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upstart writes:

Probiotics improve nausea and vomiting in pregnancy: Findings also provide clues to why some people experience more stomach upset during pregnancy:

Probiotics are thought to support the community of different microbes, often referred to as the "gut microbiome," found in the gastrointestinal tract.

During pregnancy, hormones like estrogen and progesterone increase, bringing about many physical changes. These increases can also change the gut microbiome, which likely affects the digestive system functions and causes unwanted symptoms like nausea, vomiting and constipation.

[...] Participants kept 17 daily observations of their symptoms during the duration of the study, for a total of 535 observations for the researchers to statistically assess.

What the researchers found was that taking the probiotic significantly reduced nausea and vomiting. Nausea hours (the number of hours participants felt nauseous) were reduced by 16%, and the number of times they vomited was reduced by 33%. Probiotic intake also significantly improved symptoms related to quality of life, such as fatigue, poor appetite and difficulty maintaining normal social activities, as scored by questionnaires.

[...] Participants also contributed fecal specimens before and during the study. The samples were analyzed to identify the type and number of microbes and the different byproducts of digestion.

upstart writes:

3D fault information improves alert accuracy for earthquake early warning:

The benefits of 3D fault models vary depending on the fault style (a strike slip versus a reverse fault, for instance), whether the event is a subduction or crustal earthquake, and the level of shaking that triggers the alert, according to Jessica Murray and colleagues at the U.S. Geological Survey.

They suggest 3D models would be an improvement over 2D models for an alert threshold of MMI 4.5, meaning that the alert would be triggered for shaking exceeding the "light" intensity category, where most people indoors would feel some shaking. In their study, 3D models also substantially improved alert accuracy for all subduction zone earthquakes at MMI 4.5 and MMI 2.5 (weak motion felt only by a few people) thresholds.

The study's findings could be useful for earthquake early warning systems like the U.S. West Coast's ShakeAlert, the researchers note in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

For now, ShakeAlert's algorithms use seismic data to characterize an earthquake source as a point or line. But researchers are already looking at ways to incorporate 3D source information, gleaned from fault displacement data collected by Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), into ShakeAlert.

"The expectation has been that such information would improve alerting because it would offer a better characterization of large earthquake sources compared to a point source," Murray explained. "This assumption has not been explored in terms of how a more realistic source characterization would translate to ground motion estimates, so that is one thing we set out to do."

Journal Reference:
Jessica R. Murray, Eric M. Thompson, Annemarie S. Baltay, et al. The Impact of 3D Finite‐Fault Information on Ground‐Motion Forecasting for Earthquake Early Warning, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (DOI: 10.1785/0120210162)

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upstart writes:

Trees are biggest methane 'vents' in wetland areas – even when they're dry:

In a study published in the Royal Society journal, Philosophical Transactions A, the researchers have found evidence that far more methane is emitted by trees growing on floodplains in the Amazon basin than by soil or surface water and this occurs in both wet and dry conditions.

Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas and much of our atmospheric methane comes from wetlands. A great deal of research is being carried on into exactly how much methane is emitted via this route, but models typically assume that the gas is only produced when the ground is completely flooded and underwater.

In wetland areas where there are no trees, methane would typically be consumed by the soil on its way to the surface, but in forested wetland areas, the researchers say the tree roots could be acting as a transport system for the gas, up to the surface where it vents into the atmosphere from the tree trunks.

Methane is able to escape via this route even when it is produced in soil and water that is several meters below ground level.

This would mean that existing models could be significantly underestimating the likely extent of methane emissions in wetland areas such as the Amazon basin.

Journal Reference:
Vincent Gauci, Viviane Figueiredo, Nicola Gedney, et al. Non-flooded riparian Amazon trees are a regionally significant methane source, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A (DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2020.0446)

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upstart writes:

China lunar rover to check out cube-shaped 'mystery house' object on far side of the moon:

The Yutu-2 rover is on a roll. It's been exploring the far side of the moon since early 2019 as part of China's Chang'e-4 lunar lander mission. It now has its eyes set on a strange-looking cube-shaped object it spotted in the distance. The nickname for the cube-shaped object translates to "mystery house."

The rover team is planning to drive over and get a closer look at the object.

As with Yutu-2's intriguing discovery of a "gel-like" substance inside a crater in 2019, don't get too excited for aliens. That substance turned out to be glassy-looking rock. And as far as I know, Stanley Kubrick never planted a monolith on the real moon, and those metal sculptures that were once all the rage on Earth haven't made the trek across space.

[...] According China Daily, Yutu-2 has already traveled 2,756 feet (840 meters) across the moon. Its next jaunt should shed some light on the "mystery house."

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upstart writes:

Newly unearthed dinosaur evolved 'large tail weapon' unlike any other:

In a southern and sparsely populated region of Chile, scientists excavated the skeletal remains of a naturally armored dinosaur that lived over 70 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period. Much to the team's surprise, they found it possessed a rather bizarre feature: a knife-like artillery in place of a tail.

[...] "It was an animal with a proportionally large head and a narrow snout with a beak," Sergio Soto Acuña, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at the University of Chile said. "However, the most notable feature is the caudal weapon: the posterior half of the tail is enclosed in a structure made up of fused bony plates that give the tail a very strange appearance."

The team dubbed the 2-meter (about 6-foot-6-inch) long species Stegouros elengassen due to the rest of its body resembling the Stegosaurus genus -- aka Spike from The Land Before Time. Later, extensive DNA analysis and cranial examination revealed the animal to be more closely related to a dinosaur group called Ankylosaurs, but the team decided to keep the initial name.

[...] Presumably, the dangerous appendage was used to defend against predators. But either way, Acuña adds, "This shows us that the fossil record of the Gondwanan continents can still have unexpected surprises for us."

Also at Reuters (with pictured).

Journal Reference:
Sergio Soto-Acuña, Alexander O. Vargas, Jonatan Kaluza, et al. Bizarre tail weaponry in a transitional ankylosaur from subantarctic Chile, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04147-1)

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upstart writes:

Brain drain: Scientists explain why neurons consume so much fuel even when at rest:

Dr. Ryan and his laboratory have shown in recent years that neurons' synaptic terminals, bud-like growths from which they fire neurotransmitters, are major consumers of energy when active, and are very sensitive to any disruption of their fuel supply. In the new study they examined fuel use in synaptic terminals when inactive, and found that it is still high.

This high resting fuel consumption, they discovered, is accounted for largely by the pool of vesicles at synaptic terminals. During synaptic inactivity, vesicles are fully loaded with thousands of neurotransmitters each, and are ready to launch these signal-carrying payloads across synapses to partner neurons.

Why would a synaptic vesicle consume energy even when fully loaded? The researchers discovered that there is essentially a leakage of energy from the vesicle membrane, a "proton efflux," such that a special "proton pump" enzyme in the vesicle has to keep working, and consuming fuel as it does so, even when the vesicle is already full of neurotransmitter molecules.

The experiments pointed to proteins called transporters as the likely sources of this proton leakage. Transporters normally bring neurotransmitters into vesicles, changing shape to carry the neurotransmitter in, but allowing at the same time for a proton to escape -- as they do so. Dr. Ryan speculates that the energy threshold for this transporter shape-shift was set low by evolution to enable faster neurotransmitter reloading during synaptic activity, and thus faster thinking and action.

"The downside of a faster loading capability would be that even random thermal fluctuations could trigger the transporter shape-shift, causing this continual energy drain even when no neurotransmitter is being loaded," he said.

Journal Reference:
Camila Pulido and Timothy A. Ryan. Synaptic vesicle pools are a major hidden resting metabolic burden of nerve terminals, Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abi9027)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

UVA Develops Precise Brain Surgery Without a Scalpel:

School of Medicine researchers have developed a noninvasive way to remove faulty brain circuits that could allow doctors to treat debilitating neurological diseases without the need for conventional brain surgery.

The UVA team, together with colleagues at Stanford University, indicate that the approach, if successfully translated to the operating room, could revolutionize the treatment of some of the most challenging and complex neurological diseases, including epilepsy, movement disorders and more. The approach uses low-intensity focused ultrasound waves combined with microbubbles to briefly penetrate the brain's natural defenses and allow the targeted delivery of a neurotoxin. This neurotoxin kills the culprit brain cells while sparing other healthy cells and preserving the surrounding brain architecture. 

"This novel surgical strategy has the potential to supplant existing neurosurgical procedures used for the treatment of neurological disorders that don't respond to medication," said researcher Kevin S. Lee, PhD, of UVA's Departments of Neuroscience and Neurosurgery and the Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG). "This unique approach eliminates the diseased brain cells, spares adjacent healthy cells and achieves these outcomes without even having to cut into the scalp." 

[...] The new approach is called PING, and it has already demonstrated exciting potential in laboratory studies. For instance, one of the promising applications for PING could be for the surgical treatment of epilepsies that do not respond to medication. Approximately a third of patients with epilepsy do not respond to anti-seizure drugs, and surgery can reduce or eliminate seizures for some of them. Lee and his team, along with their collaborators at Stanford, have shown that PING can reduce or eliminate seizures in two research models of epilepsy. The findings raise the possibility of treating epilepsy in a carefully-targeted and noninvasive manner without the need for traditional brain surgery. 

Another important potential advantage of PING is that it could encourage the surgical treatment of appropriate patients with epilepsy who are reluctant to undergo conventional invasive or ablative surgery. 

Journal Reference:
Yi Wang, Matthew J. Anzivino, Yanrong Zhang, et al. Noninvasive disconnection of targeted neuronal circuitry sparing axons of passage and nonneuronal cells. Journal of Neurosurgery, 2021 DOI: 10.3171/2021.7.JNS21123

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fliptop writes:

For all the outrage directed at Big Tech over the past decade, regulators have shied away from the nuclear option of actually breaking up a major platform. Until this week, that is:

By ordering Facebook to part with Giphy, a GIF creation platform it acquired in 2020, the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority broke a global taboo and ushered in a brave new world of tech enforcement.

The move has taken center stage at a gathering of competition authorities from G7 countries, and is likely to cheer prominent proponents of breaking up Big Tech, like U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and U.S. antitrust chief Lina Khan — while giving pause to skeptics like the EU's digital czar, Margrethe Vestager.

[...] In Washington, Khan's appointment as head of the Federal Trade Commission signaled bolder moves against Silicon Valley giants. In the EU, officials are rolling out new rules to limit giants' expansion. And in China, authorities are cracking down on the tech sector, fining dozens of companies that didn't seek approval for past deals.

For Facebook in particular, antitrust is only part of the problem.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

NASA sets sail into a promising but perilous future of private space stations:

On Thursday afternoon, NASA announced that it had awarded three different teams, each involving multiple companies, more than $100 million apiece to support the design and early development of private space stations in low Earth orbit.

This represents a big step toward the space agency's plan to maintain a permanent presence in space even after the aging International Space Station, which can probably keep flying through 2028 or 2030, reaches the end of its life. NASA intends to become an "anchor tenant" by sending its astronauts to one or more private stations in orbit starting in the second half of the 2020s.

The total estimated award amount for all three funded Space Act Agreements is $415.6 million. The individual award amounts, with links to each concept, are:

Each of these space station concepts is a "free flyer" in the sense of launching independently of any other facility. Previously, in February 2020, as part of a separate competitive procurement process, NASA awarded Axiom Space a $140 million contract to develop a habitable commercial module for the International Space Station. The award gives Axiom the right to attach its module to the station's Node 2 forward point.

At this stage, Axiom would appear to have some advantages in the competition for future NASA private station awards. In addition to providing the benefit of power, breathing air, and crew time through its initial attachment to the space station, Axiom is ahead in the design and construction of its facility. Axiom completed the cumbersome "preliminary design review" for its station in September, a process the free-flying stations are unlikely to finish before 2025.

But now, the "free flyer" competitors have some funding to try to catch up.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Printing technique creates effective skin equivalent, heals wounds: Material mimics all three layers of the skin, allows for complex printing structures:

The technique is the first of its kind to simulate three layers of skin: the hypodermis, or fatty layer, the dermis, and the epidermis.

"You effectively have three different cell types. They all grow at different speeds," said author Alan Smith. "If you try to produce tri-layered structures, it can be very difficult to provide each of the requirements of each different layer."

To solve this problem, the scientists used suspended layer additive manufacturing (SLAM). They created a gel-like material to support the skin equivalent, twisting and altering the structure of the gel as it formed to create a bed of particles that can then support a second phase of gel injection.

During printing, the skin layers are deposited within the support gel, which holds everything in place. After printing, the team washed away the support material, leaving behind the layered skin equivalent.

If the researchers moved a needle through the supporting gel, it repaired itself faster than other similar techniques. This results in higher resolution printing than previous methods and allows for the printing of complicated skin structures.

Journal Reference:
Richard J. A. Moakes, Jessica J. Senior, Thomas E. Robinson, et al. A suspended layer additive manufacturing approach to the bioprinting of tri-layered skin equivalents [open], APL Bioengineering (DOI: 10.1063/5.0061361)

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upstart writes:

Newfound Comet Leonard will blaze into view this year:

The object in question is Comet Leonard, catalogued C/2021 A1 and was discovered by astronomer Gregory J. Leonard on Jan. 3 at the Mount Lemmon Observatory, also known as the Mount Lemmon Infrared Observatory. The observatory is located on Mount Lemmon in the Santa Catalina Mountains, approximately 17 miles (28 kilometers) northeast of Tucson, Arizona. Mr. Leonard is a senior research specialist for the observatory's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory's Catalina Sky Survey.

[...] Of course, memories are still fresh from the striking appearance last summer of Comet NEOWISE. And some are no doubt hoping that we might have a December redux with Comet Leonard.

[...] When using standard power-law formulas, taking into account how bright the comet is now versus how much closer it will be by year's end (to both Earth and the sun), the current expectation is that the comet could reach as bright as fourth magnitude, making it bright enough to see without optical aid in a dark sky.

[...] During the first two weeks of December, Comet Leonard will be accessible to early risers, visible a couple of hours before sunrise, low in the east-northeast sky. It will track through the constellations Coma Berenices, Boötes and Serpens Caput.

upstart writes:

Pub-goers snowed in for three days at UK's highest inn:

More than 60 revelers who went out to the Tan Hill Inn in Swaledale, northern England, on Friday ended up extending their stay after snow blocked roads and brought down a power line, co-owner Andrew Hields told CNN on Monday.

"They're all in good spirits, they're all eating and drinking well," said Hields, 36, who said guests have been entertained by an Oasis cover band, Noasis, who were booked to play on Friday night, as well as quizzes, table games, karaoke and sing-along carol sessions.

There are three routes to the isolated pub, which sits at an altitude of 1,732 feet (388 meters) above sea level. Two of them were blocked by snow drifts, and a downed power line shut the third, said Hields, who has been prevented from getting to the pub.

[...] This is not the first time snow has stranded guests at the pub, said Hields, who added that as soon as there is a weather warning staff stock up on fuel, food and drink.

That means the power cable coming down hasn't affected the running of the pub, according to Hields.

[...] A mountain rescue team was called in to evacuate one man who is undergoing dialysis treatment, said Hields, but the rest stayed for a unique experience.

[...] Weather warnings were in place across large parts of the UK last week due to Storm Arwen, which brought severe weather and winds speeds of over 90 mph (144 km/h) in some areas.

Are there any Soylentils who've found themselves in similar circumstances?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket submits:

Hackers could steal encrypted data now and crack it with quantum computers later, warn analysts:

Analysts at Booz Allen Hamilton warn that Chinese espionage efforts could soon focus on encrypted data.

Beijing-backed hackers might soon start trying to steal encrypted data -- such as biometric info, the identities of covert spies, and weapons designs -- with a view to decrypting it with a future quantum computer, according to analysts at US tech consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH).

"In the 2020s, Chinese economic espionage will likely increasingly steal data that could be used to feed quantum simulations," the analysts write in the report Chinese Threats in the Quantum Era. 

At risk are data protected by the current algorithms underpinning public-key cryptography, which some fear may be rendered useless for protecting data once quantum computers become powerful enough.

The big question is when such a quantum computer might arrive. However, Booz Allen Hamilton's analysts suggest it doesn't matter that an encryption-breaking quantum computer could be years off because the type of data being targeted would still be valuable. Hence, there's still an incentive for hackers to steal high-value encrypted data.

fliptop writes:

Last year RedHat announced the early EOL of CentOS 8. In 2019 they introduced their plans for CentOS Stream:

CentOS Stream was introduced in 2019 as a rolling release version of CentOS. In the previously mentioned release cycle, it found its place between Fedora and RHEL, testing future minor releases.

However, RHEL made changes to the initial plan, deciding to halt any future CentOS releases. CentOS 8 has been declared the last downstream release that will be supported until December 2021. Therefore, instead of its previously announced EOL in 2029, its life cycle has been cut by eight years.

RHEL will not release any new CentOS distributions, only CentOS Stream.

Naturally, the stability of CentOS Stream cannot compete with CentOS releases. As it will work midstream in the release cycle, it is bound to be less stable than the RHEL distribution it precedes.

RedHat has just announced the release of CentOS Stream 9:

CentOS Stream is a continuous-delivery distribution providing each point-release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Before a package is formally introduced to CentOS Stream, it undergoes a battery of tests and checks—both automated and manual—to ensure it meets the stringent standards for inclusion in RHEL. Updates posted to Stream are identical to those posted to the unreleased minor version of RHEL. The aim? For CentOS Stream to be as fundamentally stable as RHEL itself.

To achieve this stability, each major release of Stream starts from a stable release of Fedora Linux—In CentOS Stream 9, this begins with Fedora 34, which is the same code base from which RHEL 9 is built. As updated packages pass testing and meet standards for stability, they are pushed into CentOS Stream as well as the nightly build of RHEL. What CentOS Stream looks like now is what RHEL will look like in the near future.

CentOS 7 will be EOL in June 2024. If you're running a production environment on CentOS, what are your plans? Move to CentOS Stream? Move to a different platform? Something else?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Can seven questions determine how wise you are? Seven-item Jeste-Thomas Wisdom Index has high validity to measure wisdom and potential to improve overall well-being:

The study's researchers had previously developed the 28-item San Diego Wisdom Scale (SD-WISE-28), which has been used in large national and international studies, biological research and clinical trials to evaluate wisdom.

But in a study publishing in International Psychogeriatrics, researchers found that a shortened seven-item version (SD-WISE-7 or Jeste-Thomas Wisdom Index), was comparable and reliable.

"Wisdom measures are increasingly being used to study factors that impact mental health and optimal aging. We wanted to test if a list of only seven items could provide valuable information to test wisdom," said senior author Dilip V. Jeste, MD, senior associate dean for the Center of Healthy Aging and Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

Past studies have shown that wisdom is comprised of seven components: self-reflection, pro-social behaviors (such as empathy, compassion and altruism), emotional regulation, acceptance of diverse perspectives, decisiveness, social advising (such as giving rational and helpful advice to others) and spirituality.

The latest study surveyed 2,093 participants, ages 20 to 82, through the online crowdsourcing platform Amazon Mechanical Turk.

The seven statements, selected from SD-WISE-28, relate to the seven components of wisdom and are rated on a 1 to 5 scale, from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Examples of the statements include "I remain calm under pressure" and "I avoid situations where I know my help will be needed."

"Shorter doesn't mean less valid," said Jeste. "We selected the right type of questions to get important information that not only contributes to the advancement of science but also supports our previous data that wisdom correlates with health and longevity."

[...] "We need wisdom for surviving and thriving in life. Now, we have a list of questions that take less than a couple of minutes to answer that can be put into clinical practice to try to help individuals," said Jeste.

Journal Reference:
Michael L. Thomas, Barton W. Palmer, Ellen E. Lee, et al. Abbreviated San Diego Wisdom Scale (SD-WISE-7) and Jeste-Thomas Wisdom Index (JTWI) [open], International Psychogeriatrics (DOI: 10.1017/S1041610221002684)

Original Submission