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upstart writes:

From the oilfield to the lab: How a special microbe turns oil into gases:

Microorganisms can convert oil into natural gas, i.e. methane. Until recently, it was thought that this conversion was only possible through the cooperation of different organisms. In 2019, Rafael Laso-Pérez and Gunter Wegener from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology suggested that a special archaeon can do this all by itself, as indicated by their genome analyses. Now, in collaboration with a team from China, the researchers have succeeded in cultivating this microbe in the laboratory. This enabled them to describe exactly how the microbe achieves the transformation. They also discovered that it prefers to eat rather bulky chunks of food.

Underground oil deposits on land and in the sea are home to microorganisms that use the oil as a source of energy and food, converting it into methane. Until recently, it was thought that this conversion was only possible in a complicated teamwork between different organisms: certain bacteria and usually two archaeal partners. Now the researchers have managed to cultivate an archaeon called Methanoliparia from a settling tank of an oil production facility that handles this complex reaction all by itself.

[...] This archaeon breaks down oil into methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2). "Methanoliparia is a kind of hybrid creature that combines the properties of an oil degrader with those of a methanogen, i.e. a methane producer," explains study author Gunter Wegener from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology and the MARUM—Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen.

NPC-131072 writes:

Series of preclinical studies supports the Army's pan-coronavirus vaccine development strategy:

A series of recently published preclinical study results show that the Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle (SpFN) COVID-19 vaccine developed by researchers at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) not only elicits a potent immune response but may also provide broad protection against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern as well as other coronaviruses.

Scientists in WRAIR's Emerging Infectious Diseases Branch (EIDB) developed the SpFN nanoparticle vaccine, based on a ferritin platform, as part of a forward-thinking "pan-SARS" strategy that aims to address the current pandemic and acts as a first line of defense against variants of concern and similar viruses that could emerge in the future.

[...] SpFN entered Phase 1 human trials in April 2021. Early analyses, expected to conclude this month, will provide insights into whether SpFN's potency and breadth, as demonstrated in preclinical trials, will carry over into humans. The data will also allow researchers to compare SpFN's immune profile to that of other COVID-19 vaccines already authorized for emergency use.

Journal Reference:
M. Gordon Joyce, Hannah A. D. King, Ines Elakhal-Naouar, et al. A SARS-CoV-2 ferritin nanoparticle vaccine elicits protective immune responses in nonhuman primates, Science Translational Medicine (DOI: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abi5735

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Ewa Jodlowska, the Python Software Foundation's outgoing executive director, says Python 'will go down in history' - but there is still plenty of work to be done.

The Python Software Foundation (PSF) has been the driving force behind the Python project since 2001. As well as managing the license for the open-source programming language, the non-profit organization is charged with supporting the growth of the Python community – a vast and globe-spanning network comprising upwards of 10.1 million developers, many of whom contribute to the language's ongoing development.

Yet things can take time when you're largely reliant on part-time volunteers to keep things moving forward, particularly when each contributor has their own particular interest in the language and may be trying to pull it in a certain direction accordingly.

[...] "I don't think it's an issue, it just takes a lot longer to do anything because getting community consensus around any kind of direction or change takes a long time. In Python and a lot of open-source communities, decisions don't come top-down: they come from making sure that the community is involved in the discussion."

Community has always been central to the Python programming language. Only a handful of developers work on the core programming language full-time, with much of the contributions to the language coming from an army of volunteers.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Half of top cancer studies fail high-profile reproducibility effort

A US$2-million, 8-year attempt to replicate influential preclinical cancer research papers has released its final — and disquieting — results. Fewer than half of the experiments assessed stood up to scrutiny, reports the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology (RPCB) team in eLife. The project — one of the most robust reproducibility studies performed so far — documented how hurdles including vague research protocols and uncooperative authors delayed the initiative by five years and halved its scope.

"These results aren't surprising. And, simultaneously, they're shocking," says Brian Nosek, an RPCB investigator and executive director of the Center for Open Science in Charlottesville, Virginia. Although initially planning to repeat 193 experiments from 53 papers, the team ran just 50 experiments from 23 papers.

The low replication rate is "frankly, outrageous", says Glenn Begley, an oncologist and co-founder of Parthenon Therapeutics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the study. But it isn't unexpected, he agrees. In 2012, while at the biotech firm Amgen in Thousand Oaks, California, Begley's team helped to draw attention to growing evidence of a 'reproducibility crisis', the concern that many research findings cannot be replicated. Over the previous decade, his haematology and oncology team had been able to confirm the results of only 6 of the 53 (11%) landmark papers it assessed, despite working alongside the papers' original authors.

Other analyses have reported low replication rates in drug discovery, neuroscience and psychology.

Journal Reference:
Asher Mullard. Half of top cancer studies fail high-profile reproducibility effort, (DOI: 10.1038/d41586-021-03691-0)

Original Submission

Ayn Anonymous writes:

[Editor's Note: This is how we received it. We are searching for anything else but the claim that Assange is (being) extradited is currently unsubstantiated.]

Assange is extradited to die in the US empire.
Wikileaks now puts EVERYTHING online in return.
https://file.wikileaks.org/file/?fbclid=IwAR2U_Evqah_Qy2wxNY12FMqFC5dAFUcZL5Kl4FIfQuMFMp8ssbM46oHXWMI

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

How we fought an anti encryption law in Belgium - and won!

The Belgian government has removed 'backdoor requirement' from new law after international protest.

In June 2021, the Belgian government proposed a draft law called "Law on the collection and storage of identification, traffic and location data in the electronic communications sector and their access by the authorities", or short, "the Data Retention Legislation". This draft included a passage that would have forced companies such as WhatsApp and Signal to decrypt their encrypted chats upon request by the authorities for criminal investigation.

This law would have been the worst in Europe, worse than the Snoopers' Charter in the UK or the EARN IT bill in the USA.

[...] the Belgian government did not have to wait long for the public outcry: Belgian intellectuals like Professor Bart Preneel said that "by putting a backdoor into Whatsapp, you would make it less safe for everyone".

The main criticism was that it is simply impossible to rule out that a backdoor - once it is built - is abused by criminals or undemocratic regimes. A lowering of the security level would immediately affect all users - and not just those who are the subject of a judicial investigation.

[...] The public outcry against the Belgian draft law was so strong that politicians within the government itself changed their course. Finally, the proposed passage that would have forced companies to decrypt encrypted data upon request by the authorities got removed from the draft law.

At the Federal Council of Ministers last Friday, the government approved a reworked version of the law, in which the backdoor requirement was dropped entirely.

A government mandated back door will always and should always be less popular than a central government registry of passwords and encryption keys. For your protection. In case you forget.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Tiny microbes belching toxic gas helped cause—and prolong—the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history, a new study suggests.

Generally, scientists believe Siberian volcanos spitting greenhouse gases primarily drove the mass extinction event about 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period. The gases caused extreme warming, which in turn led 80% of all marine species, as well as many land species, to go extinct.

Until now, scientists could not explain exactly how the heat caused those deaths. A new UC Riverside-led study in Nature Geoscience shows that the heat accelerated microbes' metabolisms, creating deadly conditions.

"After oxygen in the ocean was used up to decompose organic material, microbes started to 'breathe' sulfate and produced hydrogen sulfide, a gas that smells like rotten eggs and is poisonous to animals," said UC Riverside Earth system modeler Dominik Hülse.

Booga1 writes:

Raspberry Pi computers are speeding to the International Space Station.

This morning, our two new Astro Pi units launched into space. Actual, real-life space. The new Astro Pi units each consist of a Raspberry Pi computer with a Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera and a host of sensors, all housed inside a special space-ready case that makes the hardware suitable for the International Space Station (ISS).

Today's launch is the culmination of a huge piece of work we've done for the European Space Agency to get the new Astro Pi units ready to become part of the European Astro Pi Challenge.

After lift-off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the new Astro Pi units are currently travelling on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon 2 spacecraft, the module atop the rocket. You can watch the launch again here.

The article has plenty of photos and links to more information about the projects planned for the pocket-sized computers.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Antibiotics can be first-line therapy for uncomplicated appendicitis cases: A review of studies shows that antibiotic therapy is effective in up to 70% of cases that do not have added risks:

With numerous recent studies demonstrating that antibiotics work as well as surgery for most uncomplicated appendicitis cases, the non-surgical approach can now be considered a routine option, according to a review article in JAMA.

The finding -- appearing Dec. 14 and led by Theodore Pappas, M.D., professor in the Department of Surgery at Duke University School of Medicine -- cites the consensus of evidence that antibiotics successfully treat up to 70% of appendicitis cases. Surgery, usually done laparoscopically, remains the definitive option for otherwise healthy patients with a severely inflamed appendix or other factors that increase the risk of rupture.

"Acute appendicitis is the most common abdominal surgical emergency in the world, striking about one in 1,000 adults," Pappas said. "Until recently, the only treatment option was surgery, so having a non-surgical approach for many of these cases has significant impact for both patients and the health care system."

Pappas said the criteria for determining the best treatment approach is nuanced, but not excessively difficult. Appendicitis cases -- marked by abdominal pain that often migrates to the lower right side, nausea and vomiting, and low-grade fever -- are confirmed with ultrasound and/or CT scans.

If the scans depict no complications, most of these patients could receive antibiotics instead of undergoing an appendectomy. Antibiotics could also be a first-line therapy for patients who have severe symptoms, but who are older or have medical conditions that add risks to surgeries.

Journal Reference:
Dimitrios Moris, Erik Karl Paulson, Theodore N. Pappas. Diagnosis and Management of Acute Appendicitis, JAMA (DOI: 10.1001/jama.2021.20502)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Java Code Repository Riddled with Hidden Log4j Bugs; Here's Where to Look:

About 17,000 Java packages in the Maven Central repository, the most significant collection of Java packages available to developers, are vulnerable to Log4j — and it will likely take "years" for it to be fixed across the ecosystem, according to Google security.

Following the CVE update that just Log4j-core was affected, eliminating vulnerable instances of the Log4j-api, Google Security determined that as of Dec. 19, more than 17,000 packages in Maven Central were vulnerable, about 4 percent of the entire repository. Of those, just 25 percent of the packages had updated versions available, Google added.

For comparison, the Google researchers explained in a Tuesday blog post that the average bug affects between 2 percent and less than .01 percent of such packages.

Sonatype, the organization which maintains Maven Central, has a dashboard that's updated several times a day with the latest on Log4j and reported that since Dec. 10, more than 40 percent of the packages being downloaded were still vulnerable, totaling nearly 5 million downloads.

[...] "The majority of affected artifacts come from indirect dependencies (that is, the dependencies of one's own dependencies), meaning Log4j is not explicitly defined as a dependency of the artifact, but gets pulled in as a transitive dependency," the Google team said.

Making these unpatched Log4j versions even sneakier to track down is "how far down the software supply chain it's typically deployed," the analysts added.

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.

Original Submission

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

Original Submission

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)

Original Submission

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.

Original Submission