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upstart writes:

More people are poisoning themselves with horse-deworming drug to thwart COVID:

Prior to the pandemic, ivermectin had been used for decades to prevent and treat parasitic infections in people and animals. At low concentrations, the drug interferes with specific ion channels that are found in parasitic nematode worms, but not in people or animals. The ion channel disruption in nematodes results in paralysis and keeps the worms from feeding and reproducing. As such, ivermectin is routinely used in small animals, such as dogs and cats, to prevent heartworm infections. In large livestock animals—including cattle, horses, pigs, and sheep—it's used as a deworming drug.

In humans, the FDA has approved ivermectin tablets to treat conditions caused by parasitic intestinal worms as well as topical formulations for some external parasites, like head lice. But it's critical to note that the ivermectin drugs available to people involve relatively small doses and are in formulations known to be safe for human use. The over-the-counter livestock drugs, on the other hand, are not formulated for human use and have much larger doses for the animals' much larger bodies. At higher concentrations, ivermectin begins to interfere with not just nematode ion channels, but other types of critical channels in humans and animals, like neurotransmitter channels. This can be extremely dangerous.

[...] But the petri dish data has yet to translate into any convincing clinical data that the drug is actually useful against COVID-19 in whole people. Studies in humans have been small and produced inconsistent results. Meta-analyses aimed at weeding out potential clinical benefits have struggled with faulty data, and some have been retracted.

takyon writes:

Imagination Technologies to design RISC-V cores:

Now better known for its PowerVR embedded GPUs, Imagination Technologies tried to enter the CPU market by purchasing MIPS Technologies and introducing microAptiv, interAptiv, and proAptiv cores in 2012.

It did not end up well, as the company had to sell its MIPS technology a few years later, and the MIPS architecture is now barely supported. But Imagination is now working on getting back into the CPU space by designing RISC-V cores.

[...] a May 2021 report by the Financial Times claims Imagination expects to invest up to $150m over the next two years to target a fresh push into the processor design market, specifically citing the RISC-V architecture.

Press release.

Also at Tom's Hardware.

See also: QEMU 6.1 Released With RISC-V Improvements, AMD Emulation Fixes

Related: Imagination Technologies Acquired for $675 Million, MIPS to be Sold Off
Wave Computing Acquires MIPS Technologies
Imagination Announces B-Series GPU IP: Scaling up with Multi-GPU

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The Science of Underground Kingdoms:

Next, Andrade's team set about analyzing what the ants were actually doing as they worked, and a few patterns emerged. For one, Andrade says, the ants tried to be efficient as possible. That meant they dug their tunnels along the inside edges of the cups, because the cup itself would act as part of their tunnels' structures, resulting in less work for them. They also dug their tunnels as straight as possible.

"That makes sense because a straight line is the shortest path between two points," Andrade says. "And with them taking advantage of the sides of the container, it shows that the ants are very efficient at what they do."

The ants also dug their tunnels as steeply as they possibly could, right up to what's known as the angle of repose. That angle represents the steepest angle that a granular material—a material made of individual grains—can be piled up before it collapses.

To understand the angle of repose, picture a child building a sand castle at the beach. If the child uses dry sand, every scoop of sand they add will slide down the sides of the pile they've already made. More sand will make the pile taller, but also wider, and it will never get steeper. On the other hand, if the child uses wet sand, they will be able to pile the sand steeply enough to build walls, and towers, and all the other things a sand castle might have. Wet sand has a higher angle of repose than dry sand, and every granular material has an angle that is unique to it. The ants, Andrade says, can tell how steep that angle is for whatever they're digging in, and they don't exceed it. That, too, makes sense, he says.

"If I'm a digger, and I'm going to survive, my digging technique is going to align with the laws of physics, otherwise my tunnels are going to collapse and I'm going to die," he says.

Citation: "Unearthing real time 3D ant tunneling mechanics," appears in the August 23 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22002/D1.1996

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Science Shows Attractiveness Pays Off at Work – But There's a Trick To Level the Playing Field:

Beautiful people are more likely to get hired, receive better performance evaluations and get paid more—but it's not just because of their good looks, according to new research from the University at Buffalo School of Management.

The study [...] found that while a "beauty premium" exists across professions, it's partially because attractive people develop distinct traits as a result of how the world responds to their attractiveness. They build a greater sense of power and have more opportunities to improve nonverbal communication skills throughout their lives.

[...] "What we found was that while good looking people have a greater sense of power and are better nonverbal communicators, their less-attractive peers can level the playing field during the hiring process by adopting a powerful posture."

[...] In the second study, the researchers asked certain participants to strike a 'power pose' by standing with their feet shoulder-width apart, hands on hips, chest out and chin up during their pitch. With this technique, the less attractive people were able to match the level of nonverbal presence that their more attractive counterparts displayed naturally.

Journal Reference:
Min-Hsuan Tu, Elisabeth K. Gilbert, Joyce E. Bono. Is beauty more than skin deep? Attractiveness, power, and nonverbal presence in evaluations of hirability, Personnel Psychology (DOI: 10.1111/peps.12469)

Original Submission

owl writes:

WaPo link (may be paywalled): https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/07/30/oak-mites-bite-cicadas-dc/

Archive.is link (no paywall): https://archive.is/AEi6a

The incessant, shrieking sounds of cicadas may no longer be afflicting the Washington region, but experts say the insects may be bringing a new nuisance — oak leaf itch mites. And they bite.

"We wake up at night just scratching," said Cynthia Palmer of Arlington, speaking for herself and her 16-year-old daughter. Palmer said she has 12 to 15 bites all over her body and finds new ones daily. "It's like we have splotches of white paint all over us now that we're using the calamine [lotion]. The sores are red and swollen, so it's not pretty."

Across the region, residents are noticing these unfamiliar bites, mostly on their upper bodies, and are freaking out. They are rushing to doctors for help, pleading for a cure to the painful itching.

Gene Kritsky, the dean of behavioral and natural sciences at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, has an explanation: These microscopic mites are feeding on the billions of cicada eggs produced across the D.C. region and dropping out of trees. If you happen to be under or near these oak trees, those mites may land on you and bite.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

SpaceX paused Starlink launches to give its internet satellites lasers

SpaceX hasn't launched any Starlink internet satellites since June. It turns out it's because the company has been adding "lasers" to the spacecraft.

[...] "We're flying a number of laser terminals right now in space," Shotwell said, adding that SpaceX is now working to integrate lasers into all of its Starlink satellites.

"That's why we have been struggling for six or eight weeks — we wanted the next set to have laser terminals on them," Shotwell said.

[...] With this technology, SpaceX hopes that ground stations on Earth won't be necessary with every batch of satellites as part of the constellation. Making this change could allow satellite internet coverage to reach areas where ground stations cannot be built, Shotwell explained.

The recent launch lull won't last much longer

Original Submission

JoeMerchant writes:

Dan Ariely Retracts Honesty Study Based On Fake Data:

A landmark study that endorsed a simple way to curb cheating is going to be retracted nearly a decade later after a group of scientists found that it relied on faked data.

According to the 2012 paper, when people signed an honesty declaration at the beginning of a form, rather than the end, they were less likely to lie. A seemingly cheap and effective method to fight fraud, it was adopted by at least one insurance company, tested by government agencies around the world, and taught to corporate executives. It made a splash among academics, who cited it in their own research more than 400 times.

The paper also bolstered the reputations of two of its authors — Max Bazerman, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, and Dan Ariely, a psychologist and behavioral economist at Duke University — as leaders in the study of decision-making, irrationality, and unethical behavior. Ariely, a frequent TED Talk speaker and a Wall Street Journal advice columnist, cited the study in lectures and in his New York Times bestseller The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone — Especially Ourselves.

A group of outside sleuths scrutinized the original paper’s underlying data and stumbled upon a bigger problem: One of its main experiments was faked “beyond any shadow of a doubt,” a team of anonymous coward researchers concluded in a post on the blog: Data Colada, on August 17, 2021.

The bigger issue, to me, is why we have not instituted "black box warnings" on all stories which report conclusions based on self reported data?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Fukushima nuclear water to be released via undersea tunnel - SRN News:

The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant said Wednesday it plans to build an undersea tunnel so that massive amounts of treated but still radioactive water can be released into the ocean about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) away from the plant to avoid interference with local fishing.

The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, said it hopes to start releasing the water in spring 2023. TEPCO says hundreds of storage tanks at the plant need to be removed to make room for facilities necessary for the plant’s decommissioning.

An official in charge of the water discharge project, Junichi Matsumoto, said TEPCO will construct the undersea tunnel by drilling through bedrock in the seabed near its No. 5 reactor, which survived the meltdowns at the plant, to minimize possible underground contamination or leakage of radioactive ground water into the tunnel.

Increasing amounts of radioactive water have been stored in about 1,000 tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi plant since 2011, when a massive earthquake and tsunami damaged three reactors and their cooling water became contaminated and began leaking. The plant says the tanks will reach their capacity late next year.

The government decided in April to start discharging the water, after further treatment and dilution, into the Pacific Ocean in spring 2023 under safety standards set by regulators. The idea has been fiercely opposed by fishermen, residents and neighboring countries including China and South Korea.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Silent changes to Western Digital's budget SSD may lower speeds by up to 50%:

Western Digital's WD Blue SN550 budget SSD is a well-reviewed popular NVMe device that has regularly shown up on various sites' "best SSD" lists since it was released at the tail-end of 2019. The drive uses a four-lane PCI Express 3.0 interface and was novel for being able to perform better than SATA SSDs for about the same amount of money.

But that may be changing, thanks to quiet behind-the-scenes component changes: Chinese site Expreview (via Tom's Hardware and ExtremeTech) says that a newer version of the drive manufactured in July 2021 was writing data at speeds of about 390MB per second after the drive's cache had filled up. According to Expreview, that's about half the speed of older versions of the SN550; Tom's Hardware measured speeds of about 610MB per second during a sustained write test on the original SN550, so the exact amount of performance degradation may vary. Because both the old and new versions of the SN550 use the same SSD controller, it seems likely that the slowdown is being caused by inferior NAND flash.

Modern SSDs typically pair a large amount of slower NAND flash (for capacity) and a smaller cache of faster flash memory (for the peak speeds advertised on the box). Depending on the SSD, this cache memory is designed to sustain anywhere between a few gigabytes' and a few dozen gigabytes' worth of writes before it has to fall back on the slower flash. Most of the time, you'll never notice the drive slowing down, because you're not going to fill the cache up all the way by using your computer for basic browsing, office work, or even photo editing.

The people who will notice are professional video editors who are regularly exporting, copying, and moving huge 4K video files around all day. It's normal not to get an SSD's advertised peak performance 100 percent of the time, but for a drive to perform substantially worse than it performed in thorough, professional reviews is misleading at best.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

FAA to review Boeing employee reports of pressure over safety issues:

The Federal Aviation Administration is launching a broad review of how Boeing Co. employees handle safety matters on the agency's behalf after some company engineers said they face undue pressure, according to an agency letter and people familiar with the matter.

An FAA survey conducted this year found 35% of a small sample of certain Boeing employees reported problems including pressure and hurdles to transparency, according to an Aug. 19 agency letter to Boeing. Some surveyed employees, who are part of a group empowered by the agency to assist its work, said they encountered difficulties in being transparent with regulators, according to the letter, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

U.S. aviation regulators have long relied on aerospace-company employees to act on their behalf for performing certain tasks, such as signing off on certain safety assessments or approving aircraft for delivery. The problems cited by Boeing employees in the survey "indicate the environment does not support independence" of those who are empowered to act on the agency's behalf, according to the letter, which was signed by Ian Won, acting manager of the FAA's Boeing oversight office in the Seattle area.

upstart writes:

US government agencies plan to increase their use of facial recognition technology:

A 90-page report published by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) details how federal agencies currently use, and plan to expand their use of, facial recognition systems. Ten of 24 agencies surveyed plan to broaden their use of the technology by 2023. Ten agencies are also investing in research and development for the technology.

The report, published August 24, is the outcome of a study requested by Congress on federal agencies' use of facial recognition during fiscal year 2020. It characterizes the use of the technology as "increasingly common," with most agencies surveyed using it for cybersecurity, domestic law enforcement, or physical security. The report also asked all agencies that participated in the study about their future plans for facial recognition.

The results come after a year of public backlash from privacy and civil liberties advocates against police and government use of the technology. Facial recognition has proved to be less accurate on people with darker skin, women, and younger and older people. A report from the GAO released earlier this summer also described a lack of oversight by federal law enforcement agencies that use the technology.

canopic jug writes:

Consultant and author Peter N M Hansteen has written up an overview of recent and not so recent changes in OpenBSD that make life better (and may turn up elsewhere too). He covers a few decades of developments that he has found particularly useful and explains why. He covers greylisting, spam filters, OpenSSH, and of course PF.

When I found OpenBSD more than twenty years ago, my main Unix exposure was from working with Linuxes and FreeBSD. What attracted me to OpenBSD and finally had me buy an OpenBSD 2.5 CD set was the strong focus on security and code correctness. When the CD set and the classic wireframe daemon T-shirt finally arrived in the mail, I set about at first to install it on whatever spare hardware I had lying around.

[...] OpenBSD has had traffic shaping available in the ALTQ subsystem since the very early days. ALTQ was rolled into PF at some point, but the code was still marked experimental 15 years after it was written, and most people who tried to use it in anger at the time found the syntax inelegant at best, infuriating or worse at most times.

So Henning Brauer took a keen interest in the problem, and reached the conclusion that all the various traffic shaping algorithms were not in fact needed. They could all except one be reduced to mere configuration options, either as setting priorities on pass or match rules or as variations of the theme of the mother algorithm Hierarchical Fair Service Curve (HFSC for short).

Soon after, another not-small diff was making the rounds. The patch was applied early in the OpenBSD 5.5 cycle, and for the lifetime of that release older ALTQ setups were possible side by side with the new queueing system.

OpenBSD is a complete operating system and originally forked from NetBSD back in 1995 which forked from 386BSD which was ported from 4BSD. It's emphasis is on portability, standardization, correctness, proactive security, and integrated cryptography. The current release, 6.9, is its 50^th release.

Previously:
(2020) Using OpenBSD Routing Tables to Segment the Home Network for Privacy
(2020) The OpenBSD Project's 25th Anniversary
(2020) WireGuard Imported Into OpenBSD
(2017) OpenBSD and the Modern Laptop
and many more...

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Blue Origin Employees Are Jumping Ship

Jeff Bezos's spaceflight company has lost "at least 17" high-ranking staffers in recent months, reports say.

Jeff Bezos might have felt triumphant when he rocketed toward the edge of space last month, but apparently the same can't be said about other employees at Blue Origin. On Friday, CNBC was first to report that over a dozen engineers had left Bezos's company in recent weeks, with some departing for high-ranking roles at rival spaceflight outfits.

[....] A Blue Origin spokesperson told CNBC that, in spite of the turnover, the company was growing at a rapid pace, adding 850 people to its headcount in 2020 alone and adding another 650 so far this year. "We continue to fill out major leadership roles in manufacturing, quality, engine design, and vehicle design," they said. "It's a team we're building and we have great talent."

Still, these high-profile departures are a good reminder that the business of space can be a hard one to break into, even for the billionaire founder of Amazon.

It's not that nobody wants to work for your company. It's just that they don't want to work for you.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Seawater could provide nearly unlimited amounts of critical battery material:

Booming electric vehicle sales have spurred a growing demand for lithium. But the light metal, which is essential for making power-packed rechargeable batteries, isn’t abundant. Now, researchers report a major step toward tapping a virtually limitless lithium supply: pulling it straight out of seawater.

“This represents substantial progress” for the field, says Jang Wook Choi, a chemical engineer at Seoul National University who was not involved with the work.

[...] Lithium is prized for rechargeables because it stores more energy by weight than other battery materials. Manufacturers use more than 160,000 tons of the material every year, a number expected to grow nearly 10-fold over the next decade. But lithium supplies are limited and concentrated in a handful of countries, where the metal is either mined or extracted from briny water.

[...] The advance is still not likely cheap enough to compete with mining lithium on land, [materials scientist Chong] Liu says. However, she says her group is attempting to increase selectivity using other types of lithium-ion battery electrodes.

Choi adds that the approach might also prove useful for recovering lithium from discarded batteries, giving the metal a second lease on life—and potentially supercharging the ascendancy of electric vehicles.

Journal Reference:
Chong Liu, Yanbin Li, Dingchang Lin, et. al. Lithium Extraction from Seawater through Pulsed Electrochemical Intercalation, Joule (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2020.05.017)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Countering climate change with cool pavements:

Pavements are an abundant urban surface, covering around 40 percent of American cities. But in addition to carrying traffic, they can also emit heat.

Due to what’s called the urban heat island effect, densely built, impermeable surfaces like pavements can absorb solar radiation and warm up their surroundings by re-emitting that radiation as heat. This phenomenon poses a serious threat to cities. It increases air temperatures by up as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit and contributes to health and environmental risks — risks that climate change will magnify.

In response, researchers at the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (MIT CSHub) are studying how a surface that ordinarily heightens urban heat islands can instead lessen their intensity. Their research focuses on “cool pavements,” which reflect more solar radiation and emit less heat than conventional paving surfaces.

[...] Cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix have already conducted sizeable experiments with cool pavements, but the technology is still not widely implemented. The CSHub team hopes their research can guide future cool paving projects to help cities cope with a changing climate.

[...] “We can build cool pavements in many different ways,” says Randolph Kirchain, a researcher in the Materials Science Laboratory and co-director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub. “Brighter materials like concrete and lighter-colored aggregates offer higher albedo, while existing asphalt pavements can be made ‘cool’ through reflective coatings.”

CSHub researchers considered these several options in a study of Boston and Phoenix. Their analysis considered different outcomes when concrete, reflective asphalt, and reflective concrete replaced conventional asphalt pavements — which make up more than 95 percent of pavements worldwide.

Journal Reference:
Hessam AzariJafari, Xin Xu, Jeremy Gregory, et al. Urban-Scale Evaluation of Cool Pavement Impacts on the Urban Heat Island Effect and Climate Change [open], Environmental Science & Technology (DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.1c00664)

Original Submission