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Phoenix666 writes:

Study discovers how primordial bacteria adapted to arsenic:

If you could borrow H.G. Wells' time machine and travel back three billion years, it would take your breath away, literally. There was no oxygen in the air. You wouldn't be able to breathe.

"The Earth was as alien as another planet, with no oxygen in the atmosphere, acid oceans and high levels of toxic elements like arsenic," said researcher Barry Rosen, a Distinguished Professor at the FIU Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and a world-renowned expert on arsenic. "The first organisms had to evolve ways to detoxify arsenic to survive in that hostile environment."

Those organisms developed arsenic resistance genes that had genetic information for transport systems that pumped arsenic out of the cells and for enzymes that transformed arsenic into more complex molecules.

The research has implications for human exposure to arsenic in groundwater.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Temple Health:

New research by scientists at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine Temple University (LKSOM) shows, however, that gains in functional recovery from these [nerve] injuries may be possible, thanks to a molecule known as Lin28, which regulates cell growth. In a study published online in the journal Molecular Therapy, the Temple researchers describe the ability of Lin28 -- when expressed above its usual levels -- to fuel axon regrowth in mice with spinal cord injury or optic nerve injury, enabling repair of the body's communication grid.

"Our findings show that Lin28 is a major regulator of axon regeneration and a promising therapeutic target for central nervous system injuries," explained Shuxin Li, MD, PhD, Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology and in the Shriners Hospitals Pediatric Research Center at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University and senior investigator on the new study. The research is the first to demonstrate the regenerative ability of Lin28 upregulation in the injured spinal cord of animals.

Regulating the Lin28 molecule may help patients with nerve injuries recover function. Could it also enhance normal function?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Possibly active tectonic system on the Moon:

"There's this assumption that the Moon is long dead, but we keep finding that that's not the case," said Peter Schultz, a professor in Brown University's Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and co-author of the research, which is published in the journal Geology. "From this paper it appears that the Moon may still be creaking and cracking -- potentially in the present day -- and we can see the evidence on these ridges."

[...] A few ridges topped with exposed bedrock had been seen before, Schultz says. But those ridges were on the edges of ancient lava-filled impact basins and could be explained by continued sagging in response to weight caused by the lava fill. But this new study discovered that the most active ridges are related to a mysterious system of tectonic features (ridges and faults) on the lunar nearside, unrelated to both lava-filled basins and other young faults that crisscross the highlands.

"The distribution that we found here begs for a different explanation," Schultz said.

Journal Reference:
P.H. Schultz, A. Valantinas. The origin of neotectonics on the lunar nearside. Geology, 2020; DOI: 10.1130/G47202.1

It's not surprising. Cheese is not as stable a material as many suppose.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

Defining the boundaries that separate metropolitan areas has major implications for research, governance, and economic development. For instance, such boundaries can influence allocation of infrastructure funding or housing subsidies. However, traditional methods to define metropolitan regions often hamper meaningful understanding of communities' characteristics and needs.

Drawing on methodologies from network science, He and colleagues have now developed a new method of defining metropolitan areas according to census commuter data. They organized all 3,091 counties in the contiguous United States into an interconnected network, with the number of commuters who cross county lines determining the strength of connections between counties. Notably, unlike other studies that have used commuter data to define metropolitan regions, they also accounted for within-county commuting.

Portland, Oregon has created a regional planning authority, Metro, similar to this approach.

Journal Reference:
Mark He, et al. Demarcating geographic regions using community detection in commuting networks with significant self-loops, PLOS ONE (2020). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230941

Original Submission

takyon writes:

NASA Names Companies to Develop Human Landers for Artemis Moon Missions

NASA has selected three U.S. companies to design and develop human landing systems (HLS) for the agency's Artemis program, one of which will land the first woman and next man on the surface of the Moon by 2024. NASA is on track for sustainable human exploration of the Moon for the first time in history.

The human landing system awards under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP-2) Appendix H Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) are firm-fixed price, milestone-based contracts. The total combined value for all awarded contracts is $967 million for the 10-month base period.

The following companies were selected to design and build human landing systems:

• Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, is developing the Integrated Lander Vehicle (ILV) – a three-stage lander to be launched on its own New Glenn Rocket System and ULA Vulcan launch system.
• Dynetics (a Leidos company) of Huntsville, Alabama, is developing the Dynetics Human Landing System (DHLS) – a single structure providing the ascent and descent capabilities that will launch on the ULA Vulcan launch system.
• SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, is developing the Starship – a fully integrated lander that will use the SpaceX Super Heavy rocket.

"With these contract awards, America is moving forward with the final step needed to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024, including the incredible moment when we will see the first woman set foot on the lunar surface," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "This is the first time since the Apollo era that NASA has direct funding for a human landing system, and now we have companies on contract to do the work for the Artemis program."

Announcement video (2m14s).

Also at NASASpaceFlight, Space News, BBC, NYT, Ars Technica, cnet, and The Guardian.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Hong Kong has deployed robots to clean public areas in the wake of COVID-19. Developed in Hong Kong, the Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK) said their airport is the first in the world to use the sterilisation robots, which will roam around and sanitise various areas, including toilets. The airport will also introduce a 'full-body disinfection booth' for humans which perform a temperature check and "a 40-second disinfection and sanitising procedure".

Also at: BBC and CNN.

Anyone else reminded of the Microbe Eliminator cleaning bot in WALL-E?

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Good News:

Linux home directory management is about to undergo major change:

With systemd 245 comes systemd-homed. Along with that, Linux admins will have to change the way they manage users and users' home directories.

[...] Prior to systemd every system and resource was managed by its own tool, which was clumsy and inefficient. Now? Controlling and managing systems on Linux is incredibly easy.

But one of the creators, Leannart Poettering, has always considered systemd to be incomplete. With the upcoming release of systemd 245, Poettering will take his system one step closer to completion. That step is by way of homed.

[...] let's take a look at the /home directory. This is a crucial directory in the Linux filesystem hierarchy, as it contains all user data and configurations. For some admins, this directory is so important, it is often placed on a separate partition or drive than the operating system. By doing this, user data is safe, even if the operating system were to implode.

However, the way /home is handled within the operating system makes migrating the /home directory not nearly as easy as it should be. Why? With the current iteration of systemd, user information (such as ID, full name, home directory, and shell) is stored in /etc/passwd and the password associated with that user is stored in /etc/shadow. The /etc/passwd file can be viewed by anyone, whereas /etc/shadow can only be viewed by those with admin or sudo privileges.

takyon writes:

Intel's 10th Gen Comet Lake for Desktops: Skylake-S Hits 10 Cores and 5.3 GHz

Today we get the full range of its Intel's 10th Generation processors for desktops. These chips, which fall under the banner of 'Comet Lake', will now go up to 10 cores and offer turbo speeds up to 5.3 GHz. Comet Lake is the fifth iteration of Intel's very profitable Skylake microarchitecture, built on Intel's 14++nm process, at a time when the competition is on 7nm with sixteen cores. The crux, according to Intel, is that it will offer the best gaming experience in this market.

Users wanting the 10-core 5.3 GHz will need to purchase the new top Core i9-10900K processor, which has a unit price of $488, and keep it under 70 ºC to enable Intel's new Thermal Velocity Boost. Not only that, despite the 125 W TDP listed on the box, Intel states that the turbo power recommendation is 250 W – the motherboard manufacturers we've spoken to have prepared for 320-350 W from their own testing, in order to maintain that top turbo for as long as possible.

The range of 32 (!) new processors from Intel will vary from two core Celeron parts at 35 W all the way up to ten-core Core i9 hardware rated for 125 W, with per-unit pricing from $42 to $488. The standard rated TDP is 65 W, with the overclocked models at 125 W, the low-power T models at 35 W, and Pentium/Celeron at 58 W. All of the Core i3, i5, i7, and i9 processors will have HyperThreading, making the product stack a lot easier to understand. Certain models will also have F variants without integrated graphics, which will have a slightly lower per-unit cost.

[.....] For security, Intel is applying the same modifications it had made to Coffee Lake, matching up with the Cascade Lake and Whiskey Lake designs. The fix for [Meltdown] V3a has now changed from 'Firmware' to 'MCU', suggesting that Intel has added a microcontroller as a fix. We have asked Intel for clarification. Intel is now claiming that [Meltdown] V4 is fixed through a combination of hardware and OS fixes.

Intel's performance utility will now allow users to disable hyperthreading on a per-core basis.

AnandTech suggests comparing the Intel Core i9-10900F (~$422) to AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (~$432), i3-10500 (~$192) and i3-10400F (~$152) to Ryzen 5 3600 (~$173), and i9-10900KF (~$472) to the 3900X or Ryzen 9 3950X (~$722).

Also at Tom's Hardware and Wccftech.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

'Gargantuan' hail in Argentina may have smashed world record:

A supercell thunderstorm pelted a city center in Argentina a few years ago with hailstones so large scientists suggested a new category to describe them — gargantuan hail.

Researchers investigating the 2018 storm found one hailstone likely measured between 7.4 and 9.3 inches across, potentially setting a new world record. The current record belongs to a hailstone that measured 8 inches across, or about the size of a volleyball, that fell near Vivian, South Dakota.

"It's incredible," said Matthew Kumjian, associate professor in the Department of Meteorology and Atmosphere Science at Penn State. "This is the extreme upper end of what you'd expect from hail."

The scientists proposed hail larger than 6 inches should be classified as gargantuan, and said more awareness of these events, while rare, could help piece together a better understanding of the dangerous storms.

"Anything larger than about a quarter in size can start putting dents into your car," Kumjian said. "In some rare cases, 6-inch hail has actually gone through roofs and multiple floors in houses. We'd like to help mitigate the impacts on life and property, to help anticipate these kinds of events."

The storm in heavily populated Villa Carlos Paz, Argentina, offered scientists a rare opportunity to study a well-documented case of gargantuan hail. As the storm unfolded, residents took to social media, posting pictures and videos.

Hail typically occurs during severe storms, which produce strong, sustained updrafts. The winds hold hailstones aloft long enough to grow in sub-zero temperatures high in the atmosphere. But predicting hail size remains challenging, the scientists said.

Journal Reference:
Matthew R. Kumjian, Rachel Gutierrez, et al. "Gargantuan Hail in Argentina", Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Vol. 101, No. 4 (2020), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0012.1

See the PDF of the report for the full analysis. Scroll down to the end for pictures of the three largest gargantuan hail they included in their report. One of the hail stones weighed over a pound (~ 1/2 kilogram)!

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Back before computers (and cell phones!) regularly sported multi-GHz processors and GBs of memory, there was the 6502 microprocessor. It was the CPU that powered computers made by Apple, Acorn, Atari, BBC Micro, Commodore, and others. Though the 6502 was introduced in 1975, it is far from being a dead parrot!

Classic 8-Bit Computing The Atari Way:

In the classic gaming world, even before the NES arrived on the scene, there was no name more ubiquitous than Atari. Their famous 2600 console sold almost as many units as the Nintendo 64, but was released nearly 20 years prior. In many ways, despite making mistakes that led to the video game crash of the early 80s, Atari was the first to make a path in the video game industry. If you want to explore what the era of 8-bit computing was like in the Atari age, a new resource is compiling all kinds of Atari-based projects.

To get started, this Atari Projects page has instructions on how to install Altirra (a 6502 emulator) to your PC. That is really handy if you don't happen to have a 40-year old computer lying around. Read on for lots more!

An Anonymous Coward writes:

YARA version 4.0.0 has been released.

YARA is the name of a tool primarily used in malware research and detection. YARA was originally developed by Victor Alvarez of VirusTotal. The name is either an abbreviation of YARA: Another Recursive Acronym, or Yet Another Ridiculous Acronym. YARA by default comes with modules to process PE, ELF analysis, as well as support for the open-source Cuckoo sandbox. [1]

From the YARA github page:

YARA is a tool aimed at (but not limited to) helping malware researchers to identify and classify malware samples. With YARA you can create descriptions of malware families (or whatever you want to describe) based on textual or binary patterns. Each description, a.k.a rule, consists of a set of strings and a boolean expression which determine its logic.

[...] more complex and powerful rules can be created by using wild-cards, case-insensitive strings, regular expressions, special operators and many other features that you'll find explained in YARA's documentation.

YARA has been called, "The pattern matching swiss knife."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YARA

Original Submission

takyon writes:

DisplayPort Alt Mode 2.0 Spec Released: Defining Alt Mode for USB4

As the tech industry gears up for the launch of the new USB4 standard, a few more parts first need to fall into place. Along with the core specification itself, there is the matter of alternate modes, which add further functionality to USB Type-C host ports by allowing the data pins to be used to carry other types of signals. Keeping pace with the updates to USB4, some of the alt modes are being updated as well, and this process is starting with the granddaddy of them all: DisplayPort Alt Mode.

The very first USB-C alt mode, DisplayPort Alt Mode was introduced in 2014. By remapping the USB-C high speed data pins from USB data to DisplayPort data, it became possible to use a USB-C port as a DisplayPort video output, and in some cases even mix the two to get both USB 3.x signaling and DisplayPort signaling over the same cable. As a result of DisplayPort Alt Mode's release, the number of devices with video output has exploded, and in laptops especially, this has become the preferred mode for driving video outputs when a laptop doesn't include a dedicated HDMI port.

If you're willing to accept Display Stream Compression... New DisplayPort spec enables 16K video over USB-C

VESA press release.

Previously: Forget USB 3.2: Thunderbolt 3 Will Become the Basis of USB 4
DisplayPort 2.0 Announced, Triples Bandwidth to ~77.4 Gbps for 8K Displays
Speed-Doubling USB4 is Ready -- Now We Just Have to Wait for Devices

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Renewable power surges as pandemic scrambles global energy outlook, new report finds:

The pandemic-induced global economic meltdown has triggered a drop in energy demand and related carbon emissions that could transform how the world gets its energy -- even after the disease wanes, according to a report released today by the International Energy Agency (IEA)[*].

The precipitous drop in energy use is unparalleled back to the Great Depression of the 1930s. But not all energy sources are suffering equally. Efforts to shift toward renewable energy could be hastened, as fossil fuels, particularly coal and oil, have borne the brunt of the decline. Use of renewable energy, meanwhile has risen, thanks to new projects coming online, and the low cost of turning wind turbines or harvesting sunlight.

[*] Link to the IEA report.

Prices for fossil fuel have plunged, while the costs of maintaining those supply chains (eg. storage) remain constant.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A research team including research scientist Atsuko Kobayashi from the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, and research scientist Mizuho Koike from the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science at Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, have found nitrogen-bearing organic material in carbonate minerals in a Martian meteorite. This organic material has most likely been preserved for 4 billion years since Mars' Noachian age. Because carbonate minerals typically precipitate from the groundwater, this finding suggests a wet and organic-rich early Mars, which could have been habitable and favorable for life to start.

[...] Martian meteorites are pieces of Mars' surface that were themselves blasted into space by meteor impacts, and which ultimately landed on Earth. They provide important insights into Martian history. One meteorite in particular, named Allan Hills (ALH) 84001, named for the region in Antarctica it was found in 1984, is especially important. It contains orange-coloured carbonate minerals, which precipitated from salty liquid water on Mars' near-surface 4 billion years ago. As these minerals record Mars' early aqueous environment, many studies have tried to understand their unique chemistry and whether they might provide evidence for ancient life on Mars. However, previous analyses suffered from contamination with terrestrial material from Antarctic snow and ice, making it difficult to say how much of the organic material in the meteorite were truly Martian. In addition to carbon, nitrogen (N) is an essential element for terrestrial life and a useful tracer for planetary system evolution. However, due to previous technical limitations, nitrogen had not yet been measured in ALH84001.

This new research conducted by the joint ELSI-JAXA team used state-of-the-art analytical techniques to study the nitrogen content of the ALH84001 carbonates, and the team is now confident they have found the first solid evidence for 4-billion-year-old Martian organics containing nitrogen.

-- submitted from IRC

More information: Mizuho Koike et al, In-situ preservation of nitrogen-bearing organics in Noachian Martian carbonates, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15931-4

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Offspring may inherit legacy of their father's Toxoplasma infection

Studying mice infected with the common parasite Toxoplasma, the team discovered that sperm of infected fathers carried an altered 'epigenetic' signature which impacted the brains of resulting offspring. Molecules in the sperm called 'small RNA' appeared to influence the offspring's brain development and behaviour.

'Intergenerational inheritance' of similar epigenetic changes from men exposed to extreme trauma has been well documented. This latest research, published in Cell Reports, has raised the question of whether Toxoplasma infections – or even possibly other infections – in men before conception could impact the health of subsequent generations.

The research was led by Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researchers Dr Shiraz Tyebji and Associate Professor Chris Tonkin, in collaboration with Professor Anthony Hannan at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health.

[...] Associate Professor Tonkin said people could carry the dormant Toxoplasma parasite for decades, and that this had been associated with the appearance of symptoms of mental disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.