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DannyB writes:

BBC: UK will not copy EU demand for common charging cable

The UK government says it is not "currently considering" copying European Union plans for a common charging cable.

The EU has provisionally agreed all new portable electronic devices must, by autumn 2024, use a USB Type-C charger, a move it says will benefit consumers.

[....] Under the current post-Brexit arrangements, the regulation would apply to Northern Ireland, according to EU and UK officials.

DailyMail: Britain will NOT follow the EU and make USB-C charging ports mandatory on all phones – meaning Apple's 'lightning connector' will be allowed everywhere in the UK except Northern Ireland

[....] Since the EU's announcement, it had been uncertain if the decision could affect Apple products sold in the UK and other non-EU countries in Europe.

But a UK government spokesperson has told MailOnline: 'We are not currently considering replicating this requirement.'

[....] This complicates things for Apple; the firm might have to make devices with USB-C ports to sell in EU countries and Northern Ireland, as well as making devices with a Lightning ports to sell in the UK and other non-EU countries.

To simplify things, Apple could just opt to make devices with USB-C ports in the whole of Europe.

upstart writes:

NASA's plan to get Ingenuity through the Martian winter:

Since a Martian year amounts to roughly two years on Earth, and the helicopter is in the northern hemisphere, this is Ingenuity's first winter. As the solstice approaches, days are getting shorter and nights longer, and dust storms could become more frequent. That all means less sunlight for the solar panels mounted above the helicopter's twin 4-foot rotor blades. Dust on solar panels recently spelled the end of operations for NASA's InSight Mars lander, and the effects of cold on electronics is believed to have played a role in the end of the Opportunity and Spirit Mars rover missions.

"We believe it's survivable," Dave Lavery, NASA's program executive for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, told WIRED, but "every extra day is a gift." JPL Ingenuity team lead Teddy Tzanetos recently wrote in a NASA blog post that "each sol (Martian day) could be Ingenuity's last." that "each sol (Martian day) could be Ingenuity's last."

[...] As Ingenuity halts normal flight activity, the team will focus on transferring data like flight performance logs and high-definition images from the last eight flights and making software upgrades. Based on a climate model, NASA expects solar energy levels to rebound to a level that allows the resumption of normal activity this fall. By September or October, if Ingenuity is able to regain the ability to heat its systems at night, it could resume regular flight operations, scouting potential places for the Perseverance rover to stash a collection of rock and soil samples and explore what scientists believe used to be a river delta within the Jezero Crater.

upstart writes:

Japan asteroid probe finds 23 amino acids, researchers confirm:

A total of 23 types of amino acids were found in asteroid samples brought back by Japan's Hayabusa2 space probe, according to new studies published in the journal Science and elsewhere, shedding further light on the origins of life on Earth.

[...] Whether amino acids originated on Earth or arrived from space has been a topic of much scientific debate. The findings from Hayabusa2 appear to support the latter hypothesis.

"The search for extraterrestrial life could take off on hopes that amino-acid-based organisms could exist on Mars and beyond," said Tamagawa University professor Yoshitaka Yoshimura.

The findings also could shed more light on the birth of the solar system. Some of the samples are thought to contain compounds from when they were originally formed -- around 3 million years after the solar system was created roughly 4.6 billion years ago -- essentially making them a "fossil" of the solar system.

What happened before, during and after solar system formation? A recent study of the Asteroid Ryugu holds the answers!:

[...] Elemental and isotopic data revealed that Ryugu contains the most primitive pre-solar nebular (an ancient disk of gas and dust surrounding what would become the Sun) material yet identified and that some organic materials may have been inherited from before the solar system formed.

[...] The discovery of protein forming amino acids is important, because Ryugu has not been exposed to the Earth's biosphere, like meteorites, and as such their detection proves that at least some of the building blocks of life on Earth could have been formed in space environments. Hypotheses concerning the origin of life, such as those involving hydrothermal activity, require sources of amino acids, with meteorites and asteroids like Ryugu representing strong candidates due to their inventory of amino acids and because such material would have been readily delivered to the surface of the early Earth. Additionally, the isotopic characteristics of the Ryugu samples suggest that Ryugu-like material could have supplied the Earth with its water, another resource essential for the origin and sustainment of life on Earth.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Soylent readers, you'll need to click through to TFA to see the illusion referenced below.

An illusion new to science shows that the pupillary light reflex, which controls the width of the pupil in anticipation of expected changes in light, depends on the perceived environment rather than the physical reality:

Have a look at the above image. Do you perceive that the central black hole is expanding, as if you're moving into a dark environment, or falling into a hole? If so, you're not alone: a new study shows that this 'expanding hole' illusion, which is new to science, is perceived by approximately 86% of people.

[...] Optical illusions aren't mere gimmicks without scientific interest: researchers in the field of psychosociology study them to better understand the complex processes our visual system uses to anticipate and make sense of the visual world – in a far more roundabout way than a photometer device, which simply registers the amount of photonic energy.

[...] "Here we show based on the new 'expanding hole' illusion that that the pupil reacts to how we perceive light – even if this 'light' is imaginary like in the illusion – and not just to the amount of light energy that actually enters the eye. The illusion of the expanding hole prompts a corresponding dilation of the pupil, as it would happen if darkness really increased," said Laeng.

[...] "Our results show that pupils' dilation or contraction reflex is not a closed-loop mechanism, like a photocell opening a door, impervious to any other information than the actual amount of light stimulating the photoreceptor. Rather, the eye adjusts to perceived and even imagined light, not simply to physical energy. Future studies could reveal other types of physiological or bodily changes that can 'throw light' onto how illusions work," concluded Laeng.

Journal Reference:
Bruno Laeng, Shoaib Nabil and Akiyoshi Kitaoka, The Eye Pupil Adjusts to Illusorily Expanding Holes [open], Front. Hum. Neurosci., 30 May 2022 | DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.877249

Original Submission

upstart writes:

'Copyright Troll' Has Already Filed Over 1,000 Piracy Lawsuits This Year * TorrentFreak:

For more than 15 years, alleged file-sharers around the world have been pressured to pay significant settlement fees. These so-called 'copyright-trolling' efforts are pretty straightforward. Copyright holders obtain a list of 'pirating' IP-addresses and then request a subpoena from the court, compelling ISPs to hand over the associated customer data.

These schemes can be rather lucrative. With minimal effort, rights holders can rake in hundreds or thousands of dollars per defendant. That is, if a court grants expedited discovery, allowing the companies to request the personal details of alleged infringers from ISPs.

In the United States it was relatively easy to pursue these cases but over time that began to change. Most prominent was the 2018 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in the Cobbler v. Gonzales case. Here, the court ruled that identifying the registered subscriber of an IP-address was not sufficient to argue that this person is also the infringer. Rightsholders needed "something more".

This has made it harder to pursue legal actions against file-sharers, but not impossible. While pretty much all prolific lawsuit filers have ceased their activities, Strike 3 Holdings is still going strong.

upstart writes:

Scientists Create Cement Entirely Out of Waste Material:

[Scientists] have discovered a method to produce biocement from waste, making the alternative to traditional cement greener and more sustainable. Biocement is a kind of renewable cement that uses bacteria to create a hardening reaction that binds soil into a solid block. The NTU scientists have now created biocement from two common waste materials: industrial carbide sludge and urea (from mammalian urine).

They devised a method for forming a hard solid, or precipitate, from the interaction of urea with calcium ions in industrial carbide sludge. When this reaction occurs in soil, the precipitate binds soil particles together and fills gaps between them, resulting in a compact mass of soil. This produces a biocement block that is strong, durable, and less permeable. [...] It can also be used as biogrout to seal cracks in rock for seepage control and even to touch up and repair monuments like rock carvings and statues.

[...] Firstly, the team treats carbide sludge with an acid to produce soluble calcium. Urea is then added to the soluble calcium to form a cementation solution. The team then adds a bacterial culture to this cementation solution. The bacteria from the culture then break down the urea in the solution to form carbonate ions.

These ions react with the soluble calcium ions in a process called microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP). This reaction forms calcium carbonate – a hard, solid material that is naturally found in chalk, limestone, and marble.

upstart writes:

New Research Shows That Probiotics Can Help Alleviate Depression:

In their new study, the researchers led by Dr. André Schmidt and Professor Undine Lang systematically investigated the effects of probiotics on patients with depression. All participants were inpatients at the University Psychiatric Clinics Basel (UPK) and were given a probiotic (21 subjects) or a placebo (26 subjects) for 31 days, in addition to antidepressants. Neither the participants nor the study staff knew which preparation the subjects were taking throughout the study period. The researchers carried out a series of tests on the participants immediately before treatment, at the end of the 31 days and again four weeks later.

The subsequent analysis showed that although depressive symptoms decreased in all participants thanks to the general antidepressant treatment, there was a greater improvement in the subjects in the probiotic group than in the placebo group.

In addition, the composition of their intestinal flora changed, at least temporarily: in the probiotic group, an analysis of stool samples revealed an increase in lactic bacteria at the end of treatment – an effect that was accompanied by a reduction in depressive symptoms. However, the level of these health-promoting gut bacteria decreased again over the following four weeks. "It may be that four weeks of treatment is not long enough and that it takes longer for the new composition of the intestinal flora to stabilize," explains Anna-Chiara Schaub, one of the lead authors of the study.Change in the processing of emotional stimuli

Another interesting effect of taking probiotics was seen in relation to brain activity when viewing neutral or fearful faces. The researchers investigated this effect using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In patients with depression, certain brain regions for emotional processing behave differently than in individuals with good mental health. After four weeks of probiotics, this brain activity normalized in the probiotic group but not in the placebo group.

Journal Reference:
Schaub, Anna-Chiara, Schneider, Else, Vazquez-Castellanos, Jorge F., et al. Clinical, gut microbial and neural effects of a probiotic add-on therapy in depressed patients: a randomized controlled trial [open], Translational Psychiatry (DOI: 10.1038/s41398-022-01977-z)

Original Submission

Booga1 writes:

According to Car and Driver: 830,000 Teslas with Autopilot under NHTSA Investigation, Recall Possible

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will take a deeper look into how Tesla vehicles equipped with so-called Autopilot driver assistance software navigate when interacting with first responder vehicles at the scene of a collision. NHTSA said this week that it is upgrading the Preliminary Evaluation it started last August into an Engineering Analysis, which is the next step in a possible recall of hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles.

NHTSA said in its notice that it was motivated to upgrade the status of the investigation because of "an accumulation of crashes in which Tesla vehicles, operating with Autopilot engaged, struck stationary in-road or roadside first responder vehicles tending to pre-existing collision scenes."

[...]

In a public update on its probe, NHTSA laid out its case for why Autopilot needs to be investigated. NHTSA said it has so far investigated 16 crashes and found that Autopilot only aborted its own vehicle control, on average, "less than one second prior to the first impact" even though video of these events proved that the driver should have been made aware of a potential incident an average of eight seconds before impact. NHTSA found most of the drivers had their hands on the wheel (as Autopilot requires) but that the vehicles did not alert drivers to take evasive action in time.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A possible relationship between infant infections and the risk of cardiovascular disease has been discovered:

Bacteria and viruses cause the majority of infections in newborn babies. Newborns can acquire an infection before, during, and after birth. Soon after birth, babies' immune systems begin to mature, quickly decreasing the number of infections a child gets. Still, the brief period of vulnerability to infections could have serious consequences for the future health of the child.

[...] "We found the risk of adult-onset cardiovascular disease could be accruing from early life," he said. We know babies are prone to infections. This causes inflammation, a key cardiometabolic risk factor, but the relationship between infection, inflammation, and metabolic profiles in early childhood had remained underexplored until this study."

[...] The research found high rates of infant infections by 12 months of age were associated with elevated inflammation markers and changes to metabolic profiles, which influence how the body processes fats, proteins, and sugars.

[...] Professor Burgner said the research offered opportunities for early prevention measures such as identifying the types of infection and the children at highest risk, and how these risks might be offset by simple interventions.

"Targeted action could include promoting breastfeeding, ensuring timely vaccinations, and supporting families so that they can keep children at home if they are unwell with an infection," he said.

Journal Reference:
Toby Mansell, Richard Saffery, Satvika Burugupalli, et al. Early life infection and proinflammatory, atherogenic metabolomic and lipidomic profiles in infancy: a population-based cohort study [open], eLife, 2022. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.75170

Original Submission

upstart writes:

NASA's second mobile launcher is too heavy, years late, and pushing $1 billion:

Three years ago, NASA awarded a cost-plus contract to the engineering firm Bechtel for the design and construction of a large, mobile launch tower. The 118-meter tower will support the fueling and liftoff of a larger and more capable version of NASA's Space Launch System rocket that may make its debut during the second half of this decade.

When Bechtel won the contract for this mobile launcher, named ML-2, it was supposed to cost $383 million. But according to a scathing new report by NASA's inspector general, the project is already running years behind schedule, the launcher weighs too much, and the whole thing is hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. The new cost estimate for the project is $960 million.

"We found Bechtel's poor performance is the main reason for the significant projected cost increases," the report, signed by Inspector General Paul Martin, states. The report finds that Bechtel underestimated the project's scope and complexity. In turn, Bechtel officials sought to blame some of the project's cost increases on the COVID-19 pandemic.

As of this spring, NASA had already obligated $435.6 million to the project. However, despite these ample funding awards, as of May, design work for the massive launch tower was still incomplete, Martin reports. In fact, Bechtel now does not expect construction to begin until the end of calendar year 2022 at the earliest.

The report cites a litany of mistakes by the contractor, Bechtel, but does not spare NASA from criticism. For example, Martin said that NASA awarded the contract to Bechtel before the specifications for the Space Launch System rocket's upper stage were finalized. (The major upgrade to the rocket will come via a more powerful second stage, known as the Exploration Upper Stage, or EUS). This lack of final requirements to accommodate the EUS hindered design of the mobile launch tower, which must power and fuel the rocket on the ground.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Quantum computer succeeds where a classical algorithm fails:

[...] Google's quantum computing group [...] used a quantum computer as part of a system that can help us understand quantum systems in general, rather than the quantum computer. And they show that, even on today's error-prone hardware, the system can outperform classical computers on the same problem.

To understand what the new work involves, it helps to step back and think about how we typically understand quantum systems. Since the behavior of these systems is probabilistic, we typically need to measure them repeatedly. The results of these measurements are then imported into a classical computer, which processes them to generate a statistical understanding of the system's behavior. With a quantum computer, by contrast, it can be possible to mirror a quantum state using the qubits themselves, reproduce it as often as needed, and manipulate it as necessary. This method has the potential to provide a route to a more direct understanding of the quantum system at issue.

[...] The first of these ideas describes some property of a quantum system involving an arbitrary number of items—like a quantum computer with n qubits. This is exactly the circumstance described above, where repeated measurements need to be made before a classical computer can reliably identify a property. By contrast, a quantum computer can store a copy of the system in its memory, allowing it to be repeatedly duplicated and processed.

These problems, the authors show, can be solved on a quantum computer in what's called polynomial time, where the number of qubits is raised to a constant power (denoted nk). Using classical hardware, by contrast, the time scales as a constant raised to the power related to the number of qubits. As the number of qubits increases, the time needed for classical hardware rises much faster.

[...] The second task they identify is a quantum principal component analysis, where computers are used to identify the property that has the largest influence on the quantum system's behavior. This was chosen in part because this analysis is thought to be relatively insensitive to the noise introduced by errors in today's quantum processors. Mathematically, the team shows that the number of times you'd need to repeat the measurements for analysis on a classical system grows exponentially with the number of qubits. Using a quantum system, the analysis can be done with a constant number of repeats.

Journal Reference:
Hsin-Yuan Huang et al., Quantum advantage in learning from experiments, Science, 376, 6598, 2022. DOI: 10.1126/science.abn7293

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Researchers study society's readiness for AI ethical decision making:

With the accelerating evolution of technology, artificial intelligence (AI) plays a growing role in decision-making processes. Humans are becoming increasingly dependent on algorithms to process information, recommend certain behaviors, and even take actions of their behalf. A research team has studied how humans react to the introduction of AI decision making. Specifically, they explored the question, "is society ready for AI ethical decision making?" by studying human interaction with autonomous cars.

In the first of two experiments, the researchers presented 529 human subjects with an ethical dilemma a driver might face. In the scenario the researchers created, the car driver had to decide whether to crash the car into one group of people or another – the collision was unavoidable. The crash would cause severe harm to one group of people, but would save the lives of the other group. The subjects in the study had to rate the car driver's decision, when the driver was a human and also when the driver was AI. This first experiment was designed to measure the bias people might have against AI ethical decision making.

In their second experiment, 563 human subjects responded to the researchers' questions. The researchers determined how people react to the debate over AI ethical decisions once they become part of social and political discussions. In this experiment, there were two scenarios. One involved a hypothetical government that had already decided to allow autonomous cars to make ethical decisions. Their other scenario allowed the subjects to "vote" whether to allow the autonomous cars to make ethical decisions. [...]

The researchers observed that when the subjects were asked to evaluate the ethical decisions of either a human or AI driver, they did not have a definitive preference for either. However, when the subjects were asked their explicit opinion on whether a driver should be allowed to make ethical decisions on the road, the subjects had a stronger opinion against AI-operated cars. [...]

[...] "We find that there is a social fear of AI ethical decision-making. However, the source of this fear is not intrinsic to individuals. Indeed, this rejection of AI comes from what individuals believe is the society's opinion," said Shinji Kaneko, a professor in the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, and the Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability. So when not being asked explicitly, people do not show any signs of bias against AI ethical decision-making. However, when asked explicitly, people show an aversion to AI. Furthermore, where there is added discussion and information on the topic, the acceptance of AI improves in developed countries and worsens in developing countries.

Journal Reference:
Johann Caro-Burnett & Shinji Kaneko, Is Society Ready for AI Ethical Decision Making? Lessons from a Study on Autonomous Cars, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2022.101881

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

MIT researchers uncover 'unpatchable' flaw in Apple M1 chips – TechCrunch:

Apple's M1 chips have an "unpatchable" hardware vulnerability that could allow attackers to break through its last line of security defenses, MIT researchers have discovered.

The vulnerability lies in a hardware-level security mechanism utilized in Apple M1 chips called pointer authentication codes, or PAC. This feature makes it much harder for an attacker to inject malicious code into a device's memory and provides a level of defense against buffer overflow exploits, a type of attack that forces memory to spill out to other locations on the chip.

Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, however, have created a novel hardware attack, which combines memory corruption and speculative execution attacks to sidestep the security feature. The attack shows that pointer authentication can be defeated without leaving a trace, and as it utilizes a hardware mechanism, no software patch can fix it.

The attack, appropriately called "Pacman," works by "guessing" a pointer authentication code (PAC), a cryptographic signature that confirms that an app hasn't been maliciously altered. This is done using speculative execution — a technique used by modern computer processors to speed up performance by speculatively guessing various lines of computation — to leak PAC verification results, while a hardware side-channel reveals whether or not the guess was correct.

What's more, since there are only so many possible values for the PAC, the researchers found that it's possible to try them all to find the right one.

In a proof of concept, the researchers demonstrated that the attack even works against the kernel — the software core of a device's operating system — which has "massive implications for future security work on all ARM systems with pointer authentication enabled," says Joseph Ravichandran, a PhD student at MIT CSAIL and co-lead author of the research paper.

[Also Covered By]: Gizmodo

[Paper PDF]: PACMAN: Attacking ARM Pointer Authentication with Speculative Execution

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Research team including Göttingen University studies kombucha cultures under extraterrestrial conditions:

An international research team including the University of Göttingen has investigated the chances of survival of kombucha cultures under Mars-like conditions. Kombucha is known as a drink, sometimes called tea fungus or mushroom tea, which is produced by fermenting sugared tea using kombucha cultures – a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. Although the simulated Martian environment destroyed the microbial ecology of the kombucha cultures, surprisingly, a cellulose-producing bacterial species survived. The results were published in Frontiers in Microbiology.

[...] The results suggest that the cellulose produced by the bacteria is probably responsible for their survival in extraterrestrial conditions. This also provides the first evidence that bacterial cellulose could be a biomarker for extraterrestrial life and cellulose-based membranes or films could be a good biomaterial for protecting life and producing consumer goods in extraterrestrial settlements.

[...] Another focus was on investigations into changes in antibiotic resistance: the research team was able to show that the total number of antibiotic and metal resistance genes – meaning that these microorganisms might survive despite antibiotics or metals in the environment – were enriched in the exposed cultures. "This result shows that the difficulties associated with antibiotic resistance in medicine in space should be given special attention in the future," the scientists said.

Journal Reference:
Santana de Carvalho et al, The Space-Exposed Kombucha Microbial Community Member Komagataeibacter oboediens Showed Only Minor Changes in Its Genome After Reactivation on Earth, Frontiers in Microbiology, 2022. DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.782175

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Apple's macOS Ventura leaves trusty 2015 MacBook Pro behind:

A new version of macOS means a new collection of Macs can no longer run Apple's latest desktop operating system. Perhaps most notably, the new macOS Ventura update won't be available for the 2015 MacBook Pro.

[...] Another notable change compared to the compatibility list for macOS Monterey is the end of major OS updates for Apple's 2013 Mac Pro (aka the "Trashcan"). But given the age of the machine, not to mention its much derided design, I can't imagine as many will be mourning its passing. With its Ventura update, Apple is no longer offering updates for any pre-2017 Macs, which means it's offering up to five years of major macOS updates for these machines.

macOS Ventura is currently only available as a beta update for developers, but is due to launch as a public beta next month. Like previous major macOS updates, expect a full release this fall.

Obsolete macs to be obsoleted!

Original Submission