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upstart writes:

US KleptoCapture force to tackle cryptocurrency use in Russian sanction avoidance:

The US government has launched a new initiative to tackle the use of cryptocurrency and assets to circumvent new sanctions imposed on Russia.

On Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland, through the US Department of Justice's (DoJ) Office of Public Affairs, announced the creation of "Task Force KleptoCapture."

The team is described as "an interagency law enforcement task force dedicated to enforcing the sweeping sanctions, export restrictions, and economic countermeasures that the United States has imposed, along with allies and partners."

[...] KleptoCapture will include "targeting" those who try to use cryptocurrency to avoid US sanctions and those who are trying to launder the "proceeds of foreign corruption" or to "evade US responses to Russian military aggression."

"The Task Force will be fully empowered to use the most cutting-edge investigative techniques -- including data analytics, cryptocurrency tracing, foreign intelligence sources, and information from financial regulators and private sector partners -- to identify sanctions evasion and related criminal misconduct," Garland says.

In addition, KleptoCapture will be tasked with preventing the "undermining" of sanctions by seizing assets "belonging to sanctioned individuals or assets identified as the proceeds of unlawful conduct" and by investigating alleged attempts to avoid Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and anti-laundering rules in the country.

Hat tip to Runaway1956 for his submission.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Russia places extraordinary demands on OneWeb prior to satellite launch:

Russia has taken the extraordinary step of placing multiple demands on OneWeb and its government ownership prior to a planned launch of satellites Friday aboard a Soyuz rocket.

The mission, to loft 34 broadband communications satellites into orbit, was to be the 14th launch of OneWeb satellites. The company presently has 428 satellites in orbit, out of a planned total of 648 for its initial constellation. OneWeb had hoped to begin commercial service around the world later this year.

The vast majority of those satellites have launched on Russian Soyuz rockets, one of the few boosters in the world with spare lift capacity for a megaconstellation at this time. Another six Soyuz launches were scheduled for later this year to complete the OneWeb constellation.

But those plans were thrown into question by Russia's invasion of Ukraine last week. OneWeb, which is jointly owned by the United Kingdom government and an Indian multinational company, has not offered any public comments since the invasion.

Russia is demanding guarantees that OneWeb not be used for military purposes and that the UK sell its share in the company. If you have some spare trampolines and your name doesn't rhyme with Melon Usk, please contact OneWeb ASAP.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Buildings — Capturing furnace emissions - Technology Org:

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed a novel solution to reduce the environmental impact of natural gas-condensing furnaces commonly used in U.S. homes. The team built a prototype furnace that incorporates monolithic acidic gas reduction, or AGR, as the catalyst to minimize acidic gases and condensate acidity, and oxidize carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and methane.

In a demonstration, researchers conducted a 400-hour reliability and durability test and proved that AGR, made of titanium dioxide, copper oxide and minor platinum, removed more than 99.9% of the acidic gas products produced during combustion. It trapped and removed sulfur oxides and reduced additional emissions.

[...] ORNL's Zhiming Gao said [...] "This technology could be applied to commercial rooftop units, thermally driven heat pumps, gas-fired water heaters and boilers."

Journal Reference:
Zhiming Gao, Kyle Gluesenkamp, Anthony Gehl. et al. Ultra-clean condensing gas furnace enabled with acidic gas reduction, Energy Volume 243, 15 March 2022, 123068 (DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2021.123068)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

To Find the First Galaxies, Webb Space Telescope Pays Attention to Detail and Theory:

As the Webb team continues to make progress in aligning the telescope, other successful activities include the calibration of the NIRISS filter wheel and pupil wheel tuning for NIRCam. There are hundreds of activities like these planned during the commissioning process, and each is as important as the next to ensure that Webb can achieve its ambitious science goals. One such goal – detecting the earliest galaxies – also requires a lot of planning and theory to prepare for the observations. L.Y. Aaron Yung, a postdoc at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, tells us more about the important theoretical work that helps plan for and then analyze galaxy surveys:

"This summer, Webb will start searching for galaxies in the distant universe. These highly anticipated observations are the key to unlocking the secrets in galaxy evolution and our universe's history. Depending on the specific science goal of an observing program, the best-suited survey configurations can vary a lot.

"For instance, galaxy surveys going after the faintest and most distant galaxies require long exposure times (e.g., NGDEEP, PRIMER), but surveys for large-scale cosmological structure would require large survey areas (e.g., COSMOS-Web). Inputs from physically motivated simulations are essential to developing optimal observing strategies to achieve the specific scientific goals.

"To create a simulated universe, we first lay the foundation with dark matter concentrations, or halos, extracted from cosmological simulations. Dark matter accounts for 85% of the matter in the universe and has a dominant effect on the spatial distributions of galaxies across the universe. We then simulate the galaxies forming inside these dark matter halos based on astrophysical processes we learned from past observations.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Radeon RX 6500 XT GPUs Are Selling Below MSRP In Europe:

Did you expect consumer gaming-grade graphics cards to sell under MSRP in February 2022? It has happened. Mindfactory, one of Germany's most prominent online tech retailers, has published a page full of special offers this weekend. It contains AMD partner graphics cards that are selling below MSRP. This news might be exciting, but before you start dreaming about GPU upgrades, playing the latest PC games with real-time raytracing in 4K, and rushing off to find your credit card - both these sub-MSRP treats are AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT designs.

[...] Mindfactory listings show two AMD Radeon RX 6500 XTs models available for purchase. The ASRock Radeon RX 6500XT Challenger ITX and the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6500 XT Eagle were available at €199 when we first checked, but now the Gigabyte model has gone up in price to €229. The other discounted RX 6500 XT on the Mindfactory specials page is an ASRock Radeon RX 6500 XT Phantom Gaming D OC at €229. This dual-fan model used to sell for €249.

Putting the prices into context, the German MSRP for the base model AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT graphics cards is €209. In addition, Germany applies a VAT of 19%, which makes the ASRock ITX model about €160 before sales tax. If we convert this sum to USD, we get $182 before sales tax.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Raspberry Pi 64-bit Armbian Gets New Release:

Armbian, a community-run Linux distro that supports over 100 Arm- and X86-based SBCs, has announced a new version, 22.02, and there's an optimized image ready to be installed on your Raspberry Pi.

Armbian takes a 'mainline first' approach to Linux, attempting to unify the experience across many different boards, each of them optimized for at a kernel or userspace level to maintain performance. Images are based on either Debian or Ubuntu, and use mostly vanilla upstream package repos, as most of the work has gone into kernel optimization.

The new release is the first to support UEFI on both Arm and X86 using GRUB, so it can boot on Intel Macs, and along with the hundreds of bug fixes you'd expect from a new version, there's a new Extensions build framework that allows users to extend the build system independently from the core code base, with over 20 hooks available.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Stonehenge served as an ancient solar calendar: New analysis:

New finds about the stone circle's history, along with analysis of other ancient calendar systems, prompted professor Timothy Darvill to take a fresh look at Stonehenge. His analysis, published in the journal Antiquity, concluded that the site was designed as a solar calendar.

[...] Crucially, recent research had shown that Stonehenge's sarsens were added during the same phase of construction around 2500 BC. They were sourced from the same area and subsequently remained in the same formation. This indicates they worked as a single unit.

As such, Darvill analyzed these stones, examining their numerology and comparing them to other known calendars from this period. He identified a solar calendar in their layout, suggesting they served as a physical representation of the year that helped the ancient inhabitants of Wiltshire keep track of the days, weeks, and months.

"The proposed calendar works in a very straightforward way. Each of the 30 stones in the sarsen circle represents a day within a month, itself divided into three weeks each of 10 days," said Darvill, noting that distinctive stones in the circle mark the start of each week.

Additionally, an intercalary month of five days and a leap day every four years were needed to match the solar year. "The intercalary month, probably dedicated to the deities of the site, is represented by the five trilithons in the center of the site," said Darvill. "The four Station Stones outside the Sarsen Circle provide markers to notch-up until a leap day."

As such, the winter and summer solstices would be framed by the same pairs of stones every year. One of the trilithons also frames the winter solstice, indicating it may have been the new year. This solstitial alignment also helps calibrate the calendar—any errors in counting the days would be easily detectable as the sun would be in the wrong place on the solstices.

Journal Reference:
Timothy Darvill. Keeping time at Stonehenge | Antiquity | Cambridge Core [open], Antiquity (DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2022.5)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A Dead Chinese Rocket Is Crashing Into the Moon on Friday, and Scientists Can't Wait:

The strange story of a big hunk of space junk that's on a collision course with the moon comes to an explosive end Friday, and astronomers are eager to view the fallout.

An old rocket booster once thought to be the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9, but now believed to be from the Chinese Chang'e 5-T1 mission (although China denies this), will slam into the moon's far side at over 5,000 miles per hour.

Bill Gray, an amateur astronomer and software developer in Maine, first noticed the terminal trajectory. His software picked up the impact in an orbital model and Gray worked with observatories around the world to gather additional data and increase his confidence in the prediction.

[...] "I am astounded that we can tell the difference between the two rocket body options -- SpaceX versus Chinese -- and confirm which one will impact the moon with the data we have," Adam Battle, a planetary science graduate student at the University of Arizona said in a statement in February. "The differences we see are primarily due to type of paint used by SpaceX and the Chinese."

In a blog post, Gray wrote that "with all the data, we've got a certain impact at March 4 12:25:58 Universal Time (4:25 a.m. PT)." Jonathan McDowell, a leading watcher of orbit and everything near Earth in space, confirmed the prediction.

upstart writes:

AMD's Ryzen 5000 CPUs Get Major Price Cuts, Up to 25 Percent:

AMD's Ryzen 5000 (Vermeer) processors are two years old, but the Zen 3 chips are still among some of the best CPUs on the market. If you're looking for your next upgrade, U.S. retailers, including Amazon, Best Buy, Micro Center, and Newegg, are currently selling the Ryzen 5000 lineup at reduced prices.

The Ryzen 5000 price cuts are probably an answer to the recently released Intel 12th Generation Alder Lake product stack that has helped Intel recover market share in the Japanese and German markets. While Ryzen 5000 still dominates the list of best-selling processors on Amazon and Newegg, Alder Lake has been creeping up to the Zen 3 parts. For example, the Core i7-12700KF is the seventh best-selling chip on Amazon, whereas the Core i7-12700K is in the third spot on Newegg's charts. Moreover, it's that time of the year when retailers start making space for the next wave of processors.

AMD has already confirmed that Ryzen 7000 (Raphael), Ryzen 5000's successor, will hit the market in the second half of the year, so retailers have likely started to offload Ryzen 5000 parts. Ryzen 7000 lives on the completely new AM5 platform with PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 support. The transition to the AM5 socket means consumers will have to invest in a new motherboard, although the topic of the memory remains in the air. Intel's Alder Lake supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory modules, but AMD hasn't confirmed if Ryzen 7000 will also have hybrid memory support.

The story continues with a chart of prices for various models and has links to vendors, too.

Random question: Is your primary computer a desktop or a laptop? I've been laptop-only for the last 15-20 years -- my computing needs have been relatively modest.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Raspberry Pi Competitor Ranks Swell With Orange Pi 4 LTS:

A new version of the Orange Pi, one of the Raspberry Pi competitor boards built around the hexa-core Arm-based Rockchip RK3399 SoC and with a distinctive Wi-Fi antenna, is now available for pre-order, with prices starting from $55, as spotted by CNX-Software.

The Orange Pi 4 LTS (not Long-Term Support, but LTS versions of Orange Pi boards tend to be more compact versions of previous releases) features a six-core processor that sees two Arm Cortex A72 cores matched with four A53 cores and a Mali T860 GPU. There's a choice of either three or four gigabytes of LPDDR4 RAM, and a 16GB eMMC chip can be specified.

The main difference between the Orange Pi 4 LTS and the 4 and 4B boards that preceded it is the GPIO. While previous boards contained 40 pins on their headers, the LTS houses just 26, just like the original Raspberry Pi. And while we can use some Raspberry Pi HATs designed for 40-pin GPIO with the original Pi. Don't expect true GPIO compatibility with the Orange Pi 4 LTS, a quick glance of the GPIO layout shows that I2C is mapped to different pins, effectively breaking compatibility with cards which use this protocol. The audio chip also seems to have been changed, from a Realtek ALC5651 to an ESS ES8316.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

High Blood Pressure Linked With Certain Oral Bacteria in Older Women:

High blood pressure is typically defined by two measurements: systolic blood pressure (the upper number measuring pressure when the heart beats) of 130 mm Hg or higher, and diastolic blood pressure (the lower number indicating pressure between heart beats) of 80 mm Hg or higher.

While previous research has indicated that blood pressure tends to be higher in people with existing periodontal disease compared to those without it, researchers believe that this study is the first to prospectively examine the association between oral bacteria and developing hypertension.

"Since periodontal disease and hypertension are especially prevalent in older adults, if a relationship between the oral bacteria and hypertension risk could be established, there may be an opportunity to enhance hypertension prevention through increased, targeted oral care," said Michael J. LaMonte, Ph.D., M.P.H., one of the study's senior authors, a research professor in epidemiology at the University at Buffalo – State University of New York and a co-investigator in the Women's Health Initiative clinical center in the University's epidemiology and environmental health department.

Researchers evaluated data for 1,215 postmenopausal women (average age of 63 years old at study enrollment, between 1997 and 2001) in the Buffalo Osteoporosis and Periodontal Disease Study in Buffalo, New York. At study enrollment, researchers recorded blood pressure and collected oral plaque from below the gum line, "which is where some bacteria keep the gum and tooth structures healthy, and others cause gum and periodontal disease," LaMonte said. They also noted medication use and medical and lifestyle histories to assess if there is a link between oral bacteria and hypertension in older women.

NASA's Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Helicopter Aces 20th Flight on Red Planet

upstart writes:

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity helicopter aces 20th flight on Red Planet:

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity has now outflown its Red Planet expectations by a factor of four.

The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity landed on the floor of Jezero Crater with NASA's life-hunting, sample-caching Perseverance rover on Feb. 18, 2021. The solar-powered chopper soon embarked on a five-flight technology-demonstrating mission designed to show that powered flight is possible in the Red Planet's thin air.

Ingenuity aced that initial mission and was granted an extension, during which it's been serving as a scout for Perseverance and pushing the limits of Red Planet flight. And on Friday (Feb. 25), Ingenuity notched yet another milestone, this one of the round-number variety — its 20th Martian sortie.

upstart writes:

Deciphering behavior algorithms used by ants and the internet:

Engineers sometimes turn to nature for inspiration. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Associate Professor Saket Navlakha and research scientist Jonathan Suen have found that adjustment algorithms—the same feedback control process by which the Internet optimizes data traffic—are used by several natural systems to sense and stabilize behavior, including ant colonies, cells, and neurons.

Internet engineers route data around the world in small packets, which are analogous to ants. As Navlakha explains, "The goal of this work was to bring together ideas from machine learning and Internet design and relate them to the way ant colonies forage."

The same algorithm used by internet engineers is used by ants when they forage for food. At first, the colony may send out a single ant. When the ant returns, it provides information about how much food it got and how long it took to get it. The colony would then send out two ants. If they return with food, the colony may send out three, then four, five, and so on. But if ten ants are sent out and most do not return, then the colony does not decrease the number it sends to nine. Instead, it cuts the number by a large amount, a multiple (say half) of what it sent before: only five ants. In other words, the number of ants slowly adds up when the signals are positive, but is cut dramatically lower when the information is negative. Navlakha and Suen note that the system works even if individual ants get lost and parallels a particular type of "additive-increase/multiplicative-decrease algorithm" used on the internet.

Journal Reference:
Jonathan Y. Suen and Saket Navlakha. A feedback control principle common to several biological and engineered systems, Journal of the Royal Society Interface [open CC BY 4.0] (DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2021.0711)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

DDoS attackers have found this new trick to knock over websites:

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attackers are using a new technique to knock websites offline by targeting vulnerable 'middleboxes', such as firewalls, to amplify junk traffic attacks.

Amplification attacks are nothing new and have helped attackers knock over servers with short busts of traffic as high as 3.47 Tbps. Microsoft last year mitigated attacks on this scale that were the result of competition between online-gaming players.

But there's a new attack on the horizon. Akamai, a content distribution network firm, says it has seen a recent wave of attacks using "TCP Middlebox Reflection", referring to transmission control protocol (TCP) – a founding protocol for secured communications on the internet between networked machines. The attacks reached 11 Gbps at 1.5 million packets per second (Mpps), according to Akamai.

The amplification technique was revealed in a research paper last August, which showed that attackers could abuse middleboxes such as firewalls via TCP to magnify denial of service attacks. [...]

Most DDoS attacks abuse the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) to amplify packet delivery, generally by sending packets to a server that replies with a larger packet size, which is then forwarded to the attacker's intended target. The TCP attack takes advantage of network middleboxes that don't comply with the TCP standard. The researchers found hundreds of thousands of IP addresses that could amplify attacks by over 100 times utilizing firewalls and content filtering devices.

So, what was a theoretical attack just eight months ago is now a real and active threat.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Ultrasound scan can diagnose prostate cancer:

Researchers at Imperial College London, University College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust have found that a new type of ultrasound scan can diagnose most prostate cancer cases with good accuracy in a clinical trial involving 370 men.

The ultrasound scans missed only 4.3 per cent more clinically important prostate cancer cases -- cancer that should be treated rather than monitored -- compared to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans currently used to detect prostate cancer.

MRI scans are expensive and time-consuming. The team believes that an ultrasound scan should be used as a first test in a community healthcare setting and in low and middle income countries which do not have easy access to high quality MRI scans. They say it could be used in combination with current MRI scans to maximise cancer detection. The study is published in Lancet Oncology.

"MRI scans are one of the tests we use to diagnose prostate cancer. Although effective these scans are expensive, take up to 40 minutes to perform and are not easily available to all. Also, there are some patients who are unable to have MRI scans such as those with hip replacements or claustrophobia fears. As cancer waiting lists build as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a real need to find more efficient and cheaper tests to diagnose prostate cancer.