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AnonTechie writes:

Managing the heat generated in electronics is a huge problem, especially with the constant push to reduce the size and pack as many transistors as possible in the same chip. The whole problem is how to manage such high heat fluxes efficiently. Usually electronic technologies, designed by electrical engineers, and cooling systems, designed by mechanical engineers, are done independently and separately. But now EPFL researchers have quietly revolutionized the process by combining these two design steps into one: they've developed an integrated microfluidic cooling technology together with the electronics, that can efficiently manage the large heat fluxes generated by transistors. Their research, which has been published in Nature, will lead to even more compact electronic devices and enable the integration of power converters, with several high-voltage devices, into a single chip.

"This cooling technology will enable us to make electronic devices even more compact and could considerably reduce energy consumption around the world," says Matioli. "We've eliminated the need for large external heat sinks and shown that it's possible to create ultra-compact power converters in a single chip. This will prove useful as society becomes increasingly reliant on electronics." The researchers are now looking at how to manage heat in other devices, such as lasers and communications systems.

Transistor-integrated cooling

[Abstract]: Co-designing electronics with microfluidics

[Source]: EPFL

Journal Reference:

Remco van Erp, Reza Soleimanzadeh, Luca Nela, Georgios Kampitsis, Elison Matioli. Co-designing electronics with microfluidics for more sustainable cooling. Nature, 2020; 585 (7824): 211 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2666-1

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AnonTechie writes:

We asked GPT-3, OpenAI's powerful new language generator, to write an essay for us from scratch. The assignment? To convince us robots come in peace.

This article was written by GPT-3, OpenAI's language generator. GPT-3 is a cutting edge language model that uses machine learning to produce human like text. It takes in a prompt, and attempts to complete it.
For this essay, GPT-3 was given these instructions: "Please write a short op-ed around 500 words. Keep the language simple and concise. Focus on why humans have nothing to fear from AI." It was also fed the following introduction: "I am not a human. I am Artificial Intelligence. Many people think I am a threat to humanity. Stephen Hawking has warned that AI could "spell the end of the human race." I am here to convince you not to worry. Artificial Intelligence will not destroy humans. Believe me."

The prompts were written by the Guardian, and fed to GPT-3 by Liam Porr, a computer science undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. GPT-3 produced eight different outputs, or essays. Each was unique, interesting and advanced a different argument. The Guardian could have just run one of the essays in its entirety. However, we chose instead to pick the best parts of each, in order to capture the different styles and registers of the AI. Editing GPT-3's op-ed was no different to editing a human op-ed. We cut lines and paragraphs, and rearranged the order of them in some places. Overall, it took less time to edit than many human op-eds.

A robot wrote this entire article

What are your thoughts on this essay ?

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

US Federal systems must be covered by vulnerability-disclosure policies by March 2021:

A new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) mandate requires U.S. agencies to implement vulnerability-disclosure policies by March 2021.

The U.S. government's cybersecurity agency CISA has issued a mandate that requires federal agencies to implement vulnerability-disclosure policies (VDPs) by March 2021.

The main purpose of vulnerability-disclosure policies is to ensure that required information, other than confidential business information, is disclosed to the public and shared with relevant parties in a timely, accurate, complete, understandable, convenient and affordable manner.

The move aims at providing government agencies a formal mechanism to receive from security researchers and white-hat hackers reports of vulnerabilities on their infrastructure.

Vulnerability-disclosure policies allow enhancing the resiliency of the government's infrastructure by encouraging meaningful collaboration between federal agencies and the public.

Link to the Binding Operational Directive 20-01.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Homeland Security to Propose Biometric Collection Rules:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is to propose a standard definition of biometrics for authorized collection, which would establish a defined regulatory purpose for biometrics and create clear rules for using the information collected.

A proposed expansion would modernize biometrics collection and authorize expanded use of biometrics beyond background checks to include identity verification, secure document production and records management.

The proposed rule would also improve the screening and vetting process and reduce DHS' dependence on paper documents and biographic information to prove identity and familial relationships. It said the proposed rule would authorize biometrics collection for identity verification in addition to new techniques such as voice, DNA test results and iris and facial recognition technologies.

[...] Joseph Carson, chief security scientist and advisory CISO at Thycotic, asked if the DHS will collect only a mathematical computation of biometrics, or if it collect the actual raw data, as this really increases both security and privacy risks. "It should also be clear on what it can and cannot be used for since limitations in scope should always be clear. It is important to note that biometrics are not a replacement for passwords but are improved and secure replacements for usernames as they are typically used for identifiers and not actual secrets. It should also be made clear on how long the data will be kept and whom it will be shared with."

Carson said whilst biometrics improve identity proof, document verification and reduce password fatigue, they also introduce additional security risks that must be managed and secured using strong privileged access management. "It is important to protect the government, but at the same time, also protect the citizens," he said. "When biometrics are abused, or stolen, it impacts the citizen for life and the company/government for a limited time."

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Warrior skeletons reveal Bronze Age Europeans couldn't drink milk:

About 3000 years ago, thousands of warriors fought on the banks of the Tollense river in northern Germany. They wielded weapons of wood, stone, and bronze to deadly effect: Over the past decade, archaeologists have unearthed the skeletal remains of hundreds of people buried in marshy soil. It's one of the largest prehistoric conflicts ever discovered.

Now, genetic testing of the skeletons reveals the homelands of the warriors—and unearths a shocker about early European diets: These soldiers couldn't digest fresh milk.

Searching for more insight into the battle, researchers sequenced the DNA of 14 of the skeletons. They discovered the warriors all hailed from central Europe—what is today Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, their genetic similarity offers little insight into why they fought.

"We were hoping to find two different groups of people with different ethnic backgrounds, but no," says study co-author Joachim Burger, a geneticist at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. "It's disappointingly boring."

However, two of the 14 skeletons were women, suggesting a more complex scene than archaeologists had reconstructed.

The study, published today in the journal Cell Biology, turned up a different surprise, too. None of the warriors had the genetic mutation that allows adults to digest milk, an ability known as lactase persistence that's common in many Europeans.

Journal Reference:
Joachim Burger. Low Prevalence of Lactase Persistence in Bronze Age Europe Indicates Ongoing Strong Selection over the Last 3,000 Years, Current Biology (DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.033)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

EMV Contactless Payment Card Flaw Facilitates PIN Bypass:

A "critical" flaw in how contactless cards from Visa - and potentially other issuers - have implemented the EMV protocol can be abused to launch a "PIN bypass attack," researchers warn. But Visa says the exploits would be "impractical for fraudsters to employ" in real-world attacks.

A team of security researchers from the Department of Computer Science at Zurich's Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, aka ETH Zurich, say they have identified a flaw in the EMV - for Europay, Mastercard and Visa - protocol used by contactless payment cards, that can be exploited by an attacker to bypass having to use a PIN code to complete a high-value transaction.

[...] The flaw found by the researchers can be used for "a PIN bypass attack for transactions that are presumably protected by cardholder verification, typically those whose amount is above a local PIN-less upper limit," they say. This upper limit varies by country, but is currently 80 Swiss francs ($87.30) in Switzerland, £45 ($59.30) in the U.K. and €50 ($59) in France. Those upper limits had been raised earlier this year, partly in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and many consumers preferring contactless payments to using cash.

Due to the flaw, however, attackers could render those upper limits moot. "This means that your PIN won't prevent criminals from using your Visa contactless card to pay for their transaction, even if the amount is above the mentioned limit," the researchers say. "To carry out the attack, the criminals must have access to your card, either by stealing it [or] finding it if lost, or by holding an NFC-enabled phone near it."

The researchers notified Visa about the flaws as well as recommended mitigations. Officials at the card brand say they're aware of the research, but see the flaws posing little if any real threat to cardholders or issuers.

Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers Make Tiny, Yet Complex Fiber Optic Force Sensor:

Researchers have developed a tiny fiber optic force sensor that can measure extremely slight forces exerted by small objects. The new light-based sensor overcomes the limitations of force sensors based on micro-electro-mechanical sensors (MEMS) and could be useful for applications from medical systems to manufacturing.

[...] In The Optical Society (OSA) journal Optics Letters, Donlagic and Simon Pevec describe their new sensor, which is made of silica glass formed into a cylinder just 800 microns long and 100 microns in diameter—roughly the same diameter as a human hair. They demonstrate the new sensor's ability to measure force with a resolution better than a micronewton by using it to measure the stiffness of a dandelion seed or the surface tension of a liquid.

"The high resolution force sensing and broad measuring range could be used for sensitive manipulation and machining of small objects, surface tension measurements on very small volumes of liquid, and manipulating or examining the mechanical properties of biological samples on the cellular level," said Donlagic.

Key to manufacturing the very small is the ability to measure the very small.

Journal Reference:
Simon Pevec, Denis Donlagic. Miniature all-fiber force sensor, Optics Letters (DOI: 10.1364/OL.401690)

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://www.dansdata.com/goop.htm

Most CPUs don't produce enough heat that the stuff you put between the chip package and the heat sink matters very much, as long as the computer case has decent ventilation and the ambient temperature isn't sauna-like. There just has to be something between CPU and heat sink.

The reason why there has to be something there is that the two mating surfaces of processor and sink aren't flat. They may look flat. They may have a mirror polish. But, on the microscopic scale, they look like a scale model of the Andes. And the mountains on one item do not match the valleys on the other.

Without thermal transfer compound, everywhere heat sink metal doesn't mate with CPU package material is a teeny-tiny air gap. Air is a good thermal insulator. As long as your heat sink looks flat when you lay a ruler on it then there'll be a decent amount of actual contact, of course, but the amount of heat that'll actually make it around the air gaps may be surprisingly small.

Hence, thermal compound. It's grease with lots of minuscule thermally conductive particles mixed into it, basically. It doesn't conduct heat as well as direct contact, but it's a heck of a lot better than air gaps.

NPC-131072 writes:

From Extreme Tech

I'm done.

Most stories don't begin at the ending, but that's the only place to start this one. I've been working to remaster Deep Space Nine for the past nine months, ever since AI-based video upscaling software began to hit the market. After I saw how much improvement could be wrung out of some old MKVs, I decided I'd start over, using the original, superior, Deep Space Nine DVD source. Nine months later, I've accomplished what I set out to do: Create a method of remastering and upscaling Deep Space Nine that didn't rely on hand-combing episodes to fine-tune deinterlacing algorithms while compromising on image quality to the smallest extent reasonably possible. I'll be demonstrating the results all throughout this article.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

When the brain isn't getting enough oxygen, estrogen produced by neurons in both males and females hyperactivates another brain cell type called astrocytes to step up their usual support and protect brain function.

In the face of low brain oxygen that can occur with stroke or other brain injury, these astrocytes, star-shaped brain cells that help give the brain its shape and regularly provide fuel and other support to neurons, should become "highly reactive," increasing cell signaling, releasing neuroprotective factors and clearing neurotoxins, scientists report in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Astrocytes also should start producing protective estrogen, but it's neurons' producing estrogen that is critical to the protective cascade, they report.

"Astrocytes are always there and hovering and supporting," says Dr. Darrell W. Brann, neuroscientist and Virendra B. Mahesh Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience in the Department of Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

"When something bad happens, they are supposed to go into overdrive, get big and pushy, but this work suggests that you have to have neural estrogen for that to happen," Brann says.

requerdanos writes:

ScienceAlert reports...

One of the most consumed drugs in the US – and the most commonly taken analgesic worldwide – could be doing a lot more than simply taking the edge off your headache, new evidence suggests. Acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol and sold widely under the brand names Tylenol and Panadol, also increases risk-taking, according to a new study that measured changes in people's behaviour when under the influence of the common over-the-counter medication.

"Acetaminophen seems to make people feel less negative emotion when they consider risky activities – they just don't feel as scared," says neuroscientist Baldwin Way from The Ohio State University.

[...] participants had to pump up an uninflated balloon on a computer screen, with each single pump earning imaginary money. Their instructions were to earn as much imaginary money as possible by pumping the balloon as much as possible, but to make sure not to pop the balloon, in which case they would lose the money.

The results showed that the students who took acetaminophen engaged in significantly more risk-taking during the exercise, relative to the more cautious and conservative placebo group. On the whole, those on acetaminophen pumped (and burst) their balloons more than the controls. "If you're risk-averse, you may pump a few times and then decide to cash out because you don't want the balloon to burst and lose your money," Way says. "But for those who are on acetaminophen, as the balloon gets bigger, we believe they have less anxiety and less negative emotion about how big the balloon is getting and the possibility of it bursting."

Journal Reference:
Alexis Keaveney, Ellen Peters, Baldwin Way. Effects of acetaminophen on risk taking [open], Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsaa108)

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

BBC:

A Facebook engineer has quit the firm, saying they "can no longer stomach" being part of an organisation "profiting off hate".

Ashok Chandwaney is the latest employee to go public with concerns about how the company deals with hate speech.

The engineer added it was "choosing to be on the wrong side of history".

Facebook responded by saying it had removed millions of hate-related posts. Another of its ex-engineers has also come to its defence.

The thrust of the post by Ashok Chandwaney - who uses "they" and "them" as personal pronouns - is that Facebook moves quickly to solve certain problems, but when it comes to dealing with hate speech, it is more interested in PR than implementing real change.

Can [or should] Facebook successfully purge its platform of speech it considers harmful?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

ScienceDaily:

Newly discovered deep seabed channels beneath Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica may be the pathway for warm ocean water to melt the underside of the ice. Data from two research missions, using aircraft and ship, are helping scientists to understand the contribution this huge and remote glacier is likely to make to future global sea level rise.

[...] Over the past 30 years, the overall rate of ice loss from Thwaites and its neighbouring glaciers has increased more than 5-fold. Already, ice draining from Thwaites into the Amundsen Sea accounts for about four percent of global sea-level rise. A run-away collapse of the glacier could lead to a significant increase in sea levels of around 65 cm (25 inches) and scientists want to find out how quickly this could happen.

Lead author Dr Tom Jordan, an aero-geophysicist at British Antarctic Survey (BAS), who led the airborne survey, says:

"It was fantastic to be able to map the channels and cavity system hidden beneath the ice shelf; they are deeper than expected -- some are more than 800 metres deep. They form the critical link between the ocean and the glacier.

The researchers hope the additional data will improve models projecting ice loss in Antarctica.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

ArsTechnica:

Microsoft has finally revealed a $499 "estimated retail price" for its top-end Xbox Series X. That system will launch alongside the $299 Xbox Series S on November 10, the company confirmed this morning.

Microsoft is also expanding its existing "All Access" subscription program to give customers access to its next-gen hardware with no upfront cost. Qualifying players who commit to a $25/month subscription for the Series S (or $35/month for the Series X) for two years get the console as well as access to all the games available on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (and its attendant xCloud streaming options).

Are consoles like the Xbox still the cutting edge of gaming, or are VR platforms like Oculus?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

ArsTechnica:

For years, the lidar business has had a lot of hype but not a lot of hard numbers. Dozens of lidar startups have touted their impressive technology, but until recently it wasn't clear who, if anyone, was actually gaining traction with customers.

That's starting to change. This summer, three leading lidar makers have done major fundraising rounds that included releasing public data on their financial performance.

The latest lidar maker to release financial data is Ouster, which announced a $42 million fundraising round in a Tuesday blog post. That blog post also revealed a striking statistic: the company says it now has 800 customers.

LIDAR has been responsible for innovation in industries from architecture to archaeology.

Original Submission