SoylentNews

upstart writes:

Researchers discover new cell type in human lung with regenerative properties:

A new type of cell that resides deep within human lungs and may play a key role in human lung diseases has been discovered by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

The researchers [...] analyzed human lung tissue to identify the new cells, which they call respiratory airway secretory cells (RASCs). The cells line tiny airway branches, deep in the lungs, near the alveoli structures where oxygen is exchanged for carbon dioxide. The scientists showed that RASCs have stem-cell-like properties enabling them to regenerate other cells that are essential for the normal functioning of alveoli. They also found evidence that cigarette smoking and the common smoking-related ailment called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can disrupt the regenerative functions of RASCs—hinting that correcting this disruption could be a good way to treat COPD.

"COPD is a devastating and common disease, yet we really don't understand the cellular biology of why or how some patients develop it. Identifying new cell types, in particular new progenitor cells, that are injured in COPD could really accelerate the development of new treatments," said study first author Maria Basil, MD, Ph.D., an instructor of Pulmonary Medicine.

COPD typically features progressive damage to and loss of alveoli, exacerbated by chronic inflammation. It is estimated to affect approximately 10 percent of people in some parts of the United States and causes about 3 million deaths every year around the world. Patients often are prescribed steroid anti-inflammatory drugs and/or oxygen therapy, but these treatments can only slow the disease process rather than stop or reverse it. Progress in understanding COPD has been gradual in part because mice—the standard lab animal—have lungs that lack key features of human lungs.

In the new study, Morrisey and his team uncovered evidence of RASCs while examining gene-activity signatures of lung cells sampled from healthy human donors. They soon recognized that RASCs, which don't exist in mouse lungs, are "secretory" cells that reside near alveoli and produce proteins needed for the fluid lining of the airway.

Journal Reference:
Basil, Maria C., Cardenas-Diaz, Fabian L., Kathiriya, Jaymin J., et al. Human distal airways contain a multipotent secretory cell that can regenerate alveoli, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04552-0)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Missing Charles Darwin notebooks returned after two decades:

A pair of Charles Darwin's notebooks that have been missing from the Cambridge University Library for more than two decades have been returned, the library announced Tuesday. The notebooks, which include Darwin's 1837 Tree of Life sketch, were dropped off in a bright pink gift bag and stacked in plastic wrap by an anonymous person on March 9 [...] along with a note that read:

"Librarian

Happy Easter

X"

The bag of notebooks was placed in a public area outside of the librarian's office on the fourth floor and did not show "obvious signs of significant handling or damage" since they disappeared in January 2001. The notebooks were believed to have been misplaced for many years until librarian Jessica Gardner made a public appeal for their return in November 2020.

[...] Cambridge University Libraries will put the notebooks on display as part of a free exhibition called Darwin in Conversation beginning July 9.

Perhaps somebody was finally feeling a little bit guilty after 20 years of having them for him/herself.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

'Internet Age' has increased accessibility but also accelerated life's pace, researcher says:

The myriad ways in which technology has fueled the ever-accelerating pace of life in the 21st century was the topic of a virtual presentation by The Ohio State University Center for Historical Research.

In the presentation, "Pace in the Internet Age," Stephen Kern, Humanities Distinguished Professor in the Department of History, outlined the pros and cons of having 24-hour access to a seemingly limitless supply of information at one's fingertips.

One upside is that technological advancements enable people of all socioeconomic backgrounds to prepare for life-altering circumstances such as weather emergencies, Kern said.

"The ability to predict the future increases by one day in terms of predicting a hurricane every decade using computer models," Kern said. "In 1920, they looked at almanacks, which was just superstition. You knew when it was raining when your head was wet. They didn't have this knowledge. We have this knowledge (now), and anyone has this knowledge. You know what's going to happen – a hurricane's coming in three days."

upstart writes:

Epic Games releases Unreal Engine 5 to the public:

After nearly a year in early access and around a month in preview, Unreal Engine 5 has reached full release. All developers can now start downloading and using Epic's next-gen game engine. It comes with two free sample projects showcasing its abilities. Alongside the announcement, multiple prominent developers discussed their plans for working on the platform.

Since Epic unveiled Unreal Engine 5 in 2020, it's chiefly been noted for features like the Lumen real-time global illumination system and Nanite micro-polygons. This week, the company announced these features and others are now ready. However, they are still insufficient for non-gaming applications like film and TV productions.

One sample project Epic released alongside UE5 is City Sample, which lets users examine and explore an environment Epic built for The Matrix Awakens — the free UE5 demo released for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles last year. It's the first time this project has been made available to the public on PC. The other sample is Lyra Starter Game — a starting point and educational resource for building shooters, which Epic intends to upgrade over time.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Amazon, Google Busted Faking Small Business Opposition To Antitrust Reform:

For decades now, a favorite DC lobbying tactic has been to create bogus groups pretending to support something unpopular your company is doing. Like "environmentalists for big oil" or "Americans who really love telecom monopolies." These groups then help big companies create a sound-wall of illusory support for policies that generally aren't popular, or great for innovation or markets.

Case in point: this week both Politico and CNBC released stories showcasing how Amazon and Google had been funding a "small business alliance" that appears to be partially or entirely contrived. The group, the Connected Commerce Council, professes to represent small U.S. businesses, yet has been busy recently lobbying government to avoid antitrust reform (which would, generally, aid small businesses).

When Politico reached out to companies listed as members of the organization, most of them had mysteriously never heard of it, and were greatly annoyed their company names were being used for such a purpose:

The four-year-old group listed about 5,000 small businesses in its membership directory before it removed that document from its website late last month. When POLITICO contacted 70 of those businesses, 61 said they were not members of the group and many added that they were not familiar with the organization.

Google is not your friend!

Original Submission

upstart writes:

No air currents required: Ballooning spiders rely on electric fields to generate lift:

In 1832, Charles Darwin witnessed hundreds of ballooning spiders landing on the HMS Beagle while some 60 miles offshore. Ballooning is a phenomenon that's been known since at least the days of Aristotle—and immortalized in E.B. White's children's classic Charlotte's Web—but scientists have only recently made progress in gaining a better understanding of its underlying physics.

Now, physicists have developed a new mathematical model incorporating all the various forces at play as well as the effects of multiple threads, according to a recent paper published in the journal Physical Review E. Authors M. Khalid Jawed (UCLA) and Charbel Habchi (Notre Dame University-Louaize) based their new model on a computer graphics algorithm used to model fur and hair in such blockbuster films as The Hobbit and Planet of the Apes. The work could one day contribute to the design of new types of ballooning sensors for explorations of the atmosphere.

Journal Reference:
Charbel Habchi, Mohammad K. Jawed. Ballooning in spiders using multiple silk threads, Physical Review E (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.105.034401)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

GitHub now scans for secret leaks in developer workflows:

GitHub has introduced a new scanning feature for protecting developers from accidental secret leaks.

On April 4, the Microsoft-owned code repository said the GitHub Advanced Security suite has now been upgraded with a new push protection feature to prevent the leak of secrets that could compromise organization-owned projects.

GitHub Advanced Security is a licensed business product including code scanning, supply chain attack protection, and Dependabot alerts.

The new feature is an optional check for developers to use during their workflows before a git push is accepted. As of now, the scan will only check for "highly identifiable patterns" of potential leaks based on the collaborative efforts of GitHub and partner organizations, including token issuers.

There are 69 patterns in total that the tool will check for as potential indicators of secret leaks. In addition, over 100 different token types are checked.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Viruses that could save millions of lives:

[...] Long overlooked in the West, bacteriophages or bacteria-eating viruses are now being used on some of the most difficult medical cases, including a Belgian woman who developed a life-threatening infection after being injured in the 2016 Brussels airport bombing.

[...] Phages have been known about for a century, but were largely forgotten and dismissed after antibiotics revolutionized medicine in the 1930s.

[...] While phages-based medicines cannot completely replace antibiotics, researchers say they have major pluses in being cheap, not having side-effects nor damaging organs or gut flora.

"We produce six standard phages that are of wide spectrum and can heal multiple infectious diseases," said Eliava Institute physician Lia Nadareishvili.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.livescience.com/64778-vikings-reindeer-cyclone.html

Vikings hunting reindeer in Norway were once confounded by "reindeer cyclones"; a threatened herd would literally run circles around the fierce hunters, making it nearly impossible to target a single animal.

Filmmakers recently captured incredible aerial footage of one of these reindeer cyclones, which aired Feb. 13 on PBS in the documentary "Wild Way of the Vikings," a program about Vikings and the wilderness they inhabited around A.D. 1000. [Photos: Ancient Arrows from Reindeer Hunters Found in Norway]

One of the documentary's most striking scenes shows a re-enactment of a Viking hunt interspersed with real footage of reindeer herds. Reindeer were important to the Vikings for their meat, hides, antlers and bones, according to the film.

In the cyclone scene, a lone hunter (an actor playing a Viking) approaches the herd; he notches and releases an arrow. The footage that follows shows an actual herd of reindeer running in circles. As the swirling mass of bodies thunders along a circular path, an overhead camera reveals that the herd's momentum follows a spiral shape, drawing tightly toward the cyclone's "eye" at the center.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Spotted hyenas adjust their foraging behavior in response to climate change:

It is crucial to understand the mechanisms and extent to which animals in diverse ecosystems are resilient to climate change. Changes in the timing or amount of precipitation can alter vegetation growth and hence the distribution of migratory herbivores, such as the blue wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) and plains zebras (Equus quagga) in the Serengeti ecosystem in Tanzania, East Africa. Climate change may thus ultimately influence the location of profitable feeding areas for predators, such as spotted hyenas, who feed on these herbivores. A recent paper reveals that spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) can adjust their foraging behaviour to shifts in migratory prey presence in their territories that are linked to recent changes in pattern and amount of rainfall.

Scientists from the Leibniz-IZW and CEFE analysed data from a long-term project on three clans of spotted hyenas in the centre of the Serengeti National Park. The three clans have been monitored continuously from 1990 to 2019, on a near-daily basis. Weather data show that total annual rainfall substantially increased in the Serengeti over these three decades. Simultaneously, the presence of migratory herds in hyena clan territories essentially halved. "To assess how the hyenas responded to these changes in rainfall patterns and prey abundance in their territories, we focused on maternal den attendance -- the presence of lactating hyenas with entirely milk-dependent offspring at communal dens," says Morgane Gicquel, first author of the paper and doctoral student at the Leibniz-IZW.

The research team found that, over the course of a year, the probability of migratory herd presence in hyena clan territories increased with the amount of rainfall two months earlier, and that the probability of maternal den presence in clan territories also increased with that of migratory herd presence. As rainfall volume increased over the years, the presence of migratory herds in hyena clans decreased because the association between rainfall and herd presence became weaker. Surprisingly, maternal den attendance did not decrease throughout the entire study period and still matched periods of high prey abundance.

Journal Reference:Morgane Gicquel, Marion L. East, Heribert Hofer, Sarah Cubaynes, Sarah Benhaiem. Climate change does not decouple interactions between a central‐place‐foraging predator and its migratory prey. Ecosphere, 2022; 13 (4)(DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.4012)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

NASA Uses Moonlight to Improve Satellite Accuracy - Technology Org:

NASA's airborne Lunar Spectral Irradiance, or air-LUSI, flew aboard NASA's ER-2 aircraft from March 12 to 16 to accurately measure the amount of light reflected off the Moon. Reflected moonlight is a steady source of light that researchers are taking advantage of to improve the accuracy and consistency of measurements among Earth-observing satellites.

"The Moon is extremely stable and not influenced by factors on Earth like climate to any large degree. It becomes a very good calibration reference, an independent benchmark, by which we can set our instruments and see what's happening with our planet," said air-LUSI's principal investigator, Kevin Turpie, a research professor at the University of Maryland, College Park.

The air-LUSI flights are part of NASA's comprehensive satellite calibration and validation efforts. The results will compliment ground-based sites such as Railroad Valley Playa in Nevada, and together will provide orbiting satellites with a robust calibration dataset.

upstart writes:

House Committee Investigating Amazon's Labor Practices:

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform has opened an investigation into Amazon's labor practices during severe weather, according to a letter the members sent to Andy Jassy, ​​Amazon's chief executive.

"We are concerned about recent reports that Amazon may be endangering the health and safety of its workers, including requiring them to work in hazardous conditions during tornadoes, hurricanes, and other extreme weather conditions," indicates the letter, signed by the chair of the committee. [...]

The investigation will focus on the December tornado who hit amazon's delivery station in Edwardsville, Illinois, killing six people. Most employees at the facility were not direct Amazon employees. They were contracted delivery drivers, a complication that hampered the response when authorities could not easily determine how many people were at the scene.

[...] "Our goal remains to support our employees and partners, the families who have lost loved ones, the surrounding community, and everyone affected by the tornadoes," Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said Friday. "We will respond to this letter in due course."

What does YOUR workplace do in severe weather?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

US tested hypersonic missile in mid-March but kept it quiet to avoid escalating tensions with Russia:

US tested hypersonic missile in mid-March but kept it quiet to avoid escalating tensions with Russia

The Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) was launched from a B-52 bomber off the west coast, the official said, in the first successful test of the Lockheed Martin version of the system. A booster engine accelerated the missile to high speed, at which point the air-breathing scramjet engine ignited and propelled the missile at hypersonic speeds of Mach 5 and above.

The official offered scant details of the missile test, only noting the missile flew above 65,000 feet and for more than 300 miles. But even at the lower end of hypersonic range -- about 3,800 miles per hour -- a flight of 300 miles is less than 5 minutes.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The world's oldest pants are a 3,000-year-old engineering marvel:

With the help of an expert weaver, archaeologists have unraveled the design secrets behind the world's oldest pants. The 3,000-year-old wool trousers belonged to a man buried between 1000 and 1200 BCE in Western China. To make them, ancient weavers combined four different techniques to create a garment specially engineered for fighting on horseback, with flexibility in some places and sturdiness in others.

[...] Mounted herders and warriors needed their leg coverings to be flexible enough to let the wearer swing a leg across a horse without ripping the fabric or feeling constricted. At the same time, they needed some added reinforcement at crucial areas like the knees. It became, to some extent, a materials-science problem. Where do you want something elastic, and where do you want something strong? And how do you make fabric that will accomplish both?

For the makers of the world's oldest pants, produced in China around 3,000 years ago, the answer was apparently to use different weaving techniques to produce fabric with specific properties in certain areas, despite weaving the whole garment out of the same spun wool fiber.

The world's oldest-known pants were part of the burial outfit of a warrior now called Turfan Man. He wore the woven wool pants with a poncho that belted around the waist, ankle-high boots, and a wool headband adorned with seashells and bronze discs. The pants' basic design is strikingly similar to the pants most of us wear today, but closer inspection reveals the level of engineering that went into designing them.

Journal Reference:
Mayke Wagner, et. al., The invention of twill tapestry points to Central Asia: Archaeological record of multiple textile techniques used to make the woollen outfit of a ca. 3000-year-old horse rider from Turfan, China, Archaeological Research in Asia (DOI: 10.1016/j.ara.2021.100344)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Elon Musk will join Twitter's board of directors:

Elon Musk isn't just stopping at buying a stake in Twitter — he'll also have a seat at the table. As CNBCreports, Twitter is appointing Musk to the company's board of directors. He'll be of value as both a "passionate believer and intense critic" of the social network, according to chief executive Parag Agrawal.

An SEC filing shows that Musk will serve as a Class II director (that is, not top-tier) with a term that expires at the company's 2024 annual shareholder meeting. The appointment limits the stake Musk can hold. He can't own more than 14.9 percent of common stock during his tenure, and for 90 days afterward.

[...] It's too soon to say how much influence Musk will have as a director. However, he recently blasted Twitter for allegedly falling short of "free speech principles" and asked the social site's users if they want an edit button. He clearly intends to make his presence felt, not to mention thumb his nose at the SEC for its crackdown against his finance-related tweets.

Original Submission