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upstart writes:

Extending the battery life of small drones to strengthen security on U.S. Border:

To address the problem of low-capacity batteries on border drones, Gino Lim, R. Larry and Gerlene (Gerri) R. Snider Endowed Chair of Industrial Engineering, proposes the use of drones with a built-in wireless electrification line (E-line) battery charging system. Lim pioneered that technology in 2017.

"Smart border patrol using small-size drones may provide significant help in patrolling areas inaccessible to patrol agents, reduce agent response time, and increase the safety of patrol agents working in dangerous regions. To strengthen border security and reduce the need for patrolling via human agents, we propose the use of drones coupled with the use of E-lines for continuous border surveillance," Lim reports in the journal Computers & Industrial Engineering. The paper's first author is Navid Ahmadian, a former doctoral student in Lim's lab.

The E-line system charges the drones during their surveillance, enables a continuous and seamless flight over the border and eliminates the need for battery charging stations. Continuous monitoring sends live information about different locations of the borderline to the designated control centers, helping enhance border security and reducing the necessity of systems operated by people.

"This work provides an optimization model to determine the optimal number of drones, the optimal length of the E-line, and the optimal location of the E-line system required for border surveillance," said Lim.

Journal Reference:
Navid Ahmadiana, Gino J. Lim, Maryam Torabbeigi, et al. Smart border patrol using drones and wireless charging system under budget limitation, Computers & Industrial Engineering (2021) (DOI: 10.1016/j.cie.2021.107891)

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upstart writes:

Russia mulls legalizing software piracy as it's cut off from Western tech:

With sanctions against Russia starting to bite, the Kremlin is mulling ways to keep businesses and the government running. The latest is a creative twist on state asset seizures, only instead of the government taking over an oil refinery, for example, Russia is considering legalizing software piracy.

Russian law already allows for the government to authorize—"without consent of the patent holder"—the use of any intellectual property "in case of emergency related to ensuring the defense and security of the state." The government hasn't taken that step yet, but it may soon, according to a report from Russian business newspaper Kommersant, spotted and translated by Kyle Mitchell, an attorney who specializes in technology law. It's yet another sign of a Cyber Curtain that's increasingly separating Russia from the West.

The plan would create "a compulsory licensing mechanism for software, databases, and technology for integrated microcircuits," the Kommersant said. It would only apply to companies from countries that have imposed sanctions. While the article doesn't name names, many large Western firms—some of which would be likely targets—have drastically scaled back business in Russia. So far, Microsoft has suspended sales of new products and services in Russia, Apple has stopped selling devices, and Samsung has stopped selling both devices and chips.

Presumably, any move by the Kremlin to "seize" IP would exempt Chinese companies, which are reportedly considering how to press their advantage. Smartphone-makers Xiaomi and Honor stand to gain, as do Chinese automakers. Still, any gains aren't guaranteed since doing business in Russia has become riddled with problems, spanning everything from logistics to finance.

Also at TorrentFreak.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Gene-edited beef cattle get regulatory clearance in US:

U.S. regulators on Monday cleared the way for the sale of beef from gene-edited cattle in coming years after the Food and Drug Administration concluded the animals do not raise any safety concerns.

The cattle by Recombinetics are the third genetically altered animals given the green light for human consumption in the U.S. after salmon and pigs. Many other foods already are made with genetically modified ingredients from crops like soybeans and corn.

The cattle reviewed by the FDA had genes altered with a technology called CRISPR to have short, slick coats that let them more easily withstand hot weather. Cattle that aren't stressed by heat might pack on weight more easily, making for more efficient meat production.

The company did not say when home cooks or restaurants might be able to buy the beef, but the FDA said it could reach the market in as early as two years.

Unlike the salmon and pigs, the cattle did not have to go through a years long approval process. The FDA said the cattle were exempt from that because their genetic makeup is similar to other existing cattle and the trait can be found naturally in some breeds.

Dr. Steven Solomon, director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, said the agency's review of Recombinetics' cattle took several months. He said there's no reason meat from the animals or their offspring would need to be labeled differently.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/08/in_brief_security/ [theregister.com]

"A Linux local privilege escalation flaw dubbed Dirty Pipe has been discovered and disclosed along with proof-of-concept exploit code.

The flaw, CVE-2022-0847, was introduced in kernel version 5.8 and fixed in versions 5.16.11, 5.15.25, and 5.10.102.

It can be exploited by a normal logged-in user or a rogue running program to gain root-level privileges; it can also be used by malicious apps to take over vulnerable Android devices. If your phone is running an affected Linux kernel version – which you can find under About Phone and software information in the Settings app, typically – be aware that a rogue application could exploit Dirty Pipe to hijack your handset, tablet, or gadget.

[...] Max Kellermann said he found the programming blunder and reported it to the kernel security team in February, which issued patches within a few days. By now these should be filtering through to affected Linux distributions. Android will take longer: we're not aware of any official updates yet."

[...] If you're running Linux, check for security updates from your distro and install.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Optimism may promote emotional well-being by limiting how often one experiences stressful situations: Identifying psychosocial factors that could serve as treatment targets to promote living longer and in good health:

When it comes to dealing with day-to-day stressors, such as household chores or arguments with others, a new study has found that being more or less optimistic did not make a difference in how older men emotionally reacted to or recovered from these stressors. However, optimism appeared to promote emotional well-being by limiting how often older men experience stressful situations or changing the way they interpret situations as stressful.

[...] The researchers found more optimistic men reported not only lower negative mood but also more positive mood (beyond simply not feeling negative). They also reported having fewer stressors which was unrelated to their higher positive mood but explained their lower levels of negative mood.

[...] "Stress, on the other hand, is known to have a negative impact on our health. By looking at whether optimistic people handle day-to-day stressors differently, our findings add to knowledge about how optimism may promote good health as people age," says Lee.

Journal Reference:
Lewina O Lee, PhD; Francine Grodstein, ScD; Claudia Trudel-Fitzgerald, PhD; et al. Optimism, Daily Stressors, and Emotional Well-Being Over Two Decades in a Cohort of Aging Men [open], The Journals of Gerontology: Series B (DOI: 10.1093/geronb/gbac025)

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upstart writes:

Common houseplants can improve air quality indoors:

Ordinary potted house plants can potentially make a significant contribution to reducing air pollution in homes and offices, according to new research led by the University of Birmingham and in partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS).

During a series of experiments monitoring common houseplants exposed to nitrogen dioxide (NO2)—a common pollutant—researchers calculated that in some conditions, the plants could be able to reduce NO2 by as much as 20 percent. The results are published in Air Quality Atmosphere and Health.

The researchers tested three houseplants commonly found in UK homes, easy to maintain and not overly expensive to buy. They included Peace lily (Spathiphyllum wallisii), Corn plant (Dracaena fragrans) and fern arum (Zamioculcas zamiifolia).

Each plant was put, by itself, into a test chamber containing levels of NO2 comparable to an office situated next to a busy road.

Over a period of one hour, the team calculated that all the plants, regardless of species, were able to remove around half the NO2 in the chamber. The performance of the plants was not dependent on the plants' environment, for example whether it was in light or dark conditions, and whether the soil was wet or dry.

Lead researcher Dr. Christian Pfrang said: "The plants we chose were all very different from each other, yet they all showed strikingly similar abilities to remove NO2 from the atmosphere. This is very different from the way indoor plants take up CO2 in our earlier work, which is strongly dependent on environmental factors such as night time or daytime, or soil water content."

Journal Reference:
Curtis Gubb, Tijana Blanusa, Alistair Griffiths, et al. Potted plants can remove the pollutant nitrogen dioxide indoors [open], Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health (DOI: 10.1007/s11869-022-01171-6)

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upstart writes:

Even mild Covid is linked to brain damage months after illness, scans show:

During at least the first few months following a coronavirus infection, even mild cases of Covid-19 are associated with subtle tissue damage and accelerated losses in brain regions tied to the sense of smell, as well as a small loss in the brain's overall volume, a new British study finds. Having mild Covid is also associated with a cognitive function deficit.

These are the striking findings of the new study led by University of Oxford investigators, one that leading Covid researchers consider particularly important because it is the first study of the disease's potential impact on the brain that is based on brain scans taken both before and after participants contracted the coronavirus.

"This study design overcomes some of the major limitations of most brain-related studies of Covid-19 to date, which rely on analysis and interpretation at a single time point in people who had Covid-19," said Dr. Serena S. Spudich, a neurologist at the Yale University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research.

[...] The research, which was published Monday in Nature, also stands out because the lion's share of its participants apparently had mild Covid — by far, the most common outcome of coronavirus infections. Most of the brain-related studies in this field have focused on those with moderate to severe Covid.

upstart writes:

Some New Hard Drives Have Less Endurance Than SSDs:

Modern magnetic recording media, the building block of HDDs, has higher durability than most modern NAND flash memory used in SSDs. However, controversial workload ratings imposed by HDD makers to diversify their product portfolio make the latest NAS-bound hard drives less reliable than even cheap SSDs, much less the best SSDs on the market.

There are several breeds of HDDs available today: enterprise-grade drives rated for a 550TB workload per year, enterprise NAS-grade drives rated for a 300TB workload per year, and desktop PC drives rated for 180TB per year or so. Solid-state drives do not have per-year workload ratings but feature terabytes to be written (TBW) and drive writes per day (DWPD) endurance ratings that you can use to calculate the total endurance.

Drive	Annual Workload Rating	Terabytes Written
WD Gold 20TB HDD	550 TB	2,750 TB
WD Red Pro 20TB HDD	300 TB	1,500 TB
WD_Black SN850 2TB SSD	240 TB	1,200 TB
WD Red SA500 4TB SSD	500 TB	2,500TB
Ultrastar DC SN840 6.4TB	7,000 TB	35,000 TB

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