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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Hurricane Delta Becomes A Category 4 Storm As Winds Reach 140 MPH:

Hurricane Delta Becomes A Category 4 Storm As Winds Reach 140 MPH

Delta has grown at an extraordinary rate since early Monday morning, when its maximum sustained winds were only 40 mph. It quickly became a Category 4 on Tuesday, one day before it's expected to cross over part of Mexico's coast.

The hurricane center had previously predicted the storm could develop intensely strong winds late Tuesday and early Wednesday, but after a NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft measured maximum winds near 130 mph with higher gusts, the center put out a special update before noon.

As a Category 4 storm, Delta will likely cause "catastrophic damage," according to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

[...] The storm is predicted to take a slightly more westward path than forecasters had been predicting on Monday. But it's then seen curling toward the north and northeast, and its potential landfall remains on the Louisiana coast – raising concern in a region that has already seen flooding and power outages from storms over the summer.

"This storm will affect Louisiana and everyone needs to prepare accordingly," Gov. John Bel Edwards said on Tuesday.

[...] "The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is currently tied with the 1916 Atlantic hurricane season," meteorologist Philip Klotzbach says via Twitter, "for most continental US named storm landfalls in a season on record (9 landfalls)."

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for guy_:

Stunning Bronze Age statuette with a tattooed face and a bone mask found in Siberia:

'Given that the discovery is 5,000 years old, you can imagine how important it is to understand the beliefs of the ancient people populating Siberia', said Vyacheslav Molodin.

The discovery was made this summer inside the mass burial of people from Odinov culture in Vengerovsky district of Novosibirsk region, Western Siberia.

The small - about a palm size - statuette found in situ by the team of Novosibirsk Institute of Archeology and Ethnography had a mask depicting a bear made of a horse vertebrae.

'This is without a doubt the find of the season, the find that any world museum from the Hermitage to the Louvre museum would love to exhibit', said professor Vyacheslav Molodin, head of the Ust-Tartas 2 expedition.

'We've never come across anything like this, despite our extensive knowledge of the Odinov culture's burial rites.

'The woman must have been an unusual person to have such a figurine 'escoring'[sic] her to the afterlife', he said.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A September full of suffering for space fans now seems to be bleeding over into October as a long series of launch delays continues with Monday's scrub of a planned SpaceX Starlink mission[*].

This marks the fifth time the launch has been pushed back in the past three weeks, and it comes just three days after SpaceX had to stand down once again from launching a GPS satellite for the US Space Force on Friday. That mission has also been postponed now a total of four times in the past week.

The delays aren't only affecting SpaceX. A United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket was set to lift a new US spy satellite into orbit Aug. 27 and has been delayed no less than six times since, most recently on Sept. 30.

[*] SpaceX was able to successfully launch the Starlink satellites on Tuesday.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Terahertz light pulses change gene expression in stem cells, report researchers from Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) and Tokai University in Japan in the journal Optics Letters. The findings come thanks to a new tool, with implications for stem cell research and regenerative therapy development.

[...] iCeMS microengineer Ken-ichiro Kamei and physicist Hideki Hirori worked with colleagues to develop a better tool for investigating what happens when terahertz pulses are shone on human cells. The apparatus overcomes issues with previous techniques by placing cells in tiny microwells that have the same area as the terahertz light.

[...] For example, they found the pulses activated genes involved in motor neuron survival and mitochondrial function. They also deactivated genes involved in cell differentiation, the process in which stem cells change into specialized body cells.

Further investigation found that these genes were influenced by zinc-dependent transcription factors. The scientists believe the terahertz pulses generate an electric field that causes zinc ions to move inside cells, impacting the function of transcription factors, which in turn activate or deactivate the genes they are responsible for.

Hirori says the findings could aid efforts to develop a technology that can manipulate iPSC differentiation into specific cells by turning off specific genes while keeping others on, paving the way for regenerative therapies for a wide range of diseases.

Journal Reference:
Takehiro Tachizaki, Reiko Sakaguchi, Shiho Terada, et al. Terahertz pulse-altered gene networks in human induced pluripotent stem cells, Optics Letters (DOI: 10.1364/OL.402815)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Trump's return means more anxiety for White House reporters:

President Donald Trump's return to the White House to recover from the coronavirus seems certain to raise the already heightened anxiety level of the journalists assigned to follow him.

Three reporters have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent days while covering a White House described as lax, at best, in following basic safety advice like wearing masks. Discomfort only increased Monday with news that press secretary Kayleigh McEnany had tested positive.

Journalists are left to wonder if a still-contagious president will gather them for a public appearance and how their safety will be ensured.

After McEnany's announcement Monday, Fox News chief White House correspondent John Roberts spent part of his afternoon waiting outside an urgent care center for his own test. He had attended McEnany's briefing last Thursday. She didn't wear a mask, and neither did one of her assistants who later tested positive, and Roberts sat near both of them. He tested negative.

He called it an inconvenience, but stronger emotions were spreading. American Urban Radio Networks correspondent April Ryan said she found it infuriating that Trump and his team had risked the health of her colleagues. CNN's Kaitlan Collins said it was "irresponsible, at best."

"It's frustrating," said Jonathan Karl, ABC News White House correspondent. "Frankly, it makes you angry."

Separately, Trump Halts Coronavirus Relief Talks Until After The Election:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Northwestern University researchers are casting a net for nanoparticles.

The team has discovered a new, rapid method for fabricating nanoparticles from a simple, self-assembling polymer. The novel method presents new possibilities for diverse applications, including water purification, diagnostics and rapidly generating vaccine formulations, which typically require many different types of molecules to be either captured or delivered at the same time.

Using a polymer net that collapses into nanoscale hydrogels (or nanogels), the method efficiently captures over 95% of proteins, DNA or small molecule drugs—alone or in combinations. By comparison, loading efficiency is typically between 5% and 20% for other nanoparticle delivery systems.

"We use a polymer that forms a wide net throughout an aqueous solution," said Northwestern's Evan A. Scott, who led the study. "Then we induce the net to collapse. It collects anything within the solution, trapping therapeutics inside of nanogel delivery vehicles with very high efficiency."

"It works like a fishing net, which first spreads out due to electrostatic repulsion and then shrinks upon hydration to trap 'fish,'" added Fanfan Du, a postdoctoral fellow in Scott's laboratory.

The paper was published last week (Sept. 29) in the journal Nature Communications.

[...] In addition to drug delivery applications, the researchers also believe the novel method could be used for water purification. The network could collapse to collect contaminants in water, leaving pure water behind.

Journal Reference:
Fanfan Du, Baofu Qiao, Trung Dac Nguyen, et al. Homopolymer self-assembly of poly(propylene sulfone) hydrogels via dynamic noncovalent sulfone–sulfone bonding [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18657-5)

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DannyB writes:

Cellmate: Male chastity gadget hack could lock users in:

A security flaw in a hi-tech chastity belt for men made it possible for hackers to remotely lock all the devices in use simultaneously.

The internet-linked sheath has no manual override, so owners might have been faced with the prospect of having to use a grinder or bolt cutter to free themselves from its metal clamp.

The sex toy's app has been fixed by its Chinese developer after a team of UK security professionals flagged the bug.

This could be useful to anyone still using the old version of the app who finds themselves locked in as a result of an attacker making use of the revelation.

Any other attempt to cut through the device's plastic body poses a risk of harm.

[...] The security researchers said they discovered a way to fool the server into disclosing the registered name of each device owner, among other personal details, as well as the co-ordinates of every location from where the app had been used.

In addition, they said, they could reveal a unique code that had been assigned to each device.

These could be used to make the server ignore app requests to unlock any of the identified chastity toys, they added, leaving wearers locked in.

Also at The Verge and gizmodo.

(Hat tip to anubi, guy_ and an Anonymous Coward for their submissions on this story.)

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takyon writes:

Elon Musk's SpaceX wins a $149 million Pentagon contract to build missile-tracking satellites

Elon Musk's SpaceX has landed a $149 million contract to build missile-tracking satellites for the Pentagon.

SpaceX would build four satellites in its assembly plant in Redmond, Washington, the US Space Development Agency (SDA) said on Monday, per Reuters. The plant is where SpaceX builds satellites for Starlink, a constellation of satellites designed to beam the internet around the world.

This is SpaceX's first government contract to build satellites.

The four satellites would be fitted with a wide-angle infrared missile-tracking sensor supplied by a subcontractor, an SDA official said.

See also: L3Harris, SpaceX win Space Development Agency contracts to build missile-warning satellites

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

This rare bird is male on one side and female on the other:

In Rector, Pa., researchers have spotted one strange bird.

This rose-breasted grosbeak has a pink breast spot and a pink “wing pit” and black feathers on its right wing — telltale shades of males. On its left side, the songbird displays yellow and brown plumage, hues typical of females.

Annie Lindsay had been out capturing and banding birds with identification tags with her colleagues at Powdermill Nature Reserve in Rector on September 24 when a teammate hailed her on her walkie-talkie to alert her of the bird’s discovery. Lindsay, who is banding program manager at Powdermill, immediately knew what she was looking at: a half-male, half-female creature known as a gynandromorph[*].

“It was spectacular. This bird is in its nonbreeding [plumage], so in the spring when it’s in its breeding plumage, it’s going to be even more starkly male, female,” Lindsay says. The bird’s colors will become even more vibrant, and “the line between the male and female side will be even more obvious.”

In 64 years of bird banding, Powdermill’s Avian Research Center has recorded fewer than 10 such birds. After marveling over their new find in the field, Lindsay and her colleagues took the rose-breasted grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus) to the laboratory, measured its wing span and plucked out four feathers to obtain its DNA for future studies. The team later took photographs and TikTok videos with the tiny feathery guest before letting it fly on its way.

[*] Gynandromorphism.

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acid andy writes:

500,000 sharks may have to die in the fight against COVID-19

A nonprofit organization estimates about 500,000 deep-sea sharks may need to die to supply the world with a coronavirus vaccine when one proves safe and effective.

A shark’s liver contains oil primarily made up of a compound called squalene, which can also be found in plants and humans. It’s largely known as a moisturizing agent in cosmetics such as skin creams and lip balms, but squalene is also used in some adjuvants — common ingredients in vaccines that help create a stronger immune response.

The compound has been used in U.S. flu vaccines since 2016 and has an “excellent safety record,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Squalene could also lower the amount of vaccine ingredients needed for each person, meaning more could be produced with less.

[...] “Using sharks in COVID-19 vaccines is short-sighted, unpredictable, and unsustainable. There are better alternatives,” Shark Allies wrote in an online petition with more than 13,000 signatures by Monday afternoon. “From a conservation perspective, there is no doubt that the overexploitation of a key component of the marine environment will have dire consequences. On a practical level, using such a finite resource for a product that will have to be made for billions of people, continuously for years to come, is impractical.”

About 3 million sharks are killed each year for their squalene, according to the nonprofit. Depending on the dosage, about 22,000 sharks could be killed to supply the U.S. with COVID-19 vaccines, although it’s unlikely every American will receive one.

You have to wonder what the knock-on effects of removing such vast numbers of an apex predator from our marine food chains would be.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Eddie Van Halen, Hall of Fame Guitarist Who Revolutionized Instrument, Dead at 65 :

Eddie Van Halen, the legendary guitar innovator and virtuoso who led Van Halen through five decades and three lead singers, establishing himself as one of the all-time great players in rock history, died Tuesday after a long battle with cancer. He was 65.

“I can’t believe I’m having to write this, but my father, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, lost his long and arduous battle with cancer this morning,” his son Wolfgang Van Halen wrote. “He was the best father I could ever ask for. Every moment I’ve shared with him on and off stage was a gift. My heart is broken and I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover from this loss.”

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Phoenix666 writes:

Holy lockdown! The Batman and Dune movies’ releases delayed:

US-based entertainment giant Warner Bros says it is delaying the release of Dune and The Batman movies, another setback for an industry hit by coronavirus pandemic lockdowns and physical distancing measures that have closed theatres worldwide.

Dune, a science-fiction movie directed by Canadian director Dennis Villeneuve, is now scheduled to open in October 2021, instead of December. The release of The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson, has been moved to 2022 from October 2021.

Movie releases have been getting delayed even after restrictions were eased, with people still wary of stepping into cinema halls, and many theatres still not operational.

On Monday, the world’s second-biggest cinema chain, Cineworld, decided to temporarily close its UK and US movie theatres in an attempt to survive a collapse in filmmaking and cinema-going.

Can the theater industry survive?

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Phoenix666 writes:

Cisco Ordered to Pay $1.9 Billion in Cybersecurity Patent Infringement Case:

A US district judge has ordered Cisco to pay $1.9 billion to Centripetal Networks, Inc., for infringing on four patents related to cybersecurity.

Founded in 2009, Centripetal focuses on cyber threat intelligence, providing solutions that help organizations defeat cyber-attacks. The company has developed technology for operationalizing and automating threat intelligence and has been awarded various patents in the United States and abroad.

In a lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of Virginia in March 2018, the company claimed that numerous Cisco product series have been infringing on five of its patents for years.

Cisco vows to appeal the decision. Will the deeper pockets prevail?

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takyon writes:

DDR5 is Coming: First 64GB DDR5-4800 Modules from SK Hynix

DDR5 is the next stage of platform memory for use in the majority of major compute platforms. The specification (as released in July 2020) brings the main voltage down from 1.2 V to 1.1 V, increases the maximum silicon die density by a factor 4, doubles the maximum data rate, doubles the burst length, and doubles the number of bank groups. Simply put, the JEDEC DDR specifications allows for a 128 GB unbuffered module running at DDR5-6400. RDIMMs and LRDIMMs should be able to go much higher, power permitting.

[...] SK Hynix's announcement today is that they are ready to start shipping DDR5 ECC memory to module manufacturers – specifically 16 gigabit dies built on its 1Ynm process that support DDR5-4800 to DDR5-5600 at 1.1 volts. With the right packaging technology (such as 3D TSV), SK Hynix says that partners can build 256 GB LRDIMMs. Additional binning of the chips for better-than-JEDEC speeds will have to be done by the module manufacturers themselves. SK Hynix also appears to have its own modules, specifically 32GB and 64GB RDIMMs at DDR5-4800, and has previously promised to offer memory up to DDR5-8400.

[...] As part of the announcement, it was interesting to see Intel as one of the lead partners for these modules. Intel has committed to enabling DDR5 on its Sapphire Rapids Xeon processor platform, due for initial launch in late 2021/2022. AMD was not mentioned with the announcement, and neither were any Arm partners.

SK Hynix quotes that DDR5 is expected to be 10% of the global market in 2021, increasing to 43% in 2024. The intersection point for consumer platforms is somewhat blurred at this point, as we're probably only half-way through (or less than half) of the DDR4 cycle. Traditionally we expect a cost interception between old and new technology when they are equal in market share, however the additional costs in voltage regulation that DDR5 requires is likely to drive up module costs – scaling from standard power delivery on JEDEC modules up to a beefier solution on the overclocked modules. It should however make motherboards cheaper in that regard.

See also: Insights into DDR5 Sub-timings and Latencies

Previously: DDR5 Standard to be Finalized by JEDEC in 2018
DDR5-4400 Test Chip Demonstrated
Cadence and Micron Plan Production of 16 Gb DDR5 Chips in 2019
SK Hynix Announces Plans for DDR5-8400 Memory, and More
JEDEC Releases DDR5 Memory Specification

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AnonTechie writes:

Black hole breakthroughs win Nobel physics prize:

Three scientists have been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics for work to understand black holes. Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez were announced as this year's winners at a news conference in Stockholm. The winners will share the prize money of 10 million kronor (£864,200). Swedish industrialist and chemist Alfred Nobel founded the prizes in his will, written in 1895 - a year before his death.

David Haviland, chair of the physics prize committee, said this year's award "celebrates one of the most exotic objects in the Universe".

UK-born physicist Roger Penrose demonstrated that black holes were an inevitable consequence of Albert's Einstein's theory of general relativity. Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez provided the most convincing evidence yet of a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy - the Milky Way.

Also at: ABC News, phys.org, Nobel Foundation, and c|net.

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