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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

New class of antibiotics active against a wide range of bacteria: Dual-acting immuno-antibiotics block an essential pathway in bacteria and activate the adaptive immune response:

"We took a creative, double-pronged strategy to develop new molecules that can kill difficult-to-treat infections while enhancing the natural host immune response," said Farokh Dotiwala, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., assistant professor in the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center and lead author of the effort to identify a new generation of antimicrobials named dual-acting immuno-antibiotics (DAIAs).

[...] [Dotiwala] and colleagues focused on a metabolic pathway that is essential for most bacteria but absent in humans, making it an ideal target for antibiotic development. This pathway, called methyl-D-erythritol phosphate (MEP) or non-mevalonate pathway, is responsible for biosynthesis of isoprenoids -- molecules required for cell survival in most pathogenic bacteria. The lab targeted the IspH enzyme, an essential enzyme in isoprenoid biosynthesis, as a way to block this pathway and kill the microbes. Given the broad presence of IspH in the bacterial world, this approach may target a wide range of bacteria.

[...] Since previously available IspH inhibitors could not penetrate the bacterial cell wall, Dotiwala collaborated with Wistar's medicinal chemist Joseph Salvino, Ph.D., professor in The Wistar Institute Cancer Center and a co-senior author on the study, to identify and synthesize novel IspH inhibitor molecules that were able to get inside the bacteria.

The team demonstrated that the IspH inhibitors stimulated the immune system with more potent bacterial killing activity and specificity than current best-in-class antibiotics when tested in vitro on clinical isolates of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including a wide range of pathogenic gram negative and gram positive bacteria. In preclinical models of gram negative bacterial infection, the bactericidal effects of the IspH inhibitors outperformed traditional pan antibiotics. All compounds tested were shown to be nontoxic to human cells.

Journal Reference:
Kumar Sachin Singh, Rishabh Sharma, Poli Adi Narayana Reddy, et al. IspH inhibitors kill Gram-negative bacteria and mobilize immune clearance, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-03074-x)

Original Submission

2021-01-07 14:44:44 UTC: UPDATE (See below the fold).

martyb writes:

Pro-Trump rioters breach the US Capitol on historic day in Congress:

Supporters of President Donald Trump breached the US Capitol on Wednesday while Congress was meeting to certify the Electoral College's votes for president and vice president.

The Capitol has been put on lockdown and the certification vote has been paused. Vice President Mike Pence was evacuated from the building. House and Senate leadership is safe and in undisclosed locations, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Congress' counting of electoral votes is typically little more than an afterthought. But this joint session was expected to be a contentious affair that would last late into the evening and possibly on Thursday. Some Republicans are objecting to the count and delaying the inevitable certification of President-elect Joe Biden's win.

Also at AlJazeera (In Pictures: Pro-trump mob storms US Capitol building) and c|net (Mob storms Capitol forcing halt of election vote count).

[2021-01-06 22:33:53 UTC; UPDATE] NOTE: This is a chaotic time.

The Electoral College votes are currently being confirmed and tallied. Runoff votes in Georgia are being tallied and the results may swing the balance of power in the US Senate. The Georgia secretary of state [has been] relocated from [State] Capitol for security reasons. Mitch McConnell goes off on Trump. Pro-Trump reporter gloats over access to fleeing Hill staffer's computer. And Trump hand-picks replacement for Atlanta's US attorney after surprise resignation.

Let's please try and keep the discussion civil.

Also, please be polite and share your popcorn!

[Updates Begin]:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Imminent sudden stratospheric warming to occur, bringing increased risk of snow over coming weeks:

A new study led by researchers at the Universities of Bristol, Exeter, and Bath helps to shed light on the winter weather we may soon have in store following a dramatic meteorological event currently unfolding high above the North Pole.

Weather forecasting models are predicting with increasing confidence that a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) event will take place today, 5 January 2021.

The stratosphere is the layer of the atmosphere from around 10-50km above the earth's surface. SSW events are some of the most extreme of atmospheric phenomena and can see polar stratospheric temperature increase by up to 50°C over the course of a few days. Such events can bring very cold weather, which often result in snowstorms.

The infamous 2018 'Beast from the East' is a stark reminder of what an SSW can bring. The disturbance in the stratosphere can be transmitted downward and if this continues to the Earth's surface, there can be a shift in the jet stream, leading to unusually cold weather across Europe and Northern Asia. It can take a number of weeks for the signal to reach the surface, or the process may only take a few days.

The study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), involved the analysis of 40 observed SSW events which occurred over the last 60 years. Researchers developed a novel method for tracking the signal of an SSW downward from its onset in the stratosphere to the surface.

Additional coverage at The Washington Post and the UK Met Office.

Journal Reference:
Richard J. Hall, Daniel M. Mitchell, William J.M Seviour, et al. Tracking the stratosphere‐to‐surface impact of Sudden Stratospheric Warmings, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres (DOI: 10.1029/2020JD033881)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Comcast data cap blasted by lawmakers as it expands into 12 more states:

Dozens of state lawmakers from Massachusetts urged Comcast to halt enforcement of its 1.2TB monthly data cap, saying the cap hurts low-income people during the pandemic and is unnecessary because of Comcast's healthy network capacity.

"Network capacity is not an issue for Comcast or a valid excuse to charge customers more," 71 state lawmakers wrote in the letter last week, one day before Comcast brought its data cap to Massachusetts and other states where it wasn't already enforced. "Comcast itself claims it has plenty of capacity across its network, including areas where no caps are currently imposed... It is inconceivable that Comcast would choose to impose this 'cap and fee' plan during a pandemic, when many Massachusetts residents are forced to work and attend school from home via the Internet."

The letter said the lawmakers "strongly urge Comcast to discontinue this plan, and to reconsider any future attempts at imposing a data cap or any perversion of the principles of net neutrality in Massachusetts." The lawmakers also pointed out a statement by Comcast executive Tony Werner, who said the increased broadband traffic caused by the pandemic "has all been within the capability of the network."

[...] Comcast expanded its 1.2TB monthly data cap to its entire 39-state territory this month after four years of enforcing the cap in 27 of those states. Besides Massachusetts, newly capped areas include Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

How many of you know how much data you use in a month and if so, would be impacted by a 1.2 TB limit?

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Electric cars hit record 54% of sales in Norway as VW overtakes Tesla:

Norway is using huge tax incentives to help ensure that every new passenger car and van sold in the country by the end of 2025 is a zero-emission vehicle. Record electric vehicle sales in 2020 means the country is now ahead of schedule, according to Oyvind Solberg Thorsen, CEO of the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV).

The market share of electric cars in Norway increased to 54% in 2020 from 42% the previous year, according to data published by OFV on Tuesday. When hybrid vehicles are included, the share of electrified vehicles hit 83% last year.

Petrol and diesel cars, which had a combined market share of 71% in 2015, now have just 17%.

According to Reuters:

Norway became the first country in the world where the sale of electric cars has overtaken those powered by petrol, diesel and hybrid engines last year, with the German carmaker Volkswagen replacing Tesla as the top battery-vehicle producer, data shows.

[...] Seeking to become the first nation to end the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2025, oil-producing Norway exempts fully electric vehicles from taxes imposed on those relying on fossil fuels.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Mazda's rotary engine will return to the US with the MX-30 EV - Roadshow:

Great news to kick off the year that is 2021 in the auto world, folks. The Mazda MX-30 is coming to America in both fully electric and plug-in hybrid form. The latter will revive the beloved rotary engine at that.

The Detroit Bureau first reported on remarks made by Jeff Guyton, Mazda president of North American operations, on Dec. 21. But Mazda confirmed with Roadshow that not only will the MX-30 with the rotary range extender come to the US, but the purely battery-electric version will launch here, too.

Original Submission

With the days counting down to the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, the Trump administration has been undertaking a series of actions that will make it more difficult for its replacements to reverse any of its policies or pursue new ones. This is especially true in the area of environmental regulations, where both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior have recently issued decisions.

[...] The EPA's new rule [PDF link], which will be formally published [on January 6, 2021], is an attempt to set additional standards for the evidence it considers when establishing new regulations for pollutants. In principle, the rule sounds great: it wants the data behind the scientific papers it uses to be made publicly available before it can be used to support regulatory decisions. In reality, the rule is problematic, because many of these studies rely on patient records that need to be kept confidential. In other cases, the organizations with the best information on some environmental hazards are the companies that produce or work with them, and they may not be interested in sharing proprietary data.

The practical result of this sort of change is that the EPA would be precluded from relying on scientific papers that contained the clearest indications of public harm. This would almost certainly lead to weaker rules or a decision not to regulate at all.

The EPA defends the rule in a Wall Street Journal editorial:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

AMD overtakes Intel in desktop CPU market share for the first time in 15 years:

AMD has just edged out Intel in desktop CPU market share for the first time in 15 years on the strength of its Ryzen series of processors, first released in 2017.

The market share figures, gathered by PassMark Software's PerformanceTest benchmarking tool, showed AMD with a 50.8% share of the Windows desktop CPU market worldwide to 49.2% for Team Blue on January 4, 2021. Intel regained a slight 0.4% lead on January 5, but AMD has still passed the silicon Rubicon in its battle with its archrival.

[...] As more systems are benchmarked, these numbers are bound to change, so it remains to be seen if AMD can keep up its climb, but given Intel's difficulty in moving their processors to a 7nm architecture, AMD appears to have a fairly clear path to beating Intel in the desktop CPU space in the years ahead.

Digitaltrends notes that:

These numbers don't truly represent the full scope of the market, as it only analyzes "thousands" of PerformanceTest benchmarks on Windows PCs, but it does show that AMD is making gains over Intel in the desktop space with its latest lineup of Ryzen processors. According to the numbers, it's been 14 years since AMD last achieved the feat of beating Intel, even for a brief moment.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Can You Spot What's Wrong With the UK's New H.G. Wells Commemorative Coin?:

This week, the UK's Royal Mint announced five new commemorative coins honoring figures like the Queen(!) and Sir Walter Scott. It would've been a standard beginning of the new year for the mint, but this year's edition of collectibles has proven to be controversial as the coin honoring H.G. Wells seems to lack a certain familiarity with the influential author's work.

[...] In a statement to the Guardian, the Royal Mint didn't exactly admit to an error but said, "The coin depicts scenes from famous works such as War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man as imagined by designer Chris Costello." This is the second coin that the American artist has produced for the mint, and in a note accompanying the coin's release, Costello said that he drew inspiration from book covers and movie posters.

Also at: The Guardian, BoingBoing, MSN, and Yahoo!.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Linus Torvalds On The Importance Of ECC RAM, Calls Out Intel's "Bad Policies" Over ECC

There's nothing quite like some fun holiday-weekend reading as a fiery mailing list post by Linus Torvalds. The Linux creator is out with one of his classical messages, which this time is arguing over the importance of ECC memory and his opinion on how Intel's "bad policies" and market segmentation have made ECC memory less widespread.

Linus argues that error-correcting code (ECC) memory "absolutely matters" but that "Intel has been instrumental in killing the whole ECC industry with it's horribly bad market segmentation... Intel has been detrimental to the whole industry and to users because of their bad and misguided policies wrt ECC. Seriously...The arguments against ECC were always complete and utter garbage... Now even the memory manufacturers are starting [to] do ECC internally because they finally owned up to the fact that they absolutely have to. And the memory manufacturers claim it's because of economics and lower power. And they are lying bastards - let me once again point to row-hammer about how those problems have existed for several generations already, but these f*ckers happily sold broken hardware to consumers and claimed it was an "attack", when it always was "we're cutting corners"."

Ian Cutress from AnandTech points out in a reply that AMD's Ryzen ECC support is not as solid as believed.

Related: Linus Torvalds: 'I'm Not a Programmer Anymore'
Linus Torvalds Rejects "Beyond Stupid" Intel Security Patch From Amazon Web Services
Linus Torvalds: Don't Hide Rust in Linux Kernel; Death to AVX-512
Linus Torvalds Doubts Linux will Get Ported to Apple M1 Hardware

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Yellowstone's reawakened geyser won't spark a volcanic 'big one':

A geyser hiding under Yellowstone National Park recently reawakened. But don't worry: That doesn't mean the supervolcano beneath the park will erupt soon, a new study finds.

In March 2018, following a 3.5-year-long nap, Steamboat Geyser suddenly erupted, spewing steam, mud, sand and rocks into the air. The previously dormant geyser erupted 32 times in 2018, a record-breaking 48 times in 2019 and another 48 times in 2020 (its previous record of 29 eruptions was set in 1964), the U.S. Geological Survey reported Monday (Jan. 4).

Some scientists feared that the geyser's dramatic outbursts were a harbinger of volcanic activity at Yellowstone. But it turns out Steamboat's frequent eruptions do not portend a volcanic blast, according to the new study.

[...] While Steamboat Geyser has reawakened, its sudden activity didn't come along with the underground magma movement often seen before a volcanic eruption.

[...] Moreover, except for the first eruption in 2018, none of Steamboat's outbursts occurred after periods of high seismic activity, the researchers found.

"We don't find any evidence that there is a big [volcanic] eruption coming," Manga said. Nor could they determine why Steamboat reawakened, calling the reason for its reactivation "ambiguous," in the study.

Journal Reference:
Mara H. Reed, Carolina Munoz-Saez, Sahand Hajimirza, et al. The 2018 reawakening and eruption dynamics of Steamboat Geyser, the world’s tallest active geyser [open], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2020943118)

Also at UC Berkeley.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Leading computer scientists debate the next steps for AI in 2021:

The 2010s were huge for artificial intelligence, thanks to advances in deep learning, a branch of AI that has become feasible because of the growing capacity to collect, store, and process large amounts of data. Today, deep learning is not just a topic of scientific research but also a key component of many everyday applications.

But a decade’s worth of research and application has made it clear that in its current state, deep learning is not the final solution to solving the ever-elusive challenge of creating human-level AI.

What do we need to push AI to the next level? More data and larger neural networks? New deep learning algorithms? Approaches other than deep learning?

This is a topic that has been hotly debated in the AI community and was the focus of an online discussion Montreal.AI held [in December 2020]. Titled “AI debate 2: Moving AI forward: An interdisciplinary approach,” the debate was attended by scientists from a range of backgrounds and disciplines.

Approaches discussed include "hybrid artificial intelligence" (deep learning combined with preprogrammed rules), taking "inspiration from evolution," using "reinforcement learning," and adding to AI "world knowledge and common sense."

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

LA Paramedics Told Not To Transport Some Patients With Low Chance Of Survival:

The Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency issued a directive Monday that ambulance crews should only administer bottled oxygen to patients whose oxygen saturation levels fall below 90%.

In a separate memo from the county's EMS Agency, paramedic crews have been told not to transfer patients who experience cardiac arrest unless spontaneous circulation can be restored on the scene.

Both measures announced Monday, which were issued by the agency's medical director, Dr. Marianne Gausche-Hill, were taken in an attempt to get ahead of an expected surge to come following the winter holidays.

Many hospitals in the region "have reached a point of crisis and are having to make very tough decisions about patient care," Dr. Christina Ghaly, the LA County director of health services said at a briefing Monday.

[...] "We do not believe that we are yet seeing the cases that stemmed from the Christmas holiday," Ghaly added. "This, sadly, and the cases from the recent New Year's holiday, is still before us, and hospitals across the region are doing everything they can to prepare."

'We Are Not Abandoning Resuscitation': LA County Healthcare Leader Speaks Out After Memo Raises Concerns:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

TransLink confirms ransomware data theft, still restoring systems:

Metro Vancouver's transportation agency TransLink has confirmed that the Egregor ransomware operators who breached its network at the beginning of December 2020 also accessed and potentially stole employees' banking and social security information.

TransLink announced on December 1, 2020, that the transportation network was experiencing issues with their computing systems following a cyberattack.

These information technology issues impacted the company's phones and online services, as well as the customers' ability to pay for fares with a credit card or debit card. TransLink's transit services were not affected by the IT problems caused by the ransomware attack.

"We are now in a position to confirm that TransLink was the target of a ransomware attack on some of our IT infrastructure," TransLink disclosed in a statement following the incident. "This attack includes communications to TransLink through a printed message."

[...] Egregor is a ransomware operation that partners with affiliates who hack into targets' networks and deploy ransomware payloads, earning 70% of the ransom payments with the Egregor operators getting a 30% revenue share.

The affiliates who infiltrate victims' networks are also known for stealing files before encrypting devices using Egregor ransomware and for using them as leverage under the threat of publicly leaking them unless the ransom is paid.

Egregor started operating in September 2020 after Maze shut down their operation, with many of the Maze affiliates switching to Egregor as threat actors told BleepingComputer.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

McConnell introduces bill tying $2K stimulus checks to Section 230 repeal:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has thrown a wrench into Congressional approval of an increase in government stimulus relief checks from $600 to $2,000. The House voted overwhelmingly on Monday to increase the payments, as President Trump had advocated for. Instead of voting on the House bill, however, McConnell blocked it and instead introduced a new bill tying higher stimulus payments to Section 230's full repeal, according to Verge, which obtained a copy of the bill's text.

It's a tangled web, but the move is tied to Trump's veto of the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes $740 billion in defense spending for the upcoming government fiscal year. "No one has worked harder, or approved more money for the military, than I have," Trump said in a statement about the veto, claiming falsely that the military "was totally depleted" when he took office in 2017. "Your failure to terminate the very dangerous national security risk of Section 230 will make our intelligence virtually impossible to conduct without everyone knowing what we are doing at every step."

Section 230 has nothing to do with military intelligence; it's a 1996 law designed to protect Internet platforms. At its highest level, the short snippet of law basically does two things. First, it grants Internet service providers, including online platforms, broad immunity from being held legally liable for content third-party users share. Second, it grants those same services legal immunity from the decisions they make around content moderation—no matter how much or how little they choose to do.

Original Submission