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upstart writes:

Drinking linked to a decline in brain health from cradle to grave: Harm prevention policies must take the long view, say experts:

Writing in The BMJ today, researchers in Australia and the UK say evidence suggests three periods of dynamic brain changes that may be particularly sensitive to the harmful effects of alcohol: gestation (from conception to birth), later adolescence (15-19 years), and older adulthood (over 65 years).

They warn that these key periods "could increase sensitivity to the effects of environmental exposures such as alcohol" and say harm prevention policies "must take the long view."

Globally, around 10% of pregnant women consume alcohol, with the rates considerably higher in European countries than the global average, they write.

Heavy alcohol use during pregnancy can cause fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, associated with widespread reductions in brain volume and cognitive impairment. But data suggest that even low or moderate alcohol consumption during pregnancy is significantly associated with poorer psychological and behavioural outcomes in offspring.

upstart writes:

New glue sticks easily, holds strongly, and is a gas to pull apart: Research expands number of temporary adhesives:

Dartmouth research has discovered a class of molecular materials that can be used to make temporary adhesives that don't require force for removal. These non-permanent glues won't be available as home or office supplies, but they can lead to new manufacturing techniques and pharmaceutical design.

"This temporary adhesive works in an entirely different way than other adhesives," said Katherine Mirica, an assistant professor of chemistry at Dartmouth. "This innovation will unlock new manufacturing strategies where on-demand release from adhesion is required."

The Dartmouth research focuses on molecular solids, a special class of adhesive materials that exist as crystals. The molecules in the structures are sublimable, meaning that they shift directly from a solid to a gas without passing through a liquid phase.

JoeMerchant writes:

Quantum Brilliance was founded in 2019 on the back of research undertaken by its founders at the Australian National University, where they developed techniques to manufacture, scale and control qubits embedded in synthetic diamond.

The company has already built a number of "Quantum development kits" in rack units, each with around 5 qubits to work with, and it's placing them with customers already, for benchmarking, integration, co-design opportunities and to let companies start working out where they'll be advantageous once they hit the market in a ~50-qubit "Quantum Accelerator" product form by around 2025. "We think over a decade," says Luo, "we can even produce a quantum system-on-a-chip for mobile devices. Because this is truly material science technology that can achieve that." From their whitepaper, the technical description of their technique is:

Room-temperature diamond quantum computers consist of an array of processor nodes. Each processor node is comprised of a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center (a defect in the diamond lattice consisting of a substitutional nitrogen atom adjacent to a vacancy) and a cluster of nuclear spins: the intrinsic nitrogen nuclear spin and up to ~4 nearby 13C nuclear spin impurities. The nuclear spins act as the qubits of the computer, whilst the NV centers act as quantum buses that mediate the initialization and readout of the qubits, and intra-and inter-node multi-qubit operations. Quantum computation is controlled via radiofrequency, microwave, optical and magnetic fields.

"In terms of commercial deployment," says Luo, "we have the Pawsey Supercomupting Center, which is currently the Southern Hemisphere's largest supercomputing center, co-owned by CSIRO and some other universities. We established basically Australia's first supercompuing quantum innovation hub, and we set up a Pawsey Pioneer program where industry and research groups can utilize our quantum operating system.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/07/1053383188/a-broken-toilet-on-spacex-capsule-means-astronauts-will-return-to-earth-in-diape

The journey back to Earth from space is never easy, but the astronauts aboard the SpaceX capsule coming home Monday will have an extra challenge to deal with: no working toilet. The four members on SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavor will be wearing diapers as they splash down, in order to prevent anything else from splashing too.

[...] In this weekend's press conference, NASA astronaut Megan McArthur confirmed that the toilets on board Dragon Endeavor are broken. "Of course that's sub-optimal, but we're prepared to manage," she said with a smile. "Space flight is full of lots of little challenges, this is just one more that we'll encounter and take care of in our mission."

[...] NASA and SpaceX engineers say they did extensive tests to make sure that the urine leak from April, when the crew was last in the Dragon capsule, would not have harmed the spacecraft over time.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Treating diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's is a challenge because drugs have to be able to cross the blood–brain barrier. As a result, the doses administered must be high and only a small fraction reaches the brain, which can lead to significant systemic side effects.  To solve this issue, the postdoctoral researcher Jean-Michel Rabanel, under the supervison of Professor Charles Ramassamy, at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (NRS), is optimizing polymer-coated nanoparticles to increase their permeability across this barrier and consequently the delivery of encapsulated drugs in the brain.

In their recent study, the team demonstrated the effectiveness of a specific polymer with zwitterion properties. These molecules are neutral overall, and have an equal number of positive and negative charges to mimic the molecules on the cell's surface. The researchers compared the characteristics of two polymer coatings on the polylactic acid (PLA) nanoparticles, a biocompatible material easily cleared by the body.

The first coating, made of polyethylene glycol (PEG), had already been tested on the zebrafish, whose transparent body makes it possible to see the distribution of nanoparticles virtually in real time. The second coating, made of zwitterionic polymer, was compared under the same conditions.

[...] According to Société Alzheimer de Québec, neurodegenerative diseases currently affect more than 565,000 Canadians, including 152,121 in Québec.

Journal Reference:
Jean-Michel Rabanel, et al. Nanoparticle shell structural cues drive in vitro transport properties, tissue distribution and brain accessibility in zebrafish, Biomaterials (2021). (DOI: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2021.121085)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Chaotic early solar system collisions resembled 'Asteroids' arcade game:

Nearly 30 years later, a new analysis of that same Peekskill meteorite and 17 others by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has led to a new hypothesis about how asteroids formed during the early years of the solar system.

The meteorites studied in the research originated from asteroids and serve as natural samples of the space rocks. They indicate that the asteroids formed though violent bombardment and subsequent reassembly, a finding that runs counter to the prevailing idea that the young solar system was a peaceful place.

The study was published in print Dec.1 in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.

The research began when co-author Nick Dygert was a postdoctoral fellow at UT's Jackson School of Geosciences studying terrestrial rocks using a method that could measure the cooling rates of rocks from very high temperatures, up to 1,400 degrees Celsius.

Dygert, now an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, realized that this method -- called a rare earth element (REE)-in-two-pyroxene thermometer -- could work for space rocks, too.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

[...] The global chip shortage will soon cause a number of new BMWs to lose their touchscreen functionality. According to a recent Bimmerfest forum post, in an effort to save silicon and have BMW maintain its current production levels, the following models will be delivered to customers without touchscreen capabilities:

"This measure is a result of the industry-wide supply chain issues which are affecting automotive manufacturing worldwide and causing limitations on the availability of some features or options," BMW told Edmunds on Thursday. BMW did not immediately respond to Roadshow's request for comment.

According to Bimmerfest, customers affected by this change will have option code 6UY on their vehicles' window stickers, listed as "deletion of touchscreen." This will result in a $500 credit on the car's MSRP.

[...] It's unclear how long these BMW models will be affected by the chip shortage or if other cars will be added to the no-touchscreen list in the future.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

How space solar panels could power the Earth with 24/7 clean energy:

Solar power has been a key part of humanity's clean-energy repertoire. We spread masses of sunlight-harvesting panels on solar fields, and many people power their homes by decorating their roofs with the rectangles.

But there's a caveat to this wonderful power source. Solar panels can't collect energy at night. To work at peak efficiency, they need as much sunlight as possible. So, to maximize these sun catchers' performance, researchers are toying with a plan to send them to a place where the sun never sets: outer space.

Theoretically, if a bunch of solar panels were blasted into orbit, they'd soak up the sun even on the foggiest days and the darkest nights, storing an enormous amount of power. If that power were wirelessly beamed down to Earth, our planet could breathe in renewable clean energy, 24/7.

[...] In the early 1900s, Russian scientist-mathematician Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was steadily churning out a stream of futuristic designs envisioning human tech beyond Earth. He's responsible for conjuring things like space elevators, steerable rockets and, you guessed it, space solar power.

Since Bell Labs first invented the first concrete "solar panel" in the '50s, international scientists have been working to make  Tsiolkovsky's sci-fi fantasy a reality. They include Japanese researchers, the United States military and a team from California Institute of Technology spearheading the Space Solar Power Project.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

BrakTooth is a collection of flaws affecting commercial Bluetooth stacks on more than 1,400 chipsets used in billions of devices – including smartphones, PCs, toys, internet-of-things (IoT) devices and industrial equipment – that rely on Bluetooth Classic (BT) for communication.

On Thursday, CISA urged manufacturers, vendors and developers to patch or employ workarounds.

The PoC has been made available on the BrakTooth website on GitHub.

As the paper pointed out, all that attackers need to do to pick apart the BrakTooth bugs is an off-the-shelf ESP32 board that can be had for $14.80, (or as low as $4 for an alternative board on AliExpress), custom Link Manager Protocol (LMP) firmware, and a computer to run the PoC tool.

Researchers from the University of Singapore disclosed the initial group of 16 vulnerabilities (now up to 22), collectively dubbed BrakTooth, in a paper published in September. They found the bugs in the closed commercial BT stack used by 1,400+ embedded chip components and detailed a host of attack types they can cause: Mainly denial of service (DoS) via firmware crashes (the term “brak” is actually Norwegian for “crash”). One of the bugs can also lead to arbitrary code execution (ACE).

Since the paper was published, there have been a number of updates, as vendors have scrambled to patch or to figure out whether or not they will in fact patch, and as researchers have uncovered additional vulnerable devices.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey

The Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey is a review of astronomy and astrophysics literature produced approximately every ten years by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States. The report surveys the current state of the field, identifies research priorities, and makes recommendations for the coming decade. The report represents the recommendations of the research community to governmental agencies on how to prioritize scientific funding within astronomy and astrophysics. The editing committee is informed by topical panels and subcommittees, dedicated conferences, and direct community input in the form of white papers summarizing the state of the art in each subdiscipline. The most recent report, Astro2020, was released in 2021.

[...] The seventh report, released to the public at 11am ET on Thursday, November 4, 2021, recommended scientific priorities and investments for the next decade to help achieve the following primary goals: search for habitable exoplanets and extraterrestrial life, study black holes and neutron stars and study the growth and evolution of galaxies.

Astrophysics decadal survey recommends a program of flagship space telescopes

[The] report recommended NASA establish a Great Observatories Mission and Technology Maturation Program that would oversee initial studies of large "flagship" astrophysics missions as well as invest in the technologies needed to enable them.

"The survey committee expects that this process will result in decreased cost and risk and enable more frequent launches of flagship missions, even if it does require significantly more upfront investment prior to a decadal recommendation regarding implementation," the committee concluded in the 600-page report.

Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s. The 589 page report is paywalled.

Also at NPR.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Jewelers, geologists, and microscopists agree: diamonds are forever. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are using microscopic nanodiamonds to calibrate and assess the performance of high-powered microscopes. Their longevity and durability make the tiny "first-aid kits" more than up to the task.

Advanced optical microscopy systems provide high-resolution views of the structure and function of cells and molecular compounds. Developing a stable fluorescent nanodiamond phantom promises wide-reaching applicability for microscopy research and quality control alike.

"There is potential that this is going to become a standard calibration tool in fluorescence microscopy worldwide. This sample is so convenient, and so easy to use, that it is hopefully going to make a large impact," said Mantas Žurauskas, an imaging research scientist for the GlaxoSmithKline Center for Optical Molecular Imaging at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, who led the research.

The team's paper, "Fluorescent nanodiamonds for characterization of nonlinear microscopy systems," was published in Photonics Research.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Tooting Crater was named after a London suburb.

Let's deal with this name issue right away. "Tooting Crater" on Mars is a large and fairly young impact site. Mars craters expert Peter Mouginis-Mark identified the landmark and named it Tooting after his birthplace in the London suburb. It's OK to giggle about it, especially when thinking about the crater ejecting material out into space that ended up reaching Earth.

Planetary scientist Anthony Lagain of Australia's Curtin University led a study published in Nature Communications this week that traced the origin of some Martian meteorites found on Earth.

According to Curtin, 166 Martian rocks are known to have landed on our planet over the past 20 million years, but it's been tough to trace their precise origin points on Mars. It takes a lot of energy to blast a bit of Mars out into space, so the researchers looked at craters that might be responsible.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Microsoft's Surface laptop business ran a survey with YouGov in the UK and found that 66% of workers with company-owned laptops or tablets are still using the same device they had when the COVID-19 lockdowns started last March.

[...] "More than a third (35%) of employees who received new devices since the onset of COVID-19 reported a resulting increase in their productivity. Meanwhile, most employees have "made do" with the same device while working remotely," Microsoft said in a statement.

"Employees want upgrades that better suit their individual needs -- as-remote working arrangements that started as temporary measures have become the norm. Their company's IT teams, which initially purchased devices to help staff work from home during the pandemic but then shelved routine upgrades, now feel the same way."

The survey found that employees feel they are not being listened to when it comes to new devices. Half of them believe devices are provided based on job role alone – with individual requirements not considered as standard. Only one in three feel their individual needs and accessibility requirements are taken into consideration, a number that drops to 17% for frontline workers.

[...] There are several factors at play here in Microsoft's pitch to business. Companies are moving to hybrid work after a year of largely remote work, which means some sectors have stalled hardware purchases after a splurging on devices last year. And of course, Windows 11 has just arrived.

[...] Windows 11 has been out for mainstream users since October 5, but it hasn't been widely adopted yet. Windows 10 reaches end of life on October 14, 2025.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://venturebeat.com/2021/11/01/world-of-warcraft-director-ion-hazzikostas-talks-the-games-future-and-current-soul-searching/

As we said in, I think, a brief blog, a forum post, this has been a process that has been ongoing as a result of an internal period of self-reflection over the last few months. These are changes that are coming from the team as a whole. In the discussions we began internally in the aftermath of the lawsuit and everything surrounding that, on many levels, trying to understand how we as the current leadership of the team could do better — better for our team, better for our community. One thing that came up is that there are pieces of our game that, over the course of 17-plus years now, that were not necessarily the products of a diverse or inclusive range of voices, that did not necessarily reflect the perspective of the current team and of many of our players. There are things that people on our team were not proud to have in our game. These are many things that people, over the years, have pointed out in the community, but we didn't necessarily listen in the way we should have at the time.

What we did was we just set up a process internally for folks across the team, as well as sourcing some feedback from the community as a whole, to flag pieces of the game for review, whether it's old quests or specific lines. As a random example, there were a number of jokes and references made a dozen years ago about how feminine male blood elves were, mistaking male blood elves for women, just poking fun at that in a not necessarily good-spirited way. That doesn't sit right in 2021. That's the sort of thing that was reviewed by a broad group that reflects the diversity of our team today. We made decisions on whether to leave some things standing, because they're borderline, but we're not looking to reinvent everything, turn over every single stone and rewrite 17 years of WoW. It might be a little bit juvenile. It might be off-color. But this isn't something that is really making our game feel less welcoming for people, which is what we're aiming to change. Those things we left. Others were removed, others were rewritten or changed accordingly.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The U.S. Blacklists Makers of Cops' Favorite iPhone Hacking Tool:

NSO Group, an Israeli surveillance firm whose spyware has been peddled to authoritarian governments around the world, has been sanctioned by the U.S. Commerce Department. The new restrictions, which the agency announced in a press release Wednesday, will limit the degree to which American companies can provide parts or services to NSO—a decision that could seriously hobble the vendor's business.

NSO is best known for its commercial malware "Pegasus," a product that can infiltrate smartphones and silently pilfer their contents—from text messages to voice calls to photos. The company also sells a creepy "zero-click" exploit, the likes of which apparently requires no phishing and is said to take advantage of security flaws inherent in iPhones and Android devices to compromise them. In September, it was reported that some 1.65 billion Apple devices had been vulnerable to NSO's malware for a period of several months.

See also: US Cuts Off Pegasus Developer: What You Need To Know About This Spyware

Previously: Israeli Firm NSO Linked to WhatsApp Hack, Faces Lawsuit Backed by Amnesty International
Saudi Crown Prince's WhatsApp Account Reportedly Used to Hack Jeff Bezos
The Great iPwn -- Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage 'Zero-Click' Exploit
Israeli Spyware Maker Is in Spotlight Amid Reports of Wide Abuses

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