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DannyB writes:

SpaceNews.com: NASA selects Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace for spacesuit contracts

NASA awarded contracts to Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace to provide spacesuits for International Space Station spacewalks and Artemis moonwalks, although neither the agency nor the winning companies offered many technical or financial details.

NASA announced June 1 it selected the two companies for Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services, or xEVAS, contracts to support the development of new spacesuits as well as purchasing spacesuit services. The companies will own the suits they develop and will effectively rent them to NASA for space station and Artemis missions, while also being able to offer the suits to other customers.

The goal, NASA officials said at a briefing about the awards, is to have lunar spacesuits ready for the Artemis 3 lunar landing mission, currently scheduled for no earlier than 2025. NASA will also conduct an "orderly transition" from existing, decades-old suits on the ISS to the new suits around the same time.

[....] the companies provided few technical details about their suit designs, and NASA did not even have illustrations of the winning designs to show, electing instead to release an illustration of two moonwalking astronauts wearing suits not necessarily associated with either company.

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

For decades, paleobotanist David Greenwood has collected fossil plants from Australia—some so well preserved it's hard to believe they're millions of years old. [...]

The fossils date back 55 to 40 million years ago, during the Eocene epoch. At that time, the world was much warmer and wetter, and these hothouse conditions meant there were palms at the North and South Pole and predominantly arid landmasses like Australia were lush and green. [...]

To sustain a lush green landscape, the continent required a steady supply of precipitation. Warmth means more evaporation, and more rainfall was available to move into Australia's continental interior. Higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the time, 1500 to 2000 parts per million, also contributed to the lushness via a process called carbon fertilization. Reichgelt explains that with the sheer abundance of CO2, plants were basically stuffing their faces.

"Southern Australia seems to have been largely forested, with primary productivity similar to seasonal forests, not unlike those here in New England today," Reichgelt says. "In the Northern Hemisphere summer today, there is a big change in the carbon cycle, because lots of carbon dioxide gets drawn down due to primary productivity in the enormous expanse of forests that exists in a large belt around 40 to 60 degrees north. In the Southern Hemisphere, no such landmass exists at those same latitudes today. But Australia during the Eocene occupied 40 degrees to 60 degrees south. And as a result, there would be a highly productive large landmass during the Southern Hemisphere summer, drawing down carbon, more so than what Australia is doing today since it is largely arid."

DannyB writes:

From Tom's Hardware:

Intel and the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC) said they would invest €400 million (around $426 million) in a laboratory that will develop RISC-V-based processors that could be used to build zettascale supercomputers. However, the lab will not focus solely on CPUs for next-generation supercomputers but also on processor uses for artificial intelligence applications and autonomous vehicles.

The research laboratory will presumably be set up in Barcelona, Spain, and will receive €400 million from Intel and the Spanish Government over 10 years. The fundamental purpose of the joint research laboratory is to develop chips based on the open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) that could be used for a wide range of applications, including AI accelerators, autonomous vehicles, and high-performance computing.

The creation of the joint laboratory does not automatically mean that Intel will use RISC-V-based CPUs developed in the lab for its first-generation zettascale supercomputing platform but rather indicates that the company is willing to make additional investments in RISC-V. After all, last year, Intel tried to buy SiFive, a leading developer of RISC-V CPUs and is among the top sponsors of RISC-V International, a non-profit organization supporting the ISA.

[....] throughout its history, Intel invested hundreds of millions in non-x86 architectures (including RISC-based i960/i860 designs in the 1980s, Arm in the 2000s, and VLIW-based IA64/Itanium in the 1990s and the 2000s). Eventually, those architectures were dropped, but technologies developed for them found their way into x86 offerings.

I would observe that a simple well designed instruction set could require less silicon. Possibly more cores per chip using same fabrication technology. Or more speculative execution branch prediction using up some of that silicon. I would mention compiler back ends, but that is a subject best not discussed in public.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

What's in a name?

Maverick was first used as a baby name after a television show called "Maverick" aired in the 1950s, but its popularity rose meteorically in 1986 with the release of the movie "Top Gun." Today, it is even used for baby girls.

[...] So, what's in a name—or, at least, what's in a baby name trend? University of Michigan evolutionary biologist Mitchell Newberry has found that the more popular a name becomes, the less likely future parents are to follow suit. Same goes for popular dog breeds: Dalmatians today are a tenth as popular as they were in the 1990s.

Newberry, an assistant professor of complex systems, says examining trends in the popularity of baby names and dog breeds can be a proxy for understanding ecological and evolutionary change. The names and dog breed preferences themselves are like genes or organisms competing for scarce resources. In this case, the scarce resources are the minds of parents and dog owners. His results are published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

[...] Newberry used the Social Security Administration baby name database, itself born in 1935, to examine frequency dependence in first names in the United States. He found that when a name is most rare—1 in 10,000 births—it tends to grow, on average, at a rate of 1.4% a year. But when a name is most common—more than 1 in 100 births—its popularity declines, on average, at 1.6%.

Ometecuhtli writes:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-06-01/worlds-largest-plant-seagrass-meadow-shark-bay-giant-clone/101112726

"[...] But researchers have today revealed there's a plant about 4,500 years old and measuring 180 kilometres across living right under our noses in Western Australia.

Genetic testing has revealed that what was once thought to be part of a giant seagrass meadow in the shallow waters of Shark Bay, near Carnarvon, was actually a single massive clone of Posidonia australis seagrass

[...] "We were a bit suspicious because the plants around there don't act like normal seagrass," Dr Breed said. "They don't flower as much, don't seed as much, so these signs of reproductive activity were a little bit unremarkable."

But when they took samples from 10 meadows throughout the Shark Bay area, they never expected nine of them to return a genetic match.

Instead, they were planning to use their research to inform which plants to use for restoration of the meadows, to help with their resilience against threats like bleaching...

[...] Being a clone probably helps to explain why this single plant has been so successful.

[...] Polyploidy in this case has occurred because at some stage, a Posidonia plant has hybridised with another related species.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Taiwan Restricts Russia, Belarus to CPUs Under 25 MHz Frequency

From now on, Russian and Belarusian entities can only buy CPUs operating at below 25 MHz and offering performance of up to 5 GFLOPS from Taiwanese companies. This essentially excludes all modern technology, including microcontrollers for more or less sophisticated devices.

[...] Starting today, Russian entities cannot buy chips that meet one of the following conditions from Taiwanese companies, reports DigiTimes:

• Has performance of 5 GFLOPS. To put it into context, Sony's PlayStation 2 released in 2000 had peak performance of around 6.2 FP32 GFLOPS.
• Operates at 25 MHz or higher.
• Has an ALU that is wider than 32 bits.
• Has an external interconnection with a data transfer rate of 2.5 MB/s or over.
• Has more than 144 pins.
• Has basic gate propagation delay time of less than 0.4 nanosecond.

In addition to being unable to buy chips from Taiwanese companies, Russian entities will not be able to get any chip production equipment from Taiwan, which includes scanners, scanning electron microscopes, and all other types of semiconductor tools that can be used to make chips locally or perform reverse engineering (something that the country pins a lot of hopes on).

Also at Wccftech.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Code execution 0-day in Windows has been under active exploit for 7 weeks:

A critical code execution zero-day in all supported versions of Windows has been under active exploit for seven weeks, giving attackers a reliable means for installing malware without triggering Windows Defender and a roster of other endpoint protection products.

The Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool vulnerability was reported to Microsoft on April 12 as a zero-day that was already being exploited in the wild, researchers from Shadow Chaser Group said on Twitter. A response dated April 21, however, informed the researchers that the Microsoft Security Response Center team didn't consider the reported behavior a security vulnerability because, supposedly, the MSDT diagnostic tool required a password before it would execute payloads.

On Monday, Microsoft reversed course, identifying the behavior with the vulnerability tracker CVE-2022-30190 and warning for the first time that the reported behavior constituted a critical vulnerability after all.

"A remote code execution vulnerability exists when MSDT is called using the URL protocol from a calling application such as Word," the advisory stated. "An attacker who successfully exploits this vulnerability can run arbitrary code with the privileges of the calling application. The attacker can then install programs, view, change, or delete data, or create new accounts in the context allowed by the user's rights."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

UK, EU Cars (But Not Bikes, Yet) to be Fitted With Speed Limiters:

This comes as part of the General Safety Regulation passed in the EU. Mandates state "new models/types of vehicles introduced on the market," beginning in July 2022, must arrive outfitted with this software. It will be mandatory for all new cars beginning in July 2024, ostensibly to give manufacturers time to retrofit their existing production models.

[...] The European Commission describes the way a car outfitted with ISA behaves in one of four ways: cascaded acoustic warning; cascaded vibrating warning; haptic feedback through the acceleration pedal; or speed control function. Manufacturers choose their own adventure there. The first two only provide audible or tactile feedback to the driver. "Haptic feedback through the acceleration pedal" means the pedal pushes back against your foot. "Speed control function" means the car slows down for you.

https://etsc.eu/intelligent-speed-assistance-isa/

[...] ISA uses a speed sign-recognition video camera and/or GPS-linked speed limit data to advise drivers of the current speed limit and automatically limit the speed of the vehicle as needed. ISA systems do not automatically apply the brakes, but simply limit engine power preventing the vehicle from accelerating past the current speed limit unless overridden. Vehicles with this kind of ISA system factory fitted are already on sale[...].

Freeman writes:

Trafficked data could lead to subsequent attacks, agency warns:

The FBI on Friday said that thousands of compromised credentials harvested from US college and university networks are circulating on online crime forums in Russia and elsewhere—and could lead to breaches that install ransomware or steal data.

[...] Login names and passwords are routinely harvested in phishing attacks, which may use fake claims of an account breach or a COVID-themed pitch to lure victims. Often, the threat actors who conduct these attacks sell the data on crime forums. The data can then be scooped up by fellow threat actors who focus on server infections for purposes of ransomware, cryptojacking, or espionage.

[...] "The FBI is informing academic partners of identified US college and university credentials advertised for sale on online criminal marketplaces and publicly accessible forums," the agency said.

[Ed. question: Is username/password the primary way VPN access is given at these schools with thousands of transient students from all over the world? Wouldn't requiring a physical token, such as adding PKI certs to their student ID cards, be a far superior and secure solution? --hubie]

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Only ambitious climate protection measures can still save a third of the tundra:

The climate crisis can especially be felt in the Arctic: in the High North, the average air temperature has risen by more than two degrees Celsius over the past 50 years – far more than anywhere else. And this trend will only continue. [...]

"For the Arctic Ocean and the sea ice, the current and future warming will have serious consequences," says Prof Ulrike Herzschuh, Head of the Polar Terrestrial Environmental Systems Division at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). "But the environment on land will also change drastically. The broad expanses of tundra in Siberia and North America will be massively reduced, as the treeline, which is already slowly changing, rapidly advances northward in the near future. In the worst-case scenario, there will be virtually no tundra left by the middle of the millennium." [...]

The tundra is home to a unique community of plants, roughly five percent of which are endemic, i.e., can only be found in the Arctic. Typical species include the mountain avens, Arctic poppy and prostrate shrubs like willows and birches, all of which have adapted to the harsh local conditions: brief summers and long, arduous winters. It also offers a home for rare species like reindeer, lemmings and insects like the Arctic bumblebee.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Japan has successfully tested a system that could provide a constant, steady form of renewable energy:

For more than a decade, Japanese heavy machinery maker IHI Corp. has been developing a subsea turbine that harnesses the energy in deep ocean currents and converts it into a steady and reliable source of electricity. The giant machine resembles an airplane, with two counter-rotating turbine fans in place of jets, and a central 'fuselage' housing a buoyancy adjustment system. Called Kairyu, the 330-ton prototype is designed to be anchored to the sea floor at a depth of 30-50 meters (100-160 feet).

[...] The advantage of ocean currents is their stability. They flow with little fluctuation in speed and direction, giving them a capacity factor — a measure of how often the system is generating — of 50-70%, compared with around 29% for onshore wind and 15% for solar

[...] Still, the Japanese company has a long way to go. Compared with onshore facilities, it's much more complicated to install a system underwater. "Unlike Europe, which has a long history of the North Sea Oil exploration, Japan has had little experience with offshore construction," said Takagi. There are major engineering challenges to build a system robust enough to withstand the hostile conditions of a deep ocean current and to reduce maintenance costs.

"Japan isn't blessed with a lot of alternative energy sources," he said. "People may say that this is just a dream, but we need to try everything to achieve zero carbon."

If it's endless and free, it has no value? /s

For a lot more technical detail and pictures, see this IHI Corporation white paper: Power Generation Using the Kuroshio Current

Original Submission

hubie writes:

The question is more important than you think:

When should I fit exercise within my daily schedule? For most, the answer depends on our family's schedule and working hours, and perhaps on whether we're 'larks' or 'night owls'. But over the past decade, researchers have found that much more hangs on this question than these constraints. That's because recent findings suggest that the effectiveness of exercise depends on the time of day (Exercise Time Of Day, ETOD).

Now, a randomized controlled trial not only confirms convincingly that ETOD affects the effectiveness of exercise, but also shows that these effects differ between types of exercise, and between women and men. The results are published in Frontiers in Physiology.

The authors recruited 30 women and 26 men to participate. All were between 25 and 55 years old, healthy, highly active, nonsmokers, and with normal weight. [...]

Importantly, female and male participants had been independently randomized beforehand to either of two regimes: exclusively training in the morning (60min between 06:30 and 08:30), or in the evening (between 18:00 and 20:00). Those assigned to morning exercise breakfasted after exercise, and ate three further meals at four-hour intervals. Those assigned to evening exercise ate three meals at four-hour intervals before training, plus another afterwards.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/05/loot-box-laws-block-diablo-immortal-launch-in-some-european-countries/

Blizzard's upcoming open beta launch of Diablo Immortal later this week will be skipping the Netherlands and Belgium, thanks to regulations in those countries that consider games with randomized loot boxes to be illegal gambling.

"Diablo Immortal will not be available in Belgium or the Netherlands, and will not appear on Battle.net or the Belgian and Netherlands App or Google Play Stores," an Activision Blizzard spokesperson told Eurogamer over the weekend. "This is related to the current operating environment for games in those countries. Accordingly, pre-registrations for the game are not accessible in those markets."

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

The researchers successfully increased the level of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the main psychoactive component in cannabis, by close to 17%, and the level of CBG (cannabigerol), often referred to as the mother of all cannabinoids, by close to 25%. Further, Vainstein and his team were able to increase the ratio of terpenes, which are responsible for maximizing the euphoric effects of cannabis, by 20–30%.

The stated goal of their study was to find a way to intervene in the biochemical pathways in the cannabis plant in order to increase or decrease the production of active substances. The researchers accomplished this by manipulating a plant-based virus, that had first been neutralized so that it could not harm the plant, and then manipulating it to express the genes that influence the production of active substances in the cannabis plant.

See also: Metabolic 'fingerprint' predicts impairment from medical cannabis

Perhaps the research can lead to a new class of drugs as an alternative to opioid-based pain management.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/05/gop-senators-want-to-ban-chinas-digital-currency-from-us-apps-and-app-stores/

Three Republican senators are proposing a law to prohibit app stores from carrying apps that accept payments using China's digital currency. The "Defending Americans from Authoritarian Digital Currencies Act" would prohibit app stores in the US from carrying or supporting any app "that supports or enables transactions in e-CNY," also known as the digital yuan or digital renminbi.

The app stores would also be prohibited from supporting or enabling digital yuan transactions. The bill defines an app store broadly as "a publicly available website, software application, or other electronic service that distributes applications from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device."
[...]
The digital yuan is in the early stages of rollout. Akram Keram, an expert on China at the National Endowment for Democracy, wrote last year that the digital currency would give the Chinese Communist Party "direct control over and access to the financial lives of individuals, without the need to strong-arm intermediary financial entities. In a digital-yuan-consumed society, the government easily could suspend the digital wallets of dissidents and human rights activists, for example."
[...]
The US could eventually issue a digital dollar. In March, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that said his administration "places the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC [Central Bank Digital Currency]."

While Americans have long used the dollar in digital form, a digital dollar would differ in fundamental ways. The Federal Reserve explains that a Central Bank Digital Currency "is generally defined as a digital liability of a central bank that is widely available to the general public." By contrast, the current types of central bank money in the US are "physical currency issued by the Federal Reserve and digital balances held by commercial banks at the Federal Reserve."

Original Submission