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upstart writes:

Ubiquitous food additive alters human microbiota and intestinal environment:

Carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) is a synthetic member of a widely used class of food additives, termed emulsifiers, which are added to many processed foods to enhance texture and promote shelf life. CMC has not been extensively tested in humans but has been increasingly used in processed foods since the 1960s. It had long been assumed that CMC was safe to ingest because it is eliminated in the feces without being absorbed. However, increasing appreciation of the health benefits provided by bacteria that normally live in the colon, and thus would interact with non-absorbed additives, has led scientists to challenge this assumption. Experiments in mice found that CMC, and some other emulsifiers, altered gut bacteria resulting in more severe disease in a range of chronic inflammatory conditions, including colitis, metabolic syndrome and colon cancer. However, the extent to which such results are applicable to humans had not been previously investigated.

The team performed a randomized controlled-feeding study in healthy volunteers. Participants, housed at the study site, consumed an additive-free diet or an identical diet supplemented with carboxymethylcellulose (CMC). Because the diseases CMC promotes in mice take years to arise in humans, the researchers focused here on intestinal bacteria and metabolites. They found that CMC consumption changed the make-up of bacteria populating the colon, reducing select species. Furthermore, fecal samples from CMC-treated participants displayed a stark depletion of beneficial metabolites that are thought to normally maintain a healthy colon.

Lastly, the researchers performed colonoscopies on subjects at the beginning and end of the study and noticed that a subset of subjects consuming CMC displayed gut bacteria encroaching into the mucus, which has previously been observed to be a feature of inflammatory bowel diseases and type 2 diabetes. Thus, while CMC consumption did not result in any disease per se in this two week study, collectively the results support the conclusions of animal studies that long-term consumption of this additive might promote chronic inflammatory diseases. Therefore, further studies of this additive are warranted.

Journal Reference:
Benoit Chassaing, et. al. Randomized controlled-feeding study of dietary emulsifier carboxymethylcellulose reveals detrimental impacts on the gut microbiota and metabolome. Gastroenterology, 2021; (DOI: 10.1053/j.gastro.2021.11.006)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

More funding will be provided to organisations focusing on mission development activities for current and existing space projects under Australia's Moon to Mars initiative.

More federal government grants for space technology initiatives are on the way, according to Minister for Science and Technology Melissa Price, who on Tuesday announced a second round of grants for the Demonstrator Program under the Moon to Mars initiative.

The Demonstrator Program provides funding to Australian industry and research institutions focusing on mission development activities for current and existing space projects. The objectives of the program are to support Australia's ambitions to join NASA's endeavour to go to the Moon and then Mars and accelerate the growth of Australia's space industry.

For this round of grants, organisations will be able to apply for "mission grants" of between AU$750,000 and AU$10 million from a total AU$41 million grant pool.

[...] Beyond the Demonstrator Program, the Moon to Mars initiative also recently launched its flagship Trailblazer program, which entails the Australian government working with NASA to create an Australian-built semi-autonomous rover that will be used in future missions to the moon and Mars.

The federal government said last month that the Trailblazer rover is expected to be capable of operating on the moon, provide lunar regolith to a NASA payload with a "high level of autonomy", and weigh 20kg or less. It also said at the time that the rover could be launched into space as early as 2026.

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upstart writes:

Synthetic tissue can repair hearts, muscles, and vocal cords:

"People recovering from heart damage often face a long and tricky journey. Healing is challenging because of the constant movement tissues must withstand as the heart beats. The same is true for vocal cords. Until now there was no injectable material strong enough for the job," says Guangyu Bao, a PhD candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University.

The team, led by Professor Luc Mongeau and Assistant Professor Jianyu Li, developed a new injectable hydrogel for wound repair. The hydrogel is a type of biomaterial that provides room for cells to live and grow. Once injected into the body, the biomaterial forms a stable, porous structure allowing live cells to grow or pass through to repair the injured organs.

"The results are promising, and we hope that one day the new hydrogel will be used as an implant to restore the voice of people with damaged vocal cords, for example laryngeal cancer survivors," says Guangyu Bao.

The scientists tested the durability of their hydrogel in a machine they developed to simulate the extreme biomechanics of human vocal cords. Vibrating at 120 times a second for over 6 million cycles, the new biomaterial remained intact while other standard hydrogels fractured into pieces, unable to deal with the stress of the load.

Journal Reference:
Sareh Taheri, Guangyu Bao, Zixin He, et al. Injectable, Pore‐Forming, Perfusable Double‐Network Hydrogels Resilient to Extreme Biomechanical Stimulations [open], Advanced Science (DOI: 10.1002/advs.202102627)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

An international team of astronomers has conducted radio observations of a bow shock in the X-ray binary Vela X-1 using MeerKAT telescope. The observational campaign resulted in the detection of radio emission from this source. The finding is detailed in a paper published November 19 on arXiv.org.

Vela X-1 is a runaway high-mass X-ray binary (HMXB) system, consisting of an accreting neutron star and the supergiant donor HD 77581 in a tight 9-day orbit. HD 77581 launches a strong stellar wind that causes a bow shock as it interacts with the interstellar medium. This makes Vela X-1 one of only two HMXBs known to experience a bow shock.

To date, the bow shock in Vela X-1 has been detected only by narrow-band hydrogen-alpha imaging and by infrared observations. However, now a group of astronomers led by Jacob van den Eijnden of University of Oxford, UK, reports the radio detection of this feature. The discovery was made as part of the ThunderKAT Large Survey Project with MeerKAT, which is aimed at performing radio observations of active, Southern X-ray binaries, cataclysmic variables, supernovae, and gamma-ray bursts.

Journal Reference:
Eijnden, J. van den, Heywood, I., Fender, R., et al. MeerKAT discovery of radio emission from the Vela X-1 bow shock, (DOI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.10159)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Biomedical engineers find neural activity during rest is highly organized:

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — When mice rest, individual neurons fire in seconds-long, coordinated cascades, triggering activity across the brain, according to research from Penn State and the National Institutes of Health. Previously, this was thought to be a relatively random process — single neurons firing spontaneously at random times without external stimulations.

The finding, published Nov. 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was made in rodents, but may have implications for better understanding neural activity in humans — especially in elucidating cognitive decline, according to first author Xiao Liu, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and faculty co-hire in the Institute of Computational and Data Sciences.

During rest, the brain appears to restore itself: the hippocampus consolidates memories, while cerebrospinal fluid washes through neural tissue, refreshing the mind. The mechanisms of the apparent tidying and cleaning are not well understood, however.

“Single neurons fire in a highly organized manner as seconds-long cascade events in the resting state,” Liu said. “It’s not random noise. We expected to find neurons firing with some organization during the resting state, but we didn’t expect such a highly organized pattern of activity with the involvement of so many neurons.”

The researchers analyzed a public dataset collected by the Allen Institute. Allen Institute scientists recorded neuronal “spikes” — electrical impulses to transmit information across the brain — of hundreds of neurons in resting and active rodents. They also measured pupil changes and body movements. Overall, Penn State researchers focused their analyses on the individual dynamics of about 10,000 neurons from 44 different brain regions in 14 rodents.

upstart writes:

Elon Musk confirms he's worried SpaceX could go bankrupt:

Elon Musk said Tuesday via Twitter that his spacecraft company, SpaceX, needs to produce a lot more of its next-generation Starship engines, and soon, to keep growing its Starlink broadband constellation and stay in business.

"If a severe global recession were to dry up capital availability / liquidity while SpaceX was losing billions on Starlink (and) Starship, then bankruptcy, while still unlikely, is not impossible," he tweeted.

The statement came in response to a leaked email that Musk reportedly sent to employees over the long Thanksgiving holiday in the US asking for "all hands on deck."

[...] "The consequences for SpaceX if we can not get enough reliable Raptors made is that we then can't fly Starship, which means we then can't fly Starlink Satellite V2. Satellite V1, by itself, is financially weak, while V2 is strong," reads the email, which was first obtained by SpaceExplored.

SpaceX and Musk didn't directly confirm the veracity of the leaked email to CNET, but when asked by a Twitter user on Tuesday morning "(how is) the Raptor thing going?" Musk responded briefly "It's getting fixed."

takyon writes:

VisionFive V1 RISC-V Linux SBC resurrects BeagleV single board computer

Last summer we reported that BeagleV StarFive RISC-V SBC would not be manufactured, but all was not lost as StarFive would collaborate with Radxa to make a new single board computer based on their JH7100 dual-core 64-bit RISC-V processor.

But thanks to a report on Heise and extra photos acquired by CNX Software, we now have more details about the board that mostly comes with the same features as the BeagleV StarFive, but a completely different layout that brings all the main ports to one side of the board.

[...] The specifications are mostly the same as for the BeagleV board, except the 4GB RAM is gone, and only 8GB RAM appears to be offered, and USB PD and Quick Charge are now supported, instead of just 5V/3A.

[...] There's no price nor availability information for the VisionFive V1 SBC, but we should learn more in a couple of weeks with the official announcement. The board will not be suitable for everyone since it lacks a GPU for 3D graphics accelerator, but we're also expecting the StarFive JH7110 in 2022 with four 64-bit RISC-V cores and an Imagination IMG BXE-4-32 GPU. [Update: The price will be $149 according to the presentation slides from RISC-V Summit, and the JH7110 board will be called VisionFive V2]

Also at Notebookcheck.

Original Submission

[Ed note: This story combines reports from two separate articles. In the first report are results comparing the likelihood of being infected (and surviving) after having one of the three vaccines that are commonly available in the US. The second report compares the risk of death that results from being infected subsequent to being vaccinated (from the same set of three commonly-available vaccines). No vaccine is perfect; get your booster when it is available; wear a mask in public indoor spaces; and get tested regularly. The life you save may be that of a family member, loved-one, or co-worker! Emphasis retained from originals.--martyb]

upstart writes:

Breakthrough Infection Study Compares Decline in COVID Vaccine Effectiveness: Pfizer vs Moderna vs J&J:

Study in Science of more than 780,000 Veterans is the first to compare waning protection rates across all three vaccine types available to most Americans and to directly report death rates after breakthrough infection.

A new study in the leading journal Science reviewed COVID-19 breakthrough infections among 780,225 Veterans, finding that vaccine protection declined from 87.9% to 48.1% during the 2021 Delta surge in the U.S. The researchers from PHI, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Texas Health Science Center found a dramatic decline in effectiveness for the Janssen (Johnson and Johnson) vaccine, from 86.4% in March to 13%.1 in September. They also found that vaccination of any type was protective against death among infected individuals.

As COVID-19 breakthrough infections continue to emerge in some vaccine recipients and health authorities are developing policies around booster vaccinations, national data on COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections is inadequate but urgently needed. Now a study from the Public Health Institute, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Texas Health Science Center published today in the journal Science analyzed COVID infection by vaccination status among 780,225 Veterans.

Researchers found that protection against any COVID-19 infection declined for all vaccine types, with overall vaccine protection declining from 87.9% in February to 48.1% by October 2021.

• The decline was greatest for the Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) vaccine, with protection against infection declining from 86.4% in March to 13%.1 in September
• Declines for PfizerBioNTech were from 86.9% to 43.3%
• Declines for Moderna were 89.2% to 58%.

It has been quite a year so far. A new Covid-19 variant was just discovered. The economy is lurching along trying to make the best of things with supply shortages and delivery challenges. There seems to be a new challenge to face wherever we look.

Then again, there are those on the margins who were already struggling to make ends meet. The first to be let go when times are tough and the last to be rehired — through no fault of their own. Having a college education is no guarantee of success. (I have experienced homelessness, personally.) Health issues, automation replacing manual labor, an economic downturn when a major employer closes, a car accident and medical expenses... most of us are living closer to the edge than we realize.

Today is the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving and for the past nine years has been known as GivingTuesday. For me, it serves an an acknowledgement of my own mortality. That I will not live forever and I am just one unforeseen event away from being dependent on others to survive. I just heard on the news yesterday that a lung transplant (e.g. for someone who came down with COVID-19) costs $1.2 million. There goes your life's savings.

If at such times I would need to rely on others to get by, why not reach out right now and try to help someone else in a spirit of gratitude for what I have today and to help someone else who is struggling and is in need.

Monetary donations are one way to help. So is spending an evening at a soup kitchen. Volunteering to share your skills and knowledge to someone else. Even something as simple as resolving to smile and wave to all you meet on a walk. Such simple acts have no cost, but to someone who is having a rough day they can be priceless.

SoylentNews was founded by people who donated their time and talents to help a community. And continue to do so. So, look a little farther afield and help someone else today. You, and they, will be glad you did!

upstart writes:

NVIDIA Research's GauGAN AI Art Demo Responds to Words:

A picture worth a thousand words now takes just three or four words to create, thanks to GauGAN2, the latest version of NVIDIA Research's wildly popular AI painting demo.

The deep learning model behind GauGAN allows anyone to channel their imagination into photorealistic masterpieces — and it's easier than ever. Simply type a phrase like "sunset at a beach" and AI generates the scene in real time. Add an additional adjective like "sunset at a rocky beach," or swap "sunset" to "afternoon" or "rainy day" and the model, based on generative adversarial networks, instantly modifies the picture.

With the press of a button, users can generate a segmentation map, a high-level outline that shows the location of objects in the scene. From there, they can switch to drawing, tweaking the scene with rough sketches using labels like sky, tree, rock and river, allowing the smart paintbrush to incorporate these doodles into stunning images.

The new GauGAN2 text-to-image feature can now be experienced on NVIDIA AI Demos, where visitors to the site can experience AI through the latest demos from NVIDIA Research. With the versatility of text prompts and sketches, GauGAN2 lets users create and customize scenes more quickly and with finer control.

Direct link to YouTube video.

Kinda makes Turtle graphics from the 70s look rather basic. However, beware Rule 34…

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Our televisions and computer screens display news, movies, and shows in high-definition, allowing viewers a clear and vibrant experience. Fiber optic connections send laser light densely packed with data through cables to bring these experiences to users.

NASA and commercial aerospace companies are applying similar technologies to space communications, bringing optical speeds to the final frontier. Free-space optical communications leverages recent advancements in telecommunications to allow spacecraft to send high-resolution images and videos over laser links.

"Free-space" refers to the absence of the insulated, fiber optic cables that enable the terrestrial internet. Free-space laser communications flow freely through the vacuum of space, however atmosphere poses unique challenges to communications engineers.

NASA's Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) will send data to and from ground stations and, eventually, in-space user missions over laser links.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

MI6 chief Richard Moore says Beijing and Moscow ‘pouring money’ into technological advances that will reshape espionage and geopolitics.

The chief of the United Kingdom’s foreign spy service is to warn that China and Russia are racing to master artificial intelligence in a way that could revolutionise geopolitics over the next 10 years.

Richard Moore, who heads the Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, is due to make his first public speech since becoming chief of the organisation on Tuesday. In extracts of the speech released in advance by the British government he will say quantum engineering, engineered biology, vast troves of data and advances in computer power pose a threat that needs to be addressed by democratic powers.

“Our adversaries are pouring money and ambition into mastering artificial intelligence, quantum computing and synthetic biology, because they know that mastering these technologies will give them leverage,” Moore, who rarely makes public speeches, will say when he sets out his view of current threats.

The world’s spies are trying to grapple with seismic advances in technology that are challenging traditional human-led spying operations, which have dominated espionage for thousands of years.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes from multiple sources:

https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/launch.html

Webb's launch date is set for December 22, 2021 07:20 EST.

Launch Vehicle

The James Webb Space Telescope will be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket. The launch vehicle is part of the European contribution to the mission. The Ariane 5 is one of the world's most reliable launch vehicles capable of delivering Webb to its destination in space. The European Space Agency (ESA) has agreed to provide an Ariane 5 launcher and associated launch services to NASA for Webb.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59419110

The telescope will be able to see just about anything in the sky. However, it has one overriding objective - to see the light coming from the very first stars to shine in the Universe.

These pioneer stars are thought to have switched on about 100-200 million years after the Big Bang, or a little over 13.5 billion years ago.

Webb will be picking out groupings of these stars. They are so far away, their light - even though it moves at 300,000km (186,000 miles) per second - will have taken billions of years to travel the cosmos.

It should be possible for Webb to see (or least detect a faint glow from) the moment when the darkness ended and those first stars flickered into life.

https://earthsky.org/space/james-webb-telescope-hubble-successor-to-launch/

Countdown resumes for December 22 launch

[...] NASA said today that engineering teams have completed additional testing confirming the James Webb Space Telescope is ready for flight. And that means launch preparations are resuming. The Webb's target launch date is now, officially, December 22 at 7:20 a.m. EST (00:20 UTC). NASA said in a statement:

Additional testing was conducted this week to ensure the observatory's health following an incident that occurred when the release of a clamp band caused a vibration throughout the observatory.

On Wednesday, November 24, engineering teams completed these tests, and a NASA-led anomaly review board concluded no observatory components were damaged in the incident. A "consent to fuel" review was held. And NASA gave approval to begin fueling the observatory. Fueling operations will begin Thursday, November 25, and will take about 10 days.

See also: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/11/james-webb-space-telescope-cleared-for-late-december-launch/ suggested by Mockingbird

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

Big Tech firms should pay ISPs to upgrade networks, telcos in Europe claim:

The CEOs of 13 large European telecom companies today called on tech giants—presumably including Netflix and other big US companies—to pay for a portion of the Internet service providers' network upgrade costs. In a "joint CEO statement," the European telcos described their proposal as a "renewed effort to rebalance the relationship between global technology giants and the European digital ecosystem."

The letter makes an argument similar to one that AT&T and other US-based ISPs have made at times over the past 15 years, that tech companies delivering content over the Internet get a "free" ride and should subsidize the cost of building last-mile networks that connect homes to broadband access. These arguments generally don't mention the fact that tech giants already pay for their own Internet bandwidth costs and that Netflix and others have built their own content-delivery networks to help deliver the traffic that home-Internet customers choose to receive.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Innosilicon graphics cards based on "Fantasy One" GPU feature up to 32GB GDDR6X memory

Today at the "Fantasy One GPU Product Press Conference", Innosilicon, a Chinese company offering graphics and memory solutions unveiled its first discrete GPU.

At the event, Innosilicon revealed its plans for the Fantasy One GPU. This processor is based on Imagination graphics IP (BXT to be specific) which brings tons of innovations to the discrete GPU solutions offered by the Chinese company.

As many as four products have been revealed, including dual-GPU and single-GPU solutions. Type A is a consumer/workstation graphics card featuring a single Fantasy One GPU, which is actually a multi-chip (chiplet) design. Unfortunately, none of the news reports from China on this announcement had the exact configuration of the Fantasy One.

According to the data provided by Innoslicon, this GPU offers up to 5 TFLOPS of single-precision compute power [and a fillrate of 160 GPixel/s]. It is equipped with DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.1, and VGA connectors. This card is to be equipped with up to 16 GB of GDDR6(X) memory across a 128-bit interface. So far, the G6X technology has been exclusive to NVIDIA/Micron Ampere GPUs, but apparently, Innosilicon made a lot of research in PAM4 signaling and was able to unlock up to 19 Gbps memory bandwidth for their GDDR6X implementation. A relatively short memory bus will have its toll on the maximum theoretical bandwidth though, which is to go up to 304 GB/s (so somewhere in between Radeon RX 6700XT and 6600XT).

[...] The Type B [...] is a dual-GPU solution featuring two Fantasy One GPUs connected by an interface known as Innolink. The company claims up to 10 TFLOPS of computing power and 320 GPixel/s fillrates. This card can offer 32 simultaneous 1080p/60FPS streams or 64 streams at 720/30FPS. It is to feature up to 32GB of GDDR6(X) memory but is again limited by dual 128-bit interfaces from each GPU. All these cards feature a PCI-Express 4.0 interface at full X16 width.

When people are willing to pay 2-4x as much for GPUs, competition is inevitable. Intel will be joining the market with "Alchemist" discrete GPUs in Q1/Q2 2022.

Previously: Imagination Announces B-Series GPU IP: Scaling up with Multi-GPU

Original Submission