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upstart writes:

Massive New Mexico Fire Started By U.S. Forest Service, but widely reported elsewhere:

The largest wildfire in New Mexico history—which is still burning—was started by the U.S. Forest Service, federal investigators announced Friday.

The catastrophe began as two fires that merged into one. Both wildfires have now been conclusively traced to planned burns conducted by the Forest Service. Planned or "prescribed" burns are used to reduce the threat of extreme fires by reducing the amount of dry fuel in the forest.

So far, the New Mexico fire has destroyed 330 homes and scorched some 500 square miles. The cost of battling the blaze has surpassed $130 million, and rises another $5 million each day, according to the Associated Press.

The Hermits Peak Fire started on April 6. On April 19, the Calf Canyon Fire sprang from a reignited "burn pile" that had been dormant through three winter snow events. They merged on April 22, and their destructive march across the Land of Enchantment still hasn't ended.

Tech Review is running a piece on a new/recent approach to self driving, https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/05/27/1052826/ai-reinforcement-learning-self-driving-cars-autonomous-vehicles-wayve-waabi-cruise/

Four years ago, Alex Kendall sat in a car on a small road in the British countryside and took his hands off the wheel. The car, equipped with a few cheap cameras and a massive neural network, veered to the side. When it did, Kendall grabbed the wheel for a few seconds to correct it. The car veered again; Kendall corrected it. It took less than 20 minutes for the car to learn to stay on the road by itself, he says.

This was the first time that reinforcement learning—an AI technique that trains a neural network to perform a task via trial and error—had been used to teach a car to drive from scratch on a real road. It was a small step in a new direction—one that a new generation of startups believes just might be the breakthrough that makes driverless cars an everyday reality.

Reinforcement learning has had enormous success producing computer programs that can play video games and Go with superhuman skill; it has even been used to control a nuclear fusion reactor. But driving was thought to be too complicated. "We were laughed at," says Kendall, founder and CEO of the UK-based driverless-car firm Wayve.

Wayve now trains its cars in rush-hour London. Last year, it showed that it could take a car trained on London streets and have it drive in five different cities—Cambridge (UK), Coventry, Leeds, Liverpool, and Manchester—without additional training. That's something that industry leaders like Cruise and Waymo have struggled to do. This month Wayve announced it is teaming up with Microsoft to train its neural network on Azure, the tech giant's cloud-based supercomputer.

Some of the other players in this field are training their neural networks (NN) in driving simulators (still with humans as the "instructor") instead of on the road as described above.

My question is can the neural net ever get better than the person(s) that trained it? If the human (trainer) nearly misses an accident, is that what the NN will also do? Worse, I hope that they have a way of rewinding the training to some time before there is an actual accident, wouldn't want this in the training set!

I don't see that this "2.0" approach has any possibility of realizing the early hype of "zero accidents" that robot driving advocates are always going on about, but happy to hear otherwise. At best it seems like it might become nearly as good as the humans doing the training--but this would take a lot of time on the road.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Russia says it has test-fired another hypersonic missile

The Russian navy on Saturday conducted another test of a prospective hypersonic missile, a demonstration of the military's long-range strike capability amid the fighting in Ukraine.

The Defense Ministry said the Admiral Gorshkov frigate of the Northern Fleet in the White Sea launched the Zircon cruise missile in the Barents Sea, successfully hitting a practice target in the White Sea about 1,000 kilometers (540 nautical miles) away.

[...] Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Zircon is capable of flying at nine times the speed of sound and has a range of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles). Putin has emphasized that its deployment will significantly boost the capability of Russia's military.

Previously: Russia Reports First Combat Use of Hypersonic Missiles
US Tested Hypersonic Missile but Kept It Quiet to Avoid Escalating Tensions With Russia

Original Submission

upstart writes:

25% of the World's Internet Users Rely on Infrastructure That Is Susceptible to Attacks:

[...] About 25% of the world's Internet users live in countries that are more vulnerable to targeted attacks on their Internet infrastructure than previously thought. Many of the at-risk countries are located in the Global South, which broadly includes the regions of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania.

That's the conclusion of a sweeping, large-scale study conducted by computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). The scientists surveyed 75 countries.

[...] The structure of Internet connectivity differs dramatically in different parts of the world. In many developed countries, such as the United States, a large number of Internet providers compete to provide services for a large number of users. These networks are directly connected to one another and exchange content, a process called direct peering. All the providers can also plug directly into the world's Internet infrastructure.

[...] In other nations, many of them still developing countries, most users rely on a handful of providers for Internet access, and one of these providers serves an overwhelming majority of users. Not only that, but those providers rely on a limited number of companies called transit autonomous systems to get access to the global Internet and traffic from other countries. Researchers found that often these transit autonomous system providers are state-owned.

Journal Reference:
Gamero-Garrido, Alexander, Carisimo, Esteban, Hao, Shuai, et al. Quantifying Nations' Exposure to Traffic Observation and#1, (DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-98785-5_29)

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Most doctors still believe in prescribing unnecessary antibiotics to treat asymptomatic infections, study suggests:

An estimated 70% of primary care physicians reported in a survey that they would still prescribe antibiotics to treat asymptomatic infections based solely on a positive urine specimen. This is despite long-held medical guidelines recommending against this practice, according to a new study published today in JAMA Network Open, which was led by University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) researchers.

Since 2005, medical organizations have been advocating against the routine use of antibiotics to treat patients who have bacteria detected in a urine culture but no symptoms of a urinary tract infection (UTI) like burning or frequent urination. Overwhelming evidence indicates that the medications are not helpful for asymptomatic patients and could lead to adverse health effects like diarrhea, vomiting, rashes, and yeast infections. [...]

Family medicine physicians were more likely to prescribe antibiotics unnecessarily compared to other specialties. Physicians who were in residency training or who resided in the Pacific Northwest were less likely to prescribe antibiotics.

"We found other factors also played a role in prescribing like whether a physician had a stronger preference in favor of over-treating a condition and fear of missing a diagnosis; that person was more likely to favor prescribing antibiotics compared to a physician who felt more comfortable with uncertainty in practicing medicine," said study leader Daniel Morgan, MD, MS, Professor of Epidemiology & Public Health at UMSOM.

Journal Reference:
Jonathan Baghdadi et al, Exploration of Primary Care Clinician Attitudes and Cognitive Characteristics Associated With Prescribing Antibiotics for Asymptomatic Bacteriuria, JAMA Network Open (2022). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.14268

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Instead of getting exploit PoC, they're getting something a lot more sinister:

It's common practice for researchers to publish a PoC [Proof-of-Concept] of recently patched flaws on code repositories, such as GitHub. That way, they can test different solutions among themselves and force admins to apply the fixes as soon as possible.

When Microsoft patched two remote code execution vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2022-24500 and CVE-2022-26809, a few PoCs popped up on GitHub, one of them coming from an account named "rkxxz".

However, the PoC turned out to be bogus, and what it did instead was install Cobalt Strike beacons on the researchers' endpoints. [...]

Fake Windows exploits target infosec community with Cobalt Strike:

This is not the first time threat actors have targeted vulnerability researchers and pentesters.

In January 2021, the North Korean Lazarus hacking group targeted vulnerability researchers through social media accounts and zero-day browser vulnerabilities.

In March 2021, North Korean hackers again targeted the infosec community by creating a fake cybersecurity company called SecuriElite (located in Turkey).

In November, the Lazarus hacking conducted another campaign using a trojanized version of the IDA Pro reverse engineering application that installed the NukeSped remote access trojan.

By targeting the infosec community, threat actors not only gain access to vulnerability research the victim may be working on but may also potentially gain access to a cybersecurity company's network.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

An interesting history story about a French embroiderer who helped revolutionize surgery:

On June 25, 1894, the French President Marie François Sadi Carnot attended a banquet at the Chamber of Commerce in Lyon. [...] One man present, Sante Geronimo Caserio, [...] revealed a dagger, which he plunged deep into Carnot's back. [...]

The surgical trainee Alexis Carrel was, like his fellow countrymen, appalled by the assassination, but he directed his ire not towards things Italian, rather the impotence of his profession. Carrel believed that, if only Carnot's doctors had possessed the skill, they'd have been able to save the president's life.

[...] He soon found that, even with recent advances in surgery, the thread surgeons used was too thick for tiny blood vessels, which would easily tear. The needles were too bulky, too, [...] If he was going to attempt to sew vessels together, he would need better. With nothing very delicate available at surgical suppliers of the time, Carrel turned to Lyon's famous embroiderers. [...]

The woman he went to see was called Marie-Anne Leroudier, one of Lyon's finest embroiderers. Leroudier isn't always mentioned in Carrel's biographies. [...] But if you take the trouble to look up her work, it's unfathomably intricate. [...]

hubie writes:

High cost of cancer care in the U.S. doesn't reduce mortality rates:

While the U.S. spends twice as much on cancer care as the average high-income country, its cancer mortality rates are only slightly better than average, according to a new analysis by researchers at Yale University and Vassar College.

[...] The researchers found that national cancer care spending showed no relationship to population-level cancer mortality rates. "In other words, countries that spend more on cancer care do not necessarily have better cancer outcomes," said Chow.

[...] Smoking is the strongest risk factor for cancer mortality, and smoking rates have historically been lower in the United States, compared to other countries. When the researchers controlled for international variations in smoking rates, U.S. cancer mortality rates became no different than the average high-income country, with nine countries — Australia, Finland, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland — having lower smoking-adjusted cancer mortality than the United States.

[...] "The pattern of spending more and getting less is well-documented in the U.S. healthcare system; now we see it in cancer care, too," said co-author Elizabeth Bradley, president of Vassar College and professor of science, technology, and society. "Other countries and systems have much to teach the U.S. if we could be open to change."

Journal Reference:
Ryan D. Chow, Elizabeth H. Bradley, Cary P. Gross. Comparison of Cancer-Related Spending and Mortality Rates in the US vs 21 High-Income Countries, JAMA Health Forum. 2022;3(5):e221229. DOI:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2022.1229

Original Submission

Rich writes:

A digital certificate that expired after 10 years is causing a major outage in German retail payment handling. The involved Verifone H5000 card reader was introduced in 2012 but is still widely in use. Acceptance points have been advised to not power off their devices, because on startup, the failing certificate locks out the device even from updates. The vendor is trying to come up with a solution, which will likely involve USB sticks for local updates.

Report in English: https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2022-05-27/aaefes-esso-credit-card-outage-6146620.html

Details in German (with screenshots): https://www.borncity.com/blog/2022/05/27/strung-der-verifone-h5000-ec-kartenlesegerte-einige-insights-zur-zertifikateproblematik/

While in the past, many issues could be fixed by cleverly scraping together remaining data, this is one of the first nationwide occurrences of a new class of security-related bugs that actively lock out any solution attempt. What is your experience in this field?

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Knowledge-Diverse Work Teams Benefit from Fluid Hierarchies:

Co-workers who team up to solve problems or work on projects can benefit when they have less in common and take turns spotlighting their different expertise, according to new research from The University of Texas at Austin. The findings have implications for how managers can better form and manage teams so all voices are heard.

Groups of workers with varied knowledge — or "knowledge-diverse teams" — share more information among group members, a key trait of effective teamwork. [...]

"For teams, instability is often seen as a negative," Gray said. "But we found a scenario in which instability is helpful. Within a diverse team, this type of fluidity helps members bolster their position and standing by demonstrating their expertise and unique value."

Even so, homogenous teams — ones made up of members with similar knowledge and skills — share more when members' influence over time is stable.

A knowledge-diverse new product development team could include a scientist, engineer, operations expert and a marketer, while a startup team may have a chief technology officer, chief marketing officer and chief financial officer. In contrast, a homogenous team might be made of sales members who do the same task but may have different kinds of customers.

[...] Workers who are a part of a knowledge-diverse team where influence diverges should know that by sharing information, they can demonstrate their worth to co-workers and gain greater influence and trust within the team. Gray said managers need to understand that it's insufficient to bring together people with diverse knowledge and simply set them on a task. Instead, managers of knowledge-diverse teams need to think about how they can help to elevate different viewpoints as tasks evolve. Managers of homogenous teams should mull how they might promote stability so members don't compete for status.

What were the makeups of the best and worst collaborative teams you've worked on? Is any of this important, or do the variabilities in skills and experience between people wash all this out and team effectiveness is just one big stochastic crapshoot?

Journal Reference:
Steven M. Gray et al., Leveraging Knowledge Diversity in Hierarchically Differentiated Teams: The Critical Role of Hierarchy Stability, Acad Manage J, 2022
DOI: 10.5465/amj.2020.1136

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Climate change reveals unique artifacts in melting ice patches:

Sometime around 2000 BCE, a red-wing thrush died at Skirådalskollen in the Dovrefjell mountain range. Its small body quickly became buried under an ice patch. Upon emerging again 4,000 years later, its internal organs are still intact.

In recent years, hundreds of such discoveries have been made in ice patches, revealing traces of hunting, trapping, traffic, animals and plant life -- small, frozen moments of the past.

[...] "A survey based on satellite images taken in 2020 shows that more than 40 per cent of 10 selected ice patches with known finds have melted away. These figures suggest a significant threat for preserving discoveries from the ice, not to mention the ice as a climate archive," says Skar.

"The time is ripe for establishing a national monitoring programme using remote sensing and systematically securing archaeological finds and biological remains from ice patches. We should also use this programme to collect glaciological data from different parts of the country, since the ice patches can provide detailed data on how the climate has evolved over the last 7500 years," she said.

[...] "We used to think of the ice as desolate and lifeless and therefore not very important. That's changing now, but it's urgent. Large amounts of unique material are melting out and disappearing forever. Finds can provide important information about the history of both people and nature," he said.

Archaeology Report

Original Story Source

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Quantum information teleported across a rudimentary quantum network:

The power of a future quantum Internet is based on the ability to send quantum information (quantum bits) between the nodes of the network. This will enable all kinds of applications such as securely sharing confidential information, linking several quantum computers together to increase their computing capability, and the use of highly precise, linked quantum sensors.

[...] In order to be able to teleport quantum bits, several ingredients are required: a quantum entangled link between the sender and receiver, a reliable method for reading out quantum processors, and the capacity to temporarily store quantum bits. Previous research at QuTech demonstrated that it is possible to teleport quantum bits between two adjacent nodes. The researchers at QuTech have now shown for the first time that they can meet the package of requirements and have demonstrated teleportation between non–adjacent nodes, in other words over a network. They teleported quantum bits from node "Charlie" to node "Alice", with the help of an intermediate node "Bob".

Also included is a explanatory video.

See also:
The New York Times, El Pais, New Scientist (international edition), De Volkskrant, hardware.info, Nature News & Views, and Physics World

Journal Reference:
S.L.N. Hermans et al., Qubit teleportation between non-neighboring nodes in a quantum network, Nature, 2022, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04697-y

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

https://phys.org/news/2022-05-disinformation-flourished-pandemic.html

A small team of researchers at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in France has explored why disinformation seemed to flourish during the global pandemic.

One of the more remarkable features of the global pandemic is the seemingly unceasing stream of misinformation attributed not just to the virus and the people who were being infected, but in the ways the medical community has responded to the threat. From ridiculous claims regarding supposed cures to the baseless claims made by anti-vaxxers, misinformation has flourished. In this new effort, the researchers wondered why this has been happening and they looked at the sources of news, both reliable and unreliable, as participants in a supply and demand news ecosystem.

[...] The researchers were not able to ascertain why the unreliable news sources were able to respond more quickly, but suggest that the end result was higher visibility for unreliable sources, leading to widespread disinformation gaining traction, and ultimately, acceptance.

[Journal Reference]: Pietro Gravino et al, The supply and demand of news during COVID-19 and assessment of questionable sources production, Nature Human Behaviour (2022)
DOI: DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01353-3

Do you agree with this assessment?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Why are male mice afraid of bananas?:

Researchers from McGill University have identified a form of chemical signaling in mice to defend their offspring. The researchers found that proximity to pregnant and lactating female mice increased stress hormones in males and even decreased their sensitivity to pain.

"The findings have important implications for improving the reliability and reproducibility of experiments involving mice. This is yet another example of a previously unknown factor in the lab environment that can affect the results of scientific studies," says Jeffrey Mogil, a Professor in the Department of Psychology at McGill University and E. P. Taylor Chair in Pain Studies.

According to co-author Sarah Rosen, "what is likely happening is that female mice are signaling to males who might be considering attacking their babies that they will defend them vigorously. It's the threat of the possible upcoming fight that causes the stress."

"Mice have richer communication with one another than we think; it's just that a lot of it's through smell," says Mogil. The researchers started looking for the olfactory chemical responsible. Several odorants were identified, but one, n-pentyl acetate, which is released in the urine of pregnant and lactating female mice, was especially effective at producing stress in male mice.

"Curiously, n-pentyl acetate is also responsible for the unique smell of bananas. After a quick trip to the supermarket for some banana oil, we were able to confirm that the smell of banana extract stressed the male mice just as much as the pregnant females," says co-author Lucas Lima.

Journal Reference:
Sarah F. Rosen et al, Olfactory exposure to late-pregnant and lactating mice causes stress-induced analgesia in male mice, Science Advances (2022) (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abi9366)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Clearview AI fined in UK for illegally storing facial images:

Facial recognition company Clearview AI has been fined more than £7.5m by the UK's privacy watchdog and told to delete the data of UK residents.

The company gathers images from the internet to create a global facial recognition database.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) says that breaches UK data protection laws. It has ordered the firm to stop obtaining and using the personal data of UK residents.

Clearview AI chief executive Hoan Ton-That said: "I am deeply disappointed that the UK Information Commissioner has misinterpreted my technology and intentions.

"We collect only public data from the open internet and comply with all standards of privacy and law.

Clearview AI takes publicly posted pictures from Facebook, Instagram and other sources, usually without the knowledge of the platform or any permission.