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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow0495:

Timekeeping theory combines quantum clocks and Einstein's relativity:

A phenomenon of quantum mechanics known as superposition can impact timekeeping in high-precision clocks, according to a theoretical study from Dartmouth College, Saint Anselm College and Santa Clara University.

Research describing the effect shows that superposition—the ability of an atom to exist in more than one state at the same time—leads to a correction in atomic clocks known as "quantum time dilation."

The research, published in the journal Nature Communications, takes into account quantum effects beyond Albert Einstein's theory of relativity to make a new prediction about the nature of time.

"Whenever we have developed better clocks, we've learned something new about the world," said Alexander Smith, an assistant professor of physics at Saint Anselm College and adjunct assistant professor at Dartmouth College, who led the research as a junior fellow in Dartmouth's Society of Fellows. "Quantum time dilation is a consequence of both quantum mechanics and Einstein's relativity, and thus offers a new possibility to test fundamental physics at their intersection."

Journal Reference:
Alexander R. H. Smith, Mehdi Ahmadi. Quantum clocks observe classical and quantum time dilation [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18264-4)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Judge again blocks Trump administration push to ban WeChat in the US:

A judge in California has rejected a request from the Department of Justice to reverse a previous decision allowing WeChat to remain active in US app stores. US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler said new evidence the government presented did not change her opinion about the messaging app, owned by Chinese company Tencent app.[sic] WeChat will remain active in US app stores for the time being.

"The record does not support the conclusion that the government has 'narrowly tailored' the prohibited transactions to protect its national-security interests," Beeler wrote in her decision. The evidence "supports the conclusion that the restrictions 'burden substantially more speech than is necessary to further the government's legitimate interests.'" President Trump issued an executive order in August to ban WeChat, invoking the Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act.

[...] Beeler's earlier order blocked the Commerce Department ban of US transactions on WeChat. And while the government claimed it has identified "significant" threats to national security, Beeler did not appear persuaded. She said in her September 20th order that a group of WeChat users calling themselves the WeChat Alliance had demonstrated there were "serious questions" about whether the ban would potentially violate their First Amendment rights.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Chemists develop new material for the separation of carbon dioxide from industrial waste gases:

Chemists at the University of Bayreuth have developed a material that could well make an important contribution to climate protection and sustainable industrial production. With this material, the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂) can be specifically separated from industrial waste gases, natural gas, or biogas, and thereby made available for recycling. The separation process is both energy efficient and cost-effective. In the journal Cell Reports Physical Science the researchers present the structure and function of the material.

[...] "Our research team has succeeded in designing a material that fulfils two tasks at the same time. On the one hand, the physical interactions with CO₂ are strong enough to free and retain this greenhouse gas from a gas mixture. On the other hand, however, they are weak enough to allow the release of CO₂ from the material with only a small amount of energy," says Martin Rieß M.Sc., first author of the new publication and doctoral researcher at the Inorganic Chemistry I research group at the University of Bayreuth.

Journal Reference::
Martin Rieß, Renée Siegel, Jürgen Senker, Josef Breu. Diammonium-Pillared MOPS with Dynamic CO2 Selectivity, (CC BY 4.0) Cell Reports Physical Science (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2020.100210

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MrPlow writes in with a submission, via IRC, for nutherguy_

Facebook Aims to Muzzle NYU Research Into Its Political Ad Targeting:

Facebook's trying to muzzle a group of academic researchers working to shine a light on the company's notoriously opaque political-ad targeting practices. It's threatened the team with "enforcement action" if they don't pull the plug on the project and wipe all data gathered so far, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Researchers with New York University's engineering school launched the NYU Ad Observatory project in September, an initiative that uses a custom-built browser to gather data from more than 6,500 volunteers on what kind of political ads Facebook shows them. Facebook contends that this violates its terms of service banning automated data collection. Per the Journal, Facebook's director of privacy and data policy Allison Hendrix sent a letter on Oct. 16 warning the researchers that they "may be subject to additional enforcement action" if the university doesn't shut down the project immediately and delete any data it has collected.

"Scraping tools, no matter how well-intentioned, are not a permissible means of collecting information from us," she wrote.

Also at: CTV News.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow1188:

Palo Alto Networks threatens to sue security startup for comparison review, says it breaks software EULA:

[...] In a note on its website, Orca lamented at length the "outrageous" behavior of PAN, as well as posting a copy of the lawyer's letter for world-plus-dog to read. That letter claimed Orca infringed PAN's trademarks by using its name and logo in the review as well as breaching non-review clauses in the End-User License Agreement (EULA) of PAN's product.

[...] "It's outrageous that the world's largest cybersecurity vendor, its products being used by over 65,000 organizations according to its website, believes that its users aren't entitled to share any benchmark or performance comparison of its products," said Orca.

[...] Orca's boss believes a law in PAN's home state of California makes it impossible to prohibit the publishing of reviews, and also cited a case in New York where prosecutors sued McAfee, under its short-lived corporate name of Network Associates Inc, for banning reviews in its EULAs.

When asked what he thought the outcome of this latest battle would be, (Orca chief exec Avi) Shua said he hoped PAN would "simply remove these clauses from the EULA," insisting "so many people from the industry" don't support bans on reviews. He also added, in another shot across PAN's bows, that if formal legal action ensues, "it'll cost us a lot of money but it won't break Orca. I'm not going to be bullied into not doing something because someone else has deeper pockets."

Palo Alto's cease and desist letter (pdf).

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Ireland to impose 5km travel limit in strict new Covid lockdown:

Ireland is to close much of its economy and society in a second Covid-19 lockdown that imposes some of the severest restrictions in Europe.

Non-essential shops will close and people are asked to stay at home, with a 5km (3 mile) travel limit for exercise, to curb surging infection rates, the government announced on Monday evening.

From midnight on Wednesday the country will move to its highest lockdown tier for six weeks. Visits to private homes or gardens will not be permitted and there are to be no gatherings except for tightly controlled weddings and funerals.

A graduated fine system for those who breach the 5km travel limit – with exceptions for work and other purposes deemed essential – will be announced later this week. People who live alone or are parenting alone can pair with one other household as part of a support bubble. Two households can meet outdoors within the travel limit. Public transport will operate at 25% capacity.

Non-essential retail will close along with barbers' shops, beauty salons, gyms, leisure centres and cultural amenities. Pubs, cafes and restaurants will be allowed to serve takeout meals only, a devastating blow to an already weakened hospitality sector.

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takyon writes:

Liquid Lasers Challenge Fiber Lasers as the Basis of Future High-Energy Weapons

Despite a lot of progress in recent years, practical laser weapons that can shoot down planes or missiles are still a ways off. But a new liquid laser may be bringing that day closer.

Much of the effort in recent years has focused on high-power fiber lasers. These lasers usually[sic] specially doped coils of optical fibers to amplify a laser beam, and were in originally developed for industrial cutting and welding. Initially, fiber laser were dark horses in the Pentagon's effort to develop electrically powered solid-state laser weapons that began two decades ago. However, by 2013 the Navy was testing a 30-kilowatt fiber laser on a ship. Since then, their ability to deliver high-energy beams of excellent optical quality has earned fiber lasers the leading role in the current field trials of laser weapons in the 50- to 100-kilowatt class. But now aerospace giant Boeing has teamed with General Atomics—a defense contractor also known for research in nuclear fusion—to challenge fiber lasers in achieving the 250-kilowatt threshold that some believe will be essential for future generations of laser weapons. Higher laser powers would be needed for nuclear missile defense.

The challenging technology was developed to control crucial issues with high energy solid-state lasers: size, weight and power, and the problem of dissipating waste heat that could disrupt laser operation and beam quality. General Atomics "had a couple of completely new ideas, including a liquid laser. They were considered completely crazy at the time, but DARPA funded us," said company vice president Mike Perry in a 2016 interview. Liquid lasers are similar to solid-state lasers, but they use a cooling liquid that flows through channels integrated into the solid-state laser material. A crucial trick was ensuring that the cooling liquid has a refractive index exactly the same as that of the solid laser material. A perfect match of the liquid and solid could avoid any refraction or reflection at the boundary between them. Avoiding reflection or refraction in the the cooling liquid also required making the fluid flow smoothly through the channels to prevent turbulence.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Exercising one arm has twice the benefits:

New research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) has revealed that training one arm can improve strength and decrease muscle loss in the other arm - without even moving it.

The findings could help to address the muscle wastage and loss of strength often experienced in an immobilised arm, such as after injury, by using eccentric exercise on the opposing arm.

In eccentric exercises, the contracting muscle is lengthening, such as when lowering a dumbbell in bicep curls, sitting on a chair slowly or walking downstairs. Previous research has shown these exercises are more effective at growing muscle than concentric exercises, in which muscle are shortening such as when lifting a dumbbell or walking up stairs.

[...] ECU's Professor Ken Nosaka in the School of Medical and Health Sciences was part of the international study and said that the findings challenge conventional rehabilitation methods and could improve outcomes for post-injury and stroke patients.

[...] The study involved 30 participants who had one arm immobilised for a minimum of eight hours a day for four weeks. The group was then split into three, with some performing no exercise, some performing a mix of eccentric and concentric exercise and the rest performing eccentric exercise only.

Professor Nosaka said the group who used a heavy dumbbell to perform only eccentric exercise on their active arm showed an increase in strength and a decrease in muscle atrophy, or wastage, in their immobilised arm.

Journal Reference:
Omar Valdes, Carlos Ramirez, Felipe Perez, et al. Contralateral effects of eccentric resistance training on immobilized arm, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports (DOI: 10.1111/sms.13821)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

OSIRIS-REx overflows with asteroid samples after bagging bounty from Bennu:

The sampling mechanism on NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is stuffed with specimens captured from asteroid Bennu earlier this week — so full that some of the rocks are floating out into space.

Officials said Friday they will stow the samples inside the mission's Earth return capsule sooner than planned to minimize the loss of asteroid material.

"We had a successful sample collection attempt, almost too successful," said Dante Lauretta, the mission's principal investigator from the University of Arizona. "Material is escaping, and we're expediting stow as a result of that."

NASA's $1 billion Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer aims to become the first U.S. spacecraft to complete a round-trip journey to an asteroid.

After a nearly two-year close-up survey of asteroid Bennu — a clump of rock measuring a third of a mile (500 meters) wide — the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft descended to the airless world Tuesday for a celestial smash and grab. Its goal was to capture at least 2.1 ounces, or 60 grams, of pebbles, rock fragments and dust particles for return to Earth.

[...] Lauretta said Friday he is "highly confident" the sample collection attempt was successful, and that it collected "abundant mass, definitely evidence of hundreds of grams of material, and possibly more."

"My big concern now is that the particles are escaping because we're almost a victim of our own success here," Lauretta said Friday afternoon in a conference call with reporters.

Also at CNN.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

The deadly viruses that vanished without trace:

Scientists are only just starting to unravel why some viruses disappear, while others can linger and cause disease for centuries.

It was the year 1002. The English king Ethelred II – not-so-fondly remembered as "Æthelred the unready" – was at war. For over a century, Viking armies had been scoping out the land as a potential new home, under the command of leaders with well-groomed facial hair and evocative names, such as Swein Forkbeard.

So far, the Vikings had found the English resistance enticingly weak. But Ethelred had decided to make a stand. On 13 November, he ordered for every Danish man in the country to be rounded up and killed. Hundreds perished, and the incident went down in history as the St Brice's Day massacre. Ethelred's brutal act proved to be in vain, and eventually most of England was ruled by Forkbeard's son.

But what was a bad day to be a Viking in England was a gift for modern archaeologists. Over a thousand years later, 37 skeletons – thought to belong to some of the executed victims – were discovered on the grounds of St John's College in Oxford. Buried with them was a secret.

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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/10/does-paper-recycling-benefit-the-climate-it-depends/

For many people, the most familiar way to "go green" or "be eco-friendly" is probably paper recycling. (And perhaps its aging office cousin: "Consider a tree before you print this email.") There are many ways to evaluate the environmental benefits of such actions, and one of those is greenhouse gas emissions. So how does paper recycling stack up in this regard?

[...] A new study led by Stijn van Ewijk at Yale University tries to do the math on this, using practical scenarios for the next few decades. Namely, they calculate whether increasing paper recycling would make it easier or harder to hit emissions targets that would halt global warming at 2°C.

[...] So if your focus is solely on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, paper recycling isn’t the lever you pull. Instead, you target the factors surrounding paper recycling (and many other things). But given success on those things, increased paper recycling is perfectly consistent with global emissions targets. In the scenario with the most aggressive improvements, the researchers calculate that paper industry emissions could be slightly less than zero. That is, the growing amount of paper products in circulation would represent a bit more carbon than was released to make them.

Of course, paper recycling can have benefits separate from greenhouse gas emissions. Ideally, it helps reduce deforestation and habitat loss—which would also improve the bottom line for emissions. There are no sustainability silver bullets, but this study shows that paper recycling can at least fit in the puzzle.

On a side note, our University is going through a lot less paper since the start of the pandemic. I'd have to look at the numbers to say much, but it was practically non-existent when we went into lockdown mode, clear through the beginning of the Fall Semester in August of this year. We've also consumed less paper since the start of the semester. I'd guess it's due to teachers having an incentive to take advantage of technologies that don't require physical contact.

Journal Reference:
Stijn van Ewijk, Julia A. Stegemann, Paul Ekins. Limited climate benefits of global recycling of pulp and paper, Nature Sustainability (DOI: 10.1038/s41893-020-00624-z)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Happiness and the evolution of brain size:

Serotonin can act as a growth factor for the stem cells in the fetal human brain that determine brain size

During human evolution, the size of the brain increased, especially in a particular part called the neocortex. The neocortex enables us to speak, dream and think. In search of the causes underlying neocortex expansion, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, together with colleagues at the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden, previously identified a number of molecular players. These players typically act cell-intrinsically in the so-called basal progenitors, the stem cells in the developing neocortex with a pivotal role in its expansion. The researchers now report an additional, novel role of the happiness neurotransmitter serotonin which is known to function in the brain to mediate satisfaction, self-confidence and optimism – to act cell-extrinsically as a growth factor for basal progenitors in the developing human, but not mouse, neocortex. Due to this new function, placenta-derived serotonin likely contributed to the evolutionary expansion of the human neocortex.

[...] "In conclusion, our study uncovers a novel role of serotonin as a growth factor for basal progenitors in highly developed brains, notably human. Our data implicate serotonin in the expansion of the neocortex during development and human evolution", summarizes Wieland Huttner, who supervised the study. He continues: "Abnormal signaling of serotonin and a disturbed expression or mutation of its receptor HTR2A have been observed in various neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, such as Down syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism. Our findings may help explain how malfunctions of serotonin and its receptor during fetal brain development can lead to congenital disorders and may suggest novel approaches for therapeutic avenues."

Journal Reference:
Lei Xing, Nereo Kalebic, Takashi Namba, et al. Serotonin Receptor 2A Activation Promotes Evolutionarily Relevant Basal Progenitor Proliferation in the Developing Neocortex. Neuron, 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2020.09.034

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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/10/tesla-made-331-million-profit-in-q3-2020/

On Wednesday, Tesla published its financial results for the third quarter of 2020. The company says it ended Q3 2020 with a GAAP profit of $331 million, the fifth profitable quarter in a row for the US automaker. Despite the pandemic, it's a strong improvement on Q3 2019.

Tesla ends Q3 2020 with a positive free cash flow of $1.4 billion and $14.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Tesla says in its presentation to investors that Q3 was marked by substantial growth in vehicle deliveries, which counteracted a decrease in the average selling price as the company sells fewer and fewer Models S and X and sells more and more Models 3 and Y. Regulatory credits accounted for $397 million of its revenues, and the company had to pay out $280 million in stock-based compensation for CEO Elon Musk after the company reached certain milestones.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Study finds most big open-source startups outside Bay Area, many European, and avoiding VC – TechCrunch:

Over 90% of the fastest-growing open-source companies in 2020 were founded outside the San Francisco Bay Area, and 12 out of the top 20 originate in Europe, according to a new study. The "ROSS Index", created by Runa Capital, lists the fastest-growing open-source startups with public repositories on GitHub every quarter.

Interestingly, the company judged to be the fastest-growing on the latest list, Plausible, is an "open startup" (all its metrics are published, including revenues) and states on its website that it is "not interested in raising funds or taking investment. Not from individuals, not from institutions and not from venture capitalists. Our business model has nothing to do with collecting and analyzing huge amounts of personal information from web users and using these behavioral insights to sell advertisements." It says it builds a self-sustainable "privacy-friendly alternative to very popular and widely used surveillance capitalism web analytics tools".

Admittedly, "GitHub stars" are not a totally perfect metric to measure the product-market fit of open-source companies. However, the research shows a possible interesting trend away from the VC-backed startups of the last 10 years.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Simple software creates complex wooden joints:

Researchers from the Department of Creative Informatics at the University of Tokyo have created a 3D design application to create structural wooden components quickly, easily and efficiently. They call it Tsugite, the Japanese word for joinery, and through a simple 3D interface, users with little or no prior experience in either woodworking or 3D design can create designs for functional wooden structures in minutes. These designs can then instruct milling machines to carve the structural components, which users can then piece together without the need for additional tools or adhesives, following on-screen instructions.

"Our intention was to make the art of joinery available to people without specific experience. When we tested the interface in a user study, people new to 3D modeling not only designed some complex structures, but also enjoyed doing so," said researcher Maria Larsson. "Tsugite is simple to use as it guides users through the process one step at a time, starting with a gallery of existing designs that can then be modified for different purposes. But more advanced users can jump straight to a manual editing mode for more freeform creativity."

[...] "According to the U.N., the building and construction industry is responsible for almost 40% of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions. Wood is perhaps the only natural and renewable building material that we have, and efficient joinery can add further sustainability benefits," said Larsson. "When connecting timbers with joinery, as opposed to metal fixings, for example, it reduces mixing materials. This is good for sorting and recycling. Also, unglued joints can be taken apart without destroying building components. This opens up the possibility for buildings to be disassembled and reassembled elsewhere. Or for defective parts to be replaced. This flexibility of reuse and repair adds sustainability benefits to wood."

See the YouTube video: YouTube

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