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upstart writes:

ICANN won't revoke Russian Internet domains, says effect would be "devastating":

Ukraine's request to cut Russia off from core parts of the Internet has been rejected by the nonprofit group that oversees the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS). CEO Göran Marby of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) said the group must "maintain neutrality and act in support of the global Internet."

"Our mission does not extend to taking punitive actions, issuing sanctions, or restricting access against segments of the Internet—regardless of the provocations," Marby wrote in his response to Ukraine Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. "ICANN applies its policies consistently and in alignment with documented processes. To make unilateral changes would erode trust in the multi-stakeholder model and the policies designed to sustain global Internet interoperability."

Ukraine on Monday asked ICANN to revoke Russian top-level domains such as .ru, .рф, and .su; to "contribute to the revoking for SSL certificates" of those domains; and to shut down DNS root servers in Russia. Fedorov argued that the requested "measures will help users seek for reliable information in alternative domain zones, preventing propaganda and disinformation."

ICANN was "built to ensure the Internet works"

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Superoxides for Oxygen Farming on the Moon and Mars:

The dusty faces of the Moon and Mars conceal unseen hazards for future explorers. Areas of highly oxidizing material could be sufficiently reactive that they would produce chemical burns on astronauts' unprotected skin or lungs. Taking inspiration from a pioneering search for Martian life, a Greek team is developing a device to detect these 'reactive oxygen species' – as well as harvest sufficient oxygen from them to keep astronauts breathing indefinitely.

The US Viking landers that touched down on Mars in 1976 carried experiments looking for Martian life whose results are still debated more than four decades later.

Viking's 'Labeled Release' experiment applied micro-nutrient liquid to a Martian soil sample, which released copious amounts of oxygen in response. Some authorities interpreted this result as evidence of microbial life on Mars – except that even after the sample was sterilized with 160°C heat this oxygen production continued. Meanwhile other Viking experiments found no traces of organic chemicals.

"The leading interpretation today is that the results were due to an abiotic chemical reaction," notes Prof. Elias Chatzitheodoridis of the Geological Sciences Department of the National Technical University of Athens.

upstart writes:

California pilot program turns GM's EVs into roving battery packs:

[...] California's power grid has seen its fair share of brownouts, rolling blackouts, and power outages caused by wildfires caused by PG&E. To help mitigate the economic impact of those disruptions, this summer General Motors and Northern California's energy provider will team up to test out using the automaker's electric vehicles as roving, backup battery packs for the state's power grid.

The pilot program announced by GM CEO Mary Barra on CNBC Tuesday morning is premised on birectional charging technology, wherein power can both flow from the grid to a vehicle (G2V charging) and from a vehicle back to the grid (V2G), allowing the vehicle to act as an on-demand power source. GM plans to offer this capability as part of its Ultium battery platform on more than a million of its EVs by 2025. Currently the Nissan Leaf and the Nissan e-NV200 offer V2G charging, though Volkswagen announced in 2021 that its ID line will offer it later this year and the the Ford F-150 Lightning will as well.

This summer's pilot will initially investigate, "the use of bidirectional hardware coupled with software-defined communications protocols that will enable power to flow from a charged EV into a customer's home, automatically coordinating between the EV, home and PG&E's electric supply," according to a statement from the companies. Should the initial tests prove fruitful, the program will expand first to a small group of PG&E customers before scaling up to "larger customer trials" by the end of 2022.

upstart writes:

Many businesses are throwing away IT equipment before end-of-life:

Many businesses tend not to repair broken hardware, and instead throw it away, even before it reaches end-of-life. These are the findings of a new report from Euro PC which hints that the practice means additional unnecessary expenses.

Surveying 1,200 UK business owners for the report, Euro PC discovered that just a quarter (26%) have a refurbishment partner that fixes broken gear for them. The rest just throw it away.

Drilling deeper, the company found roughly two-thirds (59%) of firms are throwing away IT gear before it reaches end-of-life, while 54% swap out their endpoints every three to five years, on average

The main reasons why they replace their endpoints "so often" include improving speed, increasing reliability, and boosting their security. In fact, many business owners don't believe refurbished gear can be fast, reliable, and secure, and would use it more if they knew otherwise.

khallow writes:

Eric Berger reports ("Finally, we know production costs for SLS and Orion, and they're wild", Ars Technica):

NASA Inspector General Paul Martin serves as an independent watchdog for the space agency's myriad activities. For nearly the entirety of his time as inspector general, since his appointment in 2009, Martin has tracked NASA's development of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. Although his office has issued a dozen reports or so on various aspects of these programs, he has never succinctly stated his thoughts about the programs—until Tuesday.

Appearing before a House Science Committee hearing on NASA's Artemis program [Wikipedia description], Martin revealed the operational costs of the big rocket and spacecraft for the first time. Moreover, he took aim at NASA and particularly its large aerospace contractors for their "very poor" performance in developing these vehicles.

Martin said that the operational costs alone for a single Artemis launch—for just the rocket, Orion spacecraft, and ground systems—will total $4.1 billion. This is, he said, "a price tag that strikes us as unsustainable." With this comment, Martin essentially threw down his gauntlet and said NASA cannot have a meaningful exploration program based around SLS and Orion at this cost.

In his testimony to the Committee, IG Martin states:

Our broad, years-long oversight has identified several interrelated challenges NASA must address to achieve its ambitious Artemis goals, including unsustainable costs, a lack of transparency into funding requirements, and risks associated with its modified program management and acquisition practices designed to reduce costs and accelerate the mission schedule.

upstart writes:

Cannabinoids From Amoebae: New Process for the Production of Active THC Compounds:

Polyketides are natural products with a wide range of therapeutic applications. Among them are dietary supplements, various antibiotics such as erythromycin, and one of the key cannabinoid precursors: Olivetolic acid. It is needed for the synthesis of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). The medical use of this psychoactive substance is being intensely researched, and it is already being used to provide relief for patients with neurological diseases and pain, among other things.

THC is a natural ingredient in the cannabis plant. "However, isolating THC in its pure form from the abundance of substances is very complex," says Falk Hillmann, head of the junior research group "Evolution of Microbial Interactions" at Leibniz-HKI and coleader of the study. Chemical synthesis of THC on the other hand is expensive and the yield is low. That's why he and a team are researching how such plant substances can be efficiently produced biotechnologically.

"So far, bacteria such as Escherichia coli or the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae are mainly used, but neither of them are native producers of natural products," explains Vito Valiante, head of the cooperating junior research group "Biobricks of Microbial Natural Product Syntheses" at the Leibniz-HKI. Accordingly, a large number of genetic modifications is necessary to enable synthesis in these classic model organisms. The research team is thus looking for alternatives.

upstart writes:

The suspicion becomes real: hackers can take control of Alexa and listen to you:

This is a novel method of taking control of a person's Echo speaker. "An attacker could then use this listening function to set up a social engineering scenario where the skill pretends to be Alexa and responds to user statements as if it were Alexa," vulnerability researcher Sergio Esposito told The Register.

Amazon has already patched most of the vulnerabilities, except for one in which a Bluetooth-paired device was able to play audio files created through a vulnerable Amazon Echo speaker, Esposito confirmed. A vulnerability tracked as CVE-2022-25809 which has been assigned a Medium severity level .

Paper (pdf) at arxiv.org.

YouTube video demonstrating an attack.

See also: Ars Technica.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Oil price surges to highest since 2008 on delays in Iranian talks:

Oil prices soared to their highest since 2008 due to delays in the potential return of Iranian crude to global markets and as the United States and European allies consider banning imports of Russian oil.

Talks to revive Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers were mired in uncertainty on Sunday following Russia's demands for a US guarantee that the sanctions it faces over the Ukraine conflict will not hurt its trade with Tehran. China has also raised new demands, according to sources.

In response to Russia's demands, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that the sanctions imposed on Russia over its Ukraine invasion have nothing to do with a potential nuclear deal with Iran.

The United States and European allies, meanwhile, are exploring banning imports of Russian oil, Blinken said on Sunday, and the White House coordinated with key Congressional committees moving forward with their own ban.

Brent LCOc1 rose $11.67, or 9.9%, to $129.78 a barrel by 6:50 p.m. EST (2350 GMT), while US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 rose $10.83, or 9.4%, to $126.51, putting both contracts on track for their highest daily percentage gains since May 2020.

upstart writes:

Ice-Free in Icy Worlds: Discovery Could Lead to Ice-Free Bionic Surfaces:

Antarctic waters have conditions in which objects and living creatures can freeze even under water. This is a major problem for marine travel in polar regions. So-called supercooled water has a temperature just below the freezing point. Due to the high salt content, water in Antarctica has a freezing point of about -1.9 °C, but is about 0.05 °C colder. The smallest disturbances such as grains of sand or surfaces can cause this supercooled water to freeze – with sometimes fatal consequences for creatures that cannot survive frozen.

The Antarctic scallop "Adamussium colbecki" resists this, as chemist Konrad Meister knows. Meister is a professor at the University of Alaska and heads a research group in Mischa Bonn's department at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P) in Mainz. During an expedition in Antarctica, divers drew his attention to the scallop with the efficient ice protection mechanism. "Our divers reported that they had never observed large-scale ice on the surface of this native scallop species," Meister says.

[...] The microscope reveals small ridges that run in a radiating pattern on their shell. These ridges ensure that water freezes preferentially there. If the freezing process continues, a continuous layer of ice forms, resting only on the ridges. Due to the low adhesion between ice and shell, the smallest underwater flow can therefore wash off the ice again and the scallop does not freeze.

upstart writes:

Samsung responds to app-throttling discovery, promises to ship an off switch:

Samsung has responded to reports that it is throttling thousands of apps on the Galaxy line of smartphones.

With the launch of the Galaxy S22, users found the packed-in "Game Optimizing Service" contained a list of approximately 10,000 apps that were being throttled. This list is basically every popular, well-known app you can think of, covering everything from games to core Samsung apps like the home screen. The only apps the service seemingly didn't target were benchmark apps, which means benchmark ratings are inaccurately reporting how much power the most-used apps have access to. Modifying a benchmark app like Geekbench to be disguised as a normal app leads to CPU scores dropping as much as 46 percent. The new Galaxy S22 isn't the only smartphone with this throttling feature; it goes back as far as the Galaxy S10.

Samsung gave a statement to The Verge today, saying, "We value the feedback we receive about our products and after careful consideration, we plan to roll out a software update soon so users can control the performance while running game apps." The spokesperson continued, "The Game Optimizing Service (GOS) has been designed to help game apps achieve a great performance while managing device temperature effectively. GOS does not manage the performance of non-gaming apps."

[...] Samsung is at least promising to ship an off switch, but that part of its story doesn't make a ton of sense either. If this throttling was really needed in the first place, why is Samsung going to produce a patch that lets users turn it off? If Samsung used the battery life excuse, that is a variable where a user control feature would be a good idea. Sometimes you will need more battery life, and sometimes you're close to a charger and don't care. But a variable slider for heat is rather strange. Heat is either able to be dissipated or not, and is either damaging to the components or not. It's still hard to imagine why this code was written in the first place if it isn't just there to game benchmarks.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

More Beer in the Glass With Physics: How Water-Repellent Coatings Can Reduce Foaming:

Foam formation and a long lifetime of the foam is desired for beer in a glass, for example — but foam should be avoided in beer bottling in order to speed up the bottling process. Foam formation is also often undesirable in other industrial processes, especially if it leads to spillages and environmental contamination.

In foams, adjacent air bubbles are separated from each other by a thin film of liquid. To generate and stabilize the foam, surface-active substances such as surfactants, often lipids or proteins are added.

Many liquids, such as beer and soaps, contain such surface-active molecules which stabilize foam. To prevent foaming, additional chemicals must therefore be added, such as oils, waxes, or microparticles. These help neighboring air bubbles to fuse together quickly, causing foam to break down rapidly.

upstart writes:

The rat problem in Washington, DC, is so bad, two people got hantavirus:

Many people might already think of the nation's capital as a political rat's nest, teeming with rat-related features, like underground networks and crowded backrooms where any faint smell of betrayal could send lawmakers scurrying. But Washington, DC, is also a den of literal rats. And it's creating a concerning risk of viral spillover for residents.

In a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, DC health officials ratted out the first two known cases of hantavirus spillover in the city. The virus festers quietly in rats and other rodent populations, but in humans it can cause potentially deadly respiratory and hemorrhagic diseases. Humans pick up the infection by direct contact with rodent urine or nest dust or by breathing in aerosolized viral particles from urine, droppings, or saliva. There's also the possibility that the virus can spread from rat bites, but this is less common. Once in a human, the virus almost never jumps from human to human.

upstart writes:

New UCIe Chiplet Standard Supported by Intel, AMD, and Arm:

A broad range of industry stalwarts, like Intel, AMD, Arm, TSMC, and Samsung, among others, introduced the new Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) consortium today with the goal of standardizing die-to-die interconnects between chiplets with an open-source design, thus reducing costs and fostering a broader ecosystem of validated chiplets. In the end, the UCIe standard aims to be just as ubiquitous and universal as other connectivity standards, like USB, PCIe, and NVMe, while providing exceptional power and performance metrics for chiplet connections.

The benefits of chiplets, like reduced costs and using different types of process nodes in a single package, are well known and essential as chipmakers grapple with increasingly difficult scaling issues in the waning light of Moore's Law. The long-term vision for chiplets has always been for chipmakers to be able to develop their own types of specialized chiplets and then pair them with off-the-shelf chiplet designs from other companies, thus allowing them to build their own chips in Lego-like fashion to improve time to market while reducing costs.

However, the lack of a standardized connection between chiplets has led to a wide range of customized proprietary interconnects, so modern chiplets certainly aren't plug-and-play with other designs. Additionally, the industry has long suffered from a glaring lack of standardized validation and verification for chiplet designs and interconnects, making an off-the-shelf chiplet ecosystem impossible.

upstart writes:

Detailed Supercomputer Simulation of the Universe Creates Structures Very Similar to the Milky Way:

In their pursuit of understanding cosmic evolution, scientists rely on a two-pronged approach. Using advanced instruments, astronomical surveys attempt to look farther and farther into space (and back in time) to study the earliest periods of the Universe. At the same time, scientists create simulations that attempt to model how the Universe has evolved based on our understanding of physics. When the two match, astrophysicists and cosmologists know they are on the right track!

In recent years, increasingly-detailed simulations have been made using increasingly sophisticated supercomputers, which have yielded increasingly accurate results. Recently, an international team of researchers led by the University of Helsinki conducted the most accurate simulations to date. Known as SIBELIUS-DARK, these simulations accurately predicted the evolution of our corner of the cosmos from the Big Bang to the present day.

[...] This simulation is the first study conducted as part of the "Simulations Beyond the Local Universe" (SIBELIUS) project and was performed using the DiRAC COSmology MAchine (COSMA), a distributed computer network operated by the ICC. The simulation covers a volume of space up to a distance of 600 million light-years from Earth and is represented by over 130 billion simulated 'particles', which required thousands of computers several weeks to produce.

upstart writes:

NASA finds each state has its own climatic threshold for flu outbreaks:

What triggers an outbreak of the influenza virus? A new study of the flu in the 48 contiguous U.S. states, using data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA's Aqua satellite, has found that the answer is closely tied to local weather—specifically, to low humidity—and varies from state to state.

Average humidity varies widely across the United States, but even in the most humid states, it begins to drop as winter approaches. Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the University of Southern California correlated AIRS measurements of water vapor in the lower atmosphere with flu case estimates for each week from 2003 to 2015. The researchers found that in each state, there is a specific level of low humidity that may signal a flu outbreak is imminent. When this threshold is crossed each year, a large increase in flu cases follows within two or three weeks, on average.

Journal Reference:
E. Serman, H. Th. Thrastarson, M. Franklin, J. Teixeira. Spatial Variation in Humidity and the Onset of Seasonal Influenza Across the Contiguous United States GeoHealth Volume 6, Issue 2 (DOI: 10.1029/2021GH000469)

Original Submission