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upstart writes:

Surveillance firm pays $1 million fine after 'spy van' scandal:

The Office of the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection in Cyprus has collected a $1 million fine from intelligence company WiSpear for gathering mobile data from various individuals arriving at the airport in Larnaca.

While this is just an administrative fine under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it is related to a scandal two years ago widely publicized as the "spy van" case.

In 2019, a Chevrolet van packed with at least $3.5 million worth of equipment that could hack Android smartphones and steal data including WhatsApp and Signal messages, was stationed near the Larnaca airport.

The van had been in the area for months when politicians in Cyprus criticized the government for being passive about the activity of the vehicle after seeing its capabilities in action close to the airport in a video from Forbes.

In a press release today, the data protection watchdog in Cyprus announced that WiSpear paid an administrative fine of 925,000 euros for GDPR violations.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

NASA's Juno Captures Jupiter Photo So Gorgeous You'll Swear It's Fake:

Jupiter is one of the most daunting planets in our Solar System, and thanks to the continually impressive work of Juno, NASA just shared a truly jaw-dropping photo. Considering most people won't ever get the chance to visit outer space for themselves, images from NASA and other organizations are extremely important. While it's difficult to convey the vastness of space in words alone, a picture from Perseverance, Hubble, or another instrument makes things much easier.

There are regular examples of this all the time. You could read an article about a massive aurora engulfing the Earth, but seeing a picture of its unfathomable beauty is that much more impactful. The same is true of all the Mars exploration happening right now. It's one thing to read about the planet having vast dunes and peculiar rocks, but to see actual pictures of these things is completely different. Whether it be for educational purposes or a passing interest, these photos are most people's gateway to the Milky Way and beyond.

NASA uploaded its latest space picture on November 10 and, simply put, it's so good you'll probably think it's fake. What you're looking at above is an image of Jupiter, as captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft and edited by scientist Brian Swift. The photo was originally taken on September 2 while Juno was 16,800 miles above Jupiter's gassy atmosphere. Juno's been orbiting Jupiter since July 2016 to do exactly this. It orbits the planet, regularly uses its 'JunoCam' to capture high-quality pictures, and is entirely solar-powered despite receiving 25x less sunlight compared to Earth. It's not the most talked-about spacecraft in Nasa's portfolio, but it really is one of the most impressive.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Facebook Puts Instagram for Kids on Hold after Pushback:

Facebook drew outrage for its now paused plans for an Instagram app for kids aged 12 and under. But 13-year-olds are already welcome on social media with few protections and sometimes tragic effects, experts and parents said. That's because 13 effectively serves as the age of majority online under a two-decade-old law, and is the minimum set by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat — all of which are massively popular among children.

Josh Golin at advocacy Fairplay said the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) intended to protect the privacy of kids aged 12 or under, but was crafted well before social media and is now dangerously outdated.

"At age 13, essentially the internet treats you as an adult," Golin told AFP. "I doubt very many people now would say... 'That seems like a good time to throw them into the belly of the beast.'"

At the age of thirteen, the internet will automatically consider you as an adult

US senators have called a hearing Thursday about the "toxic effects of Facebook and Instagram" on young people, which will include the questioning of Facebook executive Antigone Davis.

Worries over the platforms' potential to harm youth have spiked after a scathing Wall Street Journal series revealing the social media giant's own research showed it knew of the damage Instagram can do to teenage girls' well-being.

In the wake of those reports, Facebook announced Monday it was suspending development of the kids' version of the photo-sharing app to consult with the parents and advocacy groups who fought against the plan.

upstart writes:

Amazon Rainforest birds' bodies transform due to climate change:

"Even in the middle of this pristine Amazon rainforest, we are seeing the global effects of climate change caused by people, including us," said Vitek Jirinec, LSU alumnus (Ph.D. '21), associate ecologist at the Integral Ecology Research Center and lead author to this study published in the journal Science Advances.

Birds in the Amazon rainforest have become smaller and their wings have become longer over several generations, indicating a response to the shifting environmental conditions that may include new physiological or nutritional challenges.

This is the first study to discover these changes in non-migratory birds' body size and shape, which eliminates other factors that may have influenced these physiological changes. Jirinec and colleagues studied data collected on more than 15,000 individual birds that were captured, measured, weighed, marked with a leg band and released, over 40 years of field work in the world's largest rainforest. The data reveal that nearly all of the birds' bodies have reduced in mass, or become lighter, since the 1980s. Most of the bird species lost on average about 2 percent of their body weight every decade. For an average bird species that weighed about 30 grams in the 1980s, the population now averages about 27.6 grams. How significant is this?

"These birds don't vary that much in size. They are fairly fine-tuned, so when everyone in the population is a couple of grams smaller, it's significant," said co-author Philip Stouffer, who is the Lee F. Mason Professor in the LSU School of Renewable Natural Resources.

The data set covers a large range of the rainforest so the changes in the birds' bodies and wings across communities are not tied to one specific site, which means that the phenomenon is pervasive.

Journal Reference:
Vitek Jirinec, Ryan C. Burner, Bruna R. Amaral, et al. Morphological consequences of climate change for resident birds in intact Amazonian rainforest, Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abk1743)

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sgleysti writes:

I'd like to know Soylentils' takes on the following Sci-Fi thought experiment:

In the near future, scientists create a safe, non-invasive, and irreversible procedure that causes a person to perceive reality without any human biases. It is offered to the general public at no cost and takes 15 minutes with no convalescence time or physical restrictions. The effects take hold gradually over the course of 24 hours and are thereafter permanent.

Would you do it?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Cheers! Better Beer From CRISPR Gene-Edited Barley:

Using CRISPR/Cas9 technology, scientists develop and study gene-edited barley that resists pre-harvest sprouting.

After a spell of unexpected rain, before the harvest season, a farmer may be faced with the unpredictable problem of untimely sprouting of barley. Sprouted barley fetches considerably lower market prices and poses an economic burden on farmers and corporations that are at the mercy of nature to survive in the agriculture industry. The aggravation of climate change has not made this situation any better either.

The problem of pre-harvest sprouting, thus, has kept agricultural researchers occupied for a long time. Pre-harvest sprouting can be avoided by prolonged grain dormancy through genetic manipulation. However, such dormancy can interfere with malt production and can also cause non-uniform germination upon sowing. Balancing these issues is, therefore, necessary for high-quality barley production.

[...] To achieve the barley of interest, Dr. Hisano and his team genetically manipulated samples of 'Golden Promise' barley using CRISPR/Cas9 targeted mutagenesis, to be either single mutants (qsd1, or qsd2), or double mutants (qsd1 and qsd2). Then, they proceeded to perform germination assays on all mutants and non-mutated samples.

Subsequently, the results they obtained for mutants, when compared to non-mutants, was extremely interesting. All the mutants showed delayed germination, but there were mutant-specific or conditional properties. Germination of mutants was promoted by 3% hydrogen peroxide treatment; exposure of all mutants to cold temperatures largely promoted germination, indicating that the grains of the mutants were not dead but had been dormant longer. The qsd1 mutation in single mutants partially reduced long grain dormancy, owing to qsd2; and qsd2 mutants could germinate in the dark, but not in the light. Also, all mutants showed abscisic acid build-up, consistent with conditions observed with delayed germination. Notably, this abscisic acid build-up in itself cannot maintain long-term grain dormancy, the latter being important for high-quality barley production.

Journal Reference:
Hiroshi Hisano, Robert E. Hoffie, Fumitaka Abe, et al. Regulation of germination by targeted mutagenesis of grain dormancy genes in barley [open], Plant Biotechnology Journal (DOI: 10.1111/pbi.13692)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

China "Boldly Goes" for Space Independence - Asian Military Review:

While China's rapid progress as a major player in space technology and capability is undeniable, the 'achilles heel' to its next step may be the restraint of the private sector.

On 29 April this year a China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) Long March 5B Y2 rocket was successfully launched from the Wenchang launch site in Hainan Province, China. It carried the Tianhe module which will become the core of China's orbiting space station. Once completed in 2022, Tiangong (as the orbiting station is named) will be China's first long-term space presence. After 2025, it may become the only orbit space station if the International Space Station (ISS) is retired to schedule (although this could potentially be extended to 2028). Tiangong is expected to have a service life of ten years (although again this could be extended).

Tiangong is the successor to China's Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 space laboratories, launched in 2011 and 2016. It's only one of a growing number of Chinese space projects. Beijing's leaders have invested a vast treasure into a long-term strategy that works, simultaneously, at multiple targets: placing into space new orbiting assets; ensuring advanced technologies for land-based assets on earth, such a launch facilities; assets inserted onto celestial bodies, starting with the Moon, and extending to asteroids and Mars.

Dr. Namrata Goswami, an independent scholar on space policy, great power politics, and ethnic conflicts, stated that a permanent space station is deemed to be important by Beijing's leaders because it helps to send 'signals' to the world that China is openly contesting the US for space leadership, and that it is a capable partner for international cooperation in space.

upstart writes:

Team engineers new way to get medication past blood-brain barrier: UT Dallas researchers method uses light and nanoparticles to pry open tight junction:

Getting medication past the brain's unique and protective blood vessels, known as the blood-brain barrier, is one of the biggest challenges in treating brain and central nervous system diseases, said Dr. Zhenpeng Qin, associate professor of mechanical engineering at UT Dallas and co-corresponding author of the study that describes the method. The technique uses light and nanoparticles to pry open temporarily these barriers -- called tight junctions -- to allow medication to reach its target.

Researchers synthesized gold nanoparticles to target the tight junction specifically and demonstrated that transcranial picosecond laser stimulation of the nanoparticles post-intravenous injection increases the permeability of the blood-brain barrier. (Illustration credit: Nano Letters)

[...] The technique involves injecting gold nanoparticles, which absorb light, into the bloodstream to target the blood-brain barrier. Researchers apply picosecond (one-trillionth of a second) laser pulses externally to activate the gold nanoparticles.

"The action produces a tiny mechanical force that temporarily breaks the barrier open so a drug can enter the blood flow into the brain," Li said.

The study demonstrated that the technique did not damage the blood-brain barrier or the constriction and dilation of blood vessels, called vasomotion.

Journal Reference:
Xiaoqing Li, Vamsidhara Vemireddy, Qi Cai, et al. Reversibly Modulating the Blood–Brain Barrier by Laser Stimulation of Molecular-Targeted Nanoparticles, Nano Letters (DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c02996)

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upstart writes:

Why the chip shortage drags on and on... and on:

The semiconductor industry lives at the cutting edge of technological progress. So why can't it churn out enough chips to keep the world moving?

Nearly two years into pandemic-caused disruptions, a severe shortage of computer chips—the components at the heart of smartphones, laptops, and innumerable other products—continues to affect manufacturers across the global economy.

Automakers have been forced to halt production in recent months as sales decline because they can't make enough cars. The shortage has affected industries from game consoles and networking gear to medical devices. In October, Apple blamed chip scarcity for crimping its financial results, and Intel warned that the drought will likely stretch to 2023.

In short, the semiconductor supply chain has become stretched in new ways that are deeply rooted and difficult to resolve. Demand is ballooning faster than chipmakers can respond, especially for basic-yet-widespread components that are subject to the kind of big variations in demand that make investments risky.

"It is utterly amazing that it's taken so long for the supply chain to rebound after the global economy came to a halt during Covid," says Brian Matas, vice president of market research at IC Insights, an analyst firm that tracks the semiconductor industry.

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