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upstart found an interesting article written by former Commodore engineer Bil Herd over at Hackaday:

Commodore C64: The Most Popular Home Computer Ever Turns 40:

This year marks the anniversary of the most popular selling home computer ever, the Commodore 64, which made its debut in 1982. Note that I am saying "home computer" and not personal computer (PC) because back then the term PC was not yet in use for home computer users.

Some of you have probably not heard of Commodore, which is kind of sad, though there is a simple reason why — Commodore is no longer around to maintain its legacy. If one were to watch a documentary about the 1980s they may see a picture of an Apple computer or its founders but most likely would not see a picture of a Commodore computer in spite of selling tens of millions of units.

It is a nice history lesson on the most popular home computer ever sold. For those less inclined to reading and scrolling, his presentation is also a YouTube video.

How many of you started with the 6502 CPU or even the Commodore 64 itself?

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/04/cdc-warns-of-puzzling-hepatitis-cases-in-kids-cases-in-2-states-10-countries/

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a health alert Thursday notifying clinicians of a US-based cluster of unexplained cases of liver inflammation in young children, which appear to be part of a puzzling international outbreak that now spans at least 10 countries and two US states.

According to the CDC, Alabama has seen nine cases of unexplained liver inflammation—aka hepatitis—in children between the ages of one and six since October of last year.
[...]
North Carolina is also investigating two cases in school-aged children, neither of which required transplants.

The unexplained cases join dozens of others from around the world, mostly in children younger than 10 and many less than five. The United Kingdom has tallied 108 cases this year

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owl writes:

https://crystalverse.com/copper-acetate-crystals/

When you wash copper pennies with vinegar, the pennies react with the vinegar to form a blue compound called copper (II) acetate. Now, if you let that vinegar dry, small, black crystals will be left behind in the dish. Those are copper acetate crystals.

It turns out you can grow much bigger copper acetate crystals. They are sleek, shiny, and look like pieces of polished obsidian.

[...] . In this guide, I'll share what I've learnt, and show you how you can grow your own perfect, black copper acetate crystal at home with scrap copper and vinegar.

upstart writes:

New data prompts reconsideration of decades-old theory about brain injury due to stroke:

Neuroscientists believed that, in the aftermath of a stroke, calming overexcited neurons might prevent them from releasing a toxic molecule that can kill neurons already damaged by lack of oxygen. This idea was supported by studies in cells and animals, but it lost favor in the early 2000s after numerous clinical trials failed to improve outcomes for stroke patients.

But a fresh approach has yielded evidence that the idea may have been discarded too hastily. The new findings are available online in the journal Brain.

By scanning the whole genomes of nearly 6,000 people who had experienced strokes, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis identified two genes associated with recovery within the pivotal first 24 hours after stroke. Events -- good or bad -- that occur in the first day set stroke patients on their courses toward long-term recovery. Both genes turned out to be involved in regulating neuronal excitability, providing evidence that overstimulated neurons influence stroke outcomes.

[...] "We started with no hypotheses about the mechanism of neuronal injury," Cruchaga said. "We started with the assumption that some genetic variants are associated with stroke recovery, but which ones they are, we did not guess. We tested every single gene and genetic region. So the fact that an unbiased analysis yielded two genes involved in excitotoxicity tells us that it must be important."

[...] "We know that that first 24-hour period has the greatest impact on outcomes," Lee said. "Beyond 24 hours, there's diminishing returns in terms of influence on long-term recovery. Right now, we don't have any neuroprotective agents for that first 24 hours. Many of the original studies with anti-excitotoxic agents were performed at a time when we weren't sure about the best trial design. We've learned a lot about stroke in the last few decades. I think it's time for a re-examination."

Journal Reference:
Ibanez, Laura, Heitsch, Laura, Carrera, Caty, et al. Multi-ancestry GWAS reveals excitotoxicity associated with outcome after ischaemic stroke, Brain (accepted manuscript)
DOI: 10.1093/brain/awac080

Original Submission

hubie writes:

As described over at ScienceDaily, a paper in Science out of the University of Minnesota found that those signs put up by various highway departments informing the drivers of how many people have died on that section of the road apparently are distracting enough to cause more accidents than if they weren't put up in the first place.

Displaying the highway death toll on message boards is a common awareness campaign, but new research shows this tactic actually leads to more crashes. This new study evaluated the effect of displaying crash death totals on highway message boards (e.g., '1669 deaths this year on Texas roads'). Versions of highway fatality messages have been displayed in at least 27 US states.

The study looked at highway statistics in Texas, where these kind of signs are put out one week each month. They found there were more crashes during the week when the signs were out, estimated to add 2600 crashes and 16 deaths per year. They suggest that this "in-your-face" messaging adds to the driver "cognitive loading." There was also a correlation between the number of deaths posted on the sign and the number of accidents.

"Distracted driving is dangerous driving," said Madsen. "Perhaps these campaigns can be reimagined to reach drivers in a safer way, such as when they are stopped at an intersection, so that their attention while driving remains focused on the roads."

Source Article:
Highway death toll messages cause more crashes

Journal Reference:
Jonathan D. Hall, Joshua M. Madsen. Can behavioral interventions be too salient? Evidence from traffic safety messages. Science, 2022; 376 (6591)
DOI: 10.1126/science.abm3427

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Build your own quantum computer with Google's latest 'simulator':

World Quantum Day was apparently yesterday [Ed: 14 April], and Google feted the occasion with the launch of The Qubit Game, as spotted by 9to5Google. Created in partnership with Doublespeak games, it's a "playful journey to building a quantum computer, one qubit at a time," Google said. It also hopes the game, and World Quantum Day, will help generate some interest in the field.

"We need more students pursuing careers building or using quantum computers, and understanding what it would be like to be a quantum scientist or engineer," wrote Asfaw. "For me, that's what World Quantum Day is all about: showing everyone what quantum computing really is and how they can get involved."

The game is somewhat addicting, but you need to play it on a larger screen because the further you advance, the more desktop screen space it takes up, as you can see near the end of their promo video on YouTube.

hubie writes:

Researchers used radiative cooling to generate enough to power LEDs or charge a cellphone

By taking advantage of the temperature difference between a solar panel and ambient air, engineers have made solar cells that can produce electricity at night.

Compared to the 100 to 200 watts per square meter that solar cells produce when the sun is shining, the nighttime production is a trickle at 50 mW/m². "But it is already financially interesting for low-power-density applications like LED lights, charging a cellphone, or trying to power small sensors," says Shanhui Fan, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University who published the work along with coauthors in Applied Physics Letters.

Fan and his colleagues harnessed the concept of radiative cooling, the phenomenon by which materials radiate heat into the sky at night after absorbing solar energy all day and that others have tapped before to make cooling paint and energy-efficient air-conditioning. Because of this effect, the temperature of a standard solar cell pointing at the sky at night falls below ambient air temperature. This generates a heat flow from the ambient air to the solar cell. "That heat flow can be harvested to generate power," Fan says.

[...] The team tested their prototype TEG-integrated solar cell for three days in October 2021 on a rooftop in Stanford, Calif. The demonstration showed a nighttime power production of 50 mW/m2. The team estimates that in a hotter, drier climate, the same setup could generate up to 100 mW/m2.

[...] "In principle, it could be possible to engineer the thermal-emission property of the solar cell to optimize its radiative cooling performance without affecting solar performance," Fan says. "Our theoretical calculations point to the possibility of a few hundred milliwatts or maybe even 1 watt."

Journal Reference:
Sid Assawaworrarit, Zunaid Omair, and Shanhui Fan, Nighttime electric power generation at a density of 50 mW/m2 via radiative cooling of a photovoltaic cell [open], Appl. Phys. Lett. 120, 143901 (2022)
DOI: 10.1063/5.0085205

Original Submission

upstart writes:

New Atomically Thin Material That Improves the Efficiency of Light-Based Tech: Solar Panels, Cameras, Biosensors:

Cameras, solar panels, biosensors, and fiber optics are technologies that rely on photodetectors, or sensors that convert light into electricity. With the shrinking size of their component semiconductor chips, photodetectors are becoming more efficient and affordable. However, current materials and manufacturing methods are constraining miniaturization, forcing trade-offs between size and performance.

[...] Manufacturing uniform, extremely thin, high quality photonic semiconductor films of material other than silicon would make semiconductor chips more efficient, applicable, and scalable.

One-atom-thick materials generally take the form of a lattice, or a layer of geometrically aligned atoms that form a pattern specific to each material. A superlattice is made up of lattices of different materials stacked upon one another. Superlattices have completely new optical, chemical and physical properties which make them adaptable for specific applications such as photo optics and other sensors.

The team at Penn Engineering made a superlattice, five atoms thick, of tungsten and sulfur (WS2).

[...] Their superlattice design is not only extremely thin, making it lightweight and cost effective, it can also emit light, not just detect it.

owl writes:

From the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/business/media/netflix-amazon-disney-ads.html

The two titans of the video streaming wars — Netflix and Disney+ — have long resisted commercials, showing a reluctance to have premium series like "Stranger Things" or "The Mandalorian" run alongside commercials hawking dish soap, soda and medications.

"No advertising coming onto Netflix — period," Reed Hastings, one of Netflix's co-chief executives, said several years ago, a point of view he repeated for some time. "We don't believe that the consumer experience would be a particularly good one if we had advertising on Disney+," Christine McCarthy, Disney's chief financial officer, said in late 2020.

But now, the streamers are starting to come around on Madison Avenue.

After announcing financial results for a difficult quarter, in which Netflix lost subscribers for the first time in a decade, Mr. Hastings told investors on Tuesday that the company planned to look into a lower-priced tier supported by ads "over the next year or two."

[Ed: If you have problems loading the page, you can try this link]

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Everyday plastic products release trillions of microscopic particles into water:

Plastics surround us, whether it's the grocery bags we use at the supermarket or household items such as shampoo and detergent bottles. Plastics don't exist only as large objects, but also as microscopic particles that are released from these larger products. These microscopic plastics can end up in the environment, and they can be ingested into our bodies.

Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have analyzed a couple of widely used consumer products to better understand these microscopic plastics. They found that when the plastic products are exposed to hot water, they release trillions of nanoparticles per liter into the water.

The NIST researchers published their findings in the scientific journal Environmental Science and Technology.

"The main takeaway here is that there are plastic particles wherever we look. There are a lot of them. Trillions per liter. We don't know if those have bad health effects on people or animals. We just have a high confidence that they're there," said NIST chemist Christopher Zangmeister.

upstart writes:

Thunderstorms, not a cyclone, were the source of Kaua'i's 2018 record-setting rain:

A record-setting rainstorm over Kaua'i, Hawai'i in April 2018 resulted in severe flash flooding and estimated damage of nearly $180 million. The deluge damaged or destroyed 532 homes, and landslides left people along Kaua'i's north coast without access to their homes. Atmospheric scientists have now revealed that severe supercell thunderstorms were to blame.

The rainstorm inundated some areas with nearly 50 inches of rainfall in a 24-hour period, smashing the previous 24-hour U.S. rainfall record of 42 inches set in Texas in 1979. An interesting finding is that the rainstorm described in this paper was associated with a kona low and not a tropical cyclone as featured in previous U.S. rainfall records.

[...] "Updrafts with rotation are more intense and longer lived, and have been observed to produce large hail and tornados in Hawai'i," said Businger. "In this case, the updrafts were forced by Kaua'i's steep mountain cliffs, with the result that the thunderstorms were more vigorous and anchored to the terrain, thus setting a new US 24-hour rainfall record!"

[...] Although supercells thunderstorms are the least common type of thunderstorm in Hawaii, they have the greatest likelihood of producing severe weather, including large hail, tornados, and strong straight-line winds.

Journal Reference:
Terrence J. Corrigan, Steven Businger. The Anatomy of a Series of Cloud Bursts that Eclipsed the U.S. Rainfall Record, Monthly Weather Review, 2022,
DOI: 10.1175/MWR-D-21-0028.1

Original Submission

Taking a page from Elon Musk's SpaceX construction project in Boca Chica (Texas), the state of Maine's largest city (Portland) will be using SPMTs (Self-Propelled Mobile Transports) this coming weekend.

It all starts at 7 PM (EDT) on Friday April 22 and continuing through 11 AM on Monday April 25, 2022. "It" is the replacement of a bridge on one of the busiest roads in the state: I-295. The whole highway will be closed, the existing overpass will be demolished, the rubble will be removed, and the previously-constructed replacement overpass will take a ride on the SPMTs to its new home... and you can watch it all happen on-line!

The $20.8 million project has a web site: https://verandaplan.org/ Linking to active content on their site is non-trivial, but try: https://verandaplan.org/livestream. Here's a short YouTube video of the bridge being moved in preparation for the actual "moving day".

The time has come: Veranda Street bridge project starts this week:

upstart found a story that led to this one:

The Mastcam-Z camera recorded video of Phobos, one of the Red Planet’s two moons:

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has captured dramatic footage of Phobos, Mars’ potato-shaped moon, crossing the face of the Sun. These observations can help scientists better understand the moon’s orbit and how its gravity pulls on the Martian surface, ultimately shaping the Red Planet’s crust and mantle.

Captured with Perseverance’s next-generation Mastcam-Z camera on April 2, the 397th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, the eclipse lasted a little over 40 seconds – much shorter than a typical solar eclipse involving Earth’s Moon. (Phobos is about 157 times smaller than Earth’s Moon. Mars’ other moon, Deimos, is even smaller.)

[...]. “I knew it was going to be good, but I didn’t expect it to be this amazing,” said Rachel Howson of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, one of the Mastcam-Z team members who operates the camera.

[...] Color also sets this version of a Phobos solar eclipse apart. Mastcam-Z has a solar filter that acts like sunglasses to reduce light intensity. “You can see details in the shape of Phobos’ shadow, like ridges and bumps on the moon’s landscape,” said Mark Lemmon, a planetary astronomer with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who has orchestrated most of the Phobos observations by Mars rovers. “You can also see sunspots. And it’s cool that you can see this eclipse exactly as the rover saw it from Mars.

Kudos to the orbitologists who knew the positions of all the appropriate bodies and got the timing right. The really cool video is also up on YouTube (but I don't think you would call this an annular eclipse since nothing looks like an annulus!)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

mRNA quality control identified as novel drug target for Alzheimer's and related dementias:

Alzheimer's disease and similar disorders are often marked by the presence of pathological forms of proteins that cause neurons to die. Besides the amyloid beta proteins, which have received a lot of attention, there are also the tau proteins. Researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio discovered a new mechanism whereby pathological forms of tau proteins cause cell death, which they believe can be treated with drugs.

These proteins are created from messenger RNA (mRNA) that carry nonsense mutations. Clearing out these aberrant mRNAs occurs through a process called nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD). The researchers noticed that pathological tau protein buildup was associated with disruptions in the NMD process. Instead of trying to figure out how to clear out the proteins, they think they can attack the cause of the NMD disruptions.

"We are focusing on how cells clear faulty RNAs, and how this RNA quality control mechanism goes awry in disease. If these types of RNAs accumulate in a cell and are translated into proteins, bad things can happen," said senior author Bess Frost, PhD, Bartell Zachry Distinguished Professor for Research in Neurodegenerative Disorders at UT Health San Antonio.

[...] Treatments for Alzheimer's disease and other tauopathies have failed in part because they focused on clearing tau protein or another protein called amyloid beta. Amyloid beta plaques and tau tangles are classic hallmarks of Alzheimer's.

Journal Reference:
Gabrielle Zuniga, Simon Levy, Paulino Ramirez, Jasmine De Mange, Elias Gonzalez, Maria Gamez and Bess Frost, Tau-induced deficits in nonsense-mediated mRNA decay contribute to neurodegeneration, Alzheimer's & Dementia, 2022
DOI: 10.1002/alz.12653

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Bacterial soundtracks revealed by graphene membrane:

Have you ever wondered if bacteria make distinctive sounds? If we could listen to bacteria, we would be able to know whether they are alive or not. When bacteria are killed using an antibiotic, those sounds would stop—unless of course the bacteria are resistant to the antibiotic. This is exactly what a team of researchers from TU Delft , led by Dr. Farbod Alijani, now have managed to do: they captured low-level noise of a single bacterium using graphene. Now, their research is published in Nature Nanotechnology.

The team of researchers initiated a collaboration with the nanobiology group of Cees Dekker and the nanomechanics group of Peter Steeneken. Together with Ph.D. student Irek Roslon and postdoc Dr. Aleksandre Japaridze, the team ran their first experiments with E. coli bacteria. Cees Dekker: "What we saw was striking. When a single bacterium adheres to the surface of a graphene drum, it generates random oscillations with amplitudes as low as a few nanometers that we could detect. We could hear the sound of a single bacterium."

The extremely small oscillations are a result of the biological processes of the bacteria with main contribution from their flagella (tails on the cell surface that propel bacteria).

[...] This research has enormous implications for the detection of antibiotic resistance. The experimental results were unequivocal: If the bacteria were resistant to the antibiotic, the oscillations just continued at the same level. When the bacteria were susceptible to the drug, vibrations decreased until one or two hours later, but then they were completely gone. Thanks to the high sensitivity of graphene drums, the phenomenon can be detected using just a single cell.

Journal Reference:
Irek E. Rosłoń, Aleksandre Japaridze, Peter G. Steeneken, Cees Dekker & Farbod Alijani, Probing nanomotion of single bacteria with graphene drums, Nat. Nanotechnol., 2022.
DOI: 10.1038/s41565-022-01111-6

Original Submission