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martyb writes:

Back on November 1, 2021 I announced a Folding@Home contest.

SoylentNews has a team that has been running for several years now. In fact, out of the over 200,000 teams in the world, we still rank in the top 300 teams! (Other teams include: Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Google, Hewlett Packard... you get the idea.) Barring any surprises, I anticipate our team attaining 3 Billion Points in the next few weeks!

The contest? Logged-in SoylentNews users only. SoylentNews account must have been created on-or-before 2021-10-01 UTC. Entry must be submitted on-or-before Saturday 2021-11-06 UTC. One entry per account. Goal is to guess when the SoylentNews.org Folding@Home team first exceeds 3,000,000,000 (3 BILLION) points according to our IRC channel: #folding-rank. (N.B. That is an echo of results shown at https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=230319 [extremeoverclocking.com]). That channel is now logged [sylnt.us] (again) and will serve as the official channel-of-record.

We had these entries:

At the time of this writing, our most recent updates have been:

Rank: 396 | WUs: 173,220 | Score: 2,999,447,358 (Sun Nov 14 04:17:15 GMT 2021)
Rank: 396 | WUs: 173,224 | Score: 2,999,635,828 (Sun Nov 14 07:17:32 GMT 2021)
Rank: 396 | WUs: 173,228 | Score: 2,999,961,921 (Sun Nov 14 10:17:48 GMT 2021)
Rank: 396 | WUs: 173,233 | Score: 3,000,413,151 (Sun Nov 14 13:18:02 GMT 2021)
Rank: 396 | WUs: 173,235 | Score: 3,000,434,452 (Sun Nov 14 16:18:15 GMT 2021)

And the winner is?

All of the them! Each will receive a free month's subscription to SoylentNews.com — thanks for playing!

Original Submission

hubie writes:

It is no surprise that driver lane changes in traffic affects the flow of traffic itself. When the density of vehicles is low, it can lead to efficiencies in traffic flow. However, when the density reaches a certain level, it has the opposite effect. In this situation, when a driver moves into another lane, the vehicle behind the lane-changing vehicle suffers a delay, which leads to a delay imposed upon the vehicle behind it, etc., that compounds itself as a delay that ripples through the traffic behind. There are several traffic flow models that simulate this, but they can be contradictory in their results. A group of researchers from the Department of Traffic Management School at the People's Public Security University of China obtained quantitative data on this effect by flying DJI Phantom 4 drones over a target vehicle driving in congested traffic. They found that a single lane change (LC) adds between 3.9–9.5 seconds of delay to the cars in the trarget lane.

A key dependency observed, which would not surprise too many people who are accustomed to driving in congested traffic, was the space between vehicles. They found that 5.5 meters was a break point between behavior for the trailing vehicle in the next lane. It was found that when the distance between vehicles is less than 5.5 m, the vehicle following the target vehicle tends to drive at a constant speed or decelerate, but when the distance between vehicles is greater than 5.5 m, the vehicle following the target vehicle tends to first accelerate to prevent the target vehicle from entering the lane (Ed note: I've always thought of this as "Philadelphia driving etiquette"), but then the speed gradually decreases when the target vehicle is forcibly inserted.

This research provides a theoretical reference for the analysis of LC of driverless vehicles. To successfully complete a lane change, a driverless vehicle must comprehensively consider the running state of the vehicle following it, not only to improve its own running speed, but also to reduce the impact on the vehicle behind it.

Journal Reference:
Yang, Q., Lu, F., Ma, J. et al. Analyzing the delays of target lane vehicles caused by vehicle lane-changing operation. Sci Rep 11, 22047 (2021).
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-00262-1

Original Submission

upstart writes:

FBI system hacked to email 'urgent' warning about fake cyberattacks:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) email servers were hacked to distribute spam email impersonating FBI warnings that the recipients' network was breached and data was stolen.

The emails pretended to warn about a “sophisticated chain attack” from an advanced threat actor known[sic], who they identify as Vinny Troia. Troia is the head of security research of the dark web intelligence companies NightLion and Shadowbyte

The spam-tracking nonprofit SpamHaus noticed that tens of thousands of these messages were delivered in two waves early this morning. They believe this is just a small part of the campaign.

[...] Researchers at the Spamhaus Project, an international nonprofit that tracks spam and associated cyber threats (phishing, botnets, malware), observed two waves of this campaign, one at 5 AM (UTC) and a second one two hours later.

The messages came from a legitimate email address - eims@ic.fbi.gov - which is from FBI’s Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal (LEEP), and carried the subject “Urgent: Threat actor in systems.”

All emails came from FBI’s IP address 153.31.119.142 (mx-east-ic.fbi.gov), Spamhaus told us.

The message warns that a threat actors[sic] has been detected in the recipients' network and has stolen data from devices.

upstart writes:

SpaceX launches 53 Starlink satellites into orbit:

SpaceX expanded its constellation of low Earth orbit satellites on Saturday with the launch of 53 Starlink satellites from Florida.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:19 a.m. EST and deployed the satellites about 16 minutes after launch.

The rocket's reusable first stage, which has been used for multiple launches, including the first crewed test flight of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, successfully returned and landed on the "Just Read the Instructions" droneship in the Atlantic Ocean.

Starlink is a satellite-based global internet system that SpaceX has been building for years to bring internet access to underserved areas of the world.

Earlier this week, SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station, including the 600th person to reach space in 60 years.

It took 21 hours for the flight from NASA's Kennedy Space Center to reach the glittering outpost.

SpaceX launches Starlink satellites after upgrading user antennas - SpaceNews:

[...] In addition to launching four other Starlink missions, the booster was used for SpaceX’s Crew Demo-2, ANASIS-11, CRS-21 and Transporter-1 missions.

SpaceX’s latest mission marked the 25th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket in 2021. Many of these missions have deployed Starlink broadband satellites for the rapidly expanding constellation.

To date, SpaceX has launched more than 1,800 Starlink satellites to build out global coverage.

[...] Starlink is serving about 140,000 users across 20 countries, according to a presentation SpaceX filed with the Federal Communications Commission Nov. 10, up about 40,000 from what it reported in August.

It said it had received more than 750,000 “orders/deposits globally” for the service.

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