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For about a decade, scientists and engineers have been developing sodium batteries, which replace both lithium and cobalt used in current lithium-ion batteries with cheaper, more environmentally friendly sodium. Unfortunately, in earlier sodium batteries, a component called the anode would tend to grow needle-like filaments called dendrites that can cause the battery to electrically short and even catch fire or explode.

[...] The new anode material, called sodium antimony telluride intermetallic -- Na metal composite (NST-Na), is made by rolling a thin sheet of sodium metal onto an antimony telluride powder, folding it over on itself, and repeating many times.

[...] This process results in a very uniform distribution of sodium atoms that makes it less likely to form dendrites or surface corrosion than existing sodium metal anodes. That makes the battery more stable and allows faster charging, comparable to a lithium-ion battery's charge rate. It also has a higher energy capacity than existing sodium-ion batteries.

[Professor Graeme] Henkelman said that if the sodium atoms that carry a charge in a sodium battery bind more strongly to each other than they do to the anode, they tend to form instabilities, or clumps of sodium that attract more sodium atoms and eventually lead to dendrites. He used a computer simulation to reveal what happens when individual sodium atoms interact with the new composite material NST-Na.

"In our calculations, this composite binds sodium a little more strongly than sodium binds itself, which is the ideal case for having the sodium atoms come down and evenly spread out on the surface and prevent these instabilities from forming," Henkelman said.

Yixian Wang, Hui Dong, Naman Katyal, Hongchang Hao, Pengcheng Liu, Hugo Celio, Graeme Henkelman, John Watt, David Mitlin. A Sodium–Antimony–Telluride Intermetallic Allows Sodium‐Metal Cycling at 100% Depth of Discharge and as an Anode‐Free Metal Battery. Advanced Materials, 2021; 2106005 DOI: 10.1002/adma.202106005

Original Submission

upstart , using material from multiple submissions, writes:

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is fueled up for its Dec. 22 launch:

The new James Webb Space Telescope is topped off and one step closer to taking flight.

Mission team members have finished fueling the James Webb Space Telescope at[sic] ahead of its planned Dec. 22 launch from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, the European Space Agency announced Monday (Dec. 6). The fueling for Webb, which is an international collaborative effort between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency, took 10 days and was completed on Dec. 3, according to the ESA statement.

After a series of delays since the development of the scope first began in 1996, Webb is still on track to finally launch Dec. 22 atop an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.

"Webb's propellant tanks were filled separately with [21 gallons] 79.5 l of dinitrogen tetroxide oxidizer and [42 gallons] 159 l hydrazine," the ESA wrote in the announcement, adding that the oxidizer "improves the burn efficiency of the hydrazine fuel."

Now that Webb is fueled, the mission team will begin "combined operations," according to the statement. In this phase, the teams behind the rocket and the telescope will come together to mount Webb on the Ariane 5 rocket and encapsulate it within the rocket's fairing. The newly joined pair will then be moved to the Final Assembly building for final preparations before liftoff.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Fully Fueled for Launch – James Webb Space Telescope:

In preparation for launch later this month, ground teams have successfully completed the delicate operation of loading the James Webb Space Telescope with the propellant it will use to steer itself while in space.

In order to make critical course corrections shortly after launch, to maintain its prescribed orbit nearly 1 million miles from Earth, and to repoint the observatory and manage its momentum during operations, Webb was built with a total of 12 rocket thrusters. These rocket thrusters use either hydrazine fuel or a special mixture of hydrazine fuel and dinitrogen tetroxide oxidizer.

To safely handle these extremely toxic propellants, Webb was moved to the fueling section of the Ariane payload preparation facility at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. Specialists wore Self-Contained Atmospheric Protective Ensemble, or "SCAPE," suits while loading the observatory. The nearly 10-day procedure began Nov. 25.

[...] The next large milestones for the joint teams will be to move Webb to the Bâtiment d'Assemblage Final (BAF), or Final Assembly Building; place it atop its rocket; and encapsulate it inside its protective fairing. With final closeouts complete, the full stack of rocket and payload atop its mobile launch platform will be rolled out of the BAF to the launch pad, two days before its scheduled Dec. 22 launch.

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upstart writes:

Instagram to users: Take a break:

Instagram will let people opt to see pop-up messages when they have spent a lot of time looking at a particular topic, suggesting they explore other subjects. Users also can decide to be nudged to take a break after they have spent 10, 20 or 30 consecutive minutes on the app, Instagram said Tuesday in a blog post. The platform will then remind users about alternative activities to social media such as going for a walk or taking a series of deep breaths, Instagram head of well-being and safety Vaishnavi J said in an interview.

"When you've been spending a long period of time — 20 minutes for example being a fairly long period of time — it is very valuable for you to then get a little notification reminding you to take a break," she said. "You may not feel like you've been spending that much time on the app because you've been doing five or six different things in those 20 minutes."

Instagram head Adam Mosseri is scheduled to appear Wednesday before a U.S. Senate subcommittee probing childrens' safety on social media. Instagram has been under mounting scrutiny over its effects on young users after a Wall Street Journal series earlier this year and other stories from a consortium of media organizations based on internal documents disclosed by Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen. Some of the documents surfaced new revelations about Instagram's impact on teenagers' body image, sleep and anxiety.

Last month, a group of U.S. state attorneys general announced an investigation into Instagram's efforts to engage children and young adults.

Instagram announced in November that it had begun testing the take-a-break feature. The company didn't release any statistics about what percentage of people actually get off the app once they have received a reminder, but said once teenagers turn on the feature, more than 90% keep it on.

Also at CNN, ZDNet

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Daytime meals may reduce health risks linked to night shift work:

"This is a rigorous and highly controlled laboratory study that demonstrates a potential intervention for the adverse metabolic effects associated with shift work, which is a known public health concern," said Marishka Brown, Ph.D., director of the NHLBI's National Center on Sleep Disorders Research. "We look forward to additional studies that confirm the results and begin to untangle the biological underpinnings of these findings."

For the study, the researchers enrolled 19 healthy young participants (seven women and 12 men). After a preconditioning routine, the participants were randomly assigned to a 14-day controlled laboratory protocol involving simulated night work conditions with one of two meal schedules. One group ate during the nighttime to mimic a meal schedule typical among night workers, and one group ate during the daytime.

The researchers then evaluated the effects of these meal schedules on their internal circadian rhythms. That's the internal process that regulates not just the sleep-wake cycle, but also the 24-hour cycle of virtually all aspects of your bodily functions, including metabolism.

upstart writes:

Whether people inform themselves or remain ignorant is due to three factors:

"The information people decide to expose themselves to has important consequences for their health, finance and relationships. By better understanding why people choose to get informed, we could develop ways to convince people to educate themselves."

The researchers conducted five experiments with 543 research participants, to gauge what factors influence information-seeking.

In one of the experiments, participants were asked how much they would like to know about health information, such as whether they had an Alzheimer's risk gene or a gene conferring a strong immune system. In another experiment, they were asked whether they wanted to see financial information, such as exchange rates or what income percentile they fall into, and in another one, whether they would have liked to learn how their family and friends rated them on traits such as intelligence and laziness.

[...] The researchers found that people choose to seek information based on these three factors: expected utility, emotional impact, and whether it was relevant to things they thought of often. This three-factor model best explained decisions to seek or avoid information compared to a range of other alternative models tested.

upstart writes:

NYC anime convention may offer 'earliest looks' at Omicron spread in US, CDC director says:

The CDC has joined investigations into the possible spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant at the Anime NYC 2021 convention held last month, assisting with contact tracing among the tens of thousands of convention attendees, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a virtual White House briefing Tuesday. The convention took place at the Javits Center from November 18-22.

These contact tracing efforts -- arguably the largest in the nation to involve Omicron -- could hold clues to just how easily and quickly this variant may spread.

"Of the reported 53,000 people who attended that conference, more than 35,000 and counting have been contacted to encourage testing for all attendees," Walensky said. "Data from this investigation will likely provide some of the earliest looks in this country on the transmissibility of the variant."

The Minnesota Department of Health announced last week that it had identified the nation's second Covid-19 case caused by Omicron in a resident who recently traveled to New York City and attended the Anime NYC 2021 convention from November 19-21. The United States' first case, also announced last week, was identified in California and health officials expect to find more cases of the variant as genetic sequencing continues around the country.

DannyB writes:

Over 200 papers quietly sue Big Tech:

Newspapers all over the country have been quietly filing antitrust lawsuits against Google and Facebook for the past year, alleging the two firms monopolized the digital ad market for revenue that would otherwise go to local news.

Why it matters: What started as a small-town effort to take a stand against Big Tech has turned into a national movement, with over 200 newspapers involved across dozens of states.

[...] The goal of the litigation is "to recover past damages to newspapers" caused by Big Tech companies, says Clayton Fitzsimmons, one of the lawyers representing the newspapers.

• The other is to "establish a new system going forward in which newspapers aren't just competitive again, but can thrive," he said, referencing laws like Australia's that force tech firms to pay publishers for their content.

• [...] If the lawsuits are successful, the papers could be entitled to "treble damages

• [...] Lawmakers have expressed keen interest in understanding how Google and Facebook's dominance affects the newspapers industry.
• The Justice Department, along with several state attorneys general, sued Google for violating antitrust laws. Facebook is facing a similar antitrust lawsuit from state attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission.

In the future we may have to Bing the local news.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Taking Viagra cuts the risk of Alzheimer's by up to 69% and it could be prescribed to beat dementia, study suggests

TAKING Viagra slashes Alzheimer's risk by two-thirds, research suggests.

Scientists claim the love drug may help boost brain health and cut levels of toxic proteins that trigger dementia.

Experts analysed data on 7.2 million U.S. adults and found regular users had a 69 per cent lower chance of being diagnosed with Alzheimer's over the next six years.

Medics say the findings, published in the journal Nature Aging suggest the little blue pill could soon be prescribed to tackle dementia.

They are now planning a fresh study to test the benefits of sildenafil – the generic version of Viagra – in early Alzheimer's patients.

Study Finds Viagra Usage Could Reduce Alzheimer's Risk by 70 Percent:

With new drug development being a time and cost-intensive process, researchers in the pharma industry have turned to repurpose already approved drugs.

[...] In the case of Alzheimer's disease, two proteins, namely beta-amyloid and tau, begin accumulating inside the brain, leading to clots and tangles. Clinical trials targeting these proteins have failed in the past decade [...] Recent research has also shown that the two proteins that work together cause the disease. The researchers began investigating which of the approved drugs could act on both the proteins at the same time instead of targeting just one.

Giant Study Finds Viagra Is Linked to Almost 70% Lower Risk of Alzheimer's:

upstart writes:

QNAP warns users of bitcoin miner targeting their NAS devices:

QNAP warned customers today of ongoing attacks targeting their NAS (network-attached storage) devices with cryptomining malware, urging them to take measures to protect them immediately

The cryptominer deployed in this campaign on compromised devices will create a new process named [oom_reaper] that will mine for Bitcoin cryptocurrency.

While running, the malware can take up to 50% of all CPU resources and will mimic a kernel process with a PID higher than 1000.

[...] QNAP also recommends customers take the following measures to protect their devices from these attacks:

1. Update QTS or QuTS hero to the latest version.
2. Install and update Malware Remover to the latest version.
3. Use stronger passwords for your administrator and other user accounts.
4. Update all installed applications to their latest versions.
5. Do not expose your NAS to the internet, or avoid using default system port numbers 443 and 8080.

You can find detailed information on the steps required for each of the actions above in today's security advisory.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Concerned about SpaceX, France to accelerate reusable rocket plans:

On Monday French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced a plan for Europe to compete more effectively with SpaceX by developing a reusable rocket on a more rapid timeline.

"For the first time Europe ... will have access to a reusable launcher," Le Maire said, according to Reuters. "In other words, we will have our SpaceX, we will have our Falcon 9. We will make up for a bad strategic choice made 10 years ago."

The new plan calls for the large, France-based rocket firm ArianeGroup to develop a new small-lift rocket called Maïa by the year 2026. This is four years ahead of a timeline previously set by the European Space Agency for the development of a significantly larger, reusable rocket.

Although the technical details are sparse, Maïa will not be Europe's "Falcon 9." It will have a lift capacity of up to 1 metric ton to low Earth orbit and be powered by a reusable Prometheus rocket engine, which is fueled by methane and liquid oxygen. This engine, which remains in the preliminary stages of development, has a thrust comparable to a single Merlin 1D rocket engine, which powers SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. But since there are nine engines on the SpaceX rocket, it can lift more than 15 times as much as the proposed Maïa in fully reusable mode.

A day late and a dollar short.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Gene discoveries give new hope to people who stutter:

There is no known cure, and existing treatments are often minimally effective. Yet for those with persistent, developmental stuttering, there is new hope, thanks to groundbreaking research led by scientists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

In two papers published this week, Jennifer "Piper" Below, PhD, and Shelly Jo Kraft, PhD, describe a "genetic architecture" for developmental stuttering and report the discovery of new genetic variations associated with the condition.

The researchers said that these findings, which were published in The American Journal of Human Genetics and Human Genetics and Genomics Advances, and studies like them have the potential to identify therapeutic directions that could improve outcomes for people who stutter.

"It's clear that in populations, stuttering is polygenic, meaning that there are multiple different genetic factors contributing to and protecting people from risk," said Below, associate professor of Medicine at VUMC. "That was something that had not been clearly shown before these studies."

[...] "It's a piece of themselves that they can then understand," she said, "instead of living a lifetime of experiencing this difference in their speech and never knowing why."

Journal Reference:
Douglas M. Shaw, Hannah P. Polikowsky, Dillon G. Pruett, et al. Phenome risk classification enables phenotypic imputation and gene discovery in developmental stuttering. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 2021; 108 (12): 2271 DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2021.11.004

Original Submission

upstart writes:

New type of earthquake discovered:

To date, researchers have explained the occurrence of earthquakes in the hydraulic-fracturing process with two processes. The first says that the fluid pumped into the rock generates a pressure increase substantial enough to generate a new network of fractures in the subsurface rocks near the well. As a result, the pressure increase can be large enough to unclamp existing faults and trigger an earthquake. According to the second process, the fluid pressure increase from injection in the subsurface also exerts elastic stress changes on the surrounding rocks that can be transmitted over longer distances. If the stress changes occur in rocks where faults exist, it can also lead to changes that cause the fault to slip and cause an earthquake.

Recently, numerical models and lab analyses have predicted a process on faults near injection wells that has been observed elsewhere on tectonic faults. The process, termed aseismic slip, starts out as slow slip that does not release any seismic energy. The slow slip can also cause a stress change on nearby faults that causes them slip rapidly and lead to an earthquake. The lack of seismic energy from aseismic slip and the size of the faults involved make it difficult to observe in nature. Researchers have therefore not yet been able to document aseismic slip broadly with any association to induced earthquakes. The work of the current study, provides indirect evidence of aseismic loading, and a transition from aseismic to seismic slip.

The German-Canadian research team interpret the recently discovered slow earthquakes as an intermediate form of conventional earthquake and aseismic slip - and thus as indirect evidence that aseismic slip can also occur in the vicinity of wells. The researchers therefore dubbed the events hybrid-frequency waveform earthquakes (EHW).

Journal Reference:
Hongyu Yu, Rebecca M. Harrington, Honn Kao , et al. Fluid-injection-induced earthquakes characterized by hybrid-frequency waveforms manifest the transition from aseismic to seismic slip [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26961-x)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Imagination introduces Catapult RISC-V CPU cores

As expected, Imagination Technologies is giving another try to the CPU IP market with the Catapult RISC-V CPU cores following their previous unsuccessful attempt with the MIPS architecture, notably the Aptiv family.

Catapult RISC-V CPUs are/will be available in four distinct families for dynamic microcontrollers, real-time embedded CPUs, high-performance application CPUs, and functionally safe automotive CPUs.

The new 32-/64-bit RISC-V cores will be scalable to up to eight asymmetric coherent cores-per cluster, offer a "plethora of customer configurable options", and support optional custom accelerators. What you won't see today are block diagrams and detailed technical information about the cores because apparently, all that information is confidential even though some Catapult RISC-V cores are already shipping "in high-performance Imagination automotive GPUs". The only way to get more details today is to sign an NDA.

Also at AnandTech and Phoronix.

Previously: Imagination Announces B-Series GPU IP: Scaling up with Multi-GPU
Imagination Technologies Plans to Design RISC-V Cores

Related: Innosilicon Graphics Cards Based on "Fantasy One" GPU Feature Up to 32GB GDDR6X Memory

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Iron integral to the development of life on Earth and the possibility of life on other planets:

Iron is an essential nutrient that almost all life requires to grow and thrive. Iron's importance goes all the way back to the formation of the planet Earth, where the amount of iron in the Earth's rocky mantle was 'set' by the conditions under which the planet formed and went on to have major ramifications for how life developed. .

[...] "The initial amount of iron in Earth's rocks is 'set' by the conditions of planetary accretion, during which the Earth's metallic core segregated from its rocky mantle," says co-author Jon Wade, Associate Professor of Planetary Materials at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford. "Too little iron in the rocky portion of the planet, like the planet Mercury, and life is unlikely. Too much, like Mars, and water may be difficult to keep on the surface for times relevant to the evolution of complex life."

Initially, iron conditions on Earth would have been optimal to ensure surface retention of water. Iron would have also been soluble in sea water, making it easily available to give simple life forms a jumpstart in development. However, oxygen levels on Earth began to rise approximately 2.4 billion years ago (referred to as the "Great Oxygenation Event'). An increase in oxygen created a reaction with iron, which led to it becoming insoluble. Gigatons of iron dropped out of sea water, where it was much less available to developing life forms.

upstart writes:

World's second tallest building tops out in Malaysia:

The spire of a soaring 118-story skyscraper has topped out at over 2,227 feet above Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur.

Set to become the world's second tallest building upon its completion next year, Merdeka 118 now stands higher than China's 2,073-foot Shanghai Tower and is dwarfed only by the Burj Khalifa[*] in Dubai.

"This is not only a great achievement in the field of engineering," he told reporters . "But it also further strengthens Malaysia's position as a modern and developed country."

Comprising 3.1 million square feet of floor space, more than half of which will be offered as offices, the tower will also house a mall, a mosque, a Park Hyatt hotel and Southeast Asia's highest observation deck. The wider four-acre site will also contain public spaces and a park at ground level.

Set in a historic part of Kuala Lumpur, the skyscraper overlooks the Stadium Merdeka, where former leader Tunku Abdul Rahman declared Malaysian independence in 1957.

[...] The Australian architecture practice behind the project, Fender Katsalidis, said the triangular glass planes on the building's facade were inspired by patterns found in Malaysian arts and crafts. The design also "symbolically (represents) the rich cultural mix that defines the people of the country," the firm said in a press release.

In a statement, one of the company's founding partners, Karl Fender, added that the building was designed to enrich "the social energy and cultural fabric of the city."

[*] Burj Khalifa on Wikipedia:

The Burj Khalifa [...] is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. With a total height of 829.8 m (2,722 ft, just over half a mile) and a roof height (excluding antenna, but including a 244 m spire) of 828 m (2,717 ft), the Burj Khalifa has been the tallest structure and building in the world since its topping out in 2009, supplanting Taipei 101, the previous holder of that status.

Original Submission