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Halibut writes:

Motherboard reports that Facebook hired a cybersecurity firm to develop a zero-day exploit for the video player in Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System). Facebook provided this exploit to the FBI to aid in the apprehension of a predator using Facebook to harass victims. This exploit was not disclosed to the Tails developers.

Also covered by Gizmodo, as seen on Schneier's blog.

[Ed Note - The zero day was provided to the FBI via a third party, not directly from Facebook.]

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Human Eggs Seem to Exhibit Preferences For Particular People's Sperm, Study Shows:

After all that time and effort agonising over whether a potential partner even likes you, then trying to decide if they're the right person to take on the massive endeavour of parenthood with, your eggs can basically turn around and say "yeah, nah".

"The idea that eggs are choosing sperm is really novel in human fertility," said clinical embryologist Daniel Brison from Manchester University in the UK.

[...] Human eggs release compounds called chemoattractants into this fluid, which chemically communicates with sperm. While the exact chemicals are yet to be identified (some researchers suspect progesterone is involved), whatever it is can trigger sperm to change swimming directions.

The researchers exposed sperm to follicular fluid from two females (a partner and a non-partner) and observed where the sperm accumulated.

[...] "Follicular fluid from different females consistently and differentially attracts sperm from specific males," the team wrote in their paper, finding that eggs attracted between 18 to 40 percent more sperm from their preferred males.

[...] The team cautions that some of the experiment's conditions could affect the accuracy of the results. For example, the IVF eggs they used had been through treatments that may have changed some biological processes.

Also, the concentrations of sperm were much higher than natural (20,000 sperm per egg instead of the average of around 250) and they were placed quite close to the egg - which may minimise differences in the effects of chemoattractants.

Journal Reference:
Chemical signals from eggs facilitate cryptic female choice in humans, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.0805)

RandomFactor writes:

Scientists in Japan have successfully triggered a hypometabolic (hibernation like) state in rodents, which do not normally hibernate.

Hibernation isn't simply prolonged sleep. When food gets scarce and winter approaches, hibernating animals begin to slow down their metabolism and drop their body temperature. During their prolonged slumber, hibernating animals quiet their brains and slow their heart rate and breathing.

[...] Mice don't hibernate in the wild. But in the lab, researchers were able to coax mice into a hibernation-like state by activating a type of brain cell called Q neurons.

"The mice exhibited distinctive qualities that met the criteria for hibernation," Takeshi Sakurai, researcher at the University of Tsukuba, said in a news release. "In particular, the body temperature set-point lowered from about 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit to about 81 degrees Fahrenheit, and the body functioned normally to maintain a lower body temperature around 71.6 degrees Fahrenheit, even when the surrounding ambient temperature was dramatically reduced."

The low energy state was also successfully induced in rats -- which neither hibernate nor experience daily torpor -- and was maintained for a week with lowered heart rates, body temperature, respiration and oxygen consumption.

Researchers say the experiment suggests it's possible humans possess Q neurons, or comparable brain cells, that could be manipulated to trigger a hibernation-like state.

If the research turns out to be applicable to humans, possible uses include medical transport, lengthy space flights, and treatment of severe pneumonia and other oxygenation affecting diseases.

Journal Reference:
Tohru M. Takahashi, Genshiro A. Sunagawa, Shingo Soya, et al. A discrete neuronal circuit induces a hibernation-like state inrodents, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2163-6)

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/06/10/after-century-searching-scientists-find-new-liquid-phase

Researchers at CU Boulder’s Soft Materials Research Center (SMRC) have discovered an elusive phase of matter, first proposed more than 100 years ago and sought after ever since.

The team describes the discovery of what scientists call a “ferroelectric nematic” phase of liquid crystal in a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The discovery "opens a door to a new universe of materials," said co-author Matt Glaser, a professor in the Department of Physics.

[...] The researchers ran more tests and discovered that this phase of RM734 was 100 to 1,000 times more responsive to electric fields than the usual nematic liquid crystals. This suggested that the molecules that make up the liquid crystal demonstrated strong polar order.

“When the molecules are all pointing to the left, and they all see a field that says, ‘go right,’ the response is dramatic,” Clark said.

[...] When the researchers examined how well aligned the molecules were inside a single domain, “we were stunned by the result,” MacLennan said. The molecules were nearly all pointing in the same direction.

Journal Reference:
Xi Chen, Eva Korblova, Dengpan Dong, et al. First-principles experimental demonstration of ferroelectricity in a thermotropic nematic liquid crystal: Polar domains and striking electro-optics [open], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2002290117)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Russia says 'years' needed to clean up Arctic spill:

Russian investigators on Wednesday detained three staff of a power plant over a huge fuel spill in the Arctic, as response teams warned a full clean-up would take years.

The spill of over 21,000 tonnes of fuel took place after a fuel reservoir collapsed last month at a power plant operated by a subsidiary of metals giant Norilsk Nickel in the city of Norilsk.

It is the largest ever to have hit the Arctic, say environmentalists.

Those working at the site have already seen the first effects of the spill on the local ecosystem, said Viktor Bronnikov, general director of Transneft Siberia oil and gas transportation company involved in the clean-up.

They included dead muskrats and ducks, he said.

The Investigative Committee looking into the accident said it had detained the director of the power station, Pavel Smirnov, and two engineers on suspicion of breaching environmental protection rules.

If convicted, they would risk up to five years in prison.

"The company considers this measure to be unjustifiably harsh," Norilsk Nickel said in a statement to AFP, citing vice-president Nikolai Utkin.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

The brain uses minimum effort to look for key information in text:

A recently completed study indicates that the human brain avoids taking unnecessary effort. When a person is reading, she strives to gain as much information as possible by dedicating as little of her cognitive capacity as possible to the processing.

[...] According to the study, the brain is processing information by taking into account the relative importance of the content that is being read. When the brain is interpreting the meaning of the words being read, it attempts to allocate resources to interpreting the words that provide as much information as possible on the content of the text.

[...] In the recently published study, the perspective was expanded to the level above individual sentences, the discourse level. It was studied using six-sentence paragraphs. At this level, the relationship between words becomes increasingly complex, and the significance of context in interpreting individual words is increased. On the discourse level, very little about information processing by the brain has been known so far.

[...] "When someone reads the sentence 'Cats are small, usually furry mammals', words such as 'mammal' and 'furry' evoke a particular pattern of brain activity. This suggests that the brain is efficiently processing information: concentrating its efforts there where the most additional value in understanding the message is to be gained," says Michiel Spapé, a senior researcher who contributed to the study.

A related finding revealed that, by using AI-based techniques, brain measurements pertaining to individual words can be used to predict whether the information gain for the words read is low or high.

[...] Ruotsalo points out that the research is only at its basic stage.

Journal Reference:
Lauri Kangassalo, Michiel Spapé, Niklas Ravaja, et al. Information gain modulates brain activity evoked by reading [open], Scientific Reports (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-63828-5)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Apple is now worth 1.5 trillion dollars:

[On Wednesday, June 10], Apple became the first US company to achieve a $1.5 trillion market capitalization. The stock surged even as investors began pulling back in many other areas of the economy.

Reasons given by investors for the optimism include anticipation of the launch of a 5G iPhone this fall, signs of strong App Store sales, and interest in the potential of ARM-driven Macs, based on a Bloomberg report yesterday that said Apple may announce an ARM transition at its annual developer conference later this month.

Yesterday and today, Apple's movement ran counter to most of the rest of the market, where investors' actions have reflected fear of a global coronavirus resurgence and anticipation of bad news from the US Federal Reserve in a report due out today.

Market capitalization essentially means the total number of shares of a company being traded multiplied by the current trading value of a share in that company, making it the best publicly available measure of the company's actual value.

AAPL was at $338.40 per share as of June 13 which gave it a total market capitalization of $1.47 trillion.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

New Horizons conducts the first interstellar parallax experiment:

More than four billion miles from home and speeding toward interstellar space, NASA's New Horizons has traveled so far that it now has a unique view of the nearest stars. "It's fair to say that New Horizons is looking at an alien sky, unlike what we see from Earth," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. "And that has allowed us to do something that had never been accomplished before—to see the nearest stars visibly displaced on the sky from the positions we see them on Earth."

On April 22-23, the spacecraft turned its long-range telescopic camera to a pair of the "closest" stars, Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359, showing just how they appear in different places than we see from Earth. Scientists have long used this "parallax effect"—how a star appears to shift against its background when seen from different locations—to measure distances to stars.

[...] when New Horizons images are paired with pictures of the same stars taken on the same dates by telescopes on Earth, the parallax shift is instantly visible. The combination yields a 3-D view of the stars "floating" in front of their background star fields.

"The New Horizons experiment provides the largest parallax baseline ever made—over 4 billion miles—and is the first demonstration of an easily observable stellar parallax," said Tod Lauer, New Horizons science team member from the National Science Foundation's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory who coordinated the parallax demonstration.

[...] Download the images (and learn more about creating and posting your own parallax perspectives) at pluto.jhuapl.edu/Learn/Paralla ... /Parallax-Images.php

Original Submission

DeathMonkey writes:

Fox News runs digitally altered images in coverage of Seattle's protests, Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone:

Fox News published digitally altered and misleading photos on stories about Seattle's Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in what photojournalism experts called a clear violation of ethical standards for news organizations.

As part of a package of stories Friday about the zone, where demonstrators have taken over several city blocks on Capitol Hill after Seattle police abandoned the East Precinct, Fox's website for much of the day featured a photo of a man standing with a military-style rifle in front of what appeared to be a smashed retail storefront.

The image was actually a mashup of photos from different days, taken by different photographers — it was done by splicing a Getty Images photo of an armed man, who had been at the protest zone June 10, with other images from May 30 of smashed windows in downtown Seattle. Another altered image combined the gunman photo with yet another image, making it appear as though he was standing in front of a sign declaring "You are now entering Free Cap Hill."

[...] The image, as displayed on the Fox News website, was spliced with other photos, including a photo of a smashed retail storefront in May, making it look as though the scene was all playing out concurrently in the autonomous zone. "It is definitely Photoshopped," confirmed Ryder. "To use a photo out of context in a journalistic setting like that seems unethical."

[...] "I think it's disgraceful propaganda and terribly misrepresentative of documentary journalism in times like this, when truth-telling and accountability is so important," said Kenny Irby, a photojournalism ethics educator and consultant. "There is no attribution. There is no acknowledgment of the montage, and it's terribly misleading."

Akili Ramsess, executive director of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), said ethical standards clearly prohibit alteration of photos in news accounts.

Previously:
(2020-06-12) Seattle's Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ)

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/hot-car-deaths-down-significantly-this-year-and-experts-think-they-know-why/757822

The United States is on track to report its lowest number of pediatric hot car deaths in a year since record-keeping on the subject began more than three decades ago, and child safety groups are pointing to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as a big factor.

With summer right around the corner, there have been two pediatric vehicular heatstroke fatalities across the country in 2020, well below normal for the first five-plus months of a calendar year. The average number of hot car deaths for children through June 10 is around nine, according to Jan Null, the founder of NoHeatStroke.org, a website that tracks hot car deaths across the country and analyzes vehicle heating dynamics.
[...]
In past documented cases, the most likely days for children to gain access to a vehicle were Saturdays and Sundays, when school wasn't in session.

"With fewer parents and caregivers traveling to work, and fewer children attending childcare and pre-school, it is imperative that all drivers, even those without children, lock their unattended vehicles so children cannot gain access,"

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

New Distance Measurements Bolster Challenge to Basic Model of Universe:

A new set of precision distance measurements made with an international collection of radio telescopes have greatly increased the likelihood that theorists need to revise the “standard model” that describes the fundamental nature of the Universe.

The new distance measurements allowed astronomers to refine their calculation of the Hubble Constant, the expansion rate of the Universe, a value important for testing the theoretical model describing the composition and evolution of the Universe. The problem is that the new measurements exacerbate a discrepancy between previously measured values of the Hubble Constant and the value predicted by the model when applied to measurements of the cosmic microwave background made by the Planck satellite.

"We find that galaxies are nearer than predicted by the standard model of cosmology, corroborating a problem identified in other types of distance measurements. There has been debate over whether this problem lies in the model itself or in the measurements used to test it. Our work uses a distance measurement technique completely independent of all others, and we reinforce the disparity between measured and predicted values. It is likely that the basic cosmological model involved in the predictions is the problem," said James Braatz, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

[...] "The maser method of measuring the expansion rate of the universe is elegant, and, unlike the others, based on geometry. By measuring extremely precise positions and dynamics of maser spots in the accretion disk surrounding a distant black hole, we can determine the distance to the host galaxies and then the expansion rate. Our result from this unique technique strengthens the case for a key problem in observational cosmology." said Mark Reid of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian, and a member of the Megamaser Cosmology Project team.

"Our measurement of the Hubble Constant is very close to other recent measurements, and statistically very different from the predictions based on the CMB and the standard cosmological model. All indications are that the standard model needs revision," said Braatz.

Journal Reference:
D. W. Pesce, J. A. Braatz, M. J. Reid, et al. The Megamaser Cosmology Project. XIII. Combined Hubble Constant Constraints - IOPscience, The Astrophysical Journal Letters (DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab75f0)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Elite gamers share mental toughness with top athletes, study finds:

A new study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, indicated an overlap between the mental toughness and stress-coping processes in traditional sports and competitive esports athletes.

• Competitive esports athletes appear to cope with stressors similarly to high-performing sports athletes
• esports players with higher ranks tended to have higher levels of mental toughness
• sports psychology interventions for high-performing sports athletes may also be beneficial to competitive esports athletes.

QUT esports researcher Dylan Poulus said 316 esports players aged 18 and over were studied from among the top 40 per cent of players.

"A disposition considered to be influential in sporting success is mental toughness and it appears to be important for success in esports," Mr Poulus said.

"To be a millionaire esports gamer you deal with stress similar as if you are getting ready to go to the Olympics.

"It is one of the fastest growing sports in the world, and with the coronavirus pandemic there has been huge interest."

Journal Reference:
Poulus, Dylan, Coulter, Tristan J., Trotter, Michael G., et al. Stress and Coping in Esports and the Influence of Mental Toughness, Frontiers in Psychology (DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00628)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

New Record-Crushing Battery Lasts 1.2 Million Miles in Electric Cars:

Electric cars had their biggest year ever in 2019. As of the end of the year, 2.5 percent of the world's total cars were electric. It's a small percentage, but represents significant growth for the electric vehicle industry.

Before electric cars become more widespread, they have some technological hurdles left to clear, including the distance drivers can go before having to re-charge the car's battery (also known as range anxiety!), and the life of the battery itself. Range currently runs from around 100 miles on the low end up to 200+ miles [see note 1] in newer models, and most warranties run out after 150,000 miles or 8 years.

The latter figures are about to get a big boost after an announcement this week from Chinese company Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL). The company says it has new battery technology that lasts up to 1.2 million miles (2 million kilometers) and 16 years—and it's ready to manufacture the batteries on demand.

[...] The battery uses lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) for its cathode (positively-charged electrode) and artificial graphite for its anode (negatively-charged electrode). The cathodes of existing batteries use small NMC crystals, but this one uses larger crystals, resulting in a structure that one researcher explained is less likely to develop cracks while the battery charges; that was one of the primary improvements contributing to a longer overall lifespan.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Face masks don't even have to work especially well to be effective:

Advice on whether or not to use face masks to limit the spread of the pandemic has varied from country to country, even differing by location within countries. These policies have had to balance whether there were sufficient supplies for medical personnel to divert some to the general public. And the whole issue was decided without a clear idea of whether face masks were actually effective against SARS-CoV-2.

But there has been reason to think masks would at least be somewhat affective, based on studies of the spread of droplets of material we expel while coughing or sneezing. And a recent analysis suggested a large group of individual studies collectively pointed to their effectiveness. But that analysis left a large degree of uncertainty about how effective they'd be at the population level and how face mask use would interact with other policy decisions.

The situation left us needing population-level modeling, which a group of UK scientists has now provided. The group's model indicates that face masks don't have to be especially effective to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and can even bring benefits if they make people more vulnerable to infection. But to really control the pandemic, they will have to be combined with a lockdown if we want to see the total infected population shrink.

[...] Right now, we just don't know enough about SARS-CoV-2 and protective gear to evaluate which of these models best reflect reality. But the models do set some reasonable bounds about what we might aim for. For example, they indicate that masks don't need to be especially good if we get enough people wearing them and couple their use to other policy initiatives.

Journal Reference:
Stutt, R., Retkure, R., Bradley, M., Gilligan, C., and Colvin, J. A modelling framework to assess the likely effectiveness of facemasks in combination with lock-down in managing the COVID-19 pandemic, Proceedings of the Royal Society A (2020) (DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2020.0376)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Internet Archive ends "emergency library" early to appease publishers:

The Internet Archive has ended its National Emergency Library programs two weeks earlier than originally scheduled, the organization announced in a Wednesday blog post.

"We moved up our schedule because, last Monday, four commercial publishers chose to sue Internet Archive during a global pandemic," the group wrote. The online library called on publishers to "call off their costly assault."

[...] If the publishers dropped their lawsuit now, they would be tacitly conceding the legality of CDL^[1] and potentially endangering the revenues they currently earn from licensing e-books to libraries for digital checkout. Also, the Internet Archive's decision to stop its emergency lending now is unlikely to protect it from liability for lending it has done over the last three months.

A win for the publishers could easily bankrupt the Internet Archive. Copyright law allows statutory damages for willful infringement to go as high as $150,000 per work, and the Internet Archive has scanned 1.4 million works and offered them for online download. So the Internet Archive could easily face damages in the billions of dollars if it loses the lawsuit. That's far beyond the group's ability to pay.

^[1] CDL - controlled digital lending - One electronic loan per physical copy in the library.

Previously:
Publishers Sue the Internet Archive Over its Open Library, Declare it a Pirate Site
Authors Fume as Online Library "Lends" Unlimited Free Books
Internet Archive Suspends E-Book Lending "Waiting Lists" During U.S. National Emergency

Original Submission