SoylentNews

upstart writes:

For mammals, eating other animals can increase cancer risk:

Cancer is a sad fact of life, as nearly 40 percent of people are diagnosed with it at some point in their lives. But humans aren't alone in this. Many different species can also develop the disease—some more often than others. By studying these species and their habits and natural defenses (or lack thereof), we can learn new ways to combat the disease.

New research that involves a comprehensive survey of cancer shows that many mammals can indeed get cancer. To gain insight into this, the team looked at records for 110,148 animals from 191 species that died in zoos. The data came from Species360, an international non-profit that collects and unifies this kind of data from zoos across the world, according to Orsolya Vincze, a research fellow at the Centre for Ecological Research in Hungary and one of the paper's authors.

Using the data gathered by the organization, the research team could "collect information on what the animals died of," she told Ars.

[...] Carnivores, however, were particularly prone to cancer. Within the dataset, more than a quarter of clouded leopards, bat-eared foxes, and red wolves died of cancer, for instance. According to Vincze, there are some hypotheses surrounding why this might be the case.

Journal Reference:
Orsolya Vincze, Fernando Colchero, Jean-Francois Lemaître, et al. Cancer risk across mammals [open], Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04224-5)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

China upset about needing to dodge SpaceX Starlink satellites:

Earlier in December, the Chinese government filed a document with the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space at the United Nations. The body helps manage the terms of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, more commonly known as the Outer Space Treaty. In the document, China alleges that it had to move its space station twice this year due to potential collisions with Starlink satellites operated by SpaceX.

The document pointedly notes that signatories of the treaty, which include the US, are responsible for the actions of any nongovernmental activities based within their borders.

The document was filed back on December 6, but it only came to light recently when Chinese Internet users became aware of it and started flaming Elon Musk, head of SpaceX.

The document starts out with an impossibly formal 110-word-long sentence that notes the Outer Space Treaty obliges its signatories to inform other nations when they discover any phenomena in space that could pose a risk to astronauts. It then indicates that China has identified such a threat: Starlink satellites.

upstart writes:

Intel to invest $7.1B in Malaysia chipmaking expansion:

Intel said it will invest 30 billion ringgit ($7.1 billion) to expand its manufacturing operation in Malaysia as chipmakers work to diversify their global supply chains that were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. semiconductor company is no stranger to Malaysia, where it built its first offshore assembly plant in Penang in 1972.

[...] the new investment will expand the operations of its Malaysian subsidiary across Penang and Kulim, creating more than 4,000 new Intel jobs and more than 5,000 local construction jobs. That's on top of 13,000 people that Intel already employs in Malaysia, roughly 10% of the company's global workforce.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Why you should consider purchasing refurbished over new electronics:

[...] And there's another set of benefits to refurbished electronics these days, which I discussed with Lauren Benton, the general manager at Back Market.

"One major issue here is too much demand, and not enough supply of chips. Refurbished electronics helps alleviate supply chain woes by keeping chips in circulation longer. Back Market­­ is leading the charge against buying new these days to support and promote sustainability in tech," Benton told me.

She outlined further the benefits of buying refurbished:

First and foremost, major cost savings can be realized. Refurbished devices are usually half the price of new while still functioning like new (they can be up to 70% off the price of new).

Better quality is another factor. Benton said that when working with professional refurbishers, consumers can expect a professional review of their device. I myself can attest to this since these devices have been proven to work reliably.

"For example, at Back Market, all sellers must meet a 25-point quality charter, which ensures that the defective rate on the platform remains low — generally below 5%. For reference, the unofficial failure rate of new devices hovers at around 3% (case in point, the iPhone X and the iPhone 8 Plus, which both came out at the end of 2017, were each reported to have a 3% failure rate in Q1 of 2018)" she told me.

Have you used reconditioned hardware and, if so, what are your experiences? If you have bought used hardware (but not reconditioned) has it turned out to be a bargain or a disappointment?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Optical Chip Promises 350x Speedup Over RTX 3080 in Some Algorithms

Lightelligence, a Boston-based photonics company, revealed the world's first small form-factor, photonics-based computing device, meaning it uses light to perform compute operations. The company claims the unit is "hundreds of times faster than a typical computing unit, such as NVIDIA RTX 3080." 350 times faster, to be exact, but that only applies to certain types of applications.

[...] The [Photonic Arithmetic Computing Engine (PACE)] is a somewhat narrow engine when it comes to what exact workloads it can execute. But, as the company says, "PACE efficiently searches for solutions to several of the hardest computational math problems, including the Ising problem, and the graph Max-Cut and Min-Cut problems, illustrating the real-world potential of integrated photonics in advanced computation." In that perspective, we can classify it as an ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) of sorts: it does very few things (or a single thing) very, very well.

Research Opens the Door to Fully Light-Based Quantum Computing

takyon writes:

Apple ditched Intel, and it paid off

Apple's decision to ditch Intel paid off this year.

The pivot allowed Apple to completely rethink the Mac, which had started to grow stale with an aging design and iterative annual upgrades. Following the divorce from Intel, Apple has launched far more exciting computers which, paired with an ongoing pandemic that has forced people to work and learn from home, have sent Apple's Mac business soaring.

It wasn't always a given. When Apple announced its move away from Intel in 2020, it was fair to question just how well Apple could power laptops and desktop computers. Apple has used in-house chips for iPhones and iPads but had been selling Intel-powered computers for 15 years. It wasn't clear how well its macOS desktop software would work with apps designed to run on Intel chips, or whether its processors would offer any consumer benefits and keep up with intensive tasks that people turned to MacBooks to run.

[...] In April 2021, CEO Tim Cook said during the company's fiscal second-quarter earnings call that the M1 chip helped fuel the 70.1% growth in Apple's Mac revenue, which hit $9.1 billion during that quarter. The growth continued in fiscal Q3, when Mac revenue was up 16% year over year. [...] There was a slowdown in fiscal Q4, when Mac revenue grew just 1.6%, as Apple, like all manufacturers, saw a slowdown from the burst of sales driven by the start of the pandemic and dealt with supply chain woes. But fiscal Q4 sales didn't include revenue from its most exciting new computer of the year.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Mapping the musical mind: Interesting patterns of brain activity emerge during musical analysis exercises:

"In the field of neuroscience, it is well established that there are areas of the brain that deal specifically with language, and even specialized regions that correspond to different parts of language processing such as grammar or syntax," said [Professor Kuniyoshi L.] Sakai. "We wondered if training under the Suzuki method might lead to activity in such areas, not when using language, but when engaging with music. Our study reveals this is indeed the case."

For their investigation, the team enlisted 98 Japanese secondary school students classified into three groups: Group S (Suzuki) was trained from a young age in the Suzuki method, Group E (Early) was musically trained from a young age but not in the Suzuki method, and Group L (Late) was either musically trained at a later age, but not in the Suzuki method, or were not musically trained at all. All the students had their brains scanned by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which produced dynamic 3D models of their brains' activity. During this time, they were given a musical exercise to identify errors in a piece of music played to them. The musical pieces played had errors in one of four musical conditions: pitch, tempo, stress and articulation.

[...] "One striking observation was that regardless of musical experience, the highly specific grammar center in the left brain was activated during the articulation condition. This connection between music and language might explain why everyone can enjoy music even if they are not musical themselves," said Sakai.

[In the early 1980s, when the field was very young, IBM was known to hire musicians for programming positions. I wonder how many Soylentils have music-related backgrounds? --martyb.]

Journal Reference:
Kuniyoshi L. Sakai, Yoshiaki Oshiba, Reiya Horisawa, et al. Music-Experience-Related and Musical-Error-Dependent Activations in the Brain, Cerebral Cortex (DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhab478)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A virtual reality simulator to train surgeons for skull-base procedures:

"The process of drilling requires surgeons to remove minimal amounts of bone while ensuring that important structures (such as nerves and vessels) housed within the bone are not harmed," Adnan Munawar, one of the researchers who developed the system, told TechXplore. "Therefore, skull base surgeries require high skill, absolute precision, and sub-millimeter accuracy. Achieving these surgical skills requires diligent training to ensure the safety of patients."

Currently, most resident surgeons are trained to complete skull base surgeries and other procedures on cadavers or on live people under the supervision of experienced doctors. However, realistic computer simulations and virtual environments could significantly enhance the training of surgeons, offering a cost-effective, safe and reproducible alternative to traditional training methods.

In addition to allowing surgeons to practice their skills in a safe and realistic setting, simulation tools enable the collection of valuable data that would otherwise be harder to attain. This includes optimal trajectories for surgical tools, the forces that are imparted during a procedure, or the position of cameras/endoscopes.

Journal Reference:
Adnan Munawar, Zhaoshuo Li, Punit Kunjam, et al. Virtual reality for synergistic surgical training and data generation, Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering: Imaging & Visualization (DOI: 10.1080/21681163.2021.1999331)

Original Submission

You guys are GREAT!

Previously:
In our last Fundraising Update we had raised $1,808.21 (net) towards our goal of $3,500.00 for the 2nd half of the year. (And five days earlier we stood at just $1,510.49).

Currently:
And where are we now? Hold onto your seat...

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

mysql>  SELECT SUM(payment_gross) AS Gross, SUM(payment_net) AS Net, ts, max(spid) AS SPID FROM subscribe_payments WHERE ts >= '2021-07-01' ;
+---------+---------+---------------------+------+
| Gross   | Net     | ts                  | SPID |
+---------+---------+---------------------+------+
| 2435.06 | 2307.23 | 2021-07-01 02:15:00 | 1727 |
+---------+---------+---------------------+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql>

In that time, we had 4x $50.00 subscriptions and a $100.00 subscription (flagged by an "*" below):

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

mysql> SELECT ts, payment_gross, payment_net, method, submethod, payment_type FROM subscribe_payments WHERE ts > '2021-12-28 13:01:56' AND payment_gross > 0 ORDER BY ts ;
+---------------------+---------------+-------------+--------+-----------+--------------+
| ts                  | payment_gross | payment_net | method | submethod | payment_type |
+---------------------+---------------+-------------+--------+-----------+--------------+
| 2021-12-28 22:28:09 |         *50.00 |       47.76 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-28 22:48:32 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-28 23:33:57 |         *50.00 |       47.76 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-29 00:54:44 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-29 02:47:41 |         *50.00 |       47.01 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-29 03:08:48 |         20.00 |       18.51 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-29 04:50:49 |        *100.00 |       96.02 | paypal | NULL      | gift         |
| 2021-12-29 07:01:43 |         20.00 |       18.51 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-29 10:58:54 |         10.00 |        9.16 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-29 12:46:04 |         25.00 |       23.26 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-29 13:32:12 |         20.00 |       19.12 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-12-29 13:37:36 |         *50.00 |       48.25 | stripe | CC        | user         |
| 2021-12-29 14:16:35 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-29 14:24:29 |         40.00 |       37.51 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-29 21:11:32 |         12.00 |       10.91 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
| 2021-12-29 22:06:03 |         20.00 |       18.81 | paypal | NULL      | user         |
+---------------------+---------------+-------------+--------+-----------+--------------+
16 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql>

Yes, the larger subscriptions are attention-getting, but $220.00 of that $527.00 came from subscriptions of $20.00 or less.

Remaining:
Since I started writing this, we received two more $20.00 subscriptions! All told, we need just $1,173.96 to make our goal and only 2 days to go. Can we do it? We Can Do This... Please Subscribe!

Ahem. Got carried away there. But seriously, every bit makes a difference; please help.
--martyb

upstart writes:

RedLine malware shows why passwords shouldn't be saved in browsers:

The RedLine information-stealing malware targets popular web browsers such as Chrome, Edge, and Opera, demonstrating why storing your passwords in browsers is a bad idea.

This malware is a commodity information-stealer that can be purchased for roughly $200 on cyber-crime forums and be deployed without requiring much knowledge or effort.

However, a new report by AhnLab ASEC warns that the convenience of using the auto-login feature on web browsers is becoming a substantial security problem affecting both organizations and individuals.

[...] Using your web browser to store your login credentials is tempting and convenient, but doing so is risky even without malware infections.

By doing so, a local or remote actor with access to your machine could steal all your passwords in a matter of minutes.

Instead, it would be best to use a dedicated password manager that stores everything in an encrypted vault and requests the master password to unlock it.

Moreover, you should configure specific rules for sensitive websites such as e-banking portals or corporate asset webpages, requiring manual credential input.

Finally, activate multi-factor authentication wherever this is available, as this additional step can save you from account take-over incidents even if your credentials have been compromised.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Vikings may have fled Greenland to escape rising seas:

In 1721, a Norwegian missionary set sail for Greenland in the hopes of converting the Viking descendants living there to Protestantism. When he arrived, the only traces he found of the Nordic society were ruins of settlements that had been abandoned 300 years earlier.

There is no written record to explain why the Vikings left or died out. But a new simulation of Greenland's coastline reveals that as the ice sheet covering most of the island started to expand around that time, sea levels rose drastically, researchers report December 15 at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in New Orleans.

These shifting coastlines would have inundated grazing areas and farmland, and could have helped bring about the end of the Nordic way of life in Greenland, says Marisa Borreggine, a geophysicist at Harvard University.

Greenland was first colonized by Vikings in 985 by a group of settlers in 14 ships led by Erik the Red, who had been banished from neighboring Iceland for manslaughter. Erik and his followers settled across southern Greenland, where they and their descendants hunted for seals, grazed livestock, built churches and traded walrus ivory with European mainlanders.

The settlers arrived during what's known as the Medieval Warm Period, when conditions across Europe and Greenland were temperate for a handful of centuries (SN: 7/24/19). But by 1350, the climate had started taking a turn for the worse with the beginning of the Little Ice Age, a period of regional cooling that lasted well into the 19th century.

Researchers have long speculated that a rapidly changing climate could have dealt a blow to Greenland's Norse society. The island probably became much colder in the last 100 years of Norse occupation, says paleoclimatologist Boyang Zhao at Brown University in Providence, R.I, who was not involved in the new research. Lower temperatures could have made farming and raising livestock more difficult, he says.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

India unveils $10.2B plan to attract semiconductor makers:

India on Wednesday announced a $10.2 billion plan to try to attract global chipmakers to set up shop in the country and transform it into a production hub of semiconductors.

The plan unveiled by Information Technology and Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw comes amid a severe shortage of semiconductors caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to global shortages of products that need them, including new cars.

India wants to lure countries with economic incentives, including manufacturers with operations in China that might be willing to shift to India because of the ongoing trade disputes between the U.S. and China, Indian officials and business leaders have said.

He told reporters that incentives will attract companies involved in various parts of the semiconductor manufacturing process. India's government will provide fiscal support of up to 50% of project costs to eligible display and semiconductor fabricators, Vaishnaw said.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.os2museum.com/wp/first-dual-channel-ide/

The OS/2 Museum recently came into possession of what may be the first adapter with support for two IDE channels... sort of:

The adapter was made by Plus Development Corporation, a subsidiary of the disk maker Quantum. This particular specimen was manufactured in 1989, though its BIOS has a 1988 copyright.

The adapter is quite obscure for something made by a well known company. I could not find any information about it whatsoever. The only public reference to its existence is its FCC ID, EU95T8IMPULSE80-2 (note that Plus Impulse was a brand name under which some Quantum drives were sold). The FCC application is from March 17, 1989, and it mentions a "hard disk controller card for internal & external hard disk drives".

Original Submission

Rich writes:

The holiday season has brought us major releases of three lighthouse projects of the Free Software world:

Krita has reached version 5.0 on the 23rd: https://krita.org/en/item/krita-5-0-released/

Blender already got to version 3.0 on the 3rd: https://www.blender.org/press/blender-3-0-a-new-era-for-content-creation/

and KiCAD hit 6.0 on the 25th: https://www.kicad.org/blog/2021/12/KiCad-6.0.0-Release/

The upgrades are significant, and these three applications already rule their domains at the entry level. How much further will they go?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Scientists draw inspiration from catchweed to create biodegradable Velcro:

Velcro is an ingenious hook-and-loop fastener inspired by nature—specifically, cockleburs. Now scientists at the Italian Institute of Technology are returning the favor. They have created the first biodegradable Velcro—inspired by climbing plants—and used it to build small devices to help monitor the health of crop plants and deliver pesticides and medicines as needed, according to a November paper published in the journal Communications Materials.

Velcro's creator was a Swiss engineer named George de Mestral, who combined his love of invention with a passion for the great outdoors. After finishing school, he took a job in the machine shop of a Swiss engineering company. In 1948, de Mestral took a two-week holiday from work to go game bird hunting. While out hiking with his Irish pointer in the Jura Mountains, he was plagued by cockleburs (burdock seeds), which clung relentlessly to both his clothing and his dog's fur.

It was so difficult to disentangle the tenacious seed pods that de Mestral became intrigued by how they were constructed and examined a few under a microscope. He noticed that the outside of each burr was covered with hundreds of tiny hooks that grabbed into loops of thread, or in the dog's case, fur. And it gave him an idea for a similar manmade fastener.

[...] Co-author Isabella Fiorello and her colleagues were interested in developing innovative new technologies for monitoring plants in situ to detect disease, as well as delivering various substances to plants. However, few such devices can be attached directly to plant leaves without damaging them. The best current options are sensors attached with chemical glues, or with clips. There are also micro-needle-based patches under development able to penetrate leaves for disease detection.

Fiorello et al. found inspiration in the common catchweed plant (Galium aparine). It can form dense, tangled mats on the ground, and while the plants can grow up to six feet, they can't stand on their own and instead must use other plants for support. For this purpose, catchweed plants rely on a "unique parasitic ratchet-like anchoring mechanism to climb over host plants, using microscopic hooks for mechanical interlocking to leaves," the authors wrote.