two-page story ( https://theconversation.com/they-might-be-giants-a-mind-blowing-sense-of-stellar-scale-2153 ), which helps give some sense of scale to how inconceivably huge the universe is.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

So What Is Protein Folding, Anyway?:

The current COVID-19 pandemic is rife with problems that hackers have attacked with gusto. From 3D printed face shields and homebrew face masks to replacements for full-fledged mechanical ventilators, the outpouring of ideas has been inspirational and heartwarming. At the same time there have been many efforts in a different area: research aimed at fighting the virus itself.

Getting to the root of the problem seems to have the most potential for ending this pandemic and getting ahead of future ones, and that's the "know your enemy" problem that the distributed computing effort known as Folding@Home aims to address. Millions of people have signed up to donate cycles from spare PCs and GPUs, and in the process have created the largest supercomputer in history.

But what exactly are all these exaFLOPS being used for? Why is protein folding something to direct so much computational might toward? What's the biochemistry behind this, and why do proteins need to fold in the first place? Here's a brief look at protein folding: what it is, how it happens, and why it's important.

]...] Protein folding research is central to our understanding of so many diseases and infections that even once we figure out a way to beat COVID-19, the Folding@Home network, which as seen such explosive growth over the past month, will not go idle for long. The network is a research tool well-suited to exploring protein models central to dozens of diseases that are related to misfolded proteins, such as Alzheimer's and variant Cruetzfeldt-Jakob disease, often incorrectly called mad-cow disease. And when the next virus inevitably comes along, all that horsepower, and all the experience being gained in managing it, will be ready to go again.

I thought I had a good general idea of what protein folding was. And then this article made clear that there was much Much MUCH more to it than I had imagined! I found it to be written at just the right level to convey information without going into the weeds with too much detail; highly recommended!

For those who haven't heard of it before, folding@home is a way for people to donate unused CPU cycles towards protein folding calculations. If you decide to participate, soylentnews even has a team that you can join!

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Boeing customers cancel staggering 150 Max plane orders, deepening crisis as coronavirus roils air travel:

Boeing customers canceled a staggering number of 737 Max orders last month, deepening the crisis the company faces amid the coronavirus pandemic and the continued grounding of its bestselling plane after two fatal crashes.

The Chicago-based manufacturer on Tuesday posted 150 cancellations of its beleaguered 737 Max jets in March, the most in decades, the company said. Brazilian airline Gol canceled 34 of the narrow-body planes and leasing firm Avolon scrapped orders for 75 of them, a move it announced earlier this month. Net cancellations in the month totaled 119 thanks to 31 orders for wide-body passenger planes and military aircraft.

That brought net orders Boeing removed from its order list in [the]first three months of the year to 307 planes, a sharp turnaround for a company that just over a year ago was aiming to increase output of its planes to meet strong demand.

[...] Boeing's airline customers are now facing the steepest drop in demand ever recorded because of Covid-19 and harsh measures like stay-at-home orders to slow its spread. The pandemic comes on top of the more than year-long grounding of the 737 Max after 346 people were killed in two crashes.

Alternate source: Yahoo finance

^{_<no-sarcasm>}
I wonder. If the 737 MAX had not been grounded, would those orders have been cancelled, despite the Covid-19 downturn in airline flights.
^{_{</no-sarcasm>}}

Original Submission

wirelessduck submitted a link which brought us to:

In a number system where the real numbers could not have an infinite number of digits, how would our physics models change?

Does Time Really Flow? New Clues Come From a Century-Old Approach to Math.:

Strangely, although we feel as if we sweep through time on the knife-edge between the fixed past and the open future, that edge — the present — appears nowhere in the existing laws of physics.

In Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, for example, time is woven together with the three dimensions of space, forming a bendy, four-dimensional space-time continuum — a "block universe" encompassing the entire past, present and future. Einstein's equations portray everything in the block universe as decided from the beginning; the initial conditions of the cosmos determine what comes later, and surprises do not occur — they only seem to. "For us believing physicists," Einstein wrote in 1955, weeks before his death, "the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

The timeless, pre-determined view of reality held by Einstein remains popular today. "The majority of physicists believe in the block-universe view, because it is predicted by general relativity," said Marina Cortês, a cosmologist at the University of Lisbon.

However, she said, "if somebody is called on to reflect a bit more deeply about what the block universe means, they start to question and waver on the implications."

Physicists who think carefully about time point to troubles posed by quantum mechanics, the laws describing the probabilistic behavior of particles. At the quantum scale, irreversible changes occur that distinguish the past from the future: A particle maintains simultaneous quantum states until you measure it, at which point the particle adopts one of the states. Mysteriously, individual measurement outcomes are random and unpredictable, even as particle behavior collectively follows statistical patterns. This apparent inconsistency between the nature of time in quantum mechanics and the way it functions in relativity has created uncertainty and confusion.