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DannyB writes:

Rich Smith at The Motley Fool opines that NASA's SLS Rocket Just Got $3.2 Billion More Expensive:

How much is too much to pay for an SLS rocket? And how much is so much that it gets SLS canceled?

At an estimated $1.55 billion in cost per launch, and $209 billion total over its 30-year history, the U.S. Space Shuttle program was easily NASA's most expensive project since the Apollo Moon Program -- but NASA's next project is going to make it look like a bargain. Two years ago, an investigation by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimated that each time NASA launches its new Space Launch System (SLS), taxpayers will ante up "over $2 billion."

As it turns out, OMB was being optimistic.

[...] Last week, NASA awarded one of its main subcontractors on the SLS project, Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC), a $3.2 billion contract to build booster rockets for five SLS rockets that will participate in the Project Artemis moon program.

[...] These boosters are essential to the Artemis program, providing "more than 75% of the thrust for each SLS launch," as NASA explains, but they do come at a cost. Specifically, each rocket booster will cost taxpayers -- and benefit Northrop Grumman -- more than $290 million.

[...] For the cost of just one Northrop Grumman booster rocket (which will be discarded after launch), NASA could buy two entire SpaceX rocketships. For what Northrop is charging to help launch one single SLS, NASA could launch four Falcon Heavy missions.

Your tax dollars at work. Also: Re-usable shuttle engines on an expendable launcher.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Drugs developed to treat AIDS and HIV could offer hope to patients diagnosed with the most common form of primary brain tumour.

The breakthrough, co-funded by the charity Brain Tumour Research, is significant because, if further research is conclusive, the anti-retroviral drugs could be prescribed for patients diagnosed with meningioma and acoustic neuroma brain tumours (also known as schwannoma).

More effective approaches are urgently needed as there are very few treatment options for these tumour types which frequently return following surgery and radiotherapy.

Meningioma is the most common form of primary brain tumour. Mostly low-grade, it can become cancerous over time, and develops from cells located in the meninges which protect the brain and spinal cord. Acoustic neuroma is a different type of low-grade, or non-cancerous brain tumour, which develops in nerve-protecting cells called Schwann cells. Both tumours may occur spontaneously, usually in adulthood, or in the hereditary disease Neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2) in childhood/early adolescence.

Researchers at the Brain Tumour Research Centre at the University of Plymouth have shown previously that a tumour suppressor, named Merlin, contributes to the development of meningioma, acoustic neuroma and ependymoma tumours. It can also contribute to neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2). Tumour suppressor genes play important roles in normal cells by controlling division or repairing errors in DNA. However, when tumour suppressors do not work properly or are absent, cells can grow out of control, leading to cancer.

In this latest study Dr Sylwia Ammoun, Senior Research Fellow, and her collaborator, Dr Robert Belshaw investigated the role that specific sections of our DNA play in tumour development. Named 'endogenous retrovirus HERV-K', these sections of DNA are relics of ancient infections that affected our primate ancestors, which have become stable elements of human DNA.

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upstart writes:

Millipedes 'as big as cars' once roamed Northern England, fossil find reveals:

The largest-ever fossil of a giant millipede—as big as a car—has been found on a beach in the north of England.

The fossil—the remains of a creature called Arthropleura—dates from the Carboniferous Period, about 326 million years ago, over 100 million years before the Age of Dinosaurs. The fossil reveals that Arthropleura was the largest-known invertebrate animal of all time, larger than the ancient sea scorpions that were the previous record holders.

The specimen, found on a Northumberland beach about 40 miles north of Newcastle, is made up of multiple articulated exoskeleton segments, broadly similar in form to modern millipedes. It is just the third such fossil ever found. It is also the oldest and largest: the segment is about 75 centimeters long, while the original creature is estimated to have measured around 2.7 meters long and weighed around 50 kilograms. The results are reported in the Journal of the Geological Society.

The fossil was discovered in January 2018 in a large block of sandstone that had fallen from a cliff to the beach at Howick Bay in Northumberland. "It was a complete fluke of a discovery," said Dr. Neil Davies from Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences, the paper's lead author. "The way the boulder had fallen, it had cracked open and perfectly exposed the fossil, which one of our former Ph.D. students happened to spot when walking by."

Unlike the cool and wet weather associated with the region today, Northumberland had a more tropical climate in the Carboniferous Period, when Great Britain lay near the Equator. Invertebrates and early amphibians lived off the scattered vegetation around a series of creeks and rivers. The specimen identified by the researchers was found in a fossilized river channel: it was likely a molted segment of the Arthropleura's exoskeleton that filled with sand, preserving it for hundreds of millions of years.

The fossil was extracted in May 2018 with permission from Natural England and the landowners, the Howick Estate. "It was an incredibly exciting find, but the fossil is so large it took four of us to carry it up the cliff face," said Davies.

More information: The largest arthropod in Earth history: insights from newly discovered Arthropleura remains (Serpukhovian Stainmore Formation, Northumberland, England), Journal of the Geological Society (2021). DOI: 10.1144/jgs2021-115J

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upstart writes:

Comets' heads can be green, but never their tails. After 90 years, we finally know why: The team solved this mystery with the help of a vacuum chamber, a lot of lasers, and one powerful cosmic reaction.:

[... C]omets -- go through a colourful metamorphosis as they cross the sky, with many comets' heads turning a radiant green colour that gets brighter as they approach the Sun. But strangely, this green shade disappears before it reaches the one or two tails trailing behind the comet.

Astronomers, scientists and chemists have been puzzled by this mystery for almost a century. In the 1930s, physicist Gerhard Herzberg theorised the phenomenon was due to sunlight destroying diatomic carbon (also known as dicarbon or C2), a chemical created from the interaction between sunlight and organic matter on the comet's head -- but as dicarbon isn't stable, this theory has been hard to test.

A new UNSW Sydney-led study, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), has finally found a way to test this chemical reaction in a laboratory -- and in doing so, has proven this 90-year-old theory correct.

"We've proven the mechanism by which dicarbon is broken up by sunlight," says Timothy Schmidt, a chemistry professor at UNSW Science and senior author of the study.

"This explains why the green coma -- the fuzzy layer of gas and dust surrounding the nucleus -- shrinks as a comet gets closer to the Sun, and also why the tail of the comet isn't green."

[...] This is the first time this chemical interaction has been studied here on Earth.

Journal Reference:
Jasmin Borsovszky, Klaas Nauta, Jun Jiang, et al. Photodissociation of dicarbon: How nature breaks an unusual multiple bond [open], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2113315118)

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owl writes:

https://www.downtowndougbrown.com/2021/12/upgrading-a-motherboards-bios-uefi-the-hard-way/

A couple of weeks ago I found a really good deal on a Socket AM4 motherboard that supports the newest AMD Ryzen CPUs. The motherboard is an ASRock A520M/ac. It's a very basic motherboard which doesn't appear to be sold by any of the usual retailers anymore, but I couldn't pass up on the deal, especially with the potential it had for being a fun learning project.

The reason I got such a good deal on it was because it was sold in non-working condition, but the seller and I both had a pretty good hunch about what was wrong. The seller said that they had bought it as an open box unit, but couldn't get it to POST. However, they had only tried CPUs in it that were not compatible with the original BIOS version. I decided to have some fun and see if that was indeed the only problem. I didn't have an older CPU available to easily test that theory. I did have a new Ryzen 7 5700G, which is only supported by BIOS revision P1.60 or newer.

An interesting read for those of us who are happy to work at the hardware level.

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upstart writes:

Stress, by itself, can lead to excessive drinking in women but not men: Study shows stress led to drinking more than intended in men only when they already had consumed alcohol:

Participants consumed alcoholic beverages in a simulated bar while experiencing stressful and non-stressful situations. Stress led women, but not men, to drink more than intended, a finding that demonstrates the importance of studying sex differences in alcohol consumption. The study was published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors.

"Some people can intend to have one or two alcoholic beverages and stop drinking, but other people just keep going. This impaired control over drinking is one of the earliest indicators of alcohol use disorders, and we know stress contributes to both impaired control over drinking and dysregulated drinking. The role of stress in impaired control over drinking is understudied, especially in women," said Julie Patock-Peckham, assistant research professor at ASU and lead author on the study.

The study took place in a research laboratory designed to simulate a bar, complete with a bartender, bar stools and lively conversations. The participants included 105 women and 105 men. They were randomized into different groups, with some either experiencing a stressful situation and others a non-stressful situation. Next, half the participants received an alcoholic drink that was equivalent to three cocktails, and the other half received three non-alcoholic drinks. After that, all participants had unrestricted access to alcoholic drinks from the bar for 90 minutes.

[...] The experimental set-up let the research team determine whether stress, the initial drink or the combination of the two caused how much alcohol the participants consumed. The team measured alcohol consumption in total number of drinks consumed and by using breath blood alcohol content (BAC).

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Whether it's cloud, coding, machine learning or AI, financial services companies are investing heavily in tech. Little wonder, then, why developers are flocking to the sector.

Customers are placing more and more faith in digital tools to manage all aspects of their lives, including their money. As such, financial services companies are increasingly becoming tech companies.

Multinational investment banking and financial services company JPMorgan Chase invests $12 billion a year in technology, of which $4 billion is dedicated to Chase Bank, the firm's consumer and commercial banking business. Not many companies, regardless of the industry, are able to work with that sort of scale, says Gill Haus, CIO of consumer and community bank (CCB) at JPMorgan Chase.

"Technology isn't an afterthought at Chase, we use all the latest technologies – machine learning, artificial intelligence, microservices, mobile, cloud – at scale," Haus tells ZDNet. "It permeates everything across the bank."

Chase currently serves more than 60 million households and has nearly 58 million digitally active customers, who rely on the technology the bank builds to manage their finances.

As of Q3 2021, the bank hasover 44 million active mobile users – an increase of 10% compared to the same period last year – and in September, 75% of total payment transactions were completed digitally.

Needless to say, there is an incredible demand for developers and other software and IT professionals in banking, says Haus – and the prospects are good. "Frankly, the sky is the limit as far as where technologists can take their careers within this industry," he adds.

Engine computer problem delays first SLS launch

DannyB writes:

Engine computer problem delays first SLS launch:

A malfunctioning computer in one of the four main engines of the Space Launch System will delay that vehicle's first launch to no earlier than March.

In a statement late Dec. 17, NASA announced that SLS engineers decided they needed to replace the controller for engine four in the core stage of the SLS. One of two redundant channels in the controller failed to power up consistently during tests of the integrated vehicle at the Kennedy Space Center.

That controller operated as expected during the core stage's Green Run test campaign at the Stennis Space Center that concluded with a full-duration static-fire test in March. An initial investigation failed to identify the root cause of the problem.

[...] Even before this latest issue, there were doubts that SLS would be ready when the first launch opportunity opened Feb. 12. Before the launch itself, NASA will roll SLS out to Launch Complex 39B for tests, including a wet dress rehearsal where the rocket is loaded with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants and goes through a practice countdown that stops just before engine ignition.

Industry sources said that rollout needed to take place by the end of the December to keep preparations for a February launch on schedule. However, as of Dec. 10, NASA said the program was planning a rollout in mid-January.

Re-arranging left over space shuttle parts takes longer than the entire Apollo program.

Boeing Starliner Test Flight Planned for Spring 2022

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

NASA and Boeing are planning no earlier than May 2022 for the rescheduled second uncrewed test flight of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft after deciding to change service modules for that mission.

Under the revised plan, the service module that had been built for the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, the flight of that vehicle to carry people, will instead be used for the Orbital Flight Test (OFT) 2 mission. The CFT mission will instead use the service module for the first operational mission, called Starliner-1.

That approach could allow the OFT-2 mission to launch in the spring. Boeing will work United Launch Alliance, whose Atlas 5 will launch the spacecraft, and the Eastern Range to consider a launch opportunity in May. That date will depend on both the readiness of the spacecraft and the schedule of other vehicles visiting the International Space Station.

[Ed's Comment: Note the difference in quoted launch dates between the 2 reports]

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Soyuz returns from private astronaut mission to the ISS

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying a Russian cosmonaut and two Japanese private astronauts returned to Earth late Dec. 19, wrapping up a banner year for commercial human spaceflight.

The Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station at 6:50 p.m. Eastern, more than 11 days after its arrival there. It safely landed in Kazakhstan at 10:13 p.m. Eastern.

The Soyuz returned to Earth Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin along with Japanese private astronauts Yusaku “MZ” Maezawa and Yozo Hirano. The three launched to the station on a Soyuz rocket Dec. 8 in a flight brokered by American space tourism company Space Adventures.

Maezawa, the billionaire founder of fashion retailer Zozo, spent his time in space doing a series of videos about life on the station. Those activities included an ad for food delivery company Uber Eats where Maezawa, dressed like a delivery person, handed over a bag of canned foods to Misurkin. Hirano, Maezawa’s assistant, helped produce the videos.

[...] This year saw four organizations perform seven dedicated commercial human spaceflights. Virgin Galactic conducted two flights of its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle, including one in July that carried Richard Branson about the 80-kilometer altitude that the company, and U.S. government agencies, define as space for the purposes of astronaut recognition. Blue Origin carried out three crewed flights of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle, most recently Dec. 11, taking 14 people to altitudes above 100 kilometers. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon carried out the Inspiration4 mission in September, taking four people on a three-day orbital flight.

Also at: trio-of-russian-japanese-space-station-visitors-safely-back-on-earth.

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Happy Holidays!
On behalf of the SoylentNews staff, we wish you safe and happy celebrations in the coming holiday season! 😀

I am also encouraging the editorial staff to post stories on a weekend/holiday schedule for Friday through Sunday (2021-12-24 UTC through 2021-12-26 UTC). Enjoy your well-deserved break!

COVID-19:
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upstart writes:

One algorithm to rule decision-making:

For most animals, life is about deciding where to go. Running, swimming, or flying through the world, animals are constantly making decisions while on the move-decisions that allow them to choose where to eat, where to hide, and with whom to associate. Breakthroughs in neurobiology over the past decades, including those awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine, have pieced together a picture of how animals represent spatially-distributed options. Now, an international team of researchers have applied this neurobiological knowledge to understand how animals choose among options scattered in space.

[...] Drawing inspiration from neurobiology, physics and animal behavior, the interdisciplinary team constructed a computational model of decision-making in the brain. The model took features of how the brain represents options in "space" -- in this case direction to potential destinations -- in order to understand how decisions are made on the move.

[...] The resulting model predicted that the brain spontaneously breaks down decisions among multiple options to a series of two-choice decisions until only one option -- the one ultimately selected -remains. This was found to result in animals exhibiting a series of abrupt changes in direction, each associated with the exclusion of one of the remaining options. Each change of direction was a result of sudden changes in neural dynamics -- a property scientists call a "bifurcation" -- at very specific geometrical relationships between the animal and the remaining options.

The algorithm was found to be so robust that the researchers predicted, not only would this "bifurcation" process result in highly accurate decisions, but also that it could be 'universal'. By overlaying many trajectories of their simulated animals, they found a branching structure that should, they expected, also be apparent if they overlaid many trajectories taken by real animals making spatial decisions.

Journal Reference:
Vivek H. Sridhar, Liang Li, Dan Gorbonos, et al. The geometry of decision-making in individuals and collectives [open], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2102157118)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Giving bug-like bots a boost: A new fabrication technique produces low-voltage, power-dense artificial muscles that improve the performance of flying microrobots.:

MIT researchers have demonstrated diminutive drones that can zip around with bug-like agility and resilience, which could eventually perform these tasks. The soft actuators that propel these microrobots are very durable, but they require much higher voltages than similarly-sized rigid actuators. The featherweight robots can't carry the necessary power electronics that would allow them [to] fly on their own.

Now, these researchers have pioneered a fabrication technique that enables them to build soft actuators that operate with 75 percent lower voltage than current versions while carrying 80 percent more payload. These soft actuators are like artificial muscles that rapidly flap the robot's wings.

This new fabrication technique produces artificial muscles with fewer defects, which dramatically extends the lifespan of the components and increases the robot's performance and payload.

"This opens up a lot of opportunity in the future for us to transition to putting power electronics on the microrobot. People tend to think that soft robots are not as capable as rigid robots. We demonstrate that this robot, weighing less than a gram, flies for the longest time with the smallest error during a hovering flight. The take-home message is that soft robots can exceed the performance of rigid robots," says Kevin Chen, who is the D. Reid Weedon, Jr. '41 assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the head of the Soft and Micro Robotics Laboratory in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), and the senior author of the paper.

upstart writes:

Backdoor gives hackers complete control over federal agency network:

A US federal agency has been hosting a backdoor that can provide total visibility into and complete control over the agency network, and the researchers who discovered it have been unable to engage with the administrators responsible, security firm Avast said on Thursday.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, associated with international rights, regularly communicates with other US agencies and international governmental and nongovernmental organizations. The security firm published a blog post after multiple attempts failed to report the findings directly and through channels the US government has in place. The post didn't name the agency, but a spokeswoman did in an email. Representatives from the commission didn't respond to an email seeking comment.

upstart writes:

Visuals increase attention; now science explains why: Chemical's release in brain tied to processing of imagery, cells' activation:

In a paper published Dec. 17 in the journal Science Advances, authors from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (also referred to as UT Health San Antonio) report that norepinephrine, a fundamental chemical for brain performance, is locally regulated in a brain region called the visual cortex.

"Before our study, research suggested the possibility of local regulation of norepinephrine release, but it had never been directly demonstrated," said study senior author Martin Paukert, MD, assistant professor of cellular and integrative physiology at UT Health San Antonio.

[...] Norepinephrine is known to be involved in paying attention. "A certain amount of this chemical needs to be released for optimum brain performance and ability to pay attention," Dr. Paukert said. "So, if there is either too much of it or too little of it, it may affect how we process information."

[...] The team's findings also extend to cells called astrocytes that function as helper cells in the brain and central nervous system.

"When a person makes a movement, such as turning the head to listen to a parent, and that is combined with visual stimulation, then more norepinephrine is released where visual information is processed," Dr. Paukert said. "Our second finding, also important, is that astrocytes can reliably detect the rate of norepinephrine release."

Journal Reference:
Shawn R. Gray, Liang Ye, Jing Yong Ye, Martin Paukert. Noradrenergic terminal short-term potentiation enables modality-selective integration of sensory input and vigilance state, Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abk1378)

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upstart writes:

The first true millipede has been discovered in Australia. It has the most legs of any living animal:

Millipedes have lots of legs. It's defining feature of this creature, which is neither worm nor insect.

However, despite a name derived from the Latin for thousand (mille) and feet (pes), no millipede has been found with more than 750 legs -- until now.

Scientists have discovered the first millipede that has more than 1,000 legs -- 1,306 to be precise -- and the most legs of any living creature on Earth. It was found living 60 meters (200 feet) below ground in a drill hole created for mineral exploration in Western Australia.

The eyeless invertebrate -- it's 3.7 inches (9.5 centimeters) long and 0.04 inch (1 millimeter) wide -- has 330 body segments, antennae, a beak for feeding and a cone-shaped head.

"It's as if you pulled a 3-inch white thread from a shirt (but it had 1,306 legs)," said Paul Marek, an associate professor at the department of entomology at Virginia Tech via email.

How do you count the legs of such a tiny creature?

To make sure no limbs were missed or counted twice, Marek said he color-coded each 10-leg segment using a high-resolution image of the uncurled millipede in Adobe Illustrator.

"I counted three times, and it took about 1 hour," said Marek, the author of the study that published in the journal Scientific Reports on Thursday.

Original Submission