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upstart writes:

Where did western honey bees come from? New research finds the sweet spot:

The western honey bee is used for crop pollination and honey production throughout most of the world, and has a remarkable capacity for surviving in vastly different environments -- from tropical rainforest, to arid environments, to temperate regions with cold winters. It is native to Africa, Europe and Asia, and was recently believed to have originated in Africa.

The research team sequenced 251 genomes from 18 subspecies from the honey bee's native range and used this data to reconstruct the origin and pattern of dispersal of honey bees. The team found that an Asian origin -- likely Western Asia -- was strongly supported by the genetic data.

"As one of the world's most important pollinators, it's essential to know the origin of the western honey bee to understand its evolution, genetics and how it adapted as it spread," says corresponding author Professor Amro Zayed of York University's Faculty of Science.

The study also highlights that the bee genome has several "hot spots" that allowed honey bees to adapt to new geographic areas. While the bee genome has more than 12,000 genes, only 145 of them had repeated signatures of adaptation associated with the formation of all major honey bee lineages found today.

Journal Reference:
Kathleen A. Dogantzis, Tanushree Tiwari, Ida M. Conflitti, et al. Thrice out of Asia and the adaptive radiation of the western honey bee, Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abj2151)

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An Anonymous Coward offers the following story:

Here's yet another reason that (assuming the article is correct) current self-driving technology has a long ways to go before it is ready for large-scale roll out in urban areas.

https://www.autonomousvehicleinternational.com/news/ai-sensor-fusion/ai-research-combats-problem-of-vanishing-cyclists-and-pedestrians.html

One particularly vexing problem for autonomous driving systems is how to deal with situations where sensors lose sight of other road users. For example, a cyclist dropping out of view behind a car or other obstruction.

Now, researchers at Örebro University in Sweden say they have developed an AI application that can account for such occurrences. "We have succeeded in developing a new way for self-driving vehicles to understand and explain the dynamics of our world just like people do," said Mehul Bhatt, professor of computer science at the university.

[...] The researchers noted that in traffic, humans are used to constantly anticipating what will happen next. This reasoning ability is something that current self-driving vehicles and AI systems in general are lacking. In the study, Bhatt, together with colleagues in Germany and India, stated that combining modern neural learning with common-sense reasoning can overcome some of these pitfalls. "The developed AI method results in self-driving vehicles learning to understand the world much like humans. With understanding also comes the ability to explain decisions," added Bhatt.

Mykl writes:

The iPhones of 9 US State Department officials were infected by malware developed and sold by the Israeli exploit firm NSO Group.

The US officials, either stationed in Uganda or focusing on issues related to that country, received warnings ... from Apple informing them their iPhones were being targeted by hackers. Citing unnamed people with knowledge of the attacks, Reuters said the hackers used software from NSO

An NSO spokesperson said in a statement that after learning of the allegations by Reuters, it immediately terminated the responsible customer's access to its system while it looks into the matter

NSO Group says that they only sell to Governments, but what if your government is really into hacking the phones of their opponents (as opposed to the official "national security" reason given for this software)?

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

ESA and Airbus have signed a contract to move forward with the design and construction of the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey, Ariel, planned for launch in 2029.

Ariel is the third in a trio of dedicated exoplanet missions conceived by ESA focusing on various aspects of this rapidly evolving subject area. It will follow Cheops, which launched in 2019, and Plato, scheduled for launch in 2026.

Ariel will study the composition of exoplanets, how they formed and how they evolve, by surveying a diverse sample of about 1000 extrasolar planets, simultaneously in visible and infrared wavelengths.

It is the first mission dedicated to measuring the chemical composition and thermal structures of exoplanets, linking them to the host star's environment. This will fill a significant gap in our knowledge of how the planet's chemistry is linked to the environment where it formed, or if and how the type of host star drives the physics and chemistry of the planet's evolution.

Observations of these worlds will give insights into the early stages of planetary and atmospheric formation, and their subsequent evolution, in turn contributing to the understanding of our own solar system. They could help us find out whether there is life elsewhere in our Universe and if there is another planet like Earth.

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takyon writes:

TSMC Founder: Pat Gelsinger Too Old to Make Intel Great Again - TSMC and Intel exchange rants.

After less than a year into his tenure as Intel's chief executive, Pat Gelsinger has set up the company's process technology roadmap that spans through 2025 and introduced the company's IDM 2.0 foundry strategy. But the ambitious CEO may not have enough time to bring Intel back to its glory days, said Morris Chang, the founder and a former CEO of TSMC, reports UDN.

Pat Gelsinger is 60, and there is a rule that Intel's executives must retire at the age of 65. As a result, Gelsinger may not have enough time to put Intel back in a manufacturing technology leadership position, Chang noted while delivering his lecture 'Cherish Taiwan's Advantages in Semiconductor Wafer Manufacturing.'

[...] TSMC is not particularly happy with Gelsinger. Last week, he said that the reliance on Taiwan as the global hub for semiconductor manufacturing was a significant risk since China had never given up plans to capture the country.

"Taiwan is not a stable place," said Gelsinger at Fortune Brainstorm Tech, reports Nikkei. "Beijing sent 27 warplanes to Taiwan's air defense identification zone this week. Does that make you feel more comfortable or less?"

He also re-emphasized his view that foreign semiconductor companies should not receive subsidies from the U.S. government to build new fabs under the $52-billion CHIPS act. Gelsinger called on the U.S. government to provide incentives only for American chipmakers. He argued that semiconductor companies from China, Taiwan and South Korea received major aid from their respective governments, which made it harder for American companies like Intel to compete.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Intel plans to take self-driving car unit public in the U.S. in mid-2022

Intel has announced that it plans to list Mobileye, the Israeli autonomous driving firm it acquired for $15.3 billion in 2017, as part of an effort to branch out into new markets.

The Santa Clara chip manufacturer said Monday that it plans to take Mobileye public in the U.S. in mid-2022 via an initial public offering of newly issued Mobileye stock. The IPO could value Mobileye at more than $50 billion, according to some reports.

Intel, whose share price has fallen from $68 in April to less than $50 in December, said the listing will create value for Intel shareholders. It added that it will remain the majority shareholder of Mobileye.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger hailed the acquisition of Mobileye as a success, adding that Mobileye's revenue will be 40% higher in 2021 than it was in 2020.

Intel CEO aims to build chip plants with money raised from Mobileye IPO

Gelsinger said Intel will retain a majority stake in Mobileye and will also receive "the majority of the proceeds" from the IPO. He declined to specify the size of the stake that would be sold or a fundraising target, but said that "certainly it will be helpful in our overall aggressive buildout of plants."

Intel has said it plans to build two chip plants in Arizona, and add other plants in the United States and Europe at sites that have not been announced.

Previously: Intel Buys Driverless Car Sensor Company Mobileye for $15.3 Billion

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Scientists Identify Factor in "Young Blood" That Helps Rejuvenate Aging Muscle:

As we age, our muscles gradually become smaller, weaker, and less able to heal after injury. In a new study, UPMC and University of Pittsburgh researchers pinpoint an important mediator of youthfulness in mouse muscle, a discovery that could advance muscle regeneration therapies for older people.

Published on December 6, 2021, in Nature Aging, the study demonstrates that circulating shuttles called extracellular vesicles, or EVs, deliver genetic instructions for the longevity protein known as Klotho to muscle cells. Loss of muscle function and impaired muscle repair in old mice may be driven by aged EVs, which carry fewer copies of these instructions than those in young animals.

The findings are an important advance in understanding why the capacity for muscles to regenerate dwindles with age.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

One year after the disruptive supply-chain attacks, researchers have observed two new clusters of activity from the Russia-based actors that signal a significant threat may be brewing.

One year after the notorious and far-reaching SolarWinds supply-chain attacks, its orchestrators are on the offensive again. Researchers said they’ve seen the threat group – which Microsoft refers to as “Nobelium” and which is linked to Russia’s spy agency – compromising global business and government targets with novel tactics and custom malware, stealing data and moving laterally across networks.

Researchers from Mandiant have identified two distinct clusters of activity that can be “plausibly” attributed to the threat group, which they track as UNC2452, they said in a report published Monday.

Mandiant has tracked the latest activity as UNC3004 and UNC2652 since last year and throughout 2021, observing the compromise of a range of companies that provide technology solutions, cloud and other services as well as resellers, they said.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

It wasn't that long ago that the very idea that another language besides C would be used in the Linux kernel would have been laughed at. Things have changed. Today, not only is Rust, the high-level system language moving closer to Linux, it's closer than ever with the next "patch series to add support for Rust as a second language to the Linux kernel."

The biggest change in these new packages is that the Rust code proposed for the kernel now relies on the stable Rust compiler rather than the beta compilers. Going forward, Rust on Linux will be migrating every time a new stable Rust compiler is released. Currently, it's using Rust 1.57.0.

By doing this, as Linux kernel and lead Rust on Linux, developer Miguel Ojeda, put it, "By upgrading the compiler, we have been able to take off the list a few unstable features we were using." This, in turn, means Rust on Linux will be more stable. 

Looking ahead, Ojeda wrote, "We will keep upgrading until we do not rely on any unstable features; at which point we may want to start declaring a minimum Rust version is supported like it is done, e.g. GCC and Clang.

Senior Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman had told me he believes "drivers are probably the first place for" Rust to appear in Linux since "they are the 'end leaves' of the tree of dependencies in the kernel source. They depend on core kernel functionality, but nothing depends on them."

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

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.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

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.