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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Inspired by extremely strong spider silk, researchers at NTNU have developed a new material that defies previously seen trade-offs between toughness and stiffness.

The material is a type of polymer known as an elastomer because it has a rubber-like elasticity. The newly developed elastomer features molecules that have eight hydrogen bonds in one repeat unit, and it is these bonds that help to evenly distribute stress put on the material and make it so durable.

"The eight hydrogen bonds are the origin of the extraordinary mechanical properties," says Zhiliang Zhang, professor of mechanics and materials at NTNU's Department of Structural Engineering. The material was developed at NTNU NanoLab and partially funded by the Research Council of Norway.

The idea to introduce a higher than usual number of hydrogen bonds came from nature. "Spider silk contains the same kind of structure," says Yizhi Zhuo, who developed the new material as part of his Ph.D. and postdoc work. "We knew it could result in very special properties."

Scientists have previously noted that spider silk—specifically dragline silk, which provides the spokes and outer rim of a spider's web—is both exceptionally stiff and tough.

Stiffness and toughness are distinct properties in engineering, and are often in opposition. Stiff materials can withstand a lot of stress before deforming, whereas tough materials can absorb a lot of energy before they break.

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owl writes:

The World's Biggest Plant to Suck Carbon Dioxide From the Sky Is Up and Running:

The world's biggest direct air capture (DAC) plant is set to come online in Iceland on Wednesday. The moment is an important one in developing new technologies to help suck carbon dioxide out of the air—but raises a whole host of questions on the future of how we're going to put those technologies to use.

The Orca plant, located about 20 miles (30 kilometers) southeast of the capital of Reykjavík, uses large industrial vacuums to remove carbon dioxide from the air. The plant's owners and operators, a Swiss startup called Climeworks, said that the plant can remove 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere, powered by hydrothermal energy. Climeworks has partnered with a carbon storage company to take that carbon dioxide and store it deep underground, where it turns into stone (whoa) after about two years.

Unlike other carbon capture technologies that prevent carbon dioxide from being released from dirty technologies in the first place—which are generally attached to fossil fuel facilities—DAC plants like Orca present the possibility of removing some of the damage we've already done. In theory, we could dot the earth with plants like Orca, resulting in what are known as "negative emissions." These types of technology aren't ready for primetime at scale yet, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said we need them to help meet the target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) outlined in the Paris Agreement (in addition to cutting emissions in the first place of course).

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upstart writes:

Hot pack or cold pack: Which one to reach for when you're injured or in pain:

When you injure yourself, you may reach for a hot or a cold pack. Which option is better depends on the nature of your pain, what caused it and how long you've had it.

[...] Cold therapy should be used for injuries that result in swelling and inflammation such as joint sprains, muscle strains or bruises. The objective is to slow blood flow to the area and prevent the effects of the injury. Gel packs that can be kept in the freezer, coolant sprays or even a bag of frozen veggies will do the job.

It is important to avoid holding ice in direct contact with the skin for long periods as this can cause skin damage. It is best to wrap ice in a cloth and then apply it.

Cold therapy is most effective in the immediate or acute phase of pain when swelling and inflammation first kicks off. Typically, the treatment should be applied for about 20 minutes and can be reapplied every two hours for a few days. After that, the injury should be well into the healing phase and the swelling and inflammation will subside.

[...] Heat therapy is not recommended for acute management of sprains, strains or contusions as this promotes blood flow and can increase swelling and pain.

Heat therapy can help chronic conditions such as recurring joint pain, neck or back pain.

upstart writes:

AT&T COW drones restoring phone service cut by Ida's extreme weather:

In their effort to reconnect southeastern communities cut off by Hurricane Ida, telecom companies are taking to the skies with flying COWs[*]. Far from heifers, however, those cell-on-wings units are ultra-buffed, extreme weather-resistant drones that provide phone service to isolated people with the outside world.

Telecom giant AT&T says it deployed its most recent generation of COWs to areas of the southeast whose electricity and communications connections have been cut off by Ida. Though tethered to a multi-purpose cable attached to ground equipment, the specialized drone can hover at 300 feet in extreme weather conditions, providing LTE phone coverage over an area of 40 miles. AT&T's COWs can withstand wind of up to 50 mph, and operate almost indefinitely.

The aerial communication relay stations were developed by AT&T's Network Disaster Recovery Team, which has already produced several generations of the craft. The first version was rolled out nearly a half decade ago, with upgrades following from there.

The COW vehicles, which process dozens of gigabytes of data and thousands of texts and calls as they fly, were first deployed to in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria 2017. The following year, they operated 200 feet above Mexico Beach, Florida in severe weather to provide LTE coverage to residents, first responders, and surrounding counties deprived of phone service. Continued improvements have led to the current version, which operates at altitudes 500% higher than terrestrial COW masts, broadening the reach of service they provide.

[*] COW: Cellular On Wings.

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DannyB writes:

The James Webb telescope has a bona fide launch date:

The telescope is ready. So is the rocket. It's time.

NASA announced in August that the James Webb Space Telescope had passed its final ground-based tests and was being prepared for shipment to its launch site in Kourou, French Guiana. Now, the oft-delayed $10 billion telescope has an official launch date: December 18, 2021.

The date was announced on Wednesday by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the launch provider, Arianespace. The space telescope will launch on an Ariane 5 rocket.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope launch delayed to December:

NASA's long-awaited and high-powered James Webb Space Telescope won't begin observations this year after NASA and its counterpart the European Space Agency (ESA) announced another launch delay.

[...] "We now know the day that thousands of people have been working towards for many years, and that millions around the world are looking forward to," Günther Hasinger, ESA's director of science, said in an agency statement. "Webb and its Ariane 5 launch vehicle are ready, thanks to the excellent work across all mission partners. We are looking forward to seeing the final preparations for launch at Europe's Spaceport."

[...] Once the James Webb Space Telescope launches, the spacecraft will spend about a month traveling the 930,000 miles (1.5 kilometers) out to its destination, the second Lagrange point (L2)[*]. Here, the observatory can enjoy a relatively stable "parking spot" orbit on the opposite side of Earth from the sun. The location is crucial for the telescope, which must remain well shielded from the heat that would interfere with the infrared capabilities on the observatory.

The telescope's instruments won't turn on until two or three months after launch, and typical science won't begin until about six months after launch, according to ESA.

[*] Wikipedia entry on Lagrange points and the specific entry on L2.

Hopefully all will go well with the launch and deployment.

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takyon writes:

XPoint capacity to surpass DRAM by 2030

We have just learned about a report by Coughlin Associates and Objective Analysis called Emerging Memories Take Off, courtesy of Tom Coughlin. The report looks at 3D XPoint, MRAM, ReRAM and other emerging memory technologies and says their revenues could grow to $44 billion by 2031. That's because they will displace some server DRAM, and also NOR flash and SRAM — either as standalone chips or as embedded memory within ASICs and microcontrollers.

The emerging memory market is set to grow substantially with 3D XPoint revenues reaching $20 billion-plus by 2031, and standalone MRAM and STT-RAM reaching $1.7 billion in revenues by then. The report predicts that the bulk of embedded NOR and SRAM in SoCs will be replaced by embedded ReRAM and MRAM.

A chart shows XPoint capacity ships crossing the 100,000PB level in 2028 and so surpassing DRAM, whose capacity growth is slowing slightly. The chart shows XPoint capacity shipped being 1000PB this year. That number will grow 100x to 100,000PB in 2028.

Related: Micron Abandons 3D XPoint, Puts Fab Up for Sale
Micron Sells 3D XPoint Fab to Texas Instruments, Not Intel

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

An international team of researchers has developed a way to create non-radiating sources of electromagnetism. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the group describes their technique and how well it worked when they tested a model based on their ideas.

For many years, physicists have grappled with the idea of "meta-atoms," macroscopic objects that have alternating current that prevents the emission of electromagnetic energy. In 1957, Yakov Zel'dovich came up with the idea of anapole states, where parity violations in electric current would produce electric moments with no poles. Since that time, some astrophysicists have suggested that such states could explain how dark matter remains hidden.

[...] Due to constraints in their lab, the team was forced to create a device based on microwaves rather than radio frequencies—they placed an 18-mm antenna inside of a 6.4-mm disk and put them into an anechoic chamber. They used another antenna to measure emissions from the device after it was turned on. They found the device able to support total suppression of far-field radiation. The researchers suggest their device could pave the way toward the development of new kinds of wireless power transfer devices.

Journal Reference:
Esmaeel Zanganeh, Andrey Evlyukhin, Andrey Miroshnichenko, et al. Anapole Meta-Atoms: Nonradiating Electric and Magnetic Sources, Physical Review Letters (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.096804)

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canopic jug writes:

Digital Music News has a brief mention about ABBA's new digital costumes, made by Industrial Light and Magic, which will be used at the concert tour accompanying their album release. It sounds like a similar method as was used to make Andy Serkis look like Gollum, but this time making people look younger and fresher. It's unclear whether the avatars will be mapped on the fly to real movement happening along with the concert or just running through pre-precorded routines.

Creative Director Ben Morris says his company has recreated ABBA in its prime, from 1979. "We are creating them as digital characters, then use performance capture techniques to animate them and make them look perfectly real," Morris says.

Klaxons' James Righton and Little Boots will both appear as part of the live band. The reunion will be the first in four decades with "I Still Have Faith in You" and "Don't Shut Me Down" celebrating the announcement.

The new ABBA album Voyage will contain ten new tracks, with at least one Christmas song. Will the group dethrone Mariah Carey's Christmas tradition of taking the top of the Christmas charts? I guess we'll see later this year.

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upstart writes:

High Court finds media outlets are responsible for Facebook comments in Dylan Voller defamation case - ABC News:

The High Court has dismissed an appeal by some of Australia's biggest media outlets including The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian, finding they are the publishers of third-party comments on their Facebook pages.

Former Northern Territory detainee Dylan Voller wants to sue the companies over alleged defamatory comments on their Facebook pages in the New South Wales Supreme Court.

But the case had been stalled by the dispute over whether the outlets were the publishers of the material. The High Court today found that, by running the Facebook pages, the media groups participated in communicating any defamatory material posted by third parties and are therefore responsible for the comments.

Mr Voller's defamation case had been progressing through the courts until questions arose over whether the outlets were considered the publishers of the Facebook comments, which were posted in reply to articles written between July 2016 and June 2017.

The question was sent to the High Court, and at the core of the case was the definition of publishing.

Lawyers for the media groups told the High Court they might have facilitated the process, but they were not the publishers of the material. But lawyers for Mr Voller told the High Court that, under the law, communication of a defamatory comment did not have to be done intentionally.

"Any degree of participation in that process of communication, however minor, makes the participant a publisher," the lawyers' submissions said.

One of the difficulties for the media groups at the time was that Facebook did not allow them to turn off the comments function.

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takyon writes:

Samsung targets 2025 for human-eye-beating 576 MP camera sensor

A confidential slide shown during a recent Samsung presentation has revealed that the company is targeting a 2025 timeframe for producing a 576 MP camera sensor. Samsung has already announced its plans to eventually release a sensor that can beat out the human eye resolution perception of 500 MP.

[...] Back in 2020, Samsung discussed how producing a 600 MP camera sensor was one of its aims, with an official editorial opining that this would go beyond the 500 MP resolution at which human eyes view the world. This recent information refines that 600 MP goal to 576 MP and even puts a target date of 2025 on it. However, don't expect a 576 MP main camera to make an appearance on a Galaxy S25 smartphone, as the giant sensors are more likely planned for use in future self-driving cars.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory (LSST) uses a 3.2 gigapixel camera.

Related: Hasselblad's New 400-Megapixel Multi-Shot Camera Captures 2.4GB Stills
Xiaomi Smartphone Will Use Samsung Camera Sensor to Take Up to 108 Megapixel Images
How Camera Companies can Survive the Smartphone

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upstart writes:

Do you hate seeing people fidget? New UBC research says you’re not alone:

Do you get anxious, annoyed or frustrated when you see someone fidgeting? If so, you may suffer from misokinesia–or the “hatred of movements.”

According to new UBC research, approximately one-third of the population suffer from the psychological phenomenon, which is defined by a strong negative emotional response to the sight of someone else’s small and repetitive movements.

The study, led by UBC psychology PhD student Sumeet Jaswal (she/her) and UBC psychology professor Dr. Todd Handy (he/him), is the first of its kind on the condition.

In this Q&A, Jaswal and Dr. Handy discuss the research findings as well as some good advice for people who may be silently suffering from misokinesia.

Journal Reference:
Jaswal, Sumeet M., De Bleser, Andreas K. F., Handy, Todd C.. Misokinesia is a sensitivity to seeing others fidget that is prevalent in the general population [open], Scientific Reports (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-96430-4)

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AnonTechie writes:

WhatsApp assures users that no one can see their messages — but the company has an extensive monitoring operation and regularly shares personal information with prosecutors.

WHEN MARK ZUCKERBERG unveiled a new "privacy-focused vision" for Facebook in March 2019, he cited the company's global messaging service, WhatsApp, as a model.

Zuckerberg's vision centered on WhatsApp's signature feature, which he said the company was planning to apply to Instagram and Facebook Messenger: end-to-end encryption, which converts all messages into an unreadable format that is only unlocked when they reach their intended destinations. WhatsApp messages are so secure, he said, that nobody else — not even the company — can read a word. As Zuckerberg had put it earlier, in testimony to the U.S. Senate in 2018, "We don't see any of the content in WhatsApp."

[...] Those assurances are not true. WhatsApp has more than 1,000 contract workers filling floors of office buildings in Austin, Texas, Dublin and Singapore, where they examine millions of pieces of users' content. Seated at computers in pods organized by work assignments, these hourly workers use special Facebook software to sift through streams of private messages, images and videos that have been reported by WhatsApp users as improper and then screened by the company's artificial intelligence systems. These contractors pass judgment on whatever flashes on their screen — claims of everything from fraud or spam to child porn and potential terrorist plotting — typically in less than a minute.

[...] A ProPublica investigation, drawing on data, documents and dozens of interviews with current and former employees and contractors, reveals how, since purchasing WhatsApp in 2014, Facebook has quietly undermined its sweeping security assurances in multiple ways. (Two articles this summer noted the existence of WhatsApp's moderators but focused on their working conditions and pay rather than their effect on users' privacy. This article is the first to reveal the details and extent of the company's ability to scrutinize messages and user data — and to examine what the company does with that information.)

The reference article gives a detailed account of how privacy is compromised ...

ProPublica

[ProPublica has added this clarification. - Fnord]

Clarification, Sept. 8, 2021: A previous version of this story caused unintended confusion about the extent to which WhatsApp examines its users' messages and whether it breaks the encryption that keeps the exchanges secret. We've altered language in the story to make clear that the company examines only messages from threads that have been reported by users as possibly abusive. It does not break end-to-end encryption.

[Also Covered By]: Gizmodo

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upstart writes:

Asteroid Traveling Through Space at 21,000 MPH Classified As Potentially Hazardous, Will Pass Earth This Month:

Somewhere out there amongst the stars is 2021 NY1, another asteroid actively hurtling towards Earth at insane speeds. While it's on track to pass the planet, it's still close enough for NASA to classify it as a potentially hazardous "Near-Earth Object" (NEO), allowing the outfit to keep an extra eye on its future trajectory.

As of now, experts believe 2021 NY1 is moving through space at nearly 21,000 miles per hour despite its size, somewhere between 427 and 984 feet wide. The asteroid is expected to pass Earth on September 22nd with its closest point coming within 930,487 miles of the planet. While that may seem like a significant amount, NASA defines NEOs as "an asteroid or comet that approaches our planet less than 1.3 times the distance from Earth to the Sun[*]."

In comparison, from Earth to the moon is roughly 240,000 miles, hence the NEO status.

"Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth's neighborhood," NASA's official NEO website says of the cosmic objects. "Composed mostly of water ice with embedded dust particles, comets originally formed in the cold outer planetary system while most of the rocky asteroids formed in the warmer inner solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The scientific interest in comets and asteroids is due largely to their status as the relatively unchanged remnant debris from the solar system formation process some 4.6 billion years ago."

[*] 1 AU is the average distance of the Earth to the Sun. So 1.3 AU would be ~120 million miles (195 million kilometers).

Also at Gadgets 360

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

In their search for pink river dolphins, researchers in the Peruvian Amazon scooped up river water sloshing with genetic material that they hoped could trace the elusive creatures.

They found what they were looking for. And then some. The environmental DNA collected yielded information on 675 species, including dozens of land-based mammals like deer, jaguar, giant anteaters, monkeys and 25 species of bat.

"It's kind of mind blowing," said Kat Bruce, founder of the eDNA firm NatureMetrics, which carried out the study for the wildlife charity WWF.

The technology is increasingly used to track rare species. Bruce hopes eDNA will help revolutionise the way the world measures and monitors nature.

It is now at the heart of a $15 million dollar project with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to collect and analyse 30,000 freshwater samples over three years from major river systems—including the Amazon, Ganges and Mekong Delta.

With species in precipitous decline and growing calls for international targets on biodiversity protection, organisers say this "eBioAtlas" can help inform policy and focus scarce conservation resources.

"What the eBioAtlas will do in the middle of this mass extinction, is hopefully start to fill those gaps in in a way that is scalable," said Mike Morris, who heads the project for NatureMetrics, at an event showcasing the project at the IUCN conference in Marseille this week.

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upstart writes:

ProtonMail deletes 'we don't log your IP' boast from website after French climate activist reportedly arrested:

Encrypted email service ProtonMail has become embroiled in a minor scandal after responding to a legal request to hand over a user's IP address and details of the devices he used to access his mailbox to Swiss police – resulting in the user's arrest.

Police were executing a warrant obtained by French authorities and served on their Swiss counterparts through Interpol, according to social media rumours that ProtonMail chief exec Andy Yen acknowledged to The Register.

[...] At the time of writing, the company's website said: "We believe privacy and security are universal values which cross borders."

After data from ProtonMail was handed to the Swiss and then French police, the author of a left-wing political activists' blog in France wrote (en français) that a group called Youth for Climate had been targeted:

The police also noticed that the collective communicated via a ProtonMail email address. They therefore sent a requisition (via EUROPOL) to the Swiss company managing the messaging system in order to find out the identity of the creator of the address. ProtonMail responded to this request by providing the IP address and the fingerprint of the browser used by the collective. It is therefore imperative to go through the tor network (or at least a VPN) when using a ProtonMail mailbox (or another secure mailbox) if you want to guarantee sufficient security.

Also at The Verge.

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