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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Congo confirms new Ebola outbreak after death of woman:

Health officials in Congo confirmed another Ebola outbreak in the country's east on Sunday, the fourth in less than three years. On February 3, a woman died in Butembo town in North Kivu province, Minister of Health Eteni Longondo announced.

The woman from the nearby village of Biena felt sick for a few days before being tested in a clinic there. She then went to a hospital in Butembo, but died before receiving the results. The government has begun tracing everyone who came in contact with her to try to "eradicate the epidemic as soon as possible," said Longondo.

This is the 12th outbreak in conflict-ridden Congo since the virus was first discovered in the country in 1976, and comes less than three months after an outbreak in the western province of Equateur, officially ended in November. The 2018 outbreak in Eastern Congo was the second deadliest in the world, killing 2,299 people before it ended in June. That outbreak lasted for nearly two years and was fought amid unprecedented challenges, including entrenched conflict between armed groups, the world's largest measles epidemic, and the spread of COVID-19.

Health officials worry a new Ebola outbreak could badly affect the nation's fragile health system, especially as it faces a resurgence of COVID-19.

"While there is hope that this early identification of an infection may help with quickly containing this outbreak, back-to-back Ebola outbreaks and COVID-19 has stretched Congo's health systems to the limit and this could put far greater strain on an already exasperated system," said Jason Kindrachuk, an assistant professor at the department of medical microbiology and infectious diseases at Canada's University of Manitoba.

Original Submission

chromas writes:

'Tis but a snippet; I recommend reading the whole article.

Wired:

One afternoon in the fall of 2019, in a grand old office building near the Arc de Triomphe, I was buzzed through an unmarked door into a showroom for the future of surveillance. The space on the other side was dark and sleek, with a look somewhere between an Apple Store and a doomsday bunker. Along one wall, a grid of electronic devices glinted in the moody downlighting—automated license plate readers, Wi-Fi-enabled locks, boxy data processing units. I was here to meet Giovanni Gaccione, who runs the public safety division of a security technology company called Genetec. Headquartered in Montreal, the firm operates four of these "Experience Centers" around the world, where it peddles intelligence products to government officials. Genetec's main sell here was software, and Gaccione had agreed to show me how it worked.

He led me first to a large monitor running a demo version of Citigraf, his division's flagship product. The screen displayed a map of the East Side of Chicago. Around the edges were thumbnail-size video streams from neighborhood CCTV cameras. In one feed, a woman appeared to be unloading luggage from a car to the sidewalk. An alert popped up above her head: "ILLEGAL PARKING." The map itself was scattered with color-coded icons—a house on fire, a gun, a pair of wrestling stick figures—each of which, Gaccione explained, corresponded to an unfolding emergency. He selected the stick figures, which denoted an assault, and a readout appeared onscreen with a few scant details drawn from the 911 dispatch center. At the bottom was a button marked "INVESTIGATE," just begging to be clicked.

Citigraf was conceived in 2016, when the Chicago Police Department hired Genetec to solve a surveillance conundrum. Like other large law enforcement organizations around the country, the department had built up such an impressive arsenal of technologies for keeping tabs on citizens that it had reached the point of surveillance overload. To get a clear picture of an emergency in progress, officers often had to bushwhack through dozens of byzantine databases and feeds from far-flung sensors, including gunshot detectors, license plate readers, and public and private security cameras. This process of braiding together strands of information—"multi-intelligence fusion" is the technical term—was becoming too difficult. As one Chicago official put it, echoing a well-worn aphorism in surveillance circles, the city was "data-rich but information-poor." What investigators needed was a tool that could cut a clean line through the labyrinth. What they needed was automated fusion.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Turbulence trouble:

"When I meet God," physicist Werner Heisenberg allegedly once said, "I'm going to ask him two questions: why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he'll have an answer for the first."

Although the quote is almost certainly fictional, it captures the sheer frustration many physicists feel about turbulence: the complex, chaotic, unpredictable flows in fluids.

This phenomenon surrounds us: swirling gases in the atmosphere disrupting our flights; the movement of rivers around rocks; the flow of blood through our arteries. We also see it on cosmic scales, explains quantum physicist Warwick Bowen from the University of Queensland (UQ), from gas flowing in galaxy clusters to the Great Red Spot – a massive cyclone on Jupiter.

"You could fit our planet within this one storm, and it's existed for many hundreds of years – for the whole time that we've been able to observe Jupiter," Bowen says.

[...] And we still don't know why. Turbulence has always been too complex to accurately analyse or even measure. Even after centuries of study, physicists have no general theoretical description of it – it's been described as the last great outstanding problem of classical physics.

Journal Reference:
Guillaume Gauthier, Matthew T. Reeves, Xiaoquan Yu, et al. Giant vortex clusters in a two-dimensional quantum fluid [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.aat5718)
Shaun P. Johnstone, Andrew J. Groszek, Philip T. Starkey, et al. Evolution of large-scale flow from turbulence in a two-dimensional superfluid [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.aat5793)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Astronomers Think They've Found Another Trojan Asteroid Lurking in Earth's Orbit:

A recently discovered object sharing Earth's orbital path around the Sun could actually be a trojan asteroid, astronomers have found.

If confirmed, it will be only the second object of its type identified to date, suggesting that there could be more of these hidden asteroids lurking in Earth's gravitational pockets.

Trojan asteroids are space rocks that share the orbital path of larger planetary bodies in the Solar System, hanging out in gravitationally stable regions known as Lagrangian points.

These are pockets where the gravitational pulls of the planet and the Sun balance perfectly with the centripetal force of any small body in that region to basically hold it in place.

Original Submission

NASA's Perseverance, China's Tianwen-1 and UAE's Hope arrive at Mars this month

aristarchus and an anonymous submitter write:

Seems like the solar system is getting smaller all the time. Three nations are having Mars missions land (hopefully) this month, something that has never happened before. Detail at C|Net, and elsewhere.

July 2020 was a huge month for Mars. Taking advantage of its nearby position in orbit, three missions departed the Earth on a seven-month journey to the red planet. Now those spacecraft -- NASA's Perseverance rover, the Chinese space agency's Tianwen-1 and the United Arab Emirates' Hope -- are arriving at their destination. They're poised to uncover the secrets our celestial neighbor hides within its atmosphere and barren plains and may even reveal relics of ancient life on the planet's surface.

Although all three spacecraft will make it to orbit around Mars this month, NASA's Perseverance (or "Percy") gets to take center stage. It will be the only mission to land on the surface this month, with an expected arrival date of Feb. 18. Perseverance builds on an impressive history of interplanetary exploration, with its sibling rover Curiosity coming up on nine years on Mars, delivering breathtaking photographs and some puzzling data.

That's not to take anything away from the UAE's Hope, or Al Amal, and China's Tianwen-1. Both spacecraft are expected to perform Mars orbital insertion, or MOI, maneuvers within a day of each other on Feb. 9 and Feb. 10, respectively. Hope will remain in orbit and analyze the Martian atmosphere, but Tianwen-1 will attempt something only achieved by two other nations: landing on Mars' unfriendly surface. China is expected to release Tianwen-1's lander and rover duo sometime in May.

Here's a recap of the journey to Mars and what we can expect this month.

Previously:
China's Tianwen-1 Mars Probe Delivers its First Haunting Look at the Planet
Three Missions to Mars Happening this Month

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Original Submission #2 

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

This $12 Billion Company Is Getting Rich Off Students Cheating Their Way Through Covid:

It's called "chegging." College students everywhere know what it means. "If I run out of time or I'm having problems on homework or an online quiz," says Matt, a 19-year-old sophomore at Arizona State, "I can chegg it."

He means he can use Chegg Study, the $14.95-a-month service he buys from Chegg, a tech company whose stock price has more than tripled during the pandemic. It takes him seconds to look up answers in Chegg's database of 46 million textbook and exam problems and turn them in as his own. In other words, to cheat. (Matt asked that his real name be withheld because he knows he's violating his school's honor code.)

Chegg is based in Santa Clara, California, but the heart of its operation is in India, where it employs more than 70,000 experts with advanced math, science, technology and engineering degrees. The experts, who work freelance, are online 24/7, supplying step-by-step answers to questions posted by subscribers (sometimes answered in less than 15 minutes). Chegg offers other services students find useful, including tools to create bibliographies, solve math problems and improve writing. But the main revenue driver, and the reason students subscribe, is Chegg Study.

[...] Forbes interviewed 52 students who use Chegg Study. Aside from the half dozen students Chegg provided for Forbes to talk to, all but 4 admitted they use the site to cheat. They include undergrads and grad students at 19 colleges, including large and small state schools and prestigious private universities like Columbia, Brown, Duke and NYU Abu Dhabi.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for FatPhil:

When Adobe Stopped Flash Content From Running It Also Stopped A Chinese Railroad:

Adobe's Flash, the web browser plug-in that powered so very many crappy games, confusing interfaces, and animated icons of the early web like Homestar Runner is now finally gone, after a long, slow, protracted death. For most of us, this just means that some goofy webgame you searched for out of misplaced nostalgia will no longer run. For a select few in China, though, the death of Flash meant being late to work, because the city of Dalian in northern China was running their railroad system on it.Yes, a railroad, run on Flash, the same thing used to run "free online casinos" and knockoff Breakout games in mortgage re-fi ads.

[...] So, when Adobe finally killed Flash-based content from running, this Tuesday Dalian's railroad network found itself ground to a halt for 20 hours.

The railroad's technicians did get everything back up and running, but the way they did this is fascinating, too. They didn't switch the rail management system to some other, more modern codebase or software installation; instead, they installed a pirated version of Flash that was still operational. The knockoff version seems to be known as "Ghost Version."

This, along with installing an older version of the Flash player to work with the knockoff Flash server setup, "solved" the problem, and the railroad was back up and running.

(Emphasis preserved from original.)

Has anything like this ever happened where you work or worked?

Also at: Ars Technica; official's account (in Chinese).

Related/Previously:
Flash is Back in South Africa.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

War on Section 230 begins in earnest as Dem senators look to limit legal immunity for social networks, websites etc:

US Senators Mark Warner (D-VA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) on Friday introduced draft legislation to limit the legal protections available to social networks, websites, and anything else that provides an "interactive computer service."

The three politicians proposed a bill they're calling the SAFE TECH Act [PDF], which narrows the liability protection afforded to organizations by Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act.

[...] Section 230 of the CDA is the legal foundation of the modern internet because it provides a way for orgs to host user-generated content while, more or less, avoiding legal liability for that content. And it allows companies to maintain that qualified immunity even when they moderate user-generated content.

[...] "A platform that hosts organizing efforts for armed militia groups making direct calls for violence faces no legal consequences for its actions, even when reported by users hundreds of times in advance of the tragic events," laments Warner, pointing at the lack of consequences for online services that were used to organize the attempted insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The bill proposes to clarify where Section 230 immunity does not apply. It seeks to remove platform protection for:

• Ads and other paid content, so platforms can't profit from unlawful or harmful services.
• Civil rights law and antitrust law violation claims.
• Harassment/cyberstalking claims related to protected classes (e.g. sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, etc).
• Wrongful death claims.
• Alien Tort Claims Act claims (e.g. allowing survivors of the Rohingya genocide to sue Facebook).

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Why elephants rarely get cancer:

Elephants – the world's largest land mammal with a lifespan of up to 70 years – have puzzled experts by rarely being struck down with the illness.

Scientists from the University at Buffalo have now revealed elephants have multiple copies of tumour-suppressing genes, all of which "contribute probably a little bit to cancer resistance".

[...] Better understanding natural cancer resistance may help in the development of new treatments, the scientists hope.

The disease arises when genetic mutations cause individual cells to grow in an uncontrolled way.

A longer life creates more opportunities for these mutations to take place, hence why cancers are more common among the elderly.

Elephants – with their lengthy lifespan and gargantuan frame – rarely develop the disease, however.

[...] "One of the expectations is as you get a really big body, your burden of cancer should increase because things with big bodies have more cells," said study author Dr Vincent Lynch.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Samsung considers Austin for $17 billion chip plant, eyes tax breaks of at least $806 million: documents show:

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is considering Austin, Texas, as one of the sites for a new $17 billion chip plant that the South Korean firm said could create 1,800 jobs, according to documents filed with Texas state officials.

The tech giant is seeking combined tax abatements of $805.5 million over 20 years from Travis County and the city of Austin, among other tax breaks, according to the documents.

Samsung said in its filings that if Austin is selected, the company would break ground on the site in the second quarter of this year and that the plant will become operational in the third quarter of 2023.

"This project is highly competitive, and the company is looking at alternative sites in the US including Arizona and New York, as well as abroad in Korea...," Samsung said in the documents, adding that it is taking into account access to talent, chip ecosystem and speed to market in its evaluation of the sites.

[...] TSMC, which counts Apple Inc among its major customers, last year disclosed plans for a $12 billion chip plant in Arizona expected to come online in 2024.

Also at: Austin American-Stateman, Dallas News, CNBC, and Yahoo!.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Astronomers identified a piece of the Milky Way's missing matter:

The majority of the universe's mass is believed to be mysterious dark matter and dark energy. 5 percent is 'normal matter' that makes up stars, planets, asteroids, etc. This is known as baryonic matter.

[...] Yuanming Wang, a doctoral candidate in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney, has developed an ingenious method to track down the missing matter. Using the technique, Wang pinpointed a hitherto undetected stream of cold gas in the Milky Way about ten light-years from Earth.

The cloud is about a trillion kilometers long and 10 billion kilometers wide[*] but only weighing about our Moon's mass.

Ms. Wang, who is pursuing her Ph.D. at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy, said, "We suspect that much of the 'missing' baryonic matter is in the form of cold gas clouds either in galaxies or between galaxies."

"This gas is undetectable using conventional methods, as it emits no visible light of its own and is just too cold for detection via radio astronomy."

martyb writes:

It's that time of year again! Americans will hold their annual football championship today — 4.5 hours from when this story goes live — Sunday, February 7th, 2021 starting at 6:30 PM EST (2230 UTC).

In years past, people would gather together for tailgate parties of every description and to watch the game. Social distancing in response to COVID-19 has certainly put a crimp on things this year. Fear not! We are again(!) offering a place to (virtually) gather with friends to comment on the game and commercials!

You are hereby invited to meet up with us on IRC in channel "#SuperBowl-LV"

See below for some details on the game.

Buccaneers vs. Chiefs 2021 Super Bowl: Date, time, TV channel, and more:

How to watch Super Bowl LIV:

Date: Feb. 7, 2021
Time: 6:30 p.m. ET
Where: Raymond James Stadium, Tampa
TV: CBS | Stream: FREE on CBSSports.com and the CBS Sports App

The story continues with which performers will sing The National Anthem and America the Beautiful, and who will perform at the halftime show, and a host of other pieces of information.

(NB 1: "Super Bowl" is a registered trademark of the National Football League; no affiliation is expressed or implied.)
(NB 2: For some reason, what the rest of the world calls "football" is what Americans call "soccer". This super bowl "football" game is decidedly NOT "soccer".)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Venus flytraps produce magnetic fields when they eat:

Carnivorous plants known as Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) lure insects between their blushing leaves with a fragrant nectar. When these insect-hungry plants snap down on their unassuming prey, they generate a measurable magnetic field, according to a new study.

[...] Rather than serving a function for the plant this magnetic field is likely a byproduct of electrical energy that flows through its leaves, said lead author Anne Fabricant, a doctoral candidate at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz in Germany. Still, it's one of the first such fields ever detected in plants.

"Wherever there is electrical activity, there should also be magnetic activity," Fabricant told Live Science. The laws of electromagnetism dictate that anything with an electrical current also generates a magnetic field; and that includes humans, animals and plants. In fact, it's such a common phenomenon among living things that there's a name associated with it: biomagnetism. But while much research focused on such magnetic fields in humans and animals, not much has been done to understand biomagnetism in the plant world.

[...] "It's exciting to demonstrate plant-biomagnetic measurements using atomic magnetometers, which operate at room temperature and can be portable and miniaturized," Fabricant said. "The fact that we were able to detect magnetic fields gives some hints about how electric currents are distributed in the trap." The researchers hope to measure even tinier magnetic fields in other plant species, according to the statement.

Journal Reference:
Anne Fabricant, Geoffrey Z. Iwata, Sönke Scherzer, et al. Action potentials induce biomagnetic fields in carnivorous Venus flytrap plants [open], Scientific Reports (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-81114-w)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Report: Apple VR Could Have 8K, Cost $3,000

Apple's currently in your pocket with its phones, on your wrist with its watches, and thanks to a new report from The Information, we now know that it's probably going to be on your heads soon too with its first VR headset- assuming you can afford it. Recent speculation about an ultra high-end Apple VR headset started just a few weeks ago thanks to Bloomberg, but The Information's new report hints at a bevy of cutting-edge features, including "more than a dozen cameras" and "ultra-high-resolution 8K displays."

These details supposedly come from "a person with direct knowledge of the device," who provided the outlet with internal Apple images of a late-stage prototype of the headset. According to both reports, the Apple VR headset will be a luxury device that uses mesh and swappable headbands to lighten the load on the wearer's head and will cost well over the $300 to $900 price tags of the competition. Current Apple discussions see pricing hitting around $3,000, according to the new report.

For that small fortune, you'll get both VR and Mixed Reality capabilities, since the device's cameras will supposedly go beyond tracking hand movements and will also "be able to pass video of the real world through the visor and display it on screens to the person wearing the headset." Lidar will also reportedly play a role here, helping to map nearby real world objects in virtual spaces rendered by the headset.

But for pure VR enthusiasts, the Apple headset will also supposedly tout two 8K screens, plus eye tracking.

Foveated rendering and eye tracking would be used to reduce the image quality in areas outside of the user's focus.

The report claims this would be a niche product unrelated to an Apple mass market augmented reality (AR) product.

Previously: Apple Goes on an Acquisition Spree, Turns Attention to NextVR
Apple Glasses Leaks and Rumors: Here's Everything We Expect to See

Original Submission

Eratosthenes and an anonymous IRC user report:

Martian landslides may be caused by melting ice and salt under the surface:

The NASA InSight mission has helped researchers determine that the planet experiences Marsquakes, making it seismically active.

And then there is the mystery of Recurring Slope Lineae, known as RSL, that have intrigued scientists for years. These RSL are a form of landslide on Mars, but no one knows what causes them, said Janice Bishop, author of a new study on the phenomena.

"We see them from orbit by the dark streaks they produce on the ground and they tend to always occur on sun-facing slopes, which led geologists to think they were related to melting ice early on," said Bishop, senior research scientist at the SETI Institute in California.

"The interesting thing is that they increase over months following dust storms and then fade away, and they appear to form repeatedly in the same regions. Also, a large number of these are forming in the equatorial part of Mars, where there is very little ice."

[...] These puzzling landslides have never been seen up close by a rover or lander, and until they can be investigated by a robotic explorer, scientists are using lab experiments and Martian analogs on Earth to try and understand them.

[...] "If our hypothesis is correct, then RSL could be indicators for salts on Mars and for near-surface active chemistry," Bishop said. "Most of us Mars scientists have considered modern Mars as a cold and dry and dormant place, shaped mostly by dust storms. This is certainly true of the surface, but our work shows that the subsurface could be much more chemically active than realized before."

Journal Reference:
J. L. Bishop, M. Yeşilbaş, N. W. Hinman, et al. Martian subsurface cryosalt expansion and collapse as trigger for landslides [open], Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abe4459)

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