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upstart writes:

Coffee may reduce risk of death from stroke and heart disease:

Drinking up to three cups of coffee a day may protect your heart, a new study finds.

Among people with no diagnosis of heart disease, regular coffee consumption of 0.5 to 3 cups of coffee a day was associated with a decreased risk of death from heart disease, stroke and early death from any cause when compared to non-coffee drinkers.

The study, presented Friday at the annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology, examined the coffee drinking behavior of over 468,000 people who participate in the UK Biobank Study, which houses in-depth genetic and health information on more than a half a million Brits.

It's another home run for coffee consumption. Studies have found drinking moderate amounts of coffee can protect adults from type 2 diabetes, Parkinson's disease, liver disease, prostate cancer,Alzheimer's, computer back pain [PDF link] and more.

Journal References:
1). Bhupathiraju, Shilpa N, Pan, An, Malik, Vasanti S, et al. Caffeinated and caffeine-free beverages and risk of type 2 diabetes [open], The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.112.048603)
2). Constance E. Ruhl. Coffee and Tea Consumption Are Associated With a Lower Incidence of Chronic Liver Disease in the United States, Gastroenterology (DOI: 10.1053/j.gastro.2005.08.056)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Space: the wooden frontier:

Humans have relied on forests and trees -- for shelter, food, and fuel -- from the earliest times. As technology has advanced, timber has been utilized for buildings, ships, and railroads. And now we may be on the verge of taking wood into space.

[...] [Wood] is considerably more sustainable than advanced alternatives, and its disposal -- especially when dropped from orbit into the upper atmosphere -- is complete and without harmful byproducts.

Moreover, earlier investigations -- in earth-bound labs -- have demonstrated wood's surprising ability to withstand a wide range of temperatures, from -150 to 150 degrees Celsius. Simulated near-vacuum conditions also resulted in negligible structural deterioration of the wood.

[...] "Wood's ability to withstand simulated low earth orbit -- or LEO -- conditions astounded us," explains Koji Murata, head of the space-wood research effort and member of the Biomaterials Design Lab at Kyoto University's graduate school of agriculture.

"We now want to see if we can accurately estimate the effects of the harsh LEO environment on organic materials."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

'Charging room' system powers lights, phones, laptops without wires:

In a move that could one day free the world's countertops from their snarl of charging cords, researchers at the University of Michigan and University of Tokyo have developed a system to safely deliver electricity over the air, potentially turning entire buildings into wireless charging zones.

Detailed in a new study published in Nature Electronics, the technology can deliver 50 watts of power using magnetic fields.

Study author Alanson Sample, U-M professor of computer science and engineering, says that in addition to untethering phones and laptops, the technology could also power implanted medical devices and open new possibilities for mobile robotics in homes and manufacturing facilities. The team is also working on implementing the system in spaces that are smaller than room-size, for example a toolbox that charges tools placed inside it.

"This really ups the power of the ubiquitous computing world—you could put a computer in anything without ever having to worry about charging or plugging in," Sample said. "There are a lot of clinical applications as well; today's heart implants, for example, require a wire that runs from the pump through the body to an external power supply. This could eliminate that, reducing the risk of infection and improving patients' quality of life."

The team, led by researchers at the University of Tokyo, demonstrated the technology in a purpose-built aluminum test room measuring approximately 10 feet by 10 feet. They wirelessly powered lamps, fans and cell phones that could draw current from anywhere in the room regardless of the placement of people and furniture.

upstart writes:

Researchers make alkali metal-chlorine batteries rechargeable:

A new type of rechargeable alkali metal-chlorine battery developed at Stanford holds six times more electricity than the commercially available rechargeable lithium-ion batteries commonly used today.

[...] The advance, detailed in a new paper published Aug. 25 in the journal Nature, could accelerate the use of rechargeable batteries and puts battery researchers one step closer toward achieving two top stated goals of their field: creating a high-performance rechargeable battery that could enable cellphones to be charged only once a week instead of daily and electric vehicles that can travel six times farther without a recharge.

The new so-called alkali metal-chlorine batteries, developed by a team of researchers led by Stanford chemistry Professor Hongjie Dai and doctoral candidate Guanzhou Zhu, relies on the back-and-forth chemical conversion of sodium chloride (Na/Cl2) or lithium chloride (Li/Cl2) to chlorine.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/microsoft-may-withhold-security-updates-from-unsupported-windows-11-pcs/

There are still a lot of question marks about running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware. We know that Microsoft won't go to extraordinary lengths to keep you from running it, we know that the new OS won't be offered to older PCs automatically using Windows Update, and we know that although Microsoft's preferred security settings can degrade performance on older hardware, those settings still won't be the defaults for new installs. But now, Microsoft has added another question to that list: Will unsupported PCs be able to get updates?

The company hasn't out and out refused to offer updates for PCs that don't meet the official requirements, but Microsoft told the Verge that old PCs running Windows 11 wouldn't be "entitled" to Windows Updates, including security and driver updates. Assuming Windows 11 receives major updates once every six months or so, as Windows 10 does, those releases may also need to be installed manually on unsupported computers.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

China cuts amount of time minors can spend playing video games:

Under the new rule, young gamers are only allowed to spend an hour playing online games on Fridays, weekends and holidays, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

The rules, published by the National Press and Publication Administration, said users under the age of 18 would be able to play games only from 8pm to 9pm local time on those days.

Online gaming companies would be barred from providing gaming services to minors in any form outside those hours and would need to ensure they had put real name verification systems in place, said the regulator, which oversees the country's video games market.

The latest move followed reports that children were using adult IDs to circumvent rules. Previously, the authorities had limited young gamers' playing time to 1.5 hours a day and to three hours on holidays.

The National Press and Publication Administration also told Xinhua it would increase the frequency and intensity of inspections for online gaming companies to ensure they were putting in place time limits and anti-addiction systems.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

NASA just cut a 10-cent check to kick-start moon mining tech:

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson presented Justin Cyrus, CEO of Colorado-based space startup Lunar Outpost, with the first payment ever issued to a company as part of a space resource contract announced Aug. 23 here at the 36th annual Space Symposium. The check, which was just 10 cents, or 10 percent of Lunar Outpost's $1 bid, and will go towards the company's efforts to collect lunar dust, or regolith, for the agency.

"We had contractual terms with them when they produce their first element. We would give them 10% of their contract award. I am happy to present a check for 10% of their bid. Justin, here's a check for 10 cents," Nelson said.

[...] "This sets a legal and procedural framework that will be utilized for generations and decades to come for companies like ours and many others to go out and collect resources from the lunar surface from other planetary bodies and make them basically useful for humanity," Cyrus said.

[...] Now, as part of this contract, the company will "collect a small amount of moon dust, verify the collection and transfer the ownership of that lunar regolith," Nelson said.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A Bad Solar Storm Could Cause an 'Internet Apocalypse':

Scientists have known for decades that an extreme solar storm, or coronal mass ejection, could damage electrical grids and potentially cause prolonged blackouts. The repercussions would be felt everywhere from global supply chains and transportation to internet and GPS access. Less examined until now, though, is the impact such a solar emission could have on internet infrastructure specifically. New research shows that the failures could be catastrophic, particularly for the undersea cables that underpin the global internet.

At the SIGCOMM 2021 data communication conference on Thursday, Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi of the University of California, Irvine presented "Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse," an examination of the damage a fast-moving cloud of magnetized solar particles could cause the global internet. Abdu Jyothi's research points out an additional nuance to a blackout-causing solar storm: the scenario where even if power returns in hours or days, mass internet outages persist.

There's some good news up front. Abdu Jyothi found that local and regional internet infrastructure would be at low risk of damage even in a massive solar storm, because optical fiber itself isn't affected by geomagnetically induced currents. Short cable spans are also grounded very regularly. But for long undersea cables that connect continents, the risks are much greater. A solar storm that disrupted a number of these cables around the world could cause a massive loss of connectivity by cutting countries off at the source, even while leaving local infrastructure intact.

[...] On top of all of this, a major solar storm could also knock out any equipment that orbits the Earth that enables services like satellite internet and global positioning.

"There are no models currently available of how this could play out," Abdu Jyothi says. "We have more understanding of how these storms would impact power systems, but that's all on land. In the ocean it's even more difficult to predict."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Eternal Change for No Energy: A Time Crystal Finally Made Real:

In a preprint posted online Thursday night, researchers at Google in collaboration with physicists at Stanford, Princeton and other universities say that they have used Google's quantum computer to demonstrate a genuine "time crystal." In addition, a separate research group claimed earlier this month to have created a time crystal in a diamond.

A novel phase of matter that physicists have strived to realize for many years, a time crystal is an object whose parts move in a regular, repeating cycle, sustaining this constant change without burning any energy.

"The consequence is amazing: You evade the second law of thermodynamics," said Roderich Moessner, director of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany, and a co-author on the Google paper. That's the law that says disorder always increases.

Time crystals are also the first objects to spontaneously break "time-translation symmetry," the usual rule that a stable object will remain the same throughout time. A time crystal is both stable and ever-changing, with special moments that come at periodic intervals in time.

[...] "This is just this completely new and exciting space that we're working in now," said Vedika Khemani, a condensed matter physicist now at Stanford who co-discovered the novel phase while she was a graduate student and co-authored the new paper with the Google team.

Journal Reference:
Mi, Xiao, Ippoliti, Matteo, Quintana, Chris, et al. Observation of Time-Crystalline Eigenstate Order on a Quantum Processor, (DOI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.13571)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The Ragnarok gang, also known as Asnarok, closed up shop this week, publishing the news to their public website, according to a post published Thursday by analyst firm Recorded Future’s The Record, among other sources.

As a parting “gift,” the group released their decryptor, hardcoded with a master decryption key, for free as well on the portal. Previously, the site was primarily the place where Ragnarok would publish data from victims who refused to pay ransom.

“Ragnarok now becomes the third ransomware group that shuts down and releases a way for victims to recover files for free this summer, after the likes of Avaddon in June and SynAck earlier this month,” according to The Record.

[...] The gang is the latest ransomware group to shutter operations, due in part to mounting pressures and crackdowns from international authorities that already have led some key players to cease their activity. In addition to Avaddon and SyNack, two heavy hitters in the game — REvil and DarkSide – also closed up shop recently.

Other ransomware groups are feeling the pressure in other ways. An apparently vengeful affiliate of the Conti Gang recently leaked the playbook of the ransomware group after alleging that the notorious cybercriminal organization underpaid him for doing its dirty work.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Researchers from MIT, the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have developed a new way to deliver molecular therapies to cells. The system, called SEND, can be programmed to encapsulate and deliver different RNA cargoes. SEND harnesses natural proteins in the body that form virus-like particles and bind RNA, and it may provoke less of an immune response than other delivery approaches.

The new delivery platform works efficiently in cell models, and, with further development, could open up a new class of delivery methods for a wide range of molecular medicines — including those for gene editing and gene replacement. Existing delivery vehicles for these therapeutics can be inefficient and randomly integrate into the genome of cells, and some can stimulate unwanted immune reactions. SEND has the promise to overcome these limitations, which could open up new opportunities to deploy molecular medicine.

[...] Reporting in Science, the team describes how SEND (Selective Endogenous eNcapsidation for cellular Delivery) takes advantage of molecules made by human cells. At the center of SEND is a protein called PEG10, which normally binds to its own mRNA and forms a spherical protective capsule around it. In their study, the team engineered PEG10 to selectively package and deliver other RNA. The scientists used SEND to deliver the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system to mouse and human cells to edit targeted genes.

[...] “By mixing and matching different components in the SEND system, we believe that it will provide a modular platform for developing therapeutics for different diseases,” said [CRISPR pioneer and senior study author Feng] Zhang.

Journal Reference:
Michael Segel, Blake Lash, Jingwei Song, et al. Mammalian retrovirus-like protein PEG10 packages its own mRNA and can be pseudotyped for mRNA delivery [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.abg6155)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

European Union To Remove The U.S. From Its 'Safe Travel' List:

American travelers in Europe may soon face additional Covid-related restrictions such as quarantines and testing requirements. The European Union has already begun the procedure to remove the United States and five other countries from its "safe travel" list, reports Reuters.

Travelers from countries on the safe list can visit E.U. countries without quarantining by showing only a recent negative test result, while travelers from other countries are discouraged from visiting for non-essential reasons. However as the "safe list" is non-binding, American travelers would not automatically be barred from entry to E.U. countries. The last word will come from each individual E.U. country, which has the authority to impose their own restrictions. In other words, it's going to be a messy patchwork of different rules and regulations across the continent.

The change to the so-called "safe list" could become official as soon as Monday. The other countries on the chopping block include Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro, and North Macedonia.

The E.U.'s safe list includes countries outside the 27-member block that are considered safe amid the Coronavirus pandemic due to the low rates of infections. The list is updated periodically based on the latest coronavirus developments in each country.

The threshold for being on the "safe travel" list is having fewer than 75 new Covid-19 cases daily per 100,000 inhabitants over the previous 14 days. Currently the United States has an infection rate roughly seven times above that threshold.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

2,200 Year Old Alexander the Great Statue Discovered in Alexandria:

The Ministry of Antiquities in Cairo has discovered a statue of Alexander the Great within an ancient "residential and commercial zone" in Alexandria that they believe was a trade center in the region during the Ptolemaic period. The archaeologists made their discovery after 9 months of excavations.

The team discovered molds for statues of Alexander the Great at the site as well as an alabaster bust of the iconic ancient leader. Also amongst these items were materials for creating amulets for warriors.

As they explored this area of Alexandria, known as the al-Shatby neighborhoud, "the mission found a large network of tunnel tanks painted in pink for storing rain, flood and groundwater to be used during the draught [sic - drought] time" said Mostafa Waziri, the Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt to the Xinhua news agency.

Waziri further explained the lay out of the town: "it was composed of a main street and several branch roads that are all connected with a sanitation network."

He believes that the area was active from the 2nd century B.C. to the 4th century A.D. Waziri also noted that the team found an array of pottery pots, coins, plates, fishing tools, and rest houses for travelers. The ruins of the area's buildings combined with the artifacts found there have led the team to believe that the town had a lively market that sold pots and had workshops for the construction of statues, amulets, and other items.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Researchers from the University of Kent, the Research Institute for Environment Treatment and Vita-Market Ltd have discovered the universal mathematical formula that can describe any bird's egg existing in nature, a feat which has been unsuccessful until now.

Egg-shape has long attracted the attention of mathematicians, engineers, and biologists from an analytical point of view. The shape has been highly regarded for its evolution as large enough to incubate an embryo, small enough to exit the body in the most efficient way, not roll away once laid, is structurally sound enough to bear weight and be the beginning of life for 10,500 species that have survived since the dinosaurs. The egg has been called the "perfect shape."

Analysis of all egg shapes used four geometric figures: sphere, ellipsoid, ovoid, and pyriform (conical), with a mathematical formula for the pyriform yet to be derived.

To rectify this, researchers introduced an additional function into the ovoid formula, developing a mathematical model to fit a completely novel geometric shape characterized as the last stage in the evolution of the sphere-ellipsoid, which it is applicable to any egg geometry.

This new universal mathematical formula for egg shape is based on four parameters: egg length, maximum breadth, shift of the vertical axis, and the diameter at one quarter of the egg length.

This long sought-for universal formula is a significant step in understanding not only the egg shape itself, but also how and why it evolved, thus making widespread biological and technological applications possible.

The actual article is pay-walled, but the abstract is available.

Journal Reference:
Valeriy G. Narushin, Michael N. Romanov, Darren K. Griffin. Egg and math: introducing a universal formula for egg shape, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1111/nyas.14680)

Original Submission

This story presents a roundup of a selection of Microsoft Windows 11 prerelease story submissions. Included are the following:

• Windows 11 To Only Support One Intel 7th Gen CPU, No AMD Zen CPUs
• Why Windows 11 Has Such Strict Hardware Requirements, According to Microsoft
• Microsoft Won't Stop You Installing Windows 11 on Older PCs
• Start or Please Stop? Power users mourn features lost in Windows 11 'simplification'

If Windows isn't your cup of tea, then please feel free to skip this story; another story will appear presently. Otherwise, please see the rest of the story below the fold: