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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Trump's Taxes Show Chronic Losses and Years of Income Tax Avoidance:

Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.

As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.

The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.

The New York Times has obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office. It does not include his personal returns for 2018 or 2019. This article offers an overview of The Times's findings; additional articles will be published in the coming weeks.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Scientists Have Found The Molecule That Allows Bacteria to 'Exhale' Electricity:

For mouthless, lungless bacteria, breathing is a bit more complicated than it is for humans.

We inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide; Geobacter - a ubiquitous, groundwater-dwelling genus of bacteria - swallow up organic waste and 'exhale' electrons, generating a tiny electric current in the process.

[...] Using advanced microscopy techniques, the researchers have uncovered the "secret molecule" that allows Geobacter to breathe over tremendously long distances previously unseen in bacteria.

The team also found that, by stimulating colonies of Geobacter with an electric field, the microbes conducted electricity 1,000 times more efficiently than they do in their natural environment.

Understanding these innate, electrical adaptations could be a crucial step in transforming Geobacter colonies into living, breathing batteries, the researchers said.

Journal Reference:
Scientists Have Found The Molecule That Allows Bacteria to 'Exhale' Electricity, (DOI: https://www.sciencealert.com/bacteria-in-mud-breathe-through-giant-snorkels-that-conduct-electricity)

Previously:
Electric Bacteria Create Currents Out of Thin - and Thick - Air
Electroactive Bacteria Can be Found All Over the Planet
Synthetic Biological Protein Nanowires with High Conductivity
Electric Life Forms that Live on Pure Energy/p>

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

HOTorNOT: The forgotten website that shaped the internet:

Created on a lark in 2000, HOTorNOT became what we'd now call an overnight viral hit by letting people upload pictures of themselves to the internet so total strangers could rate their attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10. Twenty years later, it's a conceit that smacks of the juvenile "edginess" of the early web. It's now seen at best as superficial and crass, at worst as problematic and potentially offensive. However, the deeper you dive into HOTorNOT's history, the more surprised you'll be by the thoughtfulness bubbling below its shallow surface — and its fundamental impact on internet history.

In ways big and small, HOTorNOT's DNA is embedded into almost every major platform that defines how we interact online today.

It was the genesis for revolutionary concepts like the public profile at a time when uploading pictures of yourself was seen as an oddity or risk, when Facebook wasn't even a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg's eye. Sure, we may have gotten rid of the 1 to 10 rating scale, but likes on Instagram selfies still essentially serve as an implied aggregated score of exactly how hot or not the internet thinks you are.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Why do we sleep? The answer may change right before we turn 3.:

Humans spend about a third of our lives sleeping, and scientists have long debated why slumber takes up such a huge slice of our time. Now, a new study hints that our main reason for sleeping starts off as one thing, then changes at a surprisingly specific age.

Two leading theories as to why we sleep focus on the brain: One theory says that the brain uses sleep to reorganize the connections between its cells, building electrical networks that support our memory and ability to learn; the other theory says that the brain needs time to clean up the metabolic waste that accumulates throughout the day. Neuroscientists have quibbled over which of these functions is the main reason for sleep, but the new study reveals that the answer may be different for babies and adults.

In the study, published Sep. 18 in the journal Science Advances, researchers use a mathematical model to show that infants spend most of their sleeping hours in "deep sleep," also known as random[sic] eye movement (REM)[*] sleep, while their brains rapidly build new connections between cells and grow ever larger. Then, just before toddlers reach age 2-and-a-half, their amount of REM sleep dips dramatically as the brain switches into maintenance mode, mostly using sleep time for cleaning and repair.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Justice Dept. to Brief States on Google Antitrust Inquiry:

The Justice Department on Wednesday plans to brief officials from state attorneys general offices on its antitrust action against Google, in what is expected to be one of the final steps before filing a landmark case against the tech giant.

The department will outline a potential lawsuit against Google in a call with state attorneys general, according to four people with knowledge of the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations are private. The suit could come within days, they said.

The case is expected to focus on the company's search business, and whether the company used its dominant search position to block rivals and harm consumers, according to some of the people. The suit may also accuse the company of anticompetitive practices in the ad tech market, but that part of the investigation hasn't been as fully developed as the case on search, the people said.

An agency spokeswoman declined to comment. A press officer for Google didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Original Submission

[Update 3: 20200928_142723 UTC: Starlink 12 launch scrubbed at T-0:30. "Hold Hold Hold - Scrub for weather violations". Tomorrow's GPS launch is still "go"; unknown retry date/time for this Starlink 12 launch.]

[Update 2: 20200928_130017 UTC: Added YouTube link for Starlink 12 launch.]

[Update 1: 20200927_134757 UTC: (thanks for the link, aristarchus) ULA again delays Delta IV Heavy launch due to hardware issues at Cape Canaveral:

Update, Sept. 27: The launch of Delta IV Heavy has been delayed again due to the swing arm system at Launch Complex 37. Teams are now targeting just after midnight Tuesday, Sept. 29. SpaceX's two subsequent missions are TBD until Delta IV Heavy launches.

Please submit a story (with supporting link[s]) if you learn of updated launch dates/times. --martyb]

martyb writes:

If you are interested in rocket launches and happen to be near Cape Canaveral, Florida at the end of the month, you'll potentially be able to see three rocket launches in 3 days:

That said, COVID-19 is still not under control, so please practice social distancing, wear a mask, and self-quarantine for 14 days if you choose to attend.

Sept. 27 -- 0410 GMT (12:10 a.m. EDT)
(Delayed due to issues with the launch tower's swing arm system. Aiming for after midnight 2020-09-29)
Delta 4-Heavy • NROL-44
Launch site: SLC-37B, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
A United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket will launch a classified spy satellite cargo for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. The largest of the Delta 4 family, the Heavy version features three Common Booster Cores mounted together to form a triple-body rocket.

Sept. 28 -- 1422 GMT (10:22 a.m. EDT)
Falcon 9 • Starlink 12
Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the 13th batch of approximately 60 satellites for SpaceX's Starlink broadband network, a mission designated Starlink 12.

[20200928_130017 UTC: Link to YouTube live stream scheduled to start about 15 minutes before launch; just over an hour from this update.]

Sept. 29/30 -- 0155-0210 GMT on 30th (9:55-10:10 p.m. EDT on 29th)
Falcon 9 • GPS 3 SV04
Launch site: SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the U.S. Air Force's fourth third-generation navigation satellite for the Global Positioning System. The satellite is built by Lockheed Martin.

If you are closer to the Washington, DC area at the end of the month, there is a launch scheduled from the launch facility at Wallops Island, Virginia:

Sept. 29/30 -- 0227 GMT on 30th (10:27 p.m. EDT on 29th)
Antares • NG-14
Launch site: Pad 0A, Wallops Island, Virginia
A Northrop Grumman Antares rocket will launch the 15th Cygnus cargo freighter on the 14th operational cargo delivery flight to the International Space Station. The mission is known as NG-14. The rocket will fly in the Antares 230 configuration, with two RD-181 first stage engines and a Castor 30XL second stage.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Studies Show Far-UVC Light Can Kill Coronaviruses Without Harming Humans:

Ultraviolet light can kill microscopic creatures like bacteria and viruses by destroying the molecular bonds in their genetic material. But UV light also damages human DNA, causing eye and skin damage and increasing our risk of cancer. It turns out, though, that there's a loophole: a specific wavelength of UV light that's safe for people but capable of killing coronaviruses, both on surfaces and in the air.

[...] Two recent studies, one conducted at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and one at Hiroshima University in Japan, have found that a very specific wavelength of UVC light—222 nanometers—is unable to penetrate the eye's tear layer or the dead-cell layer of skin, preventing it from reaching and damaging living cells in the human body.

[...] Despite the success[ful] tests, the Japanese research team believes that more studies need to be conducted on far-UVC light using real-world surfaces and environments before it's adopted as an effective tool for disinfection.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Astrophysicists prove that dust particles in space are mixed with ice:

The matter between the stars in a galaxy—called the interstellar medium—consists not only of gas, but also of a great deal of dust. At some point in time, stars and planets originated in such an environment, because the dust particles can clump together and merge into celestial bodies. Important chemical processes also take place on these particles, from which complex organic—possibly even prebiotic—molecules emerge.

However, for these processes to be possible, there has to be water. In particularly cold cosmic environments, water occurs in the form of ice. Until now, however, the connection between ice and dust in these regions of space was unclear. A research team from Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy has now proven that the dust particles and the ice are mixed. They report their findings in the current issue of the research journal Nature Astronomy.

"Until now, we didn't know whether ice is physically separated from the dust or mixed with individual dust moieties," explains Dr. Alexey Potapov of the University of Jena. "We compared the spectra of laboratory-made silicates, water ice and their mixtures with astronomical spectra of protostellar envelopes and protoplanetary disks. We established that the spectra are congruent if silicate dust and water ice are mixed in these environments."

Astrophysicists can gain valuable information from this data. "We need to understand different physical conditions in different astronomical environments, in order to improve the modeling of physico-chemical processes in space," says Potapov. This result would enable researchers to better estimate the amount of material and to make more accurate statements about the temperatures in different regions of the interstellar and circumstellar media.

Journal Reference:
Alexey Potapov, Jeroen Bouwman, Cornelia Jäger, et al. Dust/ice mixing in cold regions and solid-state water in the diffuse interstellar medium, Nature Astronomy (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-01214-x)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Gravity causes homogeneity of the universe:

From the Big Bang to the present

Gravity can accelerate the homogenization of space-time as the universe evolves. This insight is based on theoretical studies of the physicist David Fajman of the University of Vienna. The mathematical methods developed within the research project allow to investigate fundamental open questions of cosmology such as why the universe today appears so homogeneous.

The temporal evolution of the universe, from the Big Bang to the present, is described by Einstein's field equations of general relativity. However, there are still a number of open questions about cosmological dynamics, whose origins lie in supposed discrepancies between theory and observation. One of these open questions is: Why is the universe in its present state so homogeneous on large scales?

[...] Up to now it was not clear whether the homogenization of the universe can be explained completely by Einstein's equations. The reason for this is the complexity of the equations and the associated difficulty to analyze their solutions -- models for the universe -- and to predict their behavior.

In the concrete problem, the time evolution of the originally strong deviations from the homogeneous state as cosmological gravitational waves has to be analyzed mathematically. It has to be shown that they decay in the course of the expansion thus allowing the universe to get its homogeneous structure.

Such analyses are based on modern mathematical methods in the field of geometric analysis. Until now, these methods could only achieve such results for small deviations from the homogeneous space-time geometry. David Fajman from the University of Vienna has now succeeded for the first time to transfer these methods to the case of arbitrarily large deviations.

Journal Reference:
David Fajman. Future Attractors in 2+1 Dimensional Λ Gravity, Physical Review Letters (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.121102)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

This is how police request customer data from Amazon:

Anyone can access portions of a web portal, used by law enforcement to request customer data from Amazon, even though the portal is supposed to require a verified email address and password.

[...] The portal does not display customer data or allow access to existing law enforcement requests. But parts of the website still load without needing to log in, including its dashboard and the “standard” request form used by law enforcement to request customer data.

[...] This form allows law enforcement to request customer data using a wide variety of data points, including Amazon order numbers, serial numbers of Amazon Echo and Fire devices, credit cards details and bank account numbers, gift cards, delivery and shipping numbers, and even the Social Security number of delivery drivers.

It also allows law enforcement to obtain records related to Amazon Web Services accounts by submitting domain names or IP addresses related to the request.

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fleg writes:

from Texas invaded by microbe

"Texas officials have warned residents of some communities near Houston to stop using tap water because it might be tainted with a deadly brain-eating microbe.

[...] Naegleria fowleri is a microscopic amoeba commonly found in warm freshwater and soil, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It usually infects people when contaminated water enters the body through the nose, from where it travels to the brain and can cause a rare and debilitating disease called primary amebic meningoencephalitis."

The infection is usually fatal and typically occurs when people go swimming or diving in warm freshwater places such as lakes and rivers. In very rare instances, Naegleria infections may also occur when contaminated water from other sources, such as inadequately chlorinated swimming pool water or heated and contaminated tap water, enters the nose.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Why So Much Science is Wrong, False, Puffed, or Misleading:

In a year where scientists seemed to have gotten everything wrong, a book attempting to explain why is bizarrely relevant. Of course, science was in deep trouble long before the pandemic began and Stuart Ritchie's excellent Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth had been long in the making. Much welcomed, nonetheless, and very important.

[...] Filled with examples and accessible explanations, Ritchie expertly leads the reader on a journey through science's many troubles. He categorizes them by the four subtitles of the book: fraud, bias, negligence, and hype. Together, they all undermine the search for truth that is science's raison d'être. It's not that scientists willfully lie, cheat, or deceive – even though that happens uncomfortably often, even in the best of journals – but that poorly designed experiments, underpowered studies, spreadsheet errors or intentionally or unintentionally manipulated p-values yield results that are too good to be true. Since academics' careers depend on publishing novel, fascinating and significant results, most of them don't look a gift horse in the mouth. If the statistical software says "significant," they confidently write up the study and persuasively argue their amazing case before a top-ranked journal, its editors, and the slacking peers in the field who are supposed to police their mistakes.

Ritchie isn't some crackpot science denier or conspiracy theorist working out of his mom's basement; he's a celebrated psychologist at King's College London with lots of experience in debunking poorly-made research, particularly in his own field of psychology. For the last decade or more, this discipline has been the unfortunate poster child for the "Replication Crisis," the discovery that – to use Stanford's John Ioannidis' well-known article title – "Most Published Research Findings Are False."

American Institute for Economic Research

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for guy_:

Hitting the Books: The invisible threat that every ISS astronaut fears:

Despite starry-eyed promises by the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin, only a handful of humans will actually experience existence outside of Earth's atmosphere within our lifetime. The rest of us are stuck learning about life in space second hand but that's where How to Astronaut by former ISS commander Colonel Terry Virts comes in. Virts shares his myriad experiences training for and living aboard the ISS — everything from learning Russian and space-based emergency medicine to figuring out how to unpack an autonomously-delivered cargo shipment or even prep a deceased crew member for burial among the stars — through a series of downright entertaining essays.

And where many titles of this genre can become laden with acronyms and technical jargon, How to Astronaut remains accessible to aspiring astronauts of all ages. Just maybe don't read the story below about how the ISS crew thought they were all going to die from a toxic ammonia leak to your 6-year-old right before bed.

Excerpted from How to Astronaut: An Insider's Guide to Leaving Planet Earth by Terry Virts (Workman). © 2020.

For all the emergency training I went through as an astronaut, I never expected to be holed up in the Russian segment of the ISS, the hatch to the US segment sealed, with my crew waiting and wondering—would the space station be destroyed? Was this the end? As we floated there and pondered our predicament, I felt a bit like the guy in the Alanis Morissette song "Ironic," who was going down in an airplane crash, thinking to himself, "Now isn't this ironic?" This is how we ended up in that situation.

Read the rest of the fine article for a gripping tale of planning for failures -- simple and catastrophic -- and the human side of dealing with them.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

An aurora that lit up the sky over the Titanic might explain why it sank:

Glowing auroras shimmered in skies over the northern Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912 — the night the RMS Titanic sank. Now, new research hints that the geomagnetic storm behind the northern lights could have disrupted the ship's navigation and communication systems and hindered rescue efforts, fueling the disaster that killed more than 1,500 passengers.

Eyewitnesses described aurora glows in the region as the Titanic went down, with one observer testifying that "the northern lights were very strong that night," Mila Zinkova, an independent weather researcher and photographer, reported in a new study, published online Aug. 4 in the journal Weather.

[...] Auroras form from solar storms, when the sun expels high-speed streams of electrified gas that hurtle toward Earth. As the charged particles and energy collide with Earth's atmosphere, some travel down magnetic field lines to interact with atmospheric gases, glowing green, red, purple and blue, NASA says. These charged particles can also interfere with electrical and magnetic signals, causing surges and oscillations, according to NASA.

[...] And the northern lights were highly visible when the Titanic sank.

[...] At the same time that the solar storm's charged particles were generating a pretty light show, they could also have been tugging at the Titanic's compass. A deviation of only 0.5 degrees would have been enough to steer the ship away from safety and place it on its fatal collision course toward an iceberg, Zinkova said in the study.

"This apparently insignificant error could have made the difference between colliding with the iceberg and avoiding it," she wrote.

[...] Radio signals that night were also "freaky," operators on the ocean liner RMS Baltic reported (the Baltic was one of the ships that responded to the Titanic's distress call, but the RMS Carpathia got there first, according to the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University in Waco, Texas). SOS signals sent by the Titanic to nearby ships went unheard, and responses to the Titanic were never received, according to Zinkova.

Journal Reference:
Mila Zinkova. RMetS Journals, Weather (DOI: 10.1002/wea.3817)

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Amy Coney Barrett: Who is Trump's Supreme Court pick?:

Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the US Supreme Court comes as little surprise.

[...] Donald Trump - who as sitting president gets to select nominees - reportedly once said he was "saving her" for this moment: when elderly Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and a vacancy on the nine-member court arose.

It took the president just over a week to fast-track the 48-year-old conservative intellectual into the wings. This is his chance to tip the court make-up even further to the right ahead of the presidential election, when he could lose power.

Barrett's record on gun rights and immigration cases imply she would be as reliable a vote on the right of the court, as Ginsburg was on the left, according to Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University.

"Ginsburg maintained one of the most consistent liberal voting records in the history of the court. Barrett has the same consistency and commitment," he adds. "She is not a work-in-progress like some nominees. She is the ultimate 'deliverable' for conservative votes."

And her vote, alongside a conservative majority, could make the difference for decades ahead, especially on divisive issues such as abortion rights and the Affordable Care Act (the Obama-era health insurance provider).

Barrett's legal opinions and remarks on abortion and gay marriage have made her popular with the religious right, but earned vehement opposition from liberals.

But as a devout Catholic, she has repeatedly insisted her faith does not compromise her work.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) is facing considerable controversy about his plans to move the nomination forward quickly: