SoylentNews

upstart writes:

Low on gas: Ukraine invasion chokes supply of neon needed for chipmaking:

Russia's invasion of Ukraine threatens to pile further pressure on chip manufacturing as a squeeze on the supply of rare gasses critical to the production process adds to pandemic-related disruptions.

Ukraine supplies about 50 percent of the world's neon gas, analysts have said, a byproduct of Russia's steel industry that is purified in the former Soviet republic and is indispensable in chip production.

Manufacturers have already been reeling from shortages of components, late deliveries and rising material costs, with companies that rely on chips, such as carmakers, facing production delays as a result.

[...] Many companies, including US manufacturers Applied Materials and Intel, have said constraints would persist into 2023. Demand for raw materials is also expected to rise by more than a third in the next four years, as businesses such as the world's biggest contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company increase production, said consultancy Techcet.

"We are in great trouble. We have no rare gasses to sell," said Tsuneo Date, who runs Daito Medical Gas, a pressurized gas dealer north of Tokyo.

When Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, neon prices shot up by at least 600 percent. Companies have said they can tap into reserves but the rush to find suppliers that are not in eastern Europe is causing shortages and price hikes, not only of neon but also other industrial gasses such as xenon and krypton.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

More alcohol, less brain: Association begins with an average of just one drink a day:

The research, using a dataset of more than 36,000 adults, revealed that going from one to two drinks a day was linked with changes in the brain equivalent to aging two years. Heavier drinking was associated with an even greater toll. The science on heavy drinking and the brain is clear: The two don't have a healthy relationship. People who drink heavily have alterations in brain structure and size that are associated with cognitive impairments.

But according to a new study, alcohol consumption even at levels most would consider modest -- a few beers or glasses of wine a week -- may also carry risks to the brain. An analysis of data from more than 36,000 adults, led by a team from the University of Pennsylvania, found that light-to-moderate alcohol consumption was associated with reductions in overall brain volume.

The link grew stronger the greater the level of alcohol consumption, the researchers showed. As an example, in 50-year-olds, as average drinking among individuals increases from one alcohol unit (about half a beer) a day to two units (a pint of beer or a glass of wine) there are associated changes in the brain equivalent to aging two years. Going from two to three alcohol units at the same age was like aging three and a half years. The team reported their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

upstart writes:

Heat May Melt Away White Fat:

Applying heat locally activates beige fat in mice and humans, and could become an approach to tackle obesity, a study published today (March 4) in Cell suggests.

"Overall, they suggest a fascinating and very easy to translate observation, by applying that mild heat you might activate thermogenic adipocytes. But in humans the situation is definitely more complicated," Siegfried Ussar, an obesity researcher at Helmholtz Munich, Germany, who was not involved in the study, tells The Scientist. "It will be interesting to see how that translates to humans, because the nature of the cell types is still controversial plus the impact on the blood flow might be different."

[...] Adipose tissue comes in three colors: white, brown and beige. While white fat specializes in storing lipid and expands during obesity, brown fat is thermogenic, turning energy into heat. Beige fat is the middleman: beige fat cells are located within white fat and are indistinguishable from them, unless they undergo a process called browning. After browning, beige fat burns energy and produces heat. "We want to understand how we can activate beige fat to prevent or treat obesity," Xinran Ma, an endocrinologist at East China Normal University in Shanghai, China, who co-authored the new study, tells The Scientist.

Previous research by other groups had sought to induce browning through various stimuli, including cold treatment and the activation of beta-adrenergic signaling. In the present study, the researchers used a different stimulus: heat, applied just to a region thought to harbor beige fat. The researchers used nanoparticles, which they injected into white fat found around the groin of mice. When exposed to near-infrared light, the nanoparticles heat up the tissue around them to about 41°C. And when the researchers induced this temperature for 10 minutes in mice, they observed increased heat production in the area after 12 hours using thermal imaging—an indication that at least some of the area's beige fat had browned.

The researchers then tested local hyperthermia therapy in humans by applying a heat source of 41°C to fat deposits around the neck and the shoulders, where beige fat is thought to be found in humans. Again, internal heat production in the area increased, and remained elevated for two hours after the external heat source was removed, based on thermal imaging. From that, the authors concluded that local hyperthermia could induce thermogenesis in humans by activating beige adipocytes.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

Putin blocks Russians' access to Facebook, Twitter, app stores [Updated]:

Update 2:40pm EST: Russia's Internet censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, confirmed that it would be blocking access to Facebook, accusing the company of violating the law by blocking state media outlets from the platform.

When reached for comment by Ars, a Facebook spokesperson cited a statement from Nick Clegg, president of global affairs, who said, "We will continue to do everything we can to restore our services so they remain available to people to safely and securely express themselves and organize for action."

Original article: Russia is reportedly blocking Twitter, Facebook, various news sites, and major app stores, according to a German journalist.

The move comes after the Russian government announced last week that it was partially restricting access to Facebook in retaliation for the company applying fact-checking labels to posts from state-controlled media outlets. Earlier this week, Meta, Facebook's parent company, and YouTube blocked access to Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik in the European Union.

The news of Russia's blockade came from Mathieu von Rohr, head of the foreign desk at German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. He tweeted that "Twitter, Facebook, BBC, Deutsche Welle, App Stores" were all being blocked. (Deutsche Welle is the German public broadcaster.)

Original Submission

PiMuNu writes:

Their Bionic Eyes are Now Obsolete and Unsupported:

Barbara Campbell was walking through a New York City subway station during rush hour when her world abruptly went dark. For four years, Campbell had been using a high-tech implant in her left eye that gave her a crude kind of bionic vision, partially compensating for the genetic disease that had rendered her completely blind in her 30s. "I remember exactly where I was: I was switching from the 6 train to the F train," Campbell tells IEEE Spectrum. "I was about to go down the stairs, and all of a sudden I heard a little 'beep, beep, beep' sound."

It wasn't her phone battery running out. It was her Argus II retinal implant system powering down. The patches of light and dark that she'd been able to see with the implant's help vanished.

[...] These three patients, and more than 350 other blind people around the world with Second Sight's implants in their eyes, find themselves in a world in which the technology that transformed their lives is just another obsolete gadget. One technical hiccup, one broken wire, and they lose their artificial vision, possibly forever. To add injury to insult: A defunct Argus system in the eye could cause medical complications or interfere with procedures such as MRI scans, and it could be painful or expensive to remove.

upstart writes:

Elon Musk warns to use Starlink 'with caution' in Ukraine:

Days after sending SpaceX Starlink internet terminals to Ukraine, Elon Musk is warning people there to "please use with caution." As a non-Russian communications system, the Starlink satellite internet service has a "high" probability of being targeted during the ongoing Russian invasion, Musk said.

The SpaceX founder and CEO advised users to only turn on Starlink when needed and to place the antenna as far away from people as possible. He also suggested visibly camouflaging antennas.

[...] Additionally, the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Director Christopher Scolese recently warned that Russia's military can target satellites to disrupt satellite-based internet traffic, communications, and GPS services. Scolese said that if Russia feels it needs to, they will extend their war into space.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Study finds agreeableness a helpful trait for general success in life:

Michael Wilmot, assistant professor of management at the University of Arkansas, and Deniz Ones, professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, examined a wide range of variables, from psychological and physical health to interpersonal relationships, and from leadership effectiveness to performance in academic and organizational settings.

To better understand the impact of agreeableness, the researchers summarized results from 142 meta-analyses reporting effects for 275 variables. In all, the results comprised more than 1.9 million participants from roughly 3,900 studies. Meta-analysis is a process used to systematically merge multiple independent findings using statistical methods to calculate an overall effect.

Wilmot and Ones found that agreeableness had a desirable effect on 93% of variables and outcomes.

"We wanted to do a quantitative summary and synthesis of what we have learned about relations between agreeableness, one of the so-called Big 5 personality traits, and its consequences," Wilmot said. "We know this is important—perhaps now more than ever—because agreeableness is the personality trait primarily concerned with helping people and building positive relationships, which is not lost on organizational leaders."

upstart writes:

People say they're using Ukrainian Airbnbs to send money to locals:

The internet's found a new use for Airbnb.

Scores of people on Twitter and Facebook say they're employing a unique method to financially support Ukrainians in need: booking, but not staying in, local Airbnbs. The idea began picking up steam early Thursday, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine continued, with numerous people sharing what they say are screenshots of their communication with Ukrainian Airbnb hosts online.

SEE ALSO: How to help refugees fleeing Ukraine

"HOW TO HELP - just booked a Kiev AirBnb for 1 week, simply as a means of getting money directly into the hands of Kiev residents," read one such tweet. "It's really cheap and can make a small difference right now." Kiev is the Russian spelling of Ukraine's capitol, Kyiv.

[...] We reached out to Airbnb in an effort to determine if it's seeing an uptick in this type of activity, and if it has waived guest and host fees within Ukraine.

The company confirmed via email that it is indeed waiving guest and host fees on Ukrainian bookings "at this time," but did not directly respond to our other questions. A spokesperson did point us to a Feb. 28 blog post, where Airbnb said it would offer free housing for "up to" 100,000 refugees fleeing the country.

MrPlow writes in with a submission, via IRC, for boru.

Looks like solar cycle 24 has finally ended.

The Termination Event has Arrived:

The "Termination Event" is a new idea in solar physics, outlined by McIntosh and Leamon in a December 2020 paper in the journal Solar Physics. Not everyone accepts it–yet. If Solar Cycle 25 unfolds as McIntosh and Leamon predict, the Termination Event will have to be taken seriously.

The basic idea is this: Solar Cycle 25 (SC25) started in Dec. 2019. However, old Solar Cycle 24 (SC24) refused to go away. It hung on for two more years, producing occasional old-cycle sunspots and clogging the sun's upper layers with its decaying magnetic field. During this time, the two cycles coexisted, SC25 struggling to break free while old SC24 held it back.

[...] Researchers have long known that solar cycles can overlap. The twist added by McIntosh and Leamon is the realization that overlapping cycles interact. [...] In the early 20th century, George Ellery Hale discovered that the magnetic polarity of sunspot pairs reverses itself from one cycle to the next; indeed, the sun's entire global magnetic field flips every ~11 years.

[...] Termination Events mark the end of interference, when a new cycle can break free of the old.

The timing of the Termination Event can predict the intensity of the new cycle. In their Solar Physics paper, McIntosh and Leamon looked back over 270 years of sunspot data and found that Termination Events happen every 10 to 15 years.

"We found that the longer the time between terminators, the weaker the next cycle would be," explains Leamon. "Conversely, the shorter the time between terminators, the stronger the next solar cycle would be."

Journal Reference:
Scott W. McIntosh, Sandra Chapman, Robert J. Leamon, et al. Overlapping Magnetic Activity Cycles and the Sunspot Number: Forecasting Sunspot Cycle 25 Amplitude [open], Solar Physics (DOI: 10.1007/s11207-020-01723-y)

Original Submission

owl writes:

New York's Poop Train Threatens Small Alabama Town Once Again:

Back in 2017, the towns of Parrish and West Jefferson in northern Alabama had crappy ends to their years when a train carrying 10 million pounds of human waste from New York and New Jersey rolled into the area. Its contents were being dumped into a nearby landfill, which spread a smell locals likened to rotting corpses, attracted an infestation of flies, and generally made life as unpleasant as you'd expect. The waste-management company responsible was eventually forced to stop, bringing the towns' nightmares to an end in Spring 2018.

Or so they thought. Every good horror story gets a sequel, and Parrish and West Jefferson's has been four years in the making. According to WVTM 13, an Alabama Department of Environmental Management inspector paid a visit to the Big Sky Environmental landfill on February 1, where they found a newly constructed rail spur on the property connected to a nearby freight track. On the line were eight empty rail cars used to transport human waste, which the company reportedly confirmed had been brought down and unloaded within the last two weeks.

Original Submission

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