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upstart writes:

COP26 climate deal includes historic reference to fossil fuels but doesn't meet urgency of the crisis:

The COP process has tried and failed for years to include an acknowledgment that the climate crisis has been caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Coal is the single biggest source of greenhouse gases and phasing it out was a key priority of COP26 President Alok Sharma.

But despite that progress, the text doesn't reflect the urgency expressed by international scientists in their "code red for humanity" climate report published in August. Rather, it defers more action on reducing fossil fuel emissions to next year. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported the world needs to roughly halve emissions over the next decade.

Also at Washington Post and www.aljazeera.com

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Humans hastened the extinction of the woolly mammoth:

An international team of scientists led by researchers from the University of Adelaide and University of Copenhagen, has revealed a 20,000-year pathway to extinction for the woolly mammoth.

"Our research shows that humans were a crucial and chronic driver of population declines of woolly mammoths, having an essential role in the timing and location of their extinction," said lead author Associate Professor Damien Fordham from the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute.

[...] Signatures of past changes in the distribution and demography of woolly mammoths identified from fossils and ancient DNA show that people hastened the extinction of woolly mammoths by up to 4,000 years in some regions.

[...] The study also shows that woolly mammoths are likely to have survived in the Arctic for thousands of years longer than previously thought, existing in small areas of habitat with suitable climatic conditions and low densities of humans.

"Our finding of long-term persistence in Eurasia independently confirms recently published environmental DNA evidence that shows that woolly mammoths were roaming around Siberia 5,000 years ago," said Associate Professor Jeremey Austin from the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA.

Journal Reference:
Damien A. Fordham, Stuart C. Brown, H. Reşit Akçakaya, et al. Process‐explicit models reveal pathway to extinction for woolly mammoth using pattern‐oriented validation, Ecology Letters (DOI: 10.1111/ele.13911)

Original Submission

mhajicek writes:

Zero Motorcycles announced their groundbreaking new battery "technology", in which they sell you a large capacity battery in a motorcycle with powerful motors and advanced traction control systems, and then lock all that away behind a software paywall that you can unlock (for a fee) in their app.

https://newatlas.com/motorcycles/zero-motorcycles-2022-battery-paid-upgrades/

Zero is not the first vehicle company to do this sort of thing. Notably, Tesla sells vehicles with capabilities that can be unlocked via software "upgrades". This strategy is also common in the CNC machine tool industry; it's long frustrated machinists that they can buy a machine with all the hardware, but then have a sizable portion of memory, advanced motion smoothing, and other functions locked behind activation keys, which often cost several thousand dollars. In that industry at least, if you know the right people and have a machine with a common control, you can get what you need to unlock it through other sources.

I anticipate a similar approach in the vehicle market, which has long sold "tuner" chips and has a great deal of modding enthusiasts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIJiXNzpRMY

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Where *Isn't* Planet 9? Search for Planet Nine still continues

Not long ago astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin (the two original people proposing the existence of the planet) used the alignments of the TNO orbits to back-calculate the potential location of the unseen planet in space. It's a kind of treasure map to find the planet.

In a new paper they've put that map to use, looking through survey data in a hunt for Planet 9.

[...] Brown and Batygin wrote software that simulates where Planet 9 would be and how bright it would appears for various values of its size, reflectivity, and orbital shape. They created a database of positions and brightnesses for it, and then combed through the [Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)] database to look for it, going through the past three or so years of observations since the facility started its survey campaign.

[...] They ran 100,000 simulations of various parameters for the planet, and looked to see if the ZTF would've seen it if it were indeed smaller and closer to us. They determined that it would've been seen in the survey about 56,000 times out of the 100,000, so just looking at that their non-detection indicates the chance it's smaller and closer is now less than 50%, making it more likely it's farther out, bigger, and fainter.

The larger Vera C. Rubin Observatory is expected to find many previously hidden objects in the solar system, and is scheduled to begin full operations in October 2023. It will accumulate all-sky survey data around 10 times faster than the Zwicky Transient Facility.

Also at ExtremeTech.

upstart writes:

Not how big, how long

Don't miss the longest partial lunar eclipse of the century next week:

The longest partial lunar eclipse of the century is due to take place next week between Nov. 18 and. 19, and the gorgeous phenomenon will be visible in all 50 U.S. states.

NASA forecasts that the almost-total eclipse of the Micro Beaver Full Moon will last around 3 hours, 28 minutes and 23 seconds — beginning at approximately 2:19 a.m. EST (7:19 a.m. UTC); reaching its maximum around 4 a.m. EST (9 a.m. UTC); and ending at 5:47 a.m. EST (10:47 a.m. UTC). The Micro Beaver moon is so named because it occurs when the moon is at the farthest point from Earth and in the lead-up to beaver-trapping season.

The partial lunar eclipse, when Earth's shadow covers 97% of the full moon, will be the longest of the century by far, dwarfing the duration of the longest total lunar eclipse this century, which took place in 2018 and stretched to 1 hour and 43 minutes. The forthcoming eclipse will also be the longest partial lunar eclipse in 580 years, according to the Holcomb Observatory at Butler University, Indiana.

[...] To get exact eclipse timings for your location, you can visit timeanddate.com. The eclipse will be visible from North America and the Pacific Ocean, Alaska, Western Europe, eastern Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Though the early stages of the eclipse occur before moonrise in eastern Asia, Australia and New Zealand, eclipse-watchers in these regions will be able to see the eclipse as it reaches its maximum. Conversely, viewers in South America and Western Europe will see the moon set before the eclipse is at its peak.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Surprising findings on how salt affects blood flow in the brain:

When neurons are activated, it typically produces a rapid increase of blood flow to the area. This relationship is known as neurovascular coupling, or functional hyperemia, and it occurs via dilation of blood vessels in the brain called arterioles. Functional magnetic resource imaging (fMRI) is based on the concept of neurovascular coupling: experts look for areas of weak blood flow to diagnose brain disorders.

However, previous studies of neurovascular coupling have been limited to superficial areas of the brain (such as the cerebral cortex) and scientists have mostly examined how blood flow changes in response to sensory stimuli coming from the environment (such as visual or auditory stimuli). Little is known about whether the same principles apply to deeper brain regions attuned to stimuli produced by the body itself, known as interoceptive signals.

To study this relationship in deep brain regions, an interdisciplinary team of scientists led by Dr. Javier Stern, professor of neuroscience at Georgia State and director of the university's Center for Neuroinflammation and Cardiometabolic Diseases, developed a novel approach that combines surgical techniques and state-of-the-art neuroimaging. The team focused on the hypothalamus, a deep brain region involved in critical body functions including drinking, eating, body temperature regulation and reproduction. The study, published in the journal Cell Reports, examined how blood flow to the hypothalamus changed in response to salt intake.

canopic jug writes:

Software analyst Geoff Chappell was the expert hired by Caldera to dig into the infamous AARD code. Recently he made a review of the discovery, publication, earlier work, personal work, and scale of effort involved in analyzing the AARD code, from a historical perpective. He doesn't adress the ethical or political repercussions of the code. However, being a principal in the analysis, he is able to set the record straight on some technical and legal facts.

The AARD code is from back when MS Windows was still just a graphical shell on top of a text-based disk operating system (DOS) and existed briefly as some XOR-encrypted, self-modifying, deliberately obfuscated machine code and using a variety of undocumented DOS structures and functions. The purpose of the code was to detect competing DOSes, specifically, the then popular DR-DOS, and throw up an unnecessary warning when detected.

Some programs and drivers in some pre-release builds of Windows 3.1 include code that tests for execution on MS-DOS and displays a disingenuous error message if Windows is run on some other type of DOS. The message tells of a "Non-fatal error" and advises the user to "contact Windows 3.1 beta support". Some programs in the released build include the code and the error message, and even execute the code, performing the same tests, but without acting on the result to display the error message.

The code in question has become known widely as the AARD code, named after initials that are found within. Although the AARD code dates from the start of the 1990s, it returned to controversy at the end of the 1990s due to its appearance in a suit at law between Caldera and Microsoft. Caldera was by then the owner, after Digital Research and Novell, of what had been DR DOS. It has ever since been treated as a smoking gun in analyses of anti-competitive practices by Microsoft.

It is not my intention here to comment on the rights or wrongs that I may or may not perceive in the AARD code's existence. However, I must declare a financial interest: in 1999 when this note was first published, I was engaged indirectly by Caldera to assist with their understanding of MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows for the suit just mentioned.

What I do intend here is to put on the public record a few points of history.

The AARD code, during its short tenure, was particularly effective in scaring the public away from DR-DOS.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/11/intestinal-parasites-burrowed-into-mans-brain-and-lived-there-for-years/

[...] There, doctors witnessed the man have a two-minute-long tonic-clonic (grand mal) seizure, in which he lost consciousness and his muscles aggressively contracted. Doctors began the painstaking process of trying to piece together what was wrong by performing a battery of tests and interviewing his family.

By nearly every account, the man was in very good health. He had no history of seizures or of any cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, or neurologic disorders. His toxicology screens were clear. He took no medications, prescribed or over-the-counter. He didn't smoke and rarely drank. There was no evidence that anything had happened to him recently that would provoke a seizure; the man had spent the previous day with his children, then he had dinner with his brother, who reported nothing out of the ordinary. The only initial hint of the diagnosis to come was that the man had immigrated to Boston from a rural area of Guatemala about 20 years earlier.

But when doctors performed a CT (computed tomography) scan of his head, they quickly narrowed the possibilities. The scan revealed three calcified lesions in his brain, and doctors homed in on the diagnosis of neurocysticercosis. In other words, larval cysts from a pork tapeworm had migrated to his head years ago and nestled into various parts of his brain. The doctors documented their work on the man's illness in a case study published on Thursday, November 11, in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Journal Reference:
Andrew J. Cole, Jonathan E. Slutzman, Edward T. Ryan, et al. Case 34-2021: A 38-Year-Old Man with Altered Mental Status and New Onset of Seizures, New England Journal of Medicine (DOI: 10.1056/NEJMcpc2027080)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Microsoft is taking the fight to Chromebooks in schools with the $250 Surface Laptop SE, but inexpensive hardware is only part of the equation. One reason Chromebooks have succeeded in education is because of Chrome OS, which is well-suited for lower-end hardware, easy for IT administrators to manage, and hard to break with errant apps or malware.

Microsoft's answer to Chrome OS is Windows 11 SE. Unlike past efforts like Windows in S mode (which is still its own separate thing), Windows 11 SE isn't just a regular version of Windows with a cheaper license or a cut-down version that runs fewer apps. Windows 11 SE defaults to saving all files (including user profile information) to students' OneDrive accounts, and it has had some standard Windows 11 features removed to ensure a "distraction-free" learning environment that performs better on low-end devices. The operating system also gives IT administrators exclusive control over the apps and browser extensions that can be installed and run via Microsoft Intune.

If you're a school IT administrator with a fleet of PC laptops or desktops, you might wonder if you can buy and install Windows 11 SE on hardware you already have so you can benefit from its changes without buying new hardware. The answer, Microsoft tells us, is no. The only way to get Windows 11 SE is on laptops that ship with Windows 11 SE. And if you re-image a Windows 11 SE device with a different version of Windows 10 or Windows 11, it won't even be possible to reinstall Windows 11 SE after that.

[...] Microsoft has published documentation (PDF) that more fully explains the differences between Windows 11 SE and the other editions of Windows (including Windows in S mode).

Original Submission

upstart writes:

How do we learn to learn? New research offers an education: Study on mice reveals importance of ignoring distraction while learning:

Researchers have frequently studied the machinations of memory--specifically, how neurons store the information gained from experience so that the same information can be recalled later. However, less is known about the underlying neurobiology of how we "learn to learn"--the mechanisms our brains use to go beyond drawing from memory to utilize past experiences in meaningful, novel ways.

A greater understanding of this process could point to new methods to enhance learning and to design precision cognitive behavioral therapies for neuropsychiatric disorders like anxiety, schizophrenia, and other forms of mental dysfunction.

To explore this, the researchers conducted a series of experiments using mice, who were assessed for their ability to learn cognitively challenging tasks. Prior to the assessment, some mice received "cognitive control training" (CCT). They were put on a slowly rotating arena and trained to avoid the stationary location of a mild shock using stationary visual cues while ignoring locations of the shock on the rotating floor. CCT mice were compared to control mice. One control group also learned the same place avoidance, but it did not have to ignore the irrelevant rotating locations.

The use of the rotating arena place avoidance methodology was vital to the experiment, the scientists note, because it manipulates spatial information, dissociating the environment into stationary and rotating components. Previously, the lab had shown that learning to avoid shock on the rotating arena requires using the hippocampus, the brain's memory and navigation center, as well as the persistent activity of a molecule (protein kinase M zeta [PKM?]) that is crucial for maintaining increases in the strength of neuronal connections and for storing long-term memory.

Journal Reference:
Chung, Ain, Jou, Claudia, Grau-Perales, Alejandro, et al. Cognitive control persistently enhances hippocampal information processing, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04070-5)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

DOJ sues Uber for allegedly discriminating against passengers with disabilities:

The US Department of Justice has sued Uber for allegedly discriminating against passengers with disabilities. In a complaint filed with the US District Court for Northern California, the agency claims Uber violated Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by implementing a policy that has seen the company charge "wait time" fees to passengers who, as a result of their disabilities, need more time to enter a car. The law prohibits discrimination of individuals with disabilities by private companies.

According to the Justice Department, the policy has been in place since 2016 when Uber implemented it in a number of US cities before eventually expanding its use nationwide. Anytime a passenger needs more than two minutes to enter an UberX car or more than five minutes in the case of an Uber Black or SUV vehicle, the company charges that individual a wait time fee. Uber contends most users pay, on average, less than $0.60 when that's the case. However, passengers with disabilities, including those with wheelchairs and walkers, often need more time to enter a vehicle than those without.

"People with disabilities deserve equal access to all areas of community life, including the private transportation services provided by companies like Uber," said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke for the DOJ's Civil Rights Division.

A spokesperson for Uber called the lawsuit "surprising" and "disappointing."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Seagate Demonstrates HDD with PCIe NVMe Interface

Seagate has demonstrated the industry's first hard disk drive connected to a host using a PCIe interface at the Open Compute Project Summit. Like solid-state drives, the experimental hard drive uses the NVMe protocol to operate alongside SSDs seamlessly. Usage of a single protocol for different types of storage devices will greatly simplify datacenters.

The experimental [HDD] is based on Seagate's proprietary controller that supports all three major protocols, including SAS, SATA, and NVMe over a 'native NVMe port,' and does not require any bridges.

[...] Modern HDDs can barely saturate even a single PCIe 2.0 link, but future multi-actuator HDDs promise to be much faster, so 6 Gbps provided by SATA or 12 Gbps offered by SAS might not be enough at some point. To that end, the industry has to think about future interfaces to connect hard drives, and PCIe seems like a natural choice. Furthermore, as SSDs are gaining traction in datacenters, the NVMe protocol becomes pervasive, so it makes sense to adopt it for HDDs. This is why NVMe 2.0 adds hard drive support.

NVM Express aka Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification.

Also at Phoronix.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks warned over the weekend of an ongoing hacking campaign that has already resulted in the compromise of at least nine organizations worldwide from critical sectors, including defense, healthcare, energy, technology, and education.

To breach the orgs networks, the threat actors behind this cyberespionage campaign exploited a critical vulnerability (CVE-2021-40539) in Zoho's enterprise password management solution known as ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus which allows remotely executing code on unpatched systems without authentication.

The attacks observed by Palo Alto Networks researchers started on September 17 with scans for vulnerable servers, nine days after the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned it detected exploits used in the wild and one day after a joint advisory was published by CISA, the FBI, and the United States Coast Guard Cyber Command (CGCYBER).

Exploitation attempts began on September 22 after five days of harvesting info on potential targets who hadn't yet patched their systems.

"While we lack insight into the totality of organizations that were exploited during this campaign, we believe that, globally, at least nine entities across the technology, defense, healthcare, energy and education industries were compromised," the researchers said.

"Through global telemetry, we believe that the actor targeted at least 370 Zoho ManageEngine servers in the United States alone. Given the scale, we assess that these scans were largely indiscriminate in nature as targets ranged from education to Department of Defense entities."

Even though the researchers are working on attributing these attacks to a specific hacking group, they suspect that this is the work of a Chinese-sponsored threat group known as APT27 (also tracked as TG-3390, Emissary Panda, BRONZE UNION, Iron Tiger, and LuckyMouse).

upstart writes:

NASA solar probe 'touched the sun' but is enduring dangerous plasma explosions:

The Parker Solar Probe is an engineering marvel, designed by NASA to "touch the sun" and reveal some of the star's most closely guarded secrets. The scorch-proof craft, launched by NASA in August 2018, has been slowly sidling up to our solar system's blazing inferno for the past three years, studying its magnetic fields and particle physics along the way. It's been a successful journey, and the probe has been racking up speed records. In 2020, it became the fastest human-made object ever built.

But Parker is learning a lesson about the consequences of its great speed: constant bombardment by space dust.

Space dust is a pervasive element of our solar system and likely many other planetary systems in the universe. Tiny particles of dust, a quarter the width of a human hair and generated by asteroids and comets, are locked in a forever dance around the sun. Parker, whipping around the sun at almost unfathomable speeds, constantly collides with the grains, and as they hit its metallic body, they heat up, get vaporized and ionized, and become plasma.

Basically, Parker is being bombarded by dust at such speed that its body is constantly experiencing plasma explosions.

Using Fields, the probe's instrument for measuring magnetic fields, and Wispr, an imaging device that can snap photos of the sun and study the density of electrons in its corona, a team of scientists at the University of Colorado, Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory studied the severity of these impacts.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

TSMC and Sony officially create partnership to build $7 billion fab in Japan:

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Sony announced on Tuesday that they officially entered into a joint venture to build a new $7 billion fab in Japan, with the goal of mass-producing chips in that facility by 2024.

TSMC CEO CC Wei had already announced the new fab was in development last month, but it was yet to receive board approval until Tuesday. Rather than focus on building cutting edge chips, the new fab will primarily build chips with 22 and 28nm processes to help ease the current global chip shortage.

The new fab will be operated under a new joint venture between TSMC and Sony, called Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing (JASM), with mass production scheduled to begin by the end of 2024.

Sony will invest $500 million into the joint venture, which will give it no more than a 20% equity stake, with the remainder to be funded by TSMC.

[...] The company [TSMC] has also announced plans to spend $100 billion over three years to boost capacity.

Original Submission