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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Waste not, want not: Dutch students build electric car from recycled material:

Dutch students have created a fully functioning electric car made mostly out of waste, including plastics fished out of the sea, recycled PET bottles and household garbage.

The bright yellow, sporty two-seater which the students named 'Luca', can reach a top speed of 90 kilometres (56 miles) per hour and has a reach of 220 kilometres when fully charged, the Technical University of Eindhoven said.

"This car is really special, because it's made out of waste", project manager Lisa van Etten told Reuters.

"Our chassis is made out of flax and recycled PET bottles. For the interior we also used unsorted household waste."

[...] The car was designed and built by a group of 22 students in around 18 months, Van Etten said, as an effort to prove the potential of waste.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

Fear response neurons identified as potential anxiety treatment target:

Researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine have discovered a set of neurons in the mouse brain that appear to control physiological responses to fear, like heart palpitations and pupil dilations. Tests in mice suggest that this region could be a new drug target for anxiety treatments.

[...] Inside the amygdala is the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST), a small region previously found to be responsible for physiological fear responses. Within the BNST, the researchers zoomed in even further to a set of neurons that express a neurotransmitter gene called Pnoc.

Pnoc has previously been linked to pain sensitivity and motivation, and in the new study the team imaged the neurons that express it. Using two-photon microscopy, the researchers observed the activity of Pnoc neurons in mice while the animals were being exposed to either pleasant or unpleasant odors.

The team observed that in response to both smells, these neurons would fire and the pupils of the mice would quickly dilate – which can be either an anxiety and[sic] reward reaction, depending on the situation.

In the next experiments the researchers took a more active approach. They used optogenetics, a technique where laser light is used to either activate or silence specific cells – in this case, the Pnoc neurons. Then they measured the physical responses of the mice. Sure enough, activating Pnoc neurons caused the animals’ pupils to dilate and their heart rates to increase.

Journal Reference:
Jose Rodriguez-Romaguera. Prepronociceptin-Expressing Neurons in the Extended Amygdala Encode and Promote Rapid Arousal Responses to Motivationally Salient Stimuli, Cell Reports (DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2020.108362)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Vulkan update: we're conformant!

In June we released the source code for our prototype driver, and last month we announced that the driver had been successfully merged to Mesa upstream.

Today we have some very exciting news to share: as of 24 November the V3DV Vulkan Mesa driver for Raspberry Pi 4 has demonstrated Vulkan 1.0 conformance.

Khronos describes the conformance process as a way to ensure that its standards are consistently implemented by multiple vendors, so as to create a reliable platform for application developers. For each standard, Khronos provides a large conformance test suite (CTS) that implementations must pass successfully to be declared conformant; in the case of Vulkan 1.0, the CTS contains over 100,000 tests.

Vulkan 1.0 conformance is a major milestone in bringing Vulkan to Raspberry Pi, but it isn't the end of the journey. Our team continues to work on all fronts to expand the Vulkan feature set, improve performance, and fix bugs. So stay tuned for future Vulkan updates!

Also at CNX Software.

See also: Raspberry Pi's V3DV Vulkan Driver Now Supports Wayland
Raspberry Pi V3DV Is Officially Vulkan Conformant, Lavapipe Also Nearing 1.0 Conformance

Previously: Raspberry Pi Foundation Begins Working on Vulkan Driver
Raspberry Pi 4 Gets 8 GB RAM Model, Also 64-bit OS and USB Boot (Both in Beta)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

These Ants Suit Up in a Protective 'Biomineral Armor' Never Seen Before in Insects

Leaf-cutter ant colonies like Acromyrmex echinatior can contain millions of ants, split into four castes that all have different roles to maintain a garden of fungus that the ants eat.

These farming ants might make a top-tier team of gardeners, but that doesn't mean they don't get into the occasional scrap, and living in such large groups usually also means facing an increased risk of pathogens.

For these reasons, a little protection never goes astray, and although scientists aren't entirely sure why, it seems these little guys needed protection enough to evolve their own natural body armour.

A team led by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison analysed this 'whitish granular coating' on A. echinatior and came to the conclusion that the coating is a self-made biomineral body armour - the first known example in the insect world.

Also at Science News.

Biomineral armor in leaf-cutter ants (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19566-3) (DX)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Scientists make insta-bling at room temperature:

An international team of scientists has defied nature to make diamonds in minutes in a laboratory at room temperature - a process that normally requires billions of years, huge amounts of pressure and super-hot temperatures.

The team, led by The Australian National University (ANU) and RMIT University, made two types of diamonds: the kind found on an engagement ring and another type of diamond called Lonsdaleite, which is found in nature at the site of meteorite impacts such as Canyon Diablo in the US.

[...] This new unexpected discovery shows both Lonsdaleite and regular diamond can also form at normal room temperatures by just applying high pressures - equivalent to 640 African elephants on the tip of a ballet shoe.

"The twist in the story is how we apply the pressure. As well as very high pressures, we allow the carbon to also experience something called 'shear' - which is like a twisting or sliding force. We think this allows the carbon atoms to move into place and form Lonsdaleite and regular diamond," Professor Bradby said.

[...] "Being able to make two types of diamonds at room temperature was exciting to achieve for the first time in our lab," Ms Huang said.

Journal Reference:
Dougal G. McCulloch, Sherman Wong, Thomas B. Shiell, et al. Investigation of Room Temperature Formation of the Ultra‐Hard Nanocarbons Diamond and Lonsdaleite, Small (DOI: 10.1002/smll.202004695)

Original Submission

First off, for those of you who are celebrating Thanksgiving this Thursday, please accept our best wishes for a safe and happy holiday. For those who are struggling themselves (or who have friends or family who are), please accept our sincere and best wishes for a speedy and full recovery.

For those who are not in the US, please be aware that Thursday is a national holiday. Further, it is traditional for most people, where possible, to also take off Friday, too. This allows for an extended period of time: Thursday through Sunday, inclusive.

Our editorial staff has been happy to provide stories for the community's discussion. There is much that happens behind the scenes. I am taking this opportunity to publicly thank all of them for their hard work and their sacrifices of time and energy.

I am encouraging the editorial staff to take a break during this holiday period. Therefore, we will be on a reduced, weekend schedule from Thursday through Sunday (UTC), inclusive. We will continue to check in during this period... we thank you in advance for continuing to send in your story submissions.

Again, please accept our genuine best wishes for a safe and happy holiday!

KritonK writes:

Vivaldi Technologies released the first technical preview of Vivaldi Mail, an integrated email client, feed reader and calendar, as an experimental feature of the Vivaldi web browser. In an accompanying blog post, Vivaldi Technologies CEO Jon von Tetzchner describes the new client in detail.

This snapshot is the start of the Vivaldi Mail, Calendar and RSS technical previews 🎉🎈🥳. As these are new features of pre-Beta quality, they are not enabled by default. However, for those of you willing try them in their unfinished state, you can now enable them via "vivaldi://experiments" (you will need to restart the browser after doing so). Updates to our preview, will be included in all future snapshots.

[Have you tried it? How did it work for you? -Ed.]

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Starship SN8 successfully completes final testing ahead of flight - NASASpaceFlight.com:

Following a slightly convoluted engine testing campaign, Starship SN8 is working through the final steps to finalize its pre-flight requirements, which included a triple Raptor Static Fire test on Tuesday. Should this test go to plan – via the results of the data review – the path will be cleared for SN8 to conduct a test flight to 15 km (50,000 ft) as soon as November 30.

This three-engine firing was expected to be the final major test ahead of the highly-ambitious flight, controlled "belly flop" return, and potential landing.

The first-ever triple Raptor test was conducted over a month ago, albeit shortly after SN8 had taken up residence on the launch mount. The path towards flight was always going to involve additional first-time milestones.

Firstly, a second triple Raptor firing was added to forward planning due to an engine swap conducted after the initial test.

After that first test with Raptors SN30, SN32, and SN39, engineers then uninstalled SN39, replacing it with SN36. From that moment, an additional three-engine firing was going to be required.

However, that was added to the end of SN8's testing milestones. The decision was taken to progress towards nosecone installation to allow for two tests (single and dual engine) utilizing the liquid oxygen, or LOX, Header Tank located at the tip of the nose.

The first Header Tank Static Fire, involving one Raptor engine, was successfully conducted, although "sparks" were noticeable immediately after ignition. The debris was initially understood to be surface material instead of a problem with the engine – the latter confirmed by the push toward the second Header Tank test without an engine swap.

MrPlow writes in with a submission, via IRC, for TheMightyBuzzard.

Source: https://torrentfreak.com/amazon-patents-technology-to-track-down-streaming-pirates-201121/:

With a newly obtained patent, [Amazon] hopes to make it easier to find people who leak their content. The invention titled "encoding identifiers into customized manifest data" can be used for various purposes but copyright enforcement is high on the list.

In short, Amazon proposes a technology to add unique identifiers to streaming video. While these types of 'watermarks' are not new, Amazon's implementation is.

[...] Without going too deep into the technical details, it is clear that Amazon is trying to find and possibly implement advanced technologies to track pirating users. These technologies already exist, but can be quite resource-intensive.

Instead of encoding the identifier or watermark in the video content, Amazon proposes to add it to the manifest data. As a result, Amazon's solution can be more easily applied at the individual level. This can be useful to protect content on Amazon's own streaming service, but other rightsholders may want to use it as well.

Original Submission

[With the upcoming Thanksgiving celebration in the US on Thursday and its history of over-indulgence, this seemed to be a timely warning.--Ed.]

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Do you take your phone to the loo? Spent half an hour a day in the peace and calm of the smallest room in the house safe and secure in the knowledge few will disturb you? Are you at all concerned your habit could be detrimental to your health? According to Sydney gastroenterologist Professor Chris Berney you should be. Doctor Berney has treated 16 people over the past 18 months for haemorrhoid related issues which he believes comes from spending too long on the loo. Regularly spending over 20 minutes with the rear sphincter relaxed can result in a decline in control which leads to blood clots developing. Prof Berney published his findings regarding young people spending too much time on the toilet in the Australia New Zealand Surgery journal.

Where are the futuristic chairs with the built-in toilet?

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Women Scientists Are Calling Bullshit On a Study Claiming That Women Make Bad STEM Mentors:

Last week, the scientific journal Nature Communications, an offshoot of the internationally respected journal Nature, enraged scientists, women, and anyone who has ever been near a graduate program by publishing a study that concluded maybe women mentors are actually hurting the career prospects of their mentees. As the study's authors wrote, the research "suggests that female protégés who remain in academia reap more benefits when mentored by males rather than equally-impactful females."

Thousands of scientists from all over the world identified issues with the methods used in the study, titled, "The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance." Its methods and conclusions were even criticized by scientists who had peer-reviewed the paper, whose concerns were published alongside the study but were not addressed within the text. In response, the journal quickly promised an investigation of those methods and conclusions (the kind of thing that usually happens before publication, during peer review).

Journal Reference:
Bedoor AlShebli, Kinga Makovi, Talal Rahwan. The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19723-8)

Also at Retraction Watch

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Is This Trippy Cave Painting the Result of a Hallucination:

There's a cave in California, roughly an hour's drive from Santa Barbara, whose ceiling features a prominent pinwheel-like drawing. Fascinating new research suggests this painting is not some drug-induced abstraction, but a literal representation of the very thing that makes psychedelic trips possible.

Chewed remnants of the psychedelic plant Datura wrightii offer "unambiguous confirmation of the ingestion of hallucinogens" at Pinwheel Cave in California, according to new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The rock site was frequented by indigenous Californians roughly 500 years ago. Just as importantly, the dazzling red pinwheel painted onto the low ceiling is a representation of the plant itself, not a depiction of a shaman's visual experiences while tripping on the drug, the scientists argue. The new paper is consequently challenging the prevailing altered states of consciousness model (ASC), which contends that "hallucinogens have influenced the prehistoric making of images in caves and rock shelters," as the study authors write.

Journal Reference:
David W. Robinson, Kelly Brown, Moira McMenemy, et al. Datura quids at Pinwheel Cave, California, provide unambiguous confirmation of the ingestion of hallucinogens at a rock art site [open], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2014529117)

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Biomimicry is the concept of drawing design inspiration from the natural world, such as for materials design, structural design, process flow, etc. The idea is that Nature has spent millennia optimizing structures and designs for cohabitation within the environment. We see stories all the time here that talk about materials inspired by spider silk, sea sponges, algae, etc. These are all typically focused studies that look at only a specific aspect of the material or design.

In a paper to be published in the journal Earth's Future, researchers look at current resiliant design practices and recommend several pragmatic opportunities for infrastructure managers to make improvements by incorporating biomimicry principles within the design process. These six principles, dubbed Life's Principles are: evolve to survive, adapt to changing conditions, be locally attuned and responsive, integrate development with growth, be resource efficient, and use life-friendly chemistry. They find that current resilient design theory--in theory--addresses all of the biomimicry principles, but in practice they largely ignore and sometimes contradict these principles. They note that a lot of effort has been spent addressing efficiency, but that substantial design advantages would be realized if infrastructure managers tried to align to more biomimicry principles.

Journal Reference:
Alysha M. Helmrich, Mikhail V. Chester, Samantha Hayes, et al. Using Biomimicry to Support Resilient Infrastructure Design [open], Earth's Future (DOI: 10.1029/2020EF001653)

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma pleads guilty in criminal case:

Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty Tuesday to three criminal charges, formally taking responsibility for its part in an opioid epidemic that has contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths but also angering critics who want to see individuals held accountable, in addition to the company.

In a virtual hearing with a federal judge in Newark, New Jersey, the OxyContin maker admitted impeding the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's efforts to combat the addiction crisis.

Purdue acknowledged that it had not maintained an effective program to prevent prescription drugs from being diverted to the black market, even though it had told the DEA it did have such a program, and that it provided misleading information to the agency as a way to boost company manufacturing quotas.

It also admitted paying doctors through a speakers program to induce them to write more prescriptions for its painkillers.

And it admitted paying an electronic medical records company to send doctors information on patients that encouraged them to prescribe opioids.

The guilty pleas were entered by Purdue board chairperson Steve Miller on behalf of the company. They were part of a criminal and civil settlement announced last month between the Stamford, Connecticut-based company and the Justice Department.

[...] The deal includes $8.3 billion in penalties and forfeitures, but the company is on the hook for a direct payment to the federal government of only a fraction of that, $225 million. It would pay the smaller amount as long as it executes a settlement moving through federal bankruptcy court with state and local governments and other entities suing it over the toll of the opioid epidemic.

Original Submission

looorg writes:

PayPal appears to be vacuuming the bitcoin market. They apparently bought 70% of all mined coins last month. I guess they need a large buffer if they want to allow all their customers to convert transactions from all types of currencies into BTC. Then it's probably just a hop and a skip until EBay (the parent company) does it, too.

“Bitcoin shortage”: PayPal bought 70% of all mined BTC last month:

Crypto hedge fund Pantera Capital revealed global payments processor PayPal purchased over 70% of all Bitcoin mined in the past month, as per an investor letter published last week.

PayPal began its crypto offering to US clients earlier this month to a warm response, with data suggesting purchases of up to $20 million in Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) daily.

[...] Pantera, in its note, said it calculated the amount of Bitcoin on PayPal using metrics from the latter’s exchange provider Paxos-owned ItBit. “Prior to PayPal’s integration of crypto, itBit, the Paxos-run exchange, was doing a fairly constant amount of trading volume — the white line in the chart below,” said Pantera.

It added that after PayPal’s crypto service went live, ItBit’s volume “exploded” and implied that PayPal users were already buying almost 70% of the new supply of mined BTC. As per mining tracker site BTC.com, over 900 BTC are mined and sold in the open market by mining firms daily.

Original Submission