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upstart writes:

Mini-jet found near Milky Way's supermassive black hole:

Our Milky Way's central black hole has a leak. This supermassive black hole looks like it still has the vestiges of a blowtorch-like jet dating back several thousand years. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope hasn't photographed the phantom jet but has helped find circumstantial evidence that it is still pushing feebly into a huge hydrogen cloud and then splattering, like the narrow stream from a hose aimed into a pile of sand.

This is further evidence that the black hole, with a mass of 4.1 million Suns, is not a sleeping monster but periodically hiccups as stars and gas clouds fall into it. Black holes draw some material into a swirling, orbiting accretion disk where some of the infalling material is swept up into outflowing jets that are collimated by the black hole's powerful magnetic fields. The narrow "searchlight beams" are accompanied by a flood of deadly ionizing radiation.

"The central black hole is dynamically variable and is currently powered down," said Gerald Cecil of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Cecil pieced together, like a jigsaw puzzle, multiwavelength observations from a variety of telescopes that suggest the black hole burps out mini-jets every time it swallows something hefty, like a gas cloud. His multinational team's research has just been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

In 2013 evidence for a stubby southern jet near the black hole came from X-rays detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and radio waves detected by the Jansky Very Large Array telescope in Socorro, New Mexico. This jet too appears to be plowing into gas near the black hole.

upstart writes:

Breakthrough AI Technique Enables Real-Time Rendering of Scenes in 3D From 2D Images:

Humans are pretty good at looking at a single two-dimensional image and understanding the full three-dimensional scene that it captures. Artificial intelligence agents are not.

Yet a machine that needs to interact with objects in the world — like a robot designed to harvest crops or assist with surgery — must be able to infer properties about a 3D scene from observations of the 2D images it's trained on.

While scientists have had success using neural networks to infer representations of 3D scenes from images, these machine learning methods aren't fast enough to make them feasible for many real-world applications.

A new technique demonstrated by researchers at MIT and elsewhere is able to represent 3D scenes from images about 15,000 times faster than some existing models.

The method represents a scene as a 360-degree light field, which is a function that describes all the light rays in a 3D space, flowing through every point and in every direction. The light field is encoded into a neural network, which enables faster rendering of the underlying 3D scene from an image.

driverless writes:

Looks like Germany is about to force ISPs to actually deliver the speeds they promise in their advertising:

A new regulation coming in the form of an amendment in the Telecommunications Act of Germany could radically change the relationship between consumers and internet service providers. According to the draft, users will be able to test their internet speeds and, if there's a too large deviation between their real-world results and what their ISPs promised, they will be eligible for a bill discount. The discount amount will be comparable to the deviation between the contractually agreed Internet speeds and the actual ones.

[...] According to the German consumer protection authorities, deviations from contractual agreements affect over 50% of internet users in the country. As such, the new law will provide a balancing dynamic and an incentive for ISPs to meet their marketing promises and offer more consistent service quality.

Now if only more consumer services were regulated that way.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

New IBM and Samsung transistors could be key to super-efficient chips (updated)

IBM and Samsung claim they've made a breakthrough in semiconductor design. On day one of the IEDM [(International Electron Devices Meeting)] conference in San Francisco, the two companies unveiled a new design for stacking transistors vertically on a chip. With current processors and SoCs, transistors lie flat on the surface of the silicon, and then electric current flows from side-to-side. By contrast, Vertical Transport Field Effect Transistors (VTFET) sit perpendicular to one another and current flows vertically.

According to IBM and Samsung, this design has two advantages. First, it will allow them to bypass many performance limitations to extend Moore's Law beyond IBM's current nanosheet technology. More importantly, the design leads to less wasted energy thanks to greater current flow. They estimate VTFET will lead to processors that are either twice as fast or use 85 percent less power than chips designed with FinFET transistors. IBM and Samsung claim the process may one day allow for phones that go a full week on a single charge. They say it could also make certain energy-intensive tasks, including cryptomining, more power-efficient and therefore less impactful on the environment.

IBM blog post. Also at Notebookcheck.

See also: Samsung Begins Sampling 24 Gbps GDDR6 Memory Chips For Next-Gen GPUs

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

With further delays to BE-4 rocket engine, Vulcan may not make 2022 debut

Blue Origin is unlikely to deliver two flight-ready versions of the BE-4 rocket engine to United Launch Alliance (ULA) before at least the second quarter of 2022, two sources say. This increases the possibility that the debut flight of ULA's much-anticipated new rocket, Vulcan, could slip into 2023.

Vulcan's first stage is powered by two BE-4 engines, which burn methane and are more powerful than the space shuttle's main engines. The sources said there recently was a "relatively small" production issue with fabrication of the flight engines at Blue Origin's factory in Kent, Washington.

As a result of this, the engines will not be completed and shipped to the company's test stands in West Texas until next year. Once there, each engine must be unpacked, tested, and then re-configured to be moved to ULA's rocket assembly facility in northern Alabama. A reasonable "no-earlier-than" date for the engines' arrival at the rocket manufacturer is now April 2022, and this assumes a smooth final production and testing phase.

owl writes:

Toyota owners have to pay $8/mo to keep using their key fob for remote start

Automakers keep trying to get a piece of that sweet, sweet subscription income. Now, it's Toyota's turn.

Nearly every car company offers some sort of subscription package, and Toyota has one called Remote Connect. The service offers the usual fare, letting owners use an app to remotely lock their doors, for example, or if they own a plug-in vehicle, to precondition the interior. But as some complimentary subscriptions for Remote Connect come to an end, Toyota owners are getting an unexpected surprise—they can no longer use their key fob to remote-start their vehicles.

In terms of technology, this remote-start feature is no different from using the fob to unlock the car. The fobs use a short-range radio transmitter to send the car a signal that is encrypted with rolling codes. The car then decrypts the signal and performs the requested action, whether it's to lock or unlock the doors, beep the horn, or start the engine. RF key fobs have been around since the 1980s, and GM added a factory-installed remote-start option in 2004 (no subscription needed).

Key fob remote start has nothing to do with an app, nor does the car or the fob communicate with any servers managed by Toyota.

upstart writes:

New copper surface eliminates bacteria in just two minutes, scientists report:

A new copper surface that kills bacteria more than 100 times faster and more effectively than standard copper could help combat the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

The new copper product is the result of a collaborative research project with RMIT University[*] and Australia's national science agency, CSIRO[**], with findings just published in Biomaterials.

Copper has long been used to fight different strains of bacteria, including the commonly found golden staph, because the ions released from the metal's surface are toxic to bacterial cells.

But this process is slow when standard copper is used, as RMIT University's Distinguished Professor Ma Qian explained, and significant efforts are underway by researchers worldwide to speed it up.

"A standard copper surface will kill about 97% of golden staph within four hours," Qian said.

"Incredibly, when we placed golden staph bacteria on our specially-designed copper surface, it destroyed more than 99.99% of the cells in just two minutes."

"So not only is it more effective, it's 120 times faster."

[*] RMIT: Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
[**] CSIRO: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

Journal Reference:
J.L. Smith, N. Tran, T. Song, D. Liang, M. Qian. Robust bulk micro-nano hierarchical copper structures possessing exceptional bactericidal efficacy. Biomaterials, 2022; 280: 121271 DOI: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2021.121271

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Disrupting Spycraft: Always-On Surveillance Is Prompting Massive Changes In Covert Operations:

The spies are back to complaining that the always-on digital world and the omnipresence of surveillance devices (both public and private) is making it difficult to do spy stuff.

Last January, sources were telling Yahoo that it's no longer enough to carry around a few fake documents to get past customs and engage in spycraft -- not when the cover identities are bereft of the digital detritus generated by simply existing in a connected world. And it's difficult to move about unobserved when every street light, business, and front porch has a camera attached to it, monitoring activity 24/7/365.

The report also noted that online access to a large variety of information also made it more difficult to engage in covert activities. Russian counterintelligence agents were apparently able to sniff out CIA agents working in US embassies by looking for things like prior postings in certain countries, pay bumps for hazardous work, or mismatches in salary for employees with similar titles. Some of this investigative work could be achieved by utilizing open source information gleaned from government sites and professional-oriented platforms like LinkedIn. Data from the massive Office of Personnel Management hack likely filled in the rest of the details.

upstart writes:

Study shows critical need to reduce use of road salt in winter, suggests best practices:

Usage varies by state, but the amount of salt applied to icy roads annually in some regions can vary between approximately 3 and 18 pounds of salt per square meter, which is only about the size of a small kitchen table.

As the use of deicing salts has tripled over the past 45 years, salt concentrations are increasing dramatically in streams, rivers, lakes and other sources of freshwater.

Overuse of road salts to melt away snow and ice is threatening human health and the environment as they wash into drinking water sources, and new research from The University of Toledo spotlights the urgent need for policy makers and environmental managers to adopt a variety of solutions.

The study titled "Road Salts, Human Safety and the Rising Salinity of Our Fresh Waters" is published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment and presents how road salts hurt ecology, contaminate drinking water supplies and mobilize harmful chemicals, such as radon, mercury and lead, and then lays out suggested best management practices.

upstart writes:

Dinosaurs' last spring: Study pinpoints timing of Chicxulub asteroid impact: Groundbreaking study confirms time of year when asteroid wiped out dinosaurs and 75 percent of life on Earth:

Results of the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, greatly enhances the ability to trace the first stages of damage to life on Earth. [...]

"Time of year plays an important role in many biological functions such as reproduction, feeding strategies, host-parasite interactions, seasonal dormancy, and breeding patterns," said DePalma. "Hence, it is no surprise that the time of year for a global-scale hazard can play a big role in how harshly it impacts life. The seasonal timing of the Chicxulub impact has therefore been a critical question for the story of the end-Cretaceous extinction. Until now, the answer to that question has remained unclear."

For decades, it has been known that the cataclysmic Chicxulub asteroid impact hit the Yucatan peninsula 66 million years ago. The impact triggered the third-greatest extinction in Earth's history, dramatically changing global biomes in ways that directly relate to current global ecological crisis. Yet, the finer details of what happened after impact and how those events led to the third-worst mass-extinction in Earth's history remain very hazy.

The new study was a long-term effort that started in 2014 and applied a combination of traditional and cutting-edge techniques to piece together a trail of clues enabling identification of the season for the Chicxulub impact event. DePalma examined the Tanis research locality in southwestern North Dakota, one of the most highly detailed Cretaceous-Paleogene (KPg) boundary sites in the world, to understand the inner workings of the extinction event. The research provides important new data while building new academic bridges.

"This unique site in North Dakota had yielded a wealth of new and exciting information. Field data collected at the site, after hard work that went into analyzing it, provided us with new incredibly detailed insight of not only what happened at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, but also exactly when it happened," said Oleinik. "It is nothing short of amazing how multiple lines of independent evidence suggested so clearly what time of the year it was 66 million years ago when the asteroid hit the planet. One of the great things about science is that it allows us to look at seemingly well-known facts and events at different angles and with different precision, therefore advancing our knowledge and understanding of the natural world. It also proves that geology and paleontology is still a science of discovery, even in the 21st Century." [...]

Journal Reference:
DePalma, Robert A., Oleinik, Anton A., Gurche, Loren P., et al. Seasonal calibration of the end-cretaceous Chicxulub impact event [open], Scientific Reports (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-03232-9)

Lots snipped - it does look like it was a multidisciplinary approach which is expanded on in the article itself.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Elon Musk named Time Person of the Year:

Elon Musk is Time’s Person of the Year.

The magazine said that he had been chosen for his work in space as well as on electric cars, as well as his plans to take humanity to Mars and his interest in cryptocurrency. It also noted in its announcement that Mr Musk “also likes to live-tweet his poops”, thought to be a first for a Time “Person of the Year”.

“For creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, for driving society’s most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is TIME’s 2021 Person of the Year,” the magazine wrote in its announcement.

Time [...] has often stressed that the award does not necessarily serve as an endorsement of its recipient, but a recognition of their influence – though the announcement of Mr Musk was accompanied by a glowing profile on Time’s website.

upstart writes:

Malicious NPM packages are part of a malware "barrage" hitting repositories:

Researchers have found another 17 malicious packages in an open source repository, as the use of such repositories to spread malware continues to flourish.

This time, the malicious code was found in NPM, where 11 million developers trade more than 1 million packages among each other. Many of the 17 malicious packages appear to have been spread by different threat actors who used varying techniques and amounts of effort to trick developers into downloading malicious wares instead of the benign ones intended.

This latest discovery continues a trend first spotted a few years ago, in which miscreants sneak information stealers, keyloggers, or other types of malware into packages available in NPM, RubyGems, PyPi, or another repository. In many cases, the malicious package has a name that's a single letter different than a legitimate package. Often, the malicious package includes the same code and functionality as the package being impersonated and adds concealed code that carries out additional nefarious actions.

"We are witnessing a recent barrage of malicious software hosted and delivered through open-source software repositories," JFrog researchers Andrey Polkovnychenko and Shachar Menashe wrote on Wednesday. "Public repositories have become a handy instrument for malware distribution: the repository's server is a trusted resource, and communication with it does not raise the suspicion of any antivirus or firewall. In addition, the ease of installation via automation tools such as the npm client, provides a ripe attack vector."

Recently: Malware Downloaded from PyPI 41,000 Times Was Surprisingly Stealthy

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Intel Unveils Plan to 'Propel Moore's Law Beyond 2025':

In its relentless pursuit of Moore's Law, Intel is unveiling key packaging, transistor and quantum physics breakthroughs fundamental to advancing and accelerating computing well into the next decade. At IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) 2021, Intel outlined its path toward more than 10x interconnect density improvement in packaging with hybrid bonding, 30% to 50% area improvement in transistor scaling, major breakthroughs in new power and memory technologies, and new concepts in physics that may one day revolutionize computing.

"At Intel, the research and innovation necessary for advancing Moore's Law never stops. Our Components Research Group is sharing key research breakthroughs at IEDM 2021 in bringing revolutionary process and packaging technologies to meet the insatiable demand for powerful computing that our industry and society depend on. This is the result of our best scientists' and engineers' tireless work. They continue to be at the forefront of innovations for continuing Moore's Law." –Robert Chau, Intel Senior Fellow and general manager of Components Research

Moore's Law has been tracking innovations in computing that meet the demands of every technology generation from mainframes to mobile phones. This evolution is continuing today as we move into a new era of computing with unlimited data and artificial intelligence.

Continuous innovation is the cornerstone of Moore's Law. Intel's Components Research Group is committed to innovating across three key areas: essential scaling technologies for delivering more transistors; new silicon capabilities for power and memory gains; and exploration of new concepts in physics to revolutionize the way the world does computing. Many of the innovations that broke through previous barriers of Moore's Law and are in today's products started with the work of Component Research – including strained silicon, Hi-K metal gates, FinFET transistors, RibbonFET, and packaging innovations including EMIB and Foveros Direct.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Researchers develop advanced catalysts for clean hydrogen production:

A catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change.

The findings are significant because the production of hydrogen is important for "many aspects of our life, such as fuel cells for cars and the manufacture of many useful chemicals such as ammonia," said the OSU College of Engineering's Zhenxing Feng, a chemical engineering professor who led the research. "It's also used in the refining of metals, for producing human-made materials such as plastics and for a range of other purposes."

Producing hydrogen by splitting water via an electrochemical catalytic process is cleaner and more sustainable than the conventional method of deriving hydrogen from natural gas via a carbon-dioxide-producing process known as methane-steam reforming, Feng said. But the cost of the greener technique has been a barrier in the marketplace.

takyon writes:

Mexico joins Artemis Accords

The government of Mexico announced Dec. 9 that it is signing the U.S.-led Artemis Accords outlining best practices for space exploration.

Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon, Mexico's secretary of foreign relations, announced that Mexico would become the fourteenth country to sign the Artemis Accords, a document addressing various issues regarding safe and sustainable space exploration, many of which are directly tied to the Outer Space Treaty and other international accords.

In a statement, Ebrard said Mexico looked forward to participating in NASA's Artemis program of lunar exploration, but did not disclose details regarding the role he thought the country would play in the effort. He said that, during the Apollo program a half century ago, "we were spectators, now we are going to be participants. It is a great step for Mexico."

[...] NASA announced the Artemis Accords in October 2020 with an initial group of eight signatories. Five others later joined before Mexico, most recently Poland [on] Oct. 26. The countries who have signed include both traditional partners of the United States in space, such as Canada, Japan and several European nations, as well as emerging space nations like Brazil, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates.

Previously: NASA Wants Partner Nations to Agree to "Artemis Accords" for Lunar Exploration
Could Corporations Control Territory in Space? Under New US Rules, It Might Be Possible
Legal Questions Linger as Governments and Companies Keep Pushing Into Space

Original Submission