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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Hubble Space Telescope captured GAMA 526784, an ultra-diffuse galaxy that appears as a tenuous patch of light in this image. This wispy object resides in the constellation Hydra, roughly four billion light-years from Earth. Ultra-diffuse galaxies such as GAMA 526784 have a number of peculiarities. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. van der Burg, Acknowledgment: L. Shatz

[...] Ultra-diffuse galaxies such as GAMA 526784 have a number of peculiarities. For example, their dark matter abundance can be either extremely low or extremely high — ultra-diffuse galaxies have been observed with an almost complete lack of dark matter, whereas others are comprised of almost nothing but dark matter. Another peculiarity of this class of galaxies is their unusual abundance of bright globular clusters, something not observed in other types of galaxies.

Hubble captured GAMA 526784 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which was installed in 2002 by astronauts during Hubble Servicing Mission 3B. Since then, the instrument has played a pivotal role in some of Hubble’s most impressive scientific results, including capturing the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The ACS has also photographed Pluto in advance of the New Horizon mission, observed gargantuan gravitational lenses, and found fully formed galaxies in the early Universe.

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upstart writes:

NASA awards millions to SpaceX and Amazon's Project Kuiper for satellite communications:

Six satellite ventures — including SpaceX's Starlink network and Amazon's Project Kuiper — are due to receive a total of $278.5 million in NASA funding to demonstrate next-generation space communication services in Earth orbit.

The Communications Services Project is intended to smooth the transition from NASA's constellation of dedicated communication satellites, known as Tracking and Data Relay Satellites or TDRS, to a commercially operated network that draws upon multiple providers.

NASA has turned to similar public-private models for space services including cargo resupply and crew transportation to the International Space Station, as well as the future delivery of scientific experiments and astronauts to the lunar surface.

"By using funded Space Act Agreements, we're able to stimulate industry to demonstrate end-to-end capability leading to operational service," Eli Naffah, project manager for the Communications Services Project at NASA's Glenn Research Center, said today in a news release. "The flight demonstrations are risk reduction activities that will develop multiple capabilities and will provide operational concepts, performance validation and acquisition models needed to plan the future acquisition of commercial services for each class of NASA missions."

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upstart writes:

Big Telecom Convinces Missouri Lawmakers To Block Funding For Broadband Competition:

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) set aside $42.5 billion to be spent by the states on expanding access to affordable broadband. But state by state, telecom lobbyists are working hard to ensure that this money only goes toward "unserved" locations, and can't be used to potentially create competition in markets they already serve.

Last month we noted how states like Illinois, at the direct demand of companies like AT&T, have been passing restrictions on who can or can't access these funds. That includes blocking some cooperatives or local governments from building broadband networks. Since that's expressly forbidden by the IIJA, these states are risking all broadband funding

In other instances it's a bit more subtle than that. Missouri, for example, just passed a bill (once again directly demanded by AT&T) stating that "no federal funds received by the state, political subdivision, city, town, or village shall be expended for the construction of retail broadband internet infrastructure unless the project to be constructed is located in an unserved area or underserved area."

On its face it doesn't seem controversial. But if you know how the U.S. telecom sector and policy actually works, its intention becomes more clear. The bill doesn't just block funding for areas that are already served, it blocks access to projects in areas incumbent ISPs claim they might serve someday:

the current version of the bill would allow incumbent ISPs to block federal funding to competitors if they vaguely indicate they have eventual interest in upgrading an area. Historically, state and federal regulators in fealty to regional monopolies aren't consistent about following up on fiber deployment promises, potentially perpetuating longstanding Internet access coverage gaps.

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chris writes:

From https://ancient-archeology.com/face-of-stone-age-woman-reconstructed-with-4000-year-old-skull-found-in-sweden/

A Stone Age woman who lived 4,000 years ago is leaning on her walking stick and looking ahead as a spirited young boy bursts into a run, in a stunning life-size reconstruction now on display in Sweden.

Although her likeness is new — it debuted last month in an exhibit about ancient people at Västernorrlands Museum — researchers have known about this woman's existence for nearly a century.

During the construction of a road in the hamlet of Lagmansören in 1923, workers found her skeletal remains buried next to the remains of a child, likely a 7-year-old boy.

"With our eyes and perhaps in all times, you tend to think that this is a mother and son," said Oscar Nilsson, the Sweden-based forensic artist who spent 350 hours creating the lifelike model. "They could be. Or they could be siblings: sister and brother.

They could be relatives, or they could just be tribe friends. We don't know, because the DNA was not that well preserved to establish this relationship."

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upstart writes:

Intel CEO expects chip shortage to last until at least 2024:

Intel chief Pat Gelsinger has predicted that the global chip shortage will remain a challenge for the industry until at least 2024, particularly in areas such as foundry capacity and tool availability.

[...] During the call, Gelsinger pointed out that ongoing COVID-19 lockdowns in Shanghai and the Russian invasion in Ukraine have demonstrated the need to promote "more resilient and more geographically balanced semiconductor manufacturing", particularly as he believes that semiconductors will be the "the fuel of innovation and transformation".

"I continue to believe we are just at the beginning of a long-term growth cycle across semiconductors," he said.

"We continue to see some matched-set limitations in areas like ethernet, some softening in low-end consumer PC, and some inventory adjustments as we discussed on our last call, but overall, the demand signals from customers continue to be robust in areas like enterprise, cloud, AI, graphics, and networking."

He noted, however, the company's pace in which it achieves its expansion plans will also be dependent on the passing of the CHIPS (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors) Act. If passed, it would unlock an eye-watering $52 billion funding boost to US production of semiconductors.

[...] "I recently testified before the Senate to highlight the critical need for the US to fund the CHIPS Act. I continue to encourage Congress to fund this critical legislation and enable us to move faster toward making a balanced semiconductor supply chain a reality," Gelsinger said.

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looorg writes:

Turns out that virtual meetings are more or less just like real meetings. A lot of people arrive late. Most people don't say or do anything, they are just there. The more people that are invited to the meeting the worse it apparently is. Bad meetings are bad meetings no matter if they are live or not.

For meetings with seven or more people, some of the findings include:

        50% of participants arrive late
        40% have below average or poor engagement
        22% of participants don't say a single word
        11% don't have video or audio on

Overall, one in five video conference calls had a below average meeting score, and 31% of meetings start late.

Source: https://www.geekwire.com/2022/virtual-meeting-study-50-of-participants-arrive-late-22-dont-say-anything/

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upstart writes:

Fireball spotted over southern Mississippi, NASA confirms:

More than 30 people in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi reported seeing the exceptionally bright meteor in the sky around 8 a.m. Wednesday after hearing loud booms in Claiborne County, Mississippi, and surrounding areas, NASA reported. It was first spotted 54 miles (87 kilometers) above the Mississippi River, near Alcorn, Mississippi, officials said.

"This is one of the nicer events I have seen in the GLM (Geostationary Lightning Mappers) data," said Bill Cooke, lead of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The object, which scientists called a bolide, moved southwest at a speed of 55,000 miles per hour (88,500 kilometers per hour), breaking into pieces as it descended deeper into Earth's atmosphere. It disintegrated about 34 miles (55 kilometers) above a swampy area north of the unincorporated Concordia Parish community of Minorca in Louisiana.

[...] At its peak, the fireball was more than 10 times brighter than a full moon, NASA said. "What struck me as unusual was how few eyewitness reports we had given the skies were so clear," said Cooke. "More people heard it than saw it."

Citation: Fireball spotted over southern Mississippi, NASA confirms (2022, April 29) retrieved 29 April 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-04-fireball-southern-mississippi-nasa.html

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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/04/army-of-worm-larvae-hatch-from-mans-bum-visibly-slither-under-his-skin/

Doctors in Spain diagnosed a man with an unusual roundworm infection after watching an army of larvae writhe and slither under his skin, blanketing his whole body in an ever-shifting rash.

Doctors reported the man's rare hyperinfection this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, highlighting the unusual sight of a wriggling, sliding skin rash that tracked the movements of individual parasitic prowlers. The official diagnosis was larva currens from Strongyloides.
[...]
At the time of the larval incursion, the man was in the hospital because a cancerous growth had begun pressing on his spinal cord. Doctors had treated him for several days with a high dose of glucocorticoid, which suppresses some immune responses—and creates prime conditions for parasitic worms to flourish.

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upstart writes:

Humans possess surprising nutritional intelligence:

The international study, led by the University of Bristol (UK), set out to re-examine and test the widely-held view that humans evolved to favour energy dense foods and our diets are balanced simply by eating a variety of different foods. Contrary to this belief, its findings revealed people seem to have "nutritional wisdom," whereby foods are selected in part to meet our need for vitamins and minerals and avoid nutritional deficiencies.

Lead author Jeff Brunstrom, Professor of Experimental Psychology, said: "The results of our studies are hugely significant and rather surprising. For the first time in almost a century, we've shown humans are more sophisticated in their food choices, and appear to select based on specific micronutrients rather than simply eating everything and getting what they need by default."

The paper, published in the journal Appetite, gives renewed weight to bold research carried out in the 1930s by an American paediatrician, Dr Clara Davis, who put a group of 15 babies on a diet which allowed them to "self-select", in other words eat whatever they wanted, from 33 different food items. While no child ate the same combination of foods, they all achieved and maintained a good state of health, which was taken as evidence of "nutritional wisdom."

A story found by both einar and upstart:

NASA and DLR to end SOFIA operations - SpaceNews:

NASA and the German space agency DLR announced they will end operations for SOFIA, which is an airborne astrophysics observatory that flies a 2.7-meter infrared telescope on a Boeing 747. Operations will end no later than Sept. 30, at the conclusion of its current extended mission.

SOFIA's future has been in question in recent years because of its high operating cost. NASA spends about $85 million a year on SOFIA, more than any other operational astrophysics mission except the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA proposed terminating funding for SOFIA in its fiscal year 2021 and 2022 budget proposals, only to have Congress restore funding.

The Astro2020 astrophysics decadal survey, published in November, recommended NASA shut down SOFIA, citing its high cost and limited scientific productivity. "Relative to its cost, SOFIA has not been scientifically productive or impactful over its duration," the survey's final report stated, concluding that NASA end SOFIA operations by 2023.

[...] The agencies did not offer details on how it will shut down SOFIA. "SOFIA will finish out its scheduled operations for the 2022 fiscal year, followed by an orderly shutdown," NASA stated, with data it collected placed in online archives.

[...] "The cessation of SOFIA's flight operations is by no means the end of German-American cooperation," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, said in a DLR statement. He said the agencies will hold a joint workshop this summer to identify potential new projects "in future scientific fields."

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hubie writes:

NASA has announced that the last stage of mirror alignments for the JWST are complete. Phased and focused images are being delivered to all of the science instruments. With the optics taken care of, the last operation before it is ready is to commission the science instruments. The instruments will be run through their paces and calibrations to make sure they are operating as expected. This last stage is expected to take up to two months.

The alignment of the telescope across all of Webb's instruments can be seen in a series of images that captures the observatory's full field of view.

[...] The optical performance of the telescope continues to be better than the engineering team's most optimistic predictions. Webb's mirrors are now directing fully focused light collected from space down into each instrument, and each instrument is successfully capturing images with the light being delivered to them. The image quality delivered to all instruments is "diffraction-limited," meaning that the fineness of detail that can be seen is as good as physically possible given the size of the telescope. From this point forward the only changes to the mirrors will be very small, periodic adjustments to the primary mirror segments.

[...] Though telescope alignment is complete, some telescope calibration activities remain: As part of scientific instrument commissioning, the telescope will be commanded to point to different areas in the sky where the total amount of solar radiation hitting the observatory will vary to confirm thermal stability when changing targets. Furthermore, ongoing maintenance observations every two days will monitor the mirror alignment and, when needed, apply corrections to keep the mirrors in their aligned locations.

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DannyB writes:

Amazon's crazy cheap satellite internet antenna is a huge advantage rivals like SpaceX's Starlink may 'struggle to overcome' industry experts say

• Amazon says antennas for its Project Kuiper satellite internet service cost under $500 to build.
• One analyst called the remarkably cheap antennas "an earth shattering development."
• The price delta could give Project Kuiper a leg up on arch rival SpaceX's Starlink.

When Amazon announced its massive rocket launch deal for Project Kuiper, its satellite internet service earlier this month, one detail flew mostly under the radar. Amazon said it has figured out how to make the antennas consumers mount on their homes for less than $500. That's more than five times cheaper than what SpaceX reportedly spends to build its Starlink antennas, which have long been the cheapest on the market.

The cost delta could give Amazon a major leg up as it launches its Kuiper service and looks to overtake Starlink, which has already launched more than 2,000 satellites and had more than 145,000 users globally as of January, according to CNBC.

[....] To make internet service providers Kuiper and Starlink work, consumers need what's called an all-electronically-steered flat panel antenna, capable of tracking satellites in orbit. This tech has historically been used only for military purposes, and can cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, Quilty Analytics founder Chris Quilty told Insider.

To bring satellite internet to the public, providers have to figure out how to make the necessary antennas affordable.

[....] Another reason Amazon may have been able to get antenna costs so much lower than SpaceX is because Amazon started Project Kuiper as an engineering exercise to see if it was possible to build the antennas for less than $500, according to Quilty. The company didn't want to spend billions to build out a constellation if it wasn't possible.

By running the economics of a running a megaconstellation like Kuiper, it becomes clear that the cost of the user terminal is the most important factor, Quilty said, adding that it was insightful on Amazon's part that that's where they started their Project Kuiper efforts.

Is the one time cost of the ground terminal the biggest factor when considering purchasing a satellite internet service?

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upstart writes:

Attacker Breach 'Dozens' of GitHub Repos Using Stolen OAuth Tokens:

GitHub shared the timeline of breaches in April 2022, this timeline encompasses the information related to when a threat actor gained access and stole private repositories belonging to dozens of organizations.

GitHub revealed details tied to last week's incident where hackers, using stolen OAuth tokens, downloaded data from private repositories.

"We do not believe the attacker obtained these tokens via a compromise of GitHub or its systems because the tokens in question are not stored by GitHub in their original, usable formats," said Mike Hanley, chief security officer, GitHub.

[...] GitHub analysis the incident include[sic] that the attackers authenticated to the GitHub API using the stolen OAuth tokens issued to accounts Heroku and Travis CI. It added, most most of those affected authorized Heroku or Travis CI OAuth apps in their GitHub accounts. Attacks were selective and attackers listed the private repositories of interest. Next, attackers proceeded to clone private repositories.

"This pattern of behavior suggests the attacker was only listing organizations in order to identify accounts to selectively target for listing and downloading private repositories," Hanley said. "GitHub believes these attacks were highly targeted," he added.

GitHub said it is in the process of sending the final notification to its customer who had either Travis CI or Heroku OAuth apps integrated into their GitHub accounts.

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DannyB writes:

Greene offers bill to abolish Section 230

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Thursday is introducing a bill to abolish Section 230 — the law the protects online platforms from liability — on the heels of Twitter accepting Elon Musk's offer to buy the company and take it private.

Greene's bill would eliminate the law making online platforms not liable for content posted by third parties and replace it with a provision to require "reasonable, non-discriminatory access to online communications platforms" through a "common carrier" framework that Greene compared to airlines or package delivery services.

Republicans have long claimed that social media platforms have an anti-conservative bias, pointing to tweets that have been taken down and the removal of entire feeds from networks.

[....] Titled the 21st Century FREE Speech Act, Greene's measure will serve as the House version of a Senate bill sponsored by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.).

To combat the alleged bias against conservatives, it would prevent online communications platforms from exerting "undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, class of persons, political or religious group or affiliation, or locality" and would provide consumers a mechanism to sue for violations.

Should any platform be liable for someone else's speech? Even if they engage in moderation?

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upstart writes:

Scientists use recycled glass waste as sand replacement in 3D printing:

Glass is one material that can be 100 per cent recycled with no reduction in quality, yet it is one of the least recycled waste types. Glass is made up of silicon dioxide, or silica, which is a major component of sand, and therefore it offers significant untapped potential to be recycled into other products.

At the same time, due to growing populations, urbanisation and infrastructure development, the world is facing a shortage of sand, with climate scientists calling it one of the greatest sustainability challenges of the 21st century.

For these reasons, the NTU research team is seeking to find ways to recycle glass by 3D printing it into items for everyday use.

One of their innovations published recently in the Journal of Building Engineering, used a specially formulated concrete mix comprising recycled glass, commercial cement products, water, and additives to 3D print a concrete bench. By figuring out the optimal concrete formulation, the NTU research team was able to successfully 3D-print a 40cm tall L-shaped bench (see image) as a proof of concept that their material could be 3D printed into an everyday structural (weight-bearing) product.