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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Primitive stem cells point to new bone grafts for stubborn-to-heal fractures:

Previous studies have shown that stem cells, particularly a type called mesenchymal stem cells, can be used to produce bone grafts that are biologically active. In particular, these cells convert to bone cells that produce the materials required to make a scaffolding, or the extracellular matrix, that bones need for their growth and survival.

However, these stem cells are usually extracted from the marrow of an adult bone and are, as a result, older. Their age affects the cells' ability to divide and produce more of the precious extracellular matrix, Kaunas said.

To circumvent this problem, the researchers turned to the cellular ancestors of mesenchymal stem cells, called pluripotent stem cells. Unlike adult mesenchymal cells that have a relatively short lifetime, they noted that these primitive cells can keep proliferating, thereby creating an unlimited supply of mesenchymal stem cells needed to make the extracellular matrix for bone grafts. They added that pluripotent cells can be made by genetically reprogramming donated adult cells.

When the researchers experimentally induced the pluripotent stem cells to make brand new mesenchymal stem cells, they were able to generate an extracellular matrix that was far more biologically active compared to that generated by mesenchymal cells obtained from adult bone.

[...] To test the efficacy of their scaffolding material as a bone graft, they then carefully extracted and purified the enriched extracellular matrix and then implanted it at a site of bone defects. Upon examining the status of bone repair in a few weeks, they found that their pluripotent stem-cell-derived matrix was five to sixfold more effective than the best FDA-approved graft stimulator.

Journal Reference:
Eoin P. McNeill, Suzanne Zeitouni, Simin Pan, et al. Characterization of a pluripotent stem cell-derived matrix with powerful osteoregenerative capabilities [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16646-2)

Original Submission

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Andy Maxwell over at TorrentFreak informs us Removing "Annoying" Windows 10 Features is a DMCA Violation, Microsoft Says:

Ninjutsu OS, a new software tool that heavily modifies Windows 10 with a huge number of tweaks, mods and extra tools, has been hit with a DMCA complaint by Microsoft. According to the copyright notice, the customizing, tweaking and disabling of Windows 10 features, even when that improves privacy, amounts to a violation of Microsoft's software license.

Since Windows was first released, people have been modifying variants of the world-famous operating system to better fit their individual requirements.

Many of these tweaks can be carried out using tools provided within the software itself but the recently-released Ninjutsu OS aims to take Windows 10 modding to a whole new level.

Released on May 7, Ninjutsu OS claims to take Windows 10 and transform it into a penetration testing powerhouse, adding huge numbers of tools (around 800) aimed at security experts, a few for regular users (qBitTorrent and Tor Browser, for example) while also removing features considered unwanted or unneeded in such an environment.

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

The folks over at at TechRaptor bring us word (recently updated) that Valve Implementing New Steam Comment Moderation Bot:

Steam's forums are an enjoyable place to be when you are discussing the latest happening in the gaming world. It is common to run into internet trolls and the likes, but there is nothing like keeping up with the spam comments giving people unsafe links to click through. Some of those links directed to Counter Strike: Global Offensive skin trading and gambling sites, and other non-safe places where they ask you for sensitive and personal information.

Recently, Steam users went to Reddit to report a new message that appeared to them for a few seconds whenever they comment in forum threads. Not only that, it apparently shows for users as well who are posting reviews of their recently played games.

Reportedly, the following message normally only shows for a few seconds before your comment gets approved, which means the comment moderation bot is only looking for links or any harmful content.

"This comment is awaiting analysis by our automated content check system. It will be temporarily hidden until we verify that it does not contain harmful content (e.g. links to websites that attempt to steal information)."

Valve later got back to TechRaptor with the following message:

Yes, we are scanning the forums and hiding posts that contain links to malicious sites attempting to steal user’s Steam information. We are always looking for ways to improve with new updates, fixes, and features.

Apolitical? Check. Narrowly-scoped? Check. No ideological argument or stretching of the definition of "harm" necessary? Check. Botting like a boss, guys.

[Belated Note: SoylentNews does not use automated moderation. We stick you poor folks with the work instead. --TMB]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

On July 7, AMD will launch three refreshed Zen 2 "Matisse" desktop CPUs with slightly higher boost clocks than the previous versions:

• 12-core Ryzen 9 3900XT will boost to 4.7 GHz, instead of 4.6 GHz for the 3900X.
• 8-core Ryzen 7 3800XT will boost to 4.7 GHz, instead of 4.5 GHz for the 3800X.
• 6-core Ryzen 5 3600XT will boost to 4.5 GHz, instead of 4.4 GHz for the 3600X.

The 3900XT and 3800XT will not come with a bundled cooler, unlike the 3900X and 3800X (the top-of-the-line 16-core 3950X also did not come with a cooler). 3600XT will come with a Wraith Spire cooler.

The "suggested etailer price" (SEP) is the same as the launch prices for the previous CPUs ($499, $399, $249), but the 3900X is often sold for $400-$420 instead of $500, for example. So customers may end up paying between 10-25% more for a 2-5% potential performance gain, unless retailers drop the prices soon after launch.

The new 3000XT family of processors focuses mostly on boosting the turbo frequency by 100-200 MHz for the same power. AMD states that this is due to using an optimized 7nm manufacturing process. This is likely due to a minor BKM[*] or PDK[**] update that allows TSMC/AMD to tune the process for a better voltage/frequency curve and bin a single CPU slightly higher.

[...] In each [of the] three cases, the XT processors give slightly better frequency than the X units, so we should expect to see an official permanent price drop on the X processors in order to keep everything in line.

The CPUs should work with existing motherboards that supported the non-XT CPUs, after a BIOS update.

A September to October 2020 launch date is likely for the first next-generation Ryzen 4000 Zen 3 "Vermeer" CPUs. Rumors of the launch being pushed back to 2021 have been denied.

[*] BKM: Best-Known Method
[**] PDK: Process Design Kit

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Amazingly Detailed Map Reveals How the Brain Changes With Aging:

Last week, in a technological tour-de-force, a European team from the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden, led by Dr. Seth G.N. Grant at the University of Edinburgh, redefined impossibility with a paper in Science. Peering into the brains of mice at different ages—one day, one week, and all the way up to an elderly 18 months—the team constructed maps of roughly 5 billion synapses, outlining a timeline of their diversity and numbers in over 100 different brain regions with age.

[...] In their new study, the team built a time map of synapses in the mouse brain, which they call the “lifespan synaptome architecture,” or LSA. The project is part of the Mouse Lifespan Synaptome Atlas, which comes with an assortment of tools for researchers to dig into to better understand how our brains age with time.

To build their synaptic timeline, the team analyzed the brain of a type of transgenic mice that have some proteins in their synapses highlighted with a fluorescent protein. The team picked ten points in their lifespan, covering the entire range of newly born to adolescent to adulthood and the elderly.

Journal Reference:
Mélissa Cizeron, Zhen Qiu, Babis Koniaris, et al. A brain-wide atlas of synapses across the mouse lifespan [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.aba3163)

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Study finds 82 percent of avocado oil rancid or mixed with other oils:

Consumer demand is rising for all things avocado, including oil made from the fruit. Avocado oil is a great source of vitamins, minerals and the type of fats associated with reducing the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. But according to new research from food science experts at the University of California, Davis, the vast majority of avocado oil sold in the U.S. is of poor quality, mislabeled or adulterated with other oils.

In the country's first extensive study of commercial avocado oil quality and purity, UC Davis researchers report that at least 82 percent of test samples were either stale before expiration date or mixed with other oils. In three cases, bottles labeled as "pure" or "extra virgin" avocado oil contained near 100 percent soybean oil, an oil commonly used in processed foods that's much less expensive to produce.

Journal Reference:
Hilary S. Green, Selina C. Wang. First report on quality and purity evaluations of avocado oil sold in the US [open], Food Control (DOI: 10.1016/j.foodcont.2020.107328)

Why put avocado oil in the bottle when you can use soybean oil instead and pocket the extra profit?

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for FatPhil:

EU launches two antitrust investigations into Apple practices:

European Union authorities Tuesday launched two antitrust investigations into Apple's mobile app store and payment platform over concerns that the company's practices distort competition, opening a new front in the EU's battle against the dominance of big tech companies.

The EU's executive arm, the European Commission, said it began a formal investigation of Apple Pay over allegations that the company refuses access to the payment system in some cases and limits access to the "tap and go" function on iPhones.

The commission opened a second investigation into the mobile App Store over concerns that Apple restricts developers from letting iPhone and iPad users know about ways to make purchases outside of apps. The investigation follows complaints from music-streaming service Spotify and an e-book distributor on the impact of the App Store's rules on the competition.

EU Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager said, "It appears that Apple obtained a gatekeeper role when it comes to the distribution of apps and content to users of Apple's popular devices."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Flat spots on Saturn's moon Titan may be the floors of ancient lake beds

Peculiar flat regions on Saturn's moon Titan could be the dry floors of ancient lakes and seas. The suggestion, published June 16 in Nature Communications, may solve a 20-year-old mystery [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16663-1] [DX].

[...] "Titan is still currently the only other place in the universe that we know to have liquid on its surface, just like the Earth," says planetary scientist Jason Hofgartner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. But the lakes and seas are concentrated near Titan's poles, not the tropics. The regions where the specular reflections show up are bafflingly dry.

[...] The researchers considered whether rainfall, dunes or dry lake beds could be responsible for the reflections, and found that only lake beds explain the timing and locations of the signals. It does rain on Titan, but not frequently enough to explain the reflections, and Titan's dune fields are in the wrong spots. And the specular reflections come from two specific regions that look like other empty lake basins near Titan's poles (SN: 4/15/19).

[...] So if the reflections come from lost lakes, where did the liquid go? One possibility is that it moved from the equator to the poles as part of a Titan-wide methane cycle (SN: 12/8/17). Another is that the liquid evaporated and was destroyed by sunlight striking Titan's atmosphere.

Related: Titan's Flooded Canyons
Tiny Waves Estimated in Titan's Hydrocarbon Lakes
Extreme Methane Rainstorms Appear to Have a Key Role in Shaping Titan's Icy Surface
Acetylene and Butane Could Form Crystals on Titan

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Mars orbiter spots green glow over Red Planet:

"Previous observations hadn't captured any kind of green glow at Mars, so we decided to reorient the UVIS nadir channel to point at the 'edge' of Mars, similar to the perspective you see in images of Earth taken from the ISS," says Ann Carine Vandaele, co-author of the study.

The team studied the atmosphere from this angle many times for more than seven months, scanning different altitudes between 20 and 400 km (12.4 and 248.5 mi) above the surface twice every four-day orbit. The green emission, produced by oxygen, was present in all cases.

"The emission was strongest at an altitude of around 80 km (49.7 mi) and varied depending on the changing distance between Mars and the Sun," says Vandaele.

On closer examination, it appears that the green glow in this case mostly comes from oxygen that’s produced when carbon dioxide is split by solar radiation.

When the Martian Senate failed to pass the mandate for catalytic converters, this outcome was inevitable.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Artificial synapses and living cells communicate using brain chemicals:

The researchers first designed their artificial synapse in 2017. It worked a bit like a transistor, involving three terminals surrounded by a salty water electrolyte. In this way, the terminals act like neurons, sending electrical signals across the water (the synapse) to each other.

For the new study, the team has taken things a step further by creating a biohybrid artificial synapse. This time, the device is made up of two soft polymer electrodes, again separated by an electrolyte solution. But the key difference is that living cells were then placed on top of one of the electrodes, which were able to communicate with the other electrode across the synapse.

When these living cells released their neurotransmitters, they reacted with the electrode below them. That induces the electrode to produce ions, which then travel through the electrolyte to the other electrode, changing its conductive state.

Stanford New Release.

Journal Reference:
Keene, S.T., Lubrano, C., Kazemzadeh, S. et al. A biohybrid synapse with neurotransmitter-mediated plasticity Nature Materials (DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2020.05.008)

Just in time to augment the brain functions that social media has rotted away.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Boston Dynamics will now sell any business its own Spot robot for $74,500:

Robotmaker Boston Dynamics has finally put its four-legged robot Spot on general sale. After years of development, the company began leasing the machine to businesses last year, and, as of today, is now letting any US firm buy their very own Spot for $74,500.

It's a hefty price tag, equal to the base price for a luxury Tesla Model S. But Boston Dynamics says, for that money, you're getting the most advanced mobile robot in the world, able to go pretty much anywhere a human can (as long as there are no ladders involved).

Although Spot is certainly nimble, its workload is mostly limited right now to surveying and data collection. Trial deployments have seen Spot create 3D maps of construction sites and hunt for machine faults in offshore oil rigs. Less routine tests include helping hospitals triage COVID-19 patients and, somewhat controversially, working with a police bomb squad.

[...] "We mostly sell the robot to industrial and commercial customers who have a sensor they want to take somewhere they don't want a person to go," Boston Dynamics' lead robotics engineer, Zack Jackowski, told The Verge last week.

[...] One feature that Boston Dynamics is currently working on is remote teleoperation. A demo version of this feature will be available to potential Spot customers who will be able to take a unit for a test drive in a robot assault course in the company's headquarters.

[...] Although Spot is something of a celebrity in the robot world, it's still very much a limited product. The company has leased around 150 units to customers to date, and it's going to miss its target of producing 1,000 Spot robots this year due to the impact of the coronavirus. (It'll hit the target Q1 2021, says Perry.) Customers will also be limited to buying two robots at a time, and larger orders will need to be discussed with Boston Dynamics

It's nice to know that robots have good dance moves to entertain humans working remotely from home.

Original Submission

Taking a Landslide's Temperature to Avert Catastrophe:

The disaster Veveakis is referring to occurred at the Vajont Dam, one of the tallest in the world at 860 feet, in northern Italy in 1963. After years of attempting to mitigate a slow, incremental landslide of roughly an inch per day in the adjoining mountainside by lowering the water level of the lake behind the dam, the landslide suddenly accelerated without warning. Nearly 10 billion cubic feet of rock plummeted down the gorge and into the lake at almost 70 miles per hour. That created a tsunami more than 800 feet tall that crashed over the dam, completely wiping out several small towns below and killing nearly 2,000 people.

Before the catastrophe occurred, scientists did not believe any potential landslide would result in a tsunami more than 75 feet tall.

[...] In 2007, Veveakis put the pieces together and developed a model that fit the scientific observations of the disaster. It showed how water seeping into rock above an unstable layer of clay caused a creeping landslide, which in turn heated up and further destabilized the clay in a feedback loop until it rapidly failed.

"Clay is a very thermally sensitive material and it can create a shear band that is very susceptible to friction," said Carolina Segui, a PhD candidate in Veveakis's laboratory and first author of the new paper. "It's the worst material to have in such a critical place and is a nightmare for civil engineers constructing anything anywhere."

Phoenix666 wrote in with a story which inspired:

Archaeologists Find Roman Iron Age Board Game in Norway:

Last month, Norwegian archaeologists chose to excavate the remains of a small Early Iron Age grave cairn in western Norway. Dotted with monuments and grave mounds, the scenic location overlooking Alversund played an important role in Norwegian history.

The site at Ytre Fosse turned out to be a cremation patch. Amidst the fragments of pottery and burnt glass, archaeologists found a surprise: rare Roman Iron Age dice and board game pieces.

"This is wonderfully exciting. Such discoveries have not been made so many times before in Norway or Scandinavia. The special thing here is that we have found almost the whole set including the dice," said Morten Ramstad from Bergen University Museum to NRK.

[...] The pieces are of a very rare type, known to be from the Roman Iron Age, dated to around AD 300. The haul included 13 whole and five broken game chips along with an almost completely intact elongated dice.

The dice is marked with number symbols in the form of point circles and have the values ​​zero, three, four and five. Less than 15 of these have been found in Norway. Similar dice were found in the famous Vimose weapon-offering site at Fyn in Denmark.

[...] The gaming board at Vimose was also preserved, so we have some idea of what board games may have been played during the period in Scandinavia. Inspired by the Roman game Ludus latrunculorum, board games seem to have been a popular hobby amongst the Scandinavian elite of the time.

Guess they'll have to push the founding date of Gen Con a little further back than 1968...

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

Life-saving coronavirus drug 'major breakthrough':

A cheap and widely available drug can help save the lives of patients seriously ill with coronavirus.

The low-dose steroid treatment dexamethasone is a major breakthrough in the fight against the deadly virus, UK experts say.

The drug is part of the world's biggest trial testing existing treatments to see if they also work for coronavirus.

[...] The drug is already used to reduce inflammation in a range of other conditions, and it appears that it helps stop some of the damage that can happen when the body's immune system goes into overdrive as it tries to fight off coronavirus.

[...] In the trial, led by a team from Oxford University, around 2,000 hospital patients were given dexamethasone and were compared with more than 4,000 who did not receive the drug.

For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 40% to 28%. For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%.

Chief investigator Prof Peter Horby said: "This is the only drug so far that has been shown to reduce mortality - and it reduces it significantly. It's a major breakthrough."

[...] Dexamethasone has been used since the early 1960s to treat a wide range of conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis and asthma.

[...] The drug is given intravenously in intensive care, and in tablet form for less seriously ill patients. So far, the only other drug proven to benefit Covid patients is remdesivir, an antiviral treatment which has been used for Ebola.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

COVID-19 hospitalizations could mean significant out-of-pocket medical costs for many Americans:

For their study, the researchers analyzed out-of-pocket costs for pneumonia and other upper respiratory illness hospitalizations from January 2016 through August 2019 as a potential indicator of likely COVID-19 costs. The researchers found that these out-of-pocket costs were particularly high for so-called consumer-directed health plans -- which typically feature lower premiums, compared to standard plans, but higher deductibles that can be paid via tax-advantaged health savings accounts.

[...] Many big-name health insurers have voluntarily waived out-of-pocket cost sharing for COVID-19 treatment. However, employer-sponsored "self-insured" health insurance plans are not required to adhere to such waivers. Thus, tens of millions of Americans have high-deductible insurance plans that, in cases of COVID-19 hospitalization, may expose them to relatively high out-of-pocket costs.

[...] To get a sense of the likely cost burden on patients hospitalized for COVID-19, Eisenberg and colleagues examined de-identified insurance claims for 34,395 unique hospitalizations from January 2016 through August 2019. They looked at out-of-pocket costs incurred by people who had been hospitalized during the 2016-2019 study period with pneumonia, acute bronchitis, lower respiratory infections, and acute respiratory distress syndrome. (Claims data on actual COVID-19 cases were not available in the database at the time of the study.) The cases examined did not include those for people ages 65 and over, who are normally covered by Medicare. The out-of-pocket costs included deductible payments, copayments, and coinsurance payments.