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upstart writes:

Giving social support to others may boost your health:

While researchers have long thought that receiving social support from others is a key to health, results from studies have shown mixed results. So researchers from The Ohio State University decided to see if giving support may also play an important role in health.

They found that on one important measure of health -- chronic inflammation -- indicators of positive social relationships were associated with lower inflammation only among people who said they were available to provide social support to family and friends.

In other words, having friends to lean on may not help your health unless you also say that you're available to help them when they need it.

“Positive relationships may be associated with lower inflammation only for those who believe they can give more support in those relationships,” said Tao Jiang, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in psychology at Ohio State.

Preliminary evidence in the study suggested that the link between health and the willingness to help others may be especially important for women.

[...] The study used data from 1,054 participants in the National Survey of Midlife Development in the U.S. These were all healthy adults between 34 and 84 years old.

Journal Reference:
Tao Jiang, Syamil Yakin, Jennifer Crocker, Baldwin M. Way. Perceived social support-giving moderates the association between social relationships and interleukin-6 levels in blood. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 2022; 100: 25 (DOI: 10.1016/j.bbi.2021.11.002)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Researchers reveal how to turn a global warming liability into a profitable food security solution:

“Industrial sources in the U.S. are emitting a truly staggering amount of methane, which is uneconomical to capture and use with current applications,” said study lead author Sahar El Abbadi, who conducted the research as a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering.

"Our goal is to flip that paradigm, using biotechnology to create a high-value product," added El Abbadi, who is now a lecturer in the Civic, Liberal and Global Education program at Stanford.

[...] Although carbon dioxide is more abundant in the atmosphere, methane's global warming potential is about 85 times as great over a 20-year period and at least 25 times as great a century after its release. Methane also threatens air quality by increasing the concentration of tropospheric ozone, exposure to which causes an estimated 1 million premature deaths annually worldwide due to respiratory illnesses. Methane's relative concentration has grown more than twice as fast as that of carbon dioxide since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution due in great part to human-driven emissions.

A potential solution lies in methane-consuming bacteria called methanotrophs. These bacteria can be grown in a chilled, water-filled bioreactor fed pressurized methane, oxygen and nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and trace metals. The protein-rich biomass that results can be used as fishmeal in aquaculture feed, offsetting demand for fishmeal made from small fish or plant-based feeds that require land, water and fertilizer.

NPC-131072 writes:

From Nature

Researchers in South Africa are racing to track the concerning rise of a new variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The variant harbours a large number of mutations found in other variants, including Delta, and it seems to be spreading quickly across South Africa.

A top priority is to track the variant more closely as it spreads: it was first identified in Botswana this month and has turned up in travellers to Hong Kong from South Africa. Scientists are also trying to understand the variant's properties, such as whether it can evade immune responses triggered by vaccines and whether it causes more or less severe disease than other variants do.

WHO calls special meeting to discuss new Covid variant found in South Africa with 'a large number of mutations':

The World Health Organization is monitoring a new variant with numerous mutations to the spike protein, scheduling a special meeting Friday to discuss what it may mean for vaccines and treatments, officials said Thursday.

Journal Reference:
Ewen Callaway. Heavily mutated coronavirus variant puts scientists on alert, (DOI: 10.1038/d41586-021-03552-w)

Editor's Note: The UK, France and some Asian countries have suspended flights from 6 African countries as from 26 Nov at the time of processing this story Other countries may choose to do the same.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

SpaceX's Starlink Will Make Life Hell for Astronomers Like Me. Telescopes on the Moon Could Help Fix That.:

This "mega-constellation" of Starlink satellites is the brainchild of Elon Musk's company SpaceX. Their plan is something straight out of science fiction: put 42,000 satellites into orbit, and broadcast wireless internet to anyone and everyone, all of the time. Early reviews have been... less than stellar ("unreliable, inconsistent, and foiled by even the merest suggestion of trees", said The Verge). But the tech will no doubt improve. Like it or not, ubiquitous Starlink internet is coming.

There's also no reason to think that SpaceX is the only player in town. A number of other companies and countries are all planning their own satellite mega-constellations, from Amazon (3,236 satellites as part of Project Kuiper), OneWeb, and Boeing, to China's ambitious plan for a 13,000-strong swarm.

Astronomers like myself have been less than enthusiastic about the prospect of a night sky full of artificial satellites. Our most sensitive telescopes are designed to pick up the unimaginably faint signals from planets orbiting distant stars, and galaxies billions of years in the past. How did the first galaxies form after the Big Bang? How fast is the universe expanding? Are there any dangerous asteroids that might crash into Earth? Having tens of thousands of satellites criss-crossing the sky and obscuring the view is going to make answering these questions more difficult.

This is going to be a serious problem for some future projects. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is an upcoming telescope, located under Chile's dark skies, that will have the unprecedented ability to photograph the entire sky every few nights.

takyon writes:

New Ultrahard Diamond Glass Synthesized

Carnegie's Yingwei Fei and Lin Wang were part of an international research team that synthesized a new ultrahard form of carbon glass with a wealth of potential practical applications for devices and electronics. It is the hardest known glass with the highest thermal conductivity among all glass materials. Their findings are published in Nature.

[...] Because of its extremely high melting point, it's impossible to use diamond as the starting point to synthesize diamond-like glass. However, the research team, led by Jilin University's Bingbing Liu and Mingguang Yao—a former Carnegie visiting scholar—made their breakthrough by using a form of carbon composed of 60 molecules arranged to form a hollow ball. Informally called a buckyball, this Nobel Prize-winning material was heated just enough to collapse its soccer-ball-like structure to induce disorder before turning the carbon to crystalline diamond under pressure.

The team used a large-volume multi-anvil press to synthesize the diamond-like glass. The glass is sufficient large for characterization. Its properties were confirmed using a variety of advanced, high-resolution techniques for probing atomic structure.

Journal Reference:
Yuchen Shang, Zhaodong Liu, Jiajun Dong, et al. Ultrahard bulk amorphous carbon from collapsed fullerene, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03882-9)

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

Ars Technica has a series-recap-thing going on for "The Wheel of Time" series on Amazon: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/two-book-readers-recap-the-first-three-episodes-of-amazons-the-wheel-of-time/

In the event that you dislike people ruining great books for stupid political agendas, perhaps you should steer clear of this review of Amazon's TV Series.

These recaps won't cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and the book series. If you want to stay unspoiled and haven't read the books, these recaps aren't for you.

upstart writes:

A Stunning 3D Map of Blood Vessels and Cells in a Mouse Skull Could Help Scientists Make New Bones:

"We need to see what's happening inside the skull, including the relative locations of blood vessels and cells and how their organization changes during injury and over time," says Warren Grayson, Ph.D., professor of biomedical engineering and director of the Laboratory for Craniofacial and Orthopaedic Tissue Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His lab focuses on developing biomaterials and transplanting stem cells into the skull to re-create missing bone tissue.

Other scientists have provided maps of small portions of blood vessels and stem cells in the mouse skull. "However, a larger picture of the skull gives us a better understanding of the entire vasculature and distribution of different stem cell types," says Alexandra Rindone, graduate student at The Johns Hopkins University and School of Medicine and first author of the paper.

The new map, published Oct. 28 in Nature Communications, is a 3D view of the top of a mouse skull -- its cranial bone, or calvaria -- which is made up of four connected skull bones.

To create the map, which includes hundreds of thousands of cells, the Johns Hopkins researchers used four key techniques to pinpoint vessels and cells.

upstart writes:

One year on this giant, blistering hot planet is just 16 hours long:

The hunt for planets beyond our solar system has turned up more than 4,000 far-flung worlds, orbiting stars thousands of  light years from Earth. These extrasolar planets are a veritable menagerie, from rocky super-Earths and miniature Neptunes to colossal gas giants.

Among the more confounding planets discovered to date are "hot Jupiters" —  massive balls of gas that are about the size of our own Jovian planet but that zing around their stars in less than 10 days, in contrast to Jupiter's plodding, 12-year orbit. Scientists have discovered about 400 hot Jupiters to date. But exactly how these weighty whirlers came to be remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in planetary science.

Now, astronomers have discovered one of the most extreme ultrahot Jupiters  — a gas giant that is about five times Jupiter's mass and blitzes around its star in just 16 hours. The planet's orbit is the shortest of any known gas giant to date.

Due to its extremely tight orbit and proximity to its star, the planet's day side is estimated to be at around 3,500 Kelvin, or close to 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit — about as hot as a small star. This makes the planet, designated TOI-2109b, the second hottest detected so far.

Judging from its properties, astronomers believe that TOI-2109b is in the process of "orbital decay," or spiraling into its star, like bathwater circling the drain. Its extremely short orbit is predicted to cause the planet to spiral toward its star faster than other hot Jupiters.

upstart writes:

Italy fines Amazon, Apple $230M over reseller collusion – TechCrunch:

Amazon and Apple have been hit with almost $230 million (€203M) in total fines by Italy’s antitrust authority — following an investigation into reselling of Apple and (Apple-owned) Beats kit on Amazon’s Italian ecommerce marketplace.

The authority says the alleged collusion decreased the level of discounts available to consumers buying Apple and Beats products on the Amazon Italy marketplace.

It has also ordered the tech giants to end the restrictions on resellers.

The AGCM announced the sanction today, saying its probe identified a restrictive agreement between the pair to block some “legitimate” resellers of Beats products on Amazon.it.

The fine breaks down into €134.5M (~$151M) for Amazon — and €68.7M (~$77.3M) for Apple.

The agreement in question was signed between the pair back in October 2018.

Per the AGCM’s press release, it found the agreement contained a number of contractual clauses which prohibited official and unofficial resellers of Apple and Beats products from using Amazon.it — with the restriction limiting the sale of Apple and Beats products on Amazon.it to Amazon itself and a number of resellers the authority says were “chosen individually and in a discriminatory way” — in violation of Art. 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Samsung Officially Announces $17 Billion Advanced Semiconductor Site in Texas – Facility to Span More Than 5 Million Square Meters

After multiple reports and of course, surveying various locations in the U.S., Samsung has officially announced that Taylor, Texas[*], is the location of the Korean giant's $17 billion advanced chip manufacturing facility. The company states that the new hub will boost production of various semiconductor solutions that will be found in next-generation solutions, including smartphones.

[...] The Korean tech behemoth says that groundbreaking will begin in the first half of 2022, with operations expected to start in the second half of 2024. Unfortunately, this timeline means that this chip manufacturing hub will not be one of the locations where Samsung will mass produce its 3nm wafers, as a previous report states that mass production of this advanced process will commence in the first half of 2022.

[*] Taylor, Texas on Wikipedia.

Texas To Get Multiple New Fabs as Samsung and TI to Spend $47 Billion on New Facilities

After a year of searching for the right place of its new U.S. fab, Samsung this week announced that it would build a fab near Taylor, Texas. The company will invest $17 billion in the new semiconductor fabrication plant and will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives from local and state authorities. Separately, Texas authorities have announced that Texas Instruments intend to spend $30 billion on new fabs in the state, as well.

[...] The Governor of Texas recently announced the Texas Instruments was planning to build several new 300-mm fabs near Sherman[**]. In total, TI intends to build as many as four wafer fabrication facilities in the region over coming decades and the cumulative investments are expected to total $30 billion as fabs will be eventually upgraded.

Texas Instruments itself [has] yet have to formally announce its investments plans, but the announcement by the governor Greg Abbot indicates that the principal decisions have been made and now TI needs to finalize the details.

[**] Sherman, Texas on Wikipedia.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Retrotechtacular: Office Equipment From The 1940s:

If you can’t imagine writing a letter on a typewriter and putting it in a mailbox, then you take computers for granted. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. More niche applications begat niche machines, and a number of them are on display in this film that the Computer History Archives Project released last month. Aside from the File-o-matic Desk, the Addressograph, or the Sound Scriber, there a number of other devices that give us a peek into a bygone era.

YouTube has a 17m00s video by IBM demonstrating many of these in use.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-secret-history-of-atapi/

The other day I asked myself a seemingly trivial question: What was the first ATAPI CD-ROM drive and when was it available? Given that ATAPI was a major technology which instantly obsoleted all proprietary CD-ROM interfaces and made SCSI much less desirable, one might expect that there would have been some press releases touting the advantages of the new technology, articles describing the whys and wherefores, but… nope. There is nothing.

In 1993, CD-ROM drives used either SCSI or one of several proprietary interfaces, the major amongst those being Matsushita/Panasonic, Mitsumi, Philips, and Sony. In 1995, the proprietary interfaces were effectively gone and most new CD-ROM drives used the ATAPI interface. Something clearly happened in 1994, but exactly what, when, and how—that’s something of a mystery.

[Ed. note: As one who was around when this happened, I found it to be a detailed and fascinating read! Unfortunately, it was years later when I could afford my first CD-ROM. Who else here has experience from those early days? --martyb]

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Ultrashort-pulse lasers kill bacterial superbugs, spores:

Life-threatening bacteria are becoming ever more resistant to antibiotics, making the search for alternatives to antibiotics an increasingly urgent challenge. For certain applications, one alternative may be a special type of laser.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that lasers that emit ultrashort pulses of light can kill multidrug-resistant bacteria and hardy bacterial spores. The findings, available online in the Journal of Biophotonics, open up the possibility of using such lasers to destroy bacteria that are hard to kill by other means. The researchers previously have shown that such lasers don't damage human cells, making it possible to envision using the lasers to sterilize wounds or disinfect blood products.

"The ultrashort-pulse laser technology uniquely inactivates pathogens while preserving human proteins and cells," said first author Shaw-Wei (David) Tsen, MD, PhD, an instructor of radiology at Washington University's Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology (MIR). "Imagine if, prior to closing a surgical wound, we could scan a laser beam across the site and further reduce the chances of infection. I can see this technology being used soon to disinfect biological products in vitro, and even to treat bloodstream infections in the future by putting patients on dialysis and passing the blood through a laser treatment device."

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://github.com/rust-lang/team/pull/671

The entire moderation team resigns, effective immediately. This resignation is done in protest of the Core Team placing themselves unaccountable to anyone but themselves.

As a result of such structural unaccountability, we have been unable to enforce the Rust Code of Conduct to the standards the community expects of us and to the standards we hold ourselves to. To leave under these circumstances deeply pains us, and we apologize to all of those that we have let down. In recognition that we are out of options from the perspective of Rust Governance, we feel as though we have no course remaining to us but to step down and make this statement.

In so doing, we would offer a few suggestions to the community writ large:

• We suggest that Rust Team Members come to a consensus on a process for oversight over the Core Team. Currently, they are answerable only to themselves, which is a property unique to them in contrast to all other Rust teams.

• In the interest of not perpetuating unaccountability, we recommend that the replacement for the Mod Team be made by Rust Team Members not on the Core Team.
• We suggest that the future Mod Team, with advice from Rust Team Members, proactively decide how best to handle and discover unhealthy conflict among Rust Team Members. We suggest that the Mod Team work with the Foundation in obtaining resources for professional mediation.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Chemotherapy may affect muscle cells at lower doses than previously thought: The cancer therapy may also affect the protein building process, not just cause muscles to degrade:

According to the researchers, it was previously known that chemotherapy drugs can affect the mitochondria within cells, which can cause the loss of muscle tissue via a process called oxidative stress.

In their new study, the researchers studied three different chemotherapy drugs in cultured muscle cells at levels too low to trigger oxidative stress. They found that the muscle cells were still affected by the lower levels of drugs -- this time by interfering with the process that builds muscle, called protein synthesis.

Gustavo Nader, associate professor of kinesiology, said that while the findings need to be confirmed in humans, they could have implications for cancer treatment in the future.

"Eventually, it may be that the implementation of cancer treatments should consider that even at low doses that do not cause oxidative stress, some chemotherapy drugs may still promote the loss of muscle tissue," Nader said. "The tumor is already making you weak, it's contributing to the loss of muscle mass, and the chemo drugs are helping the tumor to accomplish that."