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NotSanguine writes:

Jennifer Ouellette over at Ars Technica is reporting on new research on "how distrust in health expertise spreads through social networks."

The article, published on 13 May, in the journal Nature compares network relationships within both pro and anti vaccination groups on Facebook. From the Ars piece:

Last year, the United States reported the greatest number of measles cases since 1992. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 1,282 individual cases of measles in 31 states in 2019, and the majority were among people who were not vaccinated against measles. It was yet another example of how the proliferation of anti-vaccine messaging has put public health at risk, and the COVID-19 pandemic is only intensifying the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories.

But there may be hope: researchers have developed a "map" of how distrust in health expertise spreads through social networks, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature. Such a map could help public health advocates better target their messaging efforts.

[...] [Lead author]Johnson and his colleagues analyzed Facebook communities actively posting about the topic of vaccines during the 2019 measles outbreak—more than 100 million users in all—from around the world, mapping out the interconnected networks of information across cities, countries, continents, and languages. There were three main camps: communities that were pro-vaccine, communities that were anti-vaccine, and communities that were neutral or undecided regarding the topic (groups focused on parenting, for instance).

martyb writes:

Background:
Back in the early days of SoylentNews, things were often fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants. We tried to plan ahead and anticipate future needs. In retrospect, I'd like to think we did pretty well, all in all. One early casualty was the choice of our discussion system. My memory is fuzzy on the details, but I seem to recall it was based on "phpBB Forum Software" (Corrections welcome!) That eventually was superseded by IRC.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC):
Yes, SoylentNews has its own IRC service. It's used for all manner of purposes. Ostensibly, it's for staff to communicate with each other about site plans, development, and operations. But, multiple "channels" are readily implemented, so we have a bunch of channels up and running. If you are new to IRC, the easiest way to get started is to use our web portal — just select a nick, accept "#Soylent" as the channel, and you're there!

If you have heard about IRC and are curious about our IRC service, please read on past the fold. Otherwise, a new story will be along presently.

Unrelated:
Please join me in wishing NCommander a Happy Birthday!

Phoenix666 writes:

CNet:

It's going to be awhile longer before the US Postal Service receives new mail delivery vehicles. The USPS has reportedly once again delayed its ongoing proposal process because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trucks.com first reported the delay on Tuesday after the request for proposal period was supposed to end on March 27. Now, the service's latest filing pegs July 14 as the final date. A handful of companies have already provided prototype next-generation mail delivery vehicles in hopes of receiving a multibillion-dollar contract for the business.

The update is meant to introduce 200,000 replacement vehicles that incorporate electrification.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

TSMC to build a $12 billion advanced semiconductor plant in Arizona with U.S. government support

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's largest contract semiconductor foundry, said today that it plans to build an advanced chip foundry in Arizona with support from the state and the United States federal government.

The announcement follows a Wall Street Journal report earlier this week that White House officials were in talks with TSMC and Intel to build foundries in the U.S., as part of its effort to reduce reliance on chip factories in Asia. Based in Hsinchu, Taiwan, TSMC provides chip components for many of the world's largest semiconductor companies and its U.S. clients include Apple and Qualcomm.

The plant, scheduled to start production of chips in 2024, will enable TSMC's American customers to fabricate their semiconductor products domestically. It will use the company's 5-nanometer technology and is expected to create 1,600 jobs and have the capacity to produce 20,000 wafers a month.

The U.S.-China trade war, national security concerns, geopolitical unrest and the COVID-19 pandemic have all underscored the shortfalls of relying on foundries located abroad and international supply chains.

The U.S. government has reportedly been in talks with TSMC for months, though one sticking point for the company was the high cost of building a new foundry. TSMC chairman Mark Liu told the New York Times in October that the project would require major subsidies because it is more expensive to operate a factory in the U.S. than in Taiwan.

Also at AnandTech, The Verge, CNN, South China Morning Post, Wccftech, and Bloomberg.

Previously: U.S. Attempting to Restrict TSMC Sales to Huawei
Washington in Talks with Chipmakers about Building U.S. Factories

Related: TSMC Holds Groundbreaking Ceremony for "5nm" Fab, Production to Begin in 2020
TSMC Has Started Development of a "2nm" Process Node

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Study confirms cats can become infected with and may transmit COVID-19 to other cats:

Professor of Pathobiological Sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine Yoshihiro Kawaoka led the study, in which researchers administered to three cats SARS-CoV-2 isolated from a human patient. The following day, the researchers swabbed the nasal passages of the cats and were able to detect the virus in two of the animals. Within three days, they detected the virus in all of the cats.

The day after the researchers administered virus to the first three cats, they placed another cat in each of their cages. Researchers did not administer SARS-CoV-2 virus to these cats.

Each day, the researchers took nasal and rectal swabs from all six cats to assess them for the presence of the virus. Within two days, one of the previously uninfected cats was shedding virus, detected in the nasal swab, and within six days, all of the cats were shedding virus. None of the rectal swabs contained virus.

Each cat shed SARS-CoV-2 from their nasal passages for up to six days. The virus was not lethal and none of the cats showed signs of illness. All of the cats ultimately cleared the virus.

"That was a major finding for us -- the cats did not have symptoms," says Kawaoka, who also holds a faculty appointment at the University of Tokyo. Kawaoka is also helping lead an effort to create a human COVID-19 vaccine called CoroFlu.

Peter J. Halfmann, Masato Hatta, Shiho Chiba, Tadashi Maemura, Shufang Fan, Makoto Takeda, Noriko Kinoshita, Shin-ichiro Hattori, Yuko Sakai-Tagawa, Kiyoko Iwatsuki-Horimoto, Masaki Imai, Yoshihiro Kawaoka. Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in Domestic Cats. New England Journal of Medicine, 2020; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2013400

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

How Do We Know the Nukes Still Work?:

Though the treaty explicitly banning all nuclear weapons tests has not yet entered into force, the United States has not detonated a nuclear weapon since 1992. The American nuclear strategy still relies on the nuclear weapons working, but without full-scale tests, the Department of Energy's National Labs now operate the Stockpile Stewardship program, which relies on theory, simulations, and experiments to deliver annual weapons assessments to the federal government.

[...] "The [Stockpile Stewardship program] has gone through a number of administrations, and the Defense Department hasn't said that we have to go back to testing," Victor "Vic" Reis, former assistant secretary of energy for defense programs at the Department of Energy and one of the program's architects, told Gizmodo. "We understand enough of what's happening with the current stockpile of weapons—they're safe and reliable."

Reis teamed up with senior scientists and military personnel to draft a program that could validate the performance of the weapons and simulate the effects of aging on the weapons and their safety—what he called Science Based Stockpile Stewardship. [...] However, there wasn't nearly enough computing capacity to run all of the required simulations. Fortunately, Reis had previously been the director of DARPA and convinced a manager there to lead what would become the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative, a program that would significantly increase the computing power available to the weapons labs. Today, the Stockpile Stewardship program operates on a three-pillared approach, combining theory, simulation, and experiment, and runs mainly out of those three labs as well as the Nevada National Security Site.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

One of the challenges of optical microscopy is to continually increase the imaging power, or resolution. In the past three hundred odd years, scientists have been building ever-better microscopes. The limit, for a long time, was determined by only two factors: the contrast of the object being viewed, and the resolving power of the optics in the microscope. The last 50 years, in particular, have led to an explosion in techniques to improve both the contrast of object and the quality of the optics.

One such technology is called a superlens. The superlens makes use of some of the peculiarities of waves to be able to resolve details that would otherwise be hidden from view. Now, researchers from Nanjing University in China have published results on a waveguide array that provides many of the benefits of a superlens. Along with that, the waveguide array does not have the technological difficulties that are usually associated with superlens fabrication.

[...] A superlens is designed to capture these detail-holding evanescent waves. To enable that, the lens must be constructed from a metamaterial that has a negative refractive index (normal materials have a positive refractive index). However, metamaterials are not easy to make, and don't perform well. Most of the light that hits a superlens is reflected from it, while internally, the substances that are used to create the metamaterial absorb a lot of light. Hence, the lens captures fine details, but the image contrast is poor.

martyb writes:

'Cell Pores' Discovery Gives Hope to Millions of Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Patients:

Scientists have discovered a new treatment to dramatically reduce swelling after brain and spinal cord injuries, offering hope to 75 million victims worldwide each year.

[...] The researchers used an already-licensed anti-psychotic medicine -- trifluoperazine (TFP) -- to alter the behaviour of tiny water channel 'pores' in cells known as aquaporins.

Testing the treatment on injured rats, they found those animals given a single dose of the drug at the trauma site recovered full movement and sensitivity in as little as two weeks, compared to an untreated group that continued to show motor and sensory impairment beyond six weeks after the injury.

The treatment works by counteracting the cells' normal reaction to a loss of oxygen in the CNS -- the brain and spinal cord -- caused by trauma. Under such conditions, cells quickly become 'saltier' because of a build-up of ions, causing a rush of water through the aquaporins which makes the cells swell and exerts pressure on the skull and spine. This build-up of pressure damages fragile brain and spinal cord tissues, disrupting the flow of electrical signals from the brain to the body and vice versa.

But the scientists discovered that TFP can stop this from happening. Focusing their efforts on important star-shaped brain and spinal cord cells called astrocytes, they found TFP prevents a protein called calmodulin from binding with the aquaporins. Normally, this binding effect sends the aquaporins shooting to the surface of the cell, letting in more water. By halting this action, the permeability of the cells is reduced.

martyb writes:

Elon Musk'S Boring Company Finishes Digging Las Vegas Tunnels:

Elon Musk's Boring Company has completed digging a second tunnel underneath the Las Vegas Convention Center, marking the end of the first phase of the $52.5 million project to build a "people-mover" system to shuttle visitors from one side of the venue to the other. The first of the two tunnels was finished in February.

Workers will now turn their attention to completing the above-ground passenger stations on either end of the tunnels, as well as a third underground station in the middle of the system. The people-mover, which is being formally called the Convention Center Loop, is still scheduled to open to the public in January 2021 in time for the next Consumer Electronics Show — if CES happens, that is.

[...] The Loop is supposed to be able to move more than 4,000 people per hour through the tunnels in a variety of Tesla vehicles, taking a cross-campus walk that normally takes at least 15 minutes and turning it into a ride that lasts less than two minutes.

[...] The Loop will pack those passengers into Model 3s, Model Xs, and a "tram" built on the Model 3 platform that can fit between 12 and 16 passengers, according to Steve Hill, the CEO and president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, who spoke to The Verge this week.

Runaway1956 writes:

Quitte frankly, the article doesn't amount to much - the video is worth clicking the link! This is what all the Folding at Home is all about!

https://www.rt.com/news/488669-coronavirus-structure-detail-video/

You can now look at the SARS-CoV-2 virus up close – at the atomic level, in fact – thanks to a scientifically accurate 3D model created by a biomedical visualization studio with the help of leading virologists.

The video by Visual Science, which is just over a minute long, lends fresh insight into the intricate structure of the deadly virus by painstakingly detailing how it functions – and how our bodies fight it. At the start of the video, we are told that the novel coronavirus at the center of the ongoing pandemic is a mere 1/1,000th the width of a human hair. Thanks to cutting-edge modelling tech, though, we are able to see the molecular structure of the virus up close.

Link to YouTube video.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for carny:

wash-your-damn-hands-and-clothes

Durable, washable textile coating can repel viruses: New research could lead to safely reusable PPE:

Research from the LAMP Lab at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering may have a solution. The lab has created a textile coating that can not only repel liquids like blood and saliva but can also prevent viruses from adhering to the surface. The work was recently published in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

"Recently there's been focus on blood-repellent surfaces, and we were interested in achieving this with mechanical durability," said Anthony Galante, PhD student in industrial engineering at Pitt and lead author of the paper.

[...] What makes the coating unique is its ability to withstand ultrasonic washing, scrubbing and scraping.

[...] "The durability is very important because there are other surface treatments out there, but they're limited to disposable textiles. You can only use a gown or mask once before disposing of it," said Paul Leu, co-author and associate professor of industrial engineering, who leads the LAMP Lab. "Given the PPE shortage, there is a need for coatings that can be applied to reusable medical textiles that can be properly washed and sanitized."

Galante put the new coating to the test, running it through tens of ultrasonic washes, applying thousands of rotations with a scrubbing pad (not unlike what might be used to scour pots and pans), and even scraping it with a sharp razor blade. After each test, the coating remained just as effective.

[...] "As this fabric was already shown to repel blood, protein and bacteria, the logical next step was to determine whether it repels viruses. We chose human adenovirus types 4 and 7, as these are causes of acute respiratory disease as well as conjunctivitis (pink eye)," said Romanowski. [...] As it turned out, the adenoviruses were repelled in a similar way as proteins."

[...] The next step for the researchers will be to test the effectiveness against betacoronaviruses, like the one that causes COVID-19.

Journal Reference:
Anthony J. Galante, Sajad Haghanifar, Eric G. Romanowskiet al. Superhemophobic and Antivirofouling Coating for Mechanically Durable and Wash-Stable Medical Textiles. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 2020; 12 (19): 22120 DOI: 10.1021/acsami.9b23058

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/05/thunderspy-what-is-is-why-its-not-scary-and-what-to-do-about-it/

Thunderspy, as its creator Björn Ruytenberg has named the attack, in most cases requires the attacker to remove the screws from the computer casing. From there, the attacker locates the Thunderbolt chip and connects a clip, which in turn is connected to a series of commodity components—priced about $600—which is connected to an attacker laptop. These devices analyze the current Thunderbolt firmware and then reflash it with a version that's largely the same except that it disables any of the Intel-developed security features that are turned on.

[...] "There are seriously tons and tons of things you can do to a PC once you open the case," says Hector Martin, an independent security researcher with extensive experience in hacking or reverse-engineering the Nintendo Wii, several generations of the Sony PlayStation, and other devices with strong defenses against physical attacks. "The evil maid threat model is interesting when you restrict it to plugging things into ports, because that can be done very quickly when e.g. the target is just looking away."

[...] Readers who are left wondering how big a threat Thunderspy poses should remember that the high bar of this attack makes it highly unlikely it will ever be actively used in real-world settings, except, perhaps, for the highest-value targets coveted by secretive spy agencies. Whichever camp has a better case, nothing will change that reality.

Previously: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/05/11/1721247

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

The Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the Hacker Who Saved the Internet (archive)

At 22, he single-handedly put a stop to the worst cyberattack the world had ever seen. Then he was arrested by the FBI. This is his untold story.

[...] For the next few minutes, the agents struck a friendly tone, asking Hutchins about his education and Kryptos Logic, the security firm where he worked. For those minutes, Hutchins allowed himself to believe that perhaps the agents wanted only to learn more about his work on WannaCry, that this was just a particularly aggressive way to get his cooperation into their investigation of that world-shaking cyberattack. Then, 11 minutes into the interview, his interrogators asked him about a program called Kronos.

"Kronos," Hutchins said. "I know that name." And it began to dawn on him, with a sort of numbness, that he was not going home after all.

[...] Despite his sentence of time served, his legal case forced him to overstay his visa, and he's soon likely to be deported back to England. As we walk into Santa Monica, past rows of expensive beach homes, he says his goal is to eventually get back here to LA, which now feels more like home than Devon. "Someday I'd like to be able to live in a house by the ocean like this," he says, "Where I can look out the window and if the waves are good, go right out and surf."

A long, but interesting read.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Excess coffee consumption a culprit for poor health

Cappuccino, latte or short black, coffee is one of the most commonly consumed drinks in the world. But whether it’s good or bad for your health can be clarified by genetics, as a world-first study from the University of South Australia’s Australian Centre for Precision Health shows that excess coffee consumption can cause poor health.

Using data from over 300,000 participants in the UK Biobank, researchers examined connections between genetically instrumented habitual coffee consumption and a full range of diseases, finding that too much coffee can increase the risk of osteoarthritis, arthropathy (joint disease) and obesity.

In earlier research conducted by Professor Hyppönen and team, six cups of coffee a day were considered the upper limit of safe consumption.

Expert genetic epidemiologist, UniSA’s Professor Elina Hyppönen, says understanding any risks associated with habitual coffee intakes could have very large implications for population health.

[...] “In this study, we used a genetic approach – called MR-PheWAS analysis – to establish the true effects of coffee consumption against 1117 clinical conditions.

“Reassuringly, our results suggest that, moderate coffee drinking is mostly safe.

“But it also showed that habitual coffee consumption increased the risks of three diseases: osteoarthritis, arthropathy and obesity, which can cause significant pain and suffering for individuals with these conditions.”

takyon writes:

NVIDIA Ampere Unleashed: NVIDIA Announces New GPU Architecture, A100 GPU, and Accelerator

Like the Volta reveal 3 years ago – and is now traditional for NVIDIA GTC reveals – today's focus is on the very high end of the market. In 2017 NVIDIA launched the Volta-based GV100 GPU, and with it the V100 accelerator. V100 was a massive success for the company, greatly expanding their datacenter business on the back of the Volta architecture's novel tensor cores and sheer brute force that can only be provided by a 800mm²+ GPU. Now in 2020, the company is looking to continue that growth with Volta's successor, the Ampere architecture.

[...] Designed to be the successor to the V100 accelerator, the A100 aims just as high, just as we'd expect from NVIDIA's new flagship accelerator for compute. The leading Ampere part is built on TSMC's 7nm process and incorporates a whopping 54 billion transistors, 2.5x as many as the V100 before it. NVIDIA has put the full density improvements offered by the 7nm process in use, and then some, as the resulting GPU die is 826mm² in size, even larger than the GV100. NVIDIA went big on the last generation, and in order to top themselves they've gone even bigger this generation.

We'll touch more on the individual specifications a bit later, but at a high level it's clear that NVIDIA has invested more in some areas than others. FP32 performance is, on paper, only modestly improved from the V100. Meanwhile tensor performance is greatly improved – almost 2.5x for FP16 tensors – and NVIDIA has greatly expanded the formats that can be used with INT8/4 support, as well as a new FP32-ish format called TF32. Memory bandwidth is also significantly expected[sic], with multiple stacks of HBM2 memory delivering a total of 1.6TB/second of bandwidth to feed the beast that is Ampere.

See also: Nvidia's first Ampere GPU is designed for data centers and AI, not your PC
Nvidia unveils Ampere GPU architecture for AI boost, and the first target is coronavirus

Previously: NVIDIA's Volta Architecture Unveiled: GV100 and Tesla V100

Original Submission