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Labor Regulator Accuses Amazon of Intimidation as Union Drives Move Forward

upstart writes:

Labor regulator accuses Amazon of intimidation as union drives move forward:

Amazon interrogated and surveilled warehouse workers in Staten Island, where some workers are seeking to form a union, prosecutors for the National Labor Relations Board said in a complaint Wednesday. The allegations come one day after the agency said the warehouse workers have collected enough signatures to move forward with a union election.

According to Bloomberg, the NLRB complaint alleges that an Amazon consultant promised to fix problems for workers if they opposed the union and called the workers leading the union push "thugs."

"Workers have the right under federal labor law to join and form unions and employers are prohibited from interfering with that right," said Kathy Drew King, the director of NLRB region 29, where the complaint originated. "The complaint seeks to stop and remedy this unlawful conduct to ensure that Amazon's employees can freely and fairly exercise their rights under the National Labor Relations Act."

Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said the allegations are false, adding, "we look forward to showing that through this process."

The situation isn't Amazon's only union battle. In a separate organizing drive in Alabama, a union asked the labor board Wednesday to make Amazon get rid of a mailbox that the agency previously ruled tainted a union election last year. A redo election is scheduled for early February.

upstart writes:

Look who's talking now: The fishes! Widespread sound communication among fish:

"We've known for a long time that some fish make sounds," said lead author Aaron Rice, a researcher at the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "But fish sounds were always perceived as rare oddities. We wanted to know if these were one-offs or if there was a broader pattern for acoustic communication in fishes."

The authors looked at a branch of fishes called the ray-finned fishes. These are vertebrates (having a backbone) that comprise 99% of the world's known species of fishes. They found 175 families that contain two-thirds of fish species that do, or are likely to, communicate with sound. By examining the fish family tree, study authors found that sound was so important, it evolved at least 33 separate times over millions of years.

"Thanks to decades of basic research on the evolutionary relationships of fishes, we can now explore many questions about how different functions and behaviors evolved in the approximately 35,000 known species of fishes," said co-author William E. Bemis '76, Cornell professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. "We're getting away from a strictly human-centric way of thinking. What we learn could give us some insight on the drivers of sound communication and how it continues to evolve."

The scientists used three sources of information: existing recordings and scientific papers describing fish sounds; the known anatomy of a fish -- whether they have the right tools for making sounds, such as certain bones, an air bladder, and sound-specific muscles; and references in 19th century literature before underwater microphones were invented.

Journal Reference:
Aaron N. Rice, Stacy C. Farina, Andrea J. Makowski, et al. Evolutionary Patterns in Sound Production across Fishes [open], Ichthyology & Herpetology (DOI: 10.1643/i2020172)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

JEDEC Publishes HBM3 Update to High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) Standard:

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the global leader in the development of standards for the microelectronics industry, today announced the publication of the next version of its High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) DRAM standard: JESD238 HBM3, available for download from the JEDEC website.  HBM3 is an innovative approach to raising the data processing rate used in applications where higher bandwidth, lower power consumption and capacity per area are essential to a solution's market success, including graphics processing and high-performance computing and servers.

Key attributes of the new HBM3 include:

• Extending the proven architecture of HBM2 towards even higher bandwidth, doubling the per-pin data rate of HBM2 generation and defining data rates of up to 6.4 Gb/s, equivalent to 819 GB/s per device
• Doubling the number of independent channels from 8 (HBM2) to 16; with two pseudo channels per channel, HBM3 virtually supports 32 channels
• Supporting 4-high, 8-high and 12-high TSV stacks with provision for a future extension to a 16-high TSV stack
• Enabling a wide range of densities based on 8Gb to 32Gb per memory layer, spanning device densities from 4GB (8Gb 4-high) to 64GB (32Gb 16-high); first generation HBM3 devices are expected to be based on a 16Gb memory layer
• Addressing the market need for high platform-level RAS (reliability, availability, serviceability), HBM3 introduces strong, symbol-based ECC on-die, as well as real-time error reporting and transparency
• Improved energy efficiency by using low-swing (0.4V) signaling on the host interface and a lower (1.1V) operating voltage

"With its enhanced performance and reliability attributes, HBM3 will enable new applications requiring tremendous memory bandwidth and capacity," said Barry Wagner, Director of Technical Marketing at NVIDIA and JEDEC HBM Subcommittee Chair.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Players needed to solve puzzles and help advance cancer research:

The game, out today on iOS and Android and available in English, Spanish, Catalan and Italian, is the result of a two-and-a-half-year long citizen science project developed by a team of researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), the Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG-CRG) and game professionals.

The game was created to boost worldwide research efforts that depend on cancer cell lines, a critical resource used by scientists to study cancer and test new drugs to treat the disease. One of the limitations of cancer cell lines are a lack of high-resolution genome reference maps, which are necessary to help researchers interpret their scientific results, for example pinpointing the location of genes of therapeutic interest or potential mutation sites.

[...] To play GENIGMA, players have to solve a puzzle involving a string of blocks of different colours and shapes. Each string represents a genetic sequence in the cancer cell line, and how players organise the blocks is a potential solution to the location of genes.

Players have to reorganise the blocks so that they attain the highest-score possible. The higher the number of players and high scores, the higher likelihood that researchers have found the correct sequence for this particular location in the reference map.

upstart writes:

Uncontrolled blood pressure is sending more people to the hospital: Men are more likely than women to be admitted for a hypertensive crisis, but women have similar hospital mortality rates:

The increase occurred during a period when some studies reported overall progress in blood pressure control and a decline in related cardiovascular events in the U.S. The findings are published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

"Although more people have been able to manage their blood pressure over the last few years, we're not seeing this improvement translate into fewer hospitalizations for hypertensive crisis[*]," said Joseph E. Ebinger, MD, a clinical cardiologist and director of clinical analytics at the Smidt Heart Institute and first author of the study.

[...] To conduct their study, the investigators analyzed data from the National Inpatient Sample, a publicly available database. The data include a subset of all hospitalizations across the U.S., providing a picture of nationwide trends. They found that annual hospitalizations for hypertensive crises more than doubled over a 13-year period. Hospitalizations related to hypertensive crises represented 0.17% of all admissions for men in 2002 but 0.39% in 2014. Hospitalizations related to hypertensive crisis represented 0.16% of all admissions for women in 2002 but 0.34% in 2014.

The investigators estimated that from 2002 to 2014, there were 918,392 hospitalizations and 4,377 in-hospital deaths related to hypertensive crisis across the U.S.

The risk of dying from a hypertensive crisis, however, did decrease slightly overall during the studied time period. Women died at the same rate as men, even though they had fewer health issues than men who also were hospitalized for a hypertensive crisis.

[*] Hypertensive crisis on Wikipedia.

Journal Reference:
Joseph E. Ebinger, Yunxian Liu, PhD, MS, Matthew Driver, MPH et al. Sex‐Specific Temporal Trends in Hypertensive Crisis Hospitalizations in the United States, Journal of the American Heart Association (DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.121.021244)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Crowding, climate change, and the case for social distancing among trees:

For many, an ideal forest is one that looks the same as it did before European colonizers arrived. [...] Managers need to consider new strategies for building resilient forests, according to Tucker Furniss and Jim Lutz, from Utah State University's Department of Wildland Resources in the S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources.

[...] Recreating historical conditions has been a key strategy for restoration efforts, but today's novel conditions require different strategies. Specifically, the research shows that lower crowding for trees can increase chances of survival after fire. Results from two long-term studies (covering 23 years and more than 50,000 individual trees) show that chances for long-term tree survival increased when trees had more space, by reducing competition and helping trees recover from fire more quickly.

Over the years, the team performed tens of thousands of post-mortems on dead trees in the Sierra Nevada mountains to identify the cause of demise. They analyzed data and found that in crowded forests, trees were less tolerant of fire damage, and were more susceptible to post-fire bark beetle attack. In more open forests, though, trees could tolerate higher levels of fire damage, even when fire burned during extreme drought. [...] Alleviating the stress that occurs when close neighbors compete for limited water resources lets trees use sap to fend off beetle attacks, and it helps them heal after fire.

upstart writes:

Australia scientists find 'spooky' spinning object in Milky Way:

Australian scientists say they have discovered an unknown spinning object in the Milky Way that they claim is unlike anything seen before.

The object - first discovered by a university student - has been observed to release a huge burst of radio energy for a full minute every 18 minutes. Objects that pulse energy in the universe are often documented. But researchers say something that turns on for a minute is highly unusual.

The team is working to understand more. The object was first discovered by Curtin University Honours student Tyrone O'Doherty in a region of the Western Australian outback known as the Murchison Widefield Array, using a telescope and a new technique he had developed.

[...] Theories around what the object might be include a neutron star or a white dwarf - a term used for the remnants of a collapsed star. However, much of the discovery remains a mystery.

"More detections will tell astronomers whether this was a rare one-off event or a vast new population we'd never noticed before," Dr Hurley-Walker said. "I'm looking forward to understanding this object and then extending the search to find more."

Neutron star on Wikipedia.
White dwarf on Wikipedia.

Also at ICRAR (International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research) which has informative depictions and a link to a video on YouTube.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

MPs to debate landmark IoT security law:

The proposed Product Security and Telecoms Infrastructure Bill will receive its second reading in the House of Commons today in a debate to be opened by current digital secretary Nadine Dorries, as it takes a significant step forward towards becoming law.

The bill – which mandates improved cyber protections for smartphones and other smart or connected internet of things (IoT) devices – has been years in the making. Its scope has expanded over time to include new provisions that will supposedly spur the roll-out of full-fibre broadband services by making it easier for operators to upgrade and share infrastructure, and reform the process of how they go about negotiating with landowners to whose property they need access.

At its core it places strict new requirements on the manufacturers and retailers of connected consumer technology, banning easy-to-guess default passwords programmed onto devices, creating a vulnerability-reporting system, and forcing manufacturers to be upfront about how long their products will receive security updates.

Failure to comply could result in fines of up to £10m, or 4% of global turnover, and up to £20,000 for every day in the case of ongoing breaches.

upstart writes:

US Navy wants to get crashed stealth fighter back -- before China can:

US Navy wants to get crashed stealth fighter back -- before China can

The F-35C, a single-engine stealth fighter and the newest jet in the US Navy fleet, crash-landed on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson during routine operations on Monday, the Navy said.

The $100 million warplane impacted the flight deck of the 100,000-ton aircraft carrier and then fell into the sea as its pilot ejected, Navy officials said. The pilot and six sailors aboard the Vinson were injured.

While damage to the Vinson was only superficial, and it and the carrier's air wing have resumed normal operations, the Navy faces the daunting task of attempting to pull the F-35 off the ocean floor in some of the most contested waters on the planet.

The Navy is giving scant details on its recovery plans for the F-35C, the first of which only became operational in 2019.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Obesity Is More Common in People With Type 1 Diabetes Than Previously Thought:

People with type 1 diabetes should be screened regularly for obesity and chronic kidney disease, according to a study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Almost half of the adults in the United States have obesity, a chronic progressive disease characterized by an individual having an excess of body fat. Obesity is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, and people with obesity are at an increased risk for many serious diseases and health conditions such as diabetes, heart and liver disease. Obesity is a main risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes, but it has not been previously seen as a major complication in type 1 diabetes.

In type 1 diabetes, the body completely stops making insulin. In type 2 diabetes, the body produces insulin, but the cells do not respond to insulin as well as they should and later in the disease often do not make enough insulin. Type 2 diabetes is more likely to occur in people who are over the age of 40, overweight, and have a family history of diabetes, although more and more younger people, are developing type 2 diabetes.

“Our study shows that obesity rates in adults with type 1 diabetes are increasing and mirror the rates in the general adult population,” said Elizabeth Selvin, Ph.D., M.P.H., of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. “Our research also highlights the high risk of kidney disease in people with type 1 diabetes. Kidney disease is often considered more common in people with type 2 diabetes, but our data shows adults with type 1 diabetes actually had a higher risk of kidney disease than those with type 2.”

[...] Reference: “Obesity and Chronic Kidney Disease in U.S. Adults with Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus” 26 January 2022, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Google Just Gave You the Best Reason Yet to Finally Quit Using Chrome:

A while back, Google said that it was on board with the idea that cookies--the little pieces of software code that websites use to do all sorts of things like keeping you logged in, to letting an advertiser know when you've clicked on their ad and then made a purchase--were bad. At least, the third-party kind--the ones that track your activity across the internet. Those types of cookies would be blocked in Chrome by 2023.

[...] Google's real problem is that it can't just shut off third-party cookies entirely since that would be very bad for its competition and might look like it was leveraging the fact that not only does it control the world's largest advertising platform, but also its most popular web browser, Chrome. Considering the attention that regulators and lawmakers are paying to big tech companies, that was a non-starter.

So, Google said it would introduce an alternative known as Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLoC. The short version is that Chrome would track your browsing history and use it to identify you as a part of a cohort of other users with similar interests. Advertisers would then target ads to the "I like to buy expensive ski outfits," cohort, or the "I just turned 50 and have 2 kids about to enter college and want to re-finance my mortgage" cohort.

[...] Now, Google is introducing an alternative it calls Topics. The idea is that Chrome will look at your browsing activity and identify up to five topics that it thinks you're interested in. When you visit a website, Chrome will show it three of those topics, with the idea that the site will then show you an ad that matches your interest.

Google says that Chrome will allow users to view the Topics they are associated with, and give them the ability to delete them. Google isn't asking users if they'd like to be part of Topics, it's just leveraging the fact that it owns Chrome in order to force users to be a part and then giving them a way to opt out if they want. That's great, except almost no one is ever going to do that. Google knows that.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Tesla exceeded revenue estimates in Q4 2021 by more than $1 billion:

According to Tesla's shareholder deck for Q4, which was released on Wednesday, not only was the company profitable, but it exceeded analyst estimates for revenue by over a billion dollars. Not bad when you're over a billion bucks ahead of the game, right?

[...] In the production department, things were similarly rosy. The company reported that it increased overall production of all its vehicles combined by 70% versus Q4 of 2020. Of course, that's not super surprising given what 2020 was like. Interestingly, Model S and Model X production was down 19% year over year, while the Model 3 and Model Y were up by 79%, which shows the brand's continued commitment to its more affordable models.

[...] Tesla also continued to expand its Supercharger network to a total of 3,476 stations with 31,498 plugs. That's a bump of 36% in stations over 2020, which is pretty respectable, especially considering supply chain issues and their effect on everything construction-related.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

IBM Watson Health Finally Sold by IBM After 11 Months of Rumors:

IBM has sold its underachieving IBM Watson Health unit for an undisclosed price tag to a global investment firm after almost a year's worth of rumors that said IBM has been trying to exit this part of its business.

In a terse Jan. 21 announcement, IBM said that Francisco Partners is acquiring the healthcare data and analytics assets from the IBM Watson Health business unit, including Health Insights, MarketScan, Clinical Development, Social Program Management, Micromedex, and imaging software offerings.

Rumors about IBM wanting to sell its Watson Health unit – which reportedly brought in $1 billion in revenue annually but has failed to make a profit – have been circulating in the press at least twice since at least February of 2021. The reports said the move was being eyed so that Big Blue could get out of the healthcare market and focus its operations and sights on the lucrative cloud computing market.

A Jan. 21 report on the sale by Bloomberg said the value of the assets involved in the transaction total more than $1 billion, according to people familiar with the plans.

According to IBM's announcement, which is the first time that the company has commented on a possible sale of IBM Watson Health since the rumors began, the transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of this year and is subject to customary regulatory clearances.

What is unclear from the company's press release is whether the sale includes all the analytics and data holdings from Watson Health or if IBM will retain any part of that business at all. The release does not give any further details on the nature of the sale.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

An Arctic hare traveled at least 388 kilometers in a record-breaking journey:

BBYY, as the adult female [hare (Lepus arcticus)] was known, made a wild dash of more than 388 kilometers [~384 miles] in 49 days — the longest distance ever recorded among hares, rabbits or any other relatives — researchers report online December 22 in Ecology.

[...] Arctic hares — which weigh roughly the same as house cats, about four kilograms [~9 pounds] — are desirable prey for foxes and wolves on the tundra. Given the hares' important role in the Arctic food web, mammalian ecologist Dominque Berteaux of the Université du Québec à Rimouski wanted to know how the animals move across the arid landscape.

In 2019, Berteaux and colleagues affixed satellite tracking collars on 25 hares captured near the northern tip of Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada. As the hares swiftly hopped away, the researchers had no idea the creatures were beginning a mind-blowing expedition across the tundra, Berteaux says. That's because hares and their relatives, called lagomorphs (SN: 3/8/58), typically spend their lives within a single, familiar territory where food is plentiful and easy to find.

[...] For a hare to endure such a perilous journey, it must balance the need to find food without becoming food, says Dennis Murray, a terrestrial ecologist at Trent University in Peterborough, Canada, who wasn't involved in the work. That makes BBYY's excursion even more impressive, he says.

Journal Reference:
Sandra Lai, Émilie Desjardins, Jacob Caron-Carrier, et al. Unsuspected mobility of Arctic hares revealed by longest journey ever recorded in a lagomorph, Ecology (DOI: 10.1002/ecy.3620)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Kirigami robotic grippers are delicate enough to lift egg yolks:

Engineering researchers from North Carolina State University have demonstrated a new type of flexible, robotic grippers that are able to lift delicate egg yolks without breaking them, and that are precise enough to lift a human hair. The work has applications for both soft robotics and biomedical technologies.

The work draws on the art of kirigami[*], which involves both cutting and folding two-dimensional (2D) sheets of material to form three-dimensional (3D) shapes. Specifically, the researchers have developed a new technique that involves using kirigami to convert 2D sheets into curved 3D structures by cutting parallel slits across much of the material. The final shape of the 3D structure is determined in large part by the outer boundary of the material. For example, a 2D material that has a circular boundary would form a spherical 3D shape.

"We have defined and demonstrated a model that allows users to work backwards," says Yaoye Hong, first author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student at NC State. "If users know what sort of curved, 3D structure they need, they can use our approach to determine the boundary shape and pattern of slits they need to use in the 2D material. And additional control of the final structure is made possible by controlling the direction in which the material is pushed or pulled."