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upstart writes:

Samples from the Moon's Oceanus Procellarum may be able to help determine the source of lunar water:

China's lunar lander Chang'E-5 delivered the first real-time, on-site definitive confirmation of water signal in the basalt's rocks and soil via on-board spectral analysis in 2020. The finding was validated through laboratory analysis of samples the lander returned in 2021. Now, the Chang'E-5 team has determined where the water came from.

[...] Chang'E-5 did not observe lunar rivers or springs; rather the lander identified, on average, 30 hydroxyl parts per million in rocks and soil on the Moon's surface. The molecules, made of one oxygen and one hydrogen atom, are the main ingredient of water, as well as the most common result of water molecules chemically reacting with other matter. Despite representing what Li called the "weak end of lunar hydration features," hydroxyl is to water what smoke is to fire: evidence.

[...] "This excess hydroxyl is indigenous, demonstrating the presence of lunar-originated internal water in the Chang'E-5 lunar samples, and that water played an important role in the formation and crystallization of the late lunar basaltic magma," Li said, referring to the composition of Chang'E-5 landing site in the mare basalt of Oceanus Procellarum. "By investigating lunar water and its source, we are learning more about the formation and evolution of not just the Moon itself, but also the solar system. In addition, lunar water is expected to provide support for future human lunar in-situ resources."

Journal Reference:
Liu, Jianjun, Liu, Bin, Ren, Xin, et al. Evidence of water on the lunar surface from Chang'E-5 in-situ spectra and returned samples [open], Nat Commun, 13, 2022. (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30807-5)

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Leaders today must be ready to take a stand on thorny social and political issues. A case study by Nien-hê Hsieh and Henry McGee examines how Apple CEO Tim Cook turned calls for data access into a rallying cry for privacy, and the complexities that followed:

Apple CEO Tim Cook didn't come to his post with an activist agenda, yet when law enforcement officials began pressuring the company to hand over iPhone users' data without their permission, Cook took what he believed was a moral stance to protect consumers' privacy.

[...] "We believe that a company that has values and acts on them can really change the world," Cook said in 2015, a year after Apple debuted new privacy measures that blocked law enforcement from accessing its customers' data. "There is an opportunity to do work that is infused with moral purpose." He said shareholders who were only looking for a return on investment "should get out of the stock."

A Harvard Business School case study and its revision, Apple: Privacy vs. Safety (A) and (B), illustrates the complex ramifications that companies should consider when putting their stake in the ground on challenging societal issues like privacy. The authors of the case offer a suggestion for CEOs: Few corporations can expect to steer clear of the lightning-rod issues of the day, so perhaps it's best to meet them head on as part of the job.

upstart writes:

"Downthem" DDoS-for-Hire Boss Gets 2 Years in Prison:

A 33-year-old Illinois man was sentenced to two years in prison today following his conviction last year for operating services that allowed paying customers to launch powerful distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against hundreds of thousands of Internet users and websites.

Matthew Gatrel of St. Charles, Ill. was found guilty for violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) related to his operation of downthem[.]org and ampnode[.]com, two DDoS-for-hire services that had thousands of customers who paid to launch more than 200,000 attacks.

Despite admitting to FBI agents that he ran these so-called "booter" services (and turning over plenty of incriminating evidence in the process), Gatrel opted to take his case to trial, defended the entire time by public defenders. Gatrel's co-defendant and partner in the business, Juan "Severon" Martinez of Pasadena, Calif., pleaded guilty just before the trial.

[...] Prosecutors said Downthem sold subscriptions allowing customers to launch DDoS attacks, while AmpNode provided "bulletproof" server hosting to customers — with an emphasis on "spoofing" servers that could be pre-configured with DDoS attack scripts and lists of vulnerable "attack amplifiers" used to launch simultaneous cyberattacks on victims.

[...] The government charged that Gatrel and Martinez constantly scanned the Internet for these misconfigured devices, and then sold lists of Internet addresses tied to these devices to other booter service operators.

"Gatrel ran a criminal enterprise designed around launching hundreds of thousands of cyber-attacks on behalf of hundreds of customers," prosecutors wrote in a memorandum submitted in advance of his sentencing. "He also provided infrastructure and resources for other cybercriminals to run their own businesses launching these same kinds of attacks. These attacks victimized wide swaths of American society and compromised computers around the world."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

How plants' threat-detection mechanisms raise the alarm:

New work led by Carnegie's Zhiyong Wang untangles a complex cellular signaling process that underpins plants' ability to balance expending energy on growth and defending themselves from pathogens. These findings, published in Nature Plants, show how plants use complex cellular circuits to process information and respond to threats and environmental conditions.

"Plants don't have brains like us, and they may be fixed in place and unable to flee from predators or pathogens, but don't feel sorry for them, because they've evolved an incredible network of information-processing circuits that enable them to 'make decisions' in response to the situations in which they find themselves," Wang explained.

[...] Higher plants put hundreds of highly specialized sensors, called receptor kinases, on their cell surfaces to monitor the environment and to communicate between cells. Wang's lab is working to elucidate the molecular circuits that connect these sensors to specific cellular responses, such as growth and immunity. Improving our understanding of how plants make cellular decisions can underpin technological interventions for improving agricultural yields in the face of a warming planet.

[...] When a plant senses a threat, it needs to activate communication chains that raise the alarm and tell it to fight off the pathogen. There are two main types of threat-detection mechanisms in plant cells—the ability to recognize distinctive chemical patterns that signify an invader, such as components of a bacterial cell, and the ability to recognize a disruption caused by invading pathogen.

hubie writes:

Saving Kids From Dangerous Infections – With An Amoeba:

C. difficile strikes 24,000 children in the United States each year, and many more around the world. The number of U.S. cases is growing, prompting the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to classify C. difficile as an immediate public health threat that requires aggressive action. The infection causes severe diarrhea and is especially dangerous to children with health conditions such as cancer, bowel diseases and cystic fibrosis. [...] For some, it can become incurable, requiring the removal of the large intestine to prevent death.

[UVA researcher Shannon] Moonah, however, aims to protect children from becoming so terribly sick. He would do that by genetically engineering a single-celled amoeba often found in the gut called "Entamoeba." Entamoeba is a parasite, but Moonah aims to use gene editing to turn it into a powerful ally against C. difficile.

Moonah plans to introduce a harmless form of Entamoeba into the intestine in order to deliver directly specific antibodies to inhibit damaging toxins produced by C. difficile. If his innovation works, this would be the first time an amoeba or other protozoan had been genetically engineered to deliver a treatment this way.

Ultimately, Moonah aims to turn his "protozoan technology and drug delivery system" into a platform used routinely to deliver a wide range of drugs to battle gut problems in young children. The strategy could offer many benefits, he says, including lessening antibiotic use amid the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The Weird World Of Liquid Cooling For Datacenters:

When it comes to high-performance desktop PCs, particularly in the world of gaming, water cooling is popular and effective. However, in the world of datacenters, servers rely on traditional air cooling more often than not, in combination with huge AC systems that keep server rooms at the appropriate temperature. However, datacenters can use water cooling, too! It just doesn’t always look quite how you’d expect.

Cooling is of crucial importance to datacenters. Letting hardware get too hot increases failure rates and can even impact service availability. It also uses a huge amount of energy, with cooling accounting for up to 40% of energy use in the average datacenter. This flows into running costs, as well, as energy doesn’t come cheap.

Thus, any efficiency gains in cooling a datacenter can have a multitude of benefits. Outside of just improving reliability and cutting down on emissions through lower energy use, there are benefits to density, too. The more effective cooling available, the more servers and processing power that can be stuffed in a given footprint without running into overheating issues.

Water and liquid cooling techniques can potentially offer a step change in performance relative to traditional air cooling. This is due to the fact that air doesn’t have a great heat capacity compared to water or other special liquid coolants. It’s much easier to transfer a great quantity of heat into a liquid. In some jurisdictions, there is even talk of using the waste heat from datacenters to provide district heating, which is much easier with a source of hot liquid carrying waste heat vs. hot air.

However, liquid cooling comes with drawbacks, too. Leaks can damage electronics if not properly managed, and such systems typically come with added complexity versus running simple fans and air conditioning systems. Naturally, that improved cooling performance comes at a trade-off, else it would be the norm already.

upstart writes:

Linux Malware Deemed 'Nearly Impossible' to Detect:

Symbiote, discovered in November, parasitically infects running processes so it can steal credentials, gain rootlkit[sic] functionality and install a backdoor for remote access.

A new Linux malware that's "nearly impossible to detect" can harvest credentials and gives attackers remote access and rootkit functionality by acting in a parasitic way to infect targets, researchers said.

Researchers from The BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team have been tracking the malware, the earliest detection of which is from November 2021, security researcher Joakim Kennedy wrote in a blog post on the BlackBerry Threat Vector Blog published last week.

Researchers have appropriately dubbed the malware—which apparently was written to target the financial sector in Latin America—"Symbiote." In biology, the word means an organism that lives in symbiosis with another organism.

"What makes Symbiote different ... is that it needs to infect other running processes to inflict damage on infected machines," he wrote. "Instead of being a standalone executable file that is run to infect a machine, it is a shared object (SO) library that is loaded into all running processes using LD_PRELOAD (T1574.006), and parasitically infects the machine."

Once Symbiote has infected all the running processes, a threat actor can engage in various nefarious activity, including rootkit functionality, the ability to harvest credentials, and remote access capability, Kennedy said.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/google-to-pay-118-million-after-being-accused-of-underpaying-15500-women/

Google has agreed to pay $118 million to settle a class action lawsuit that alleges the company underpaid female employees. The agreement will release Google from claims that it "paid women in Covered Positions less than it paid men for substantially similar work, that Google assigned women to lower levels than it assigned men, and that Google failed to pay all wages due to employees upon their separation of employment," the settlement says.

The settlement covers about 15,500 women who have worked for Google in California since 2013, the plaintiffs' law firm said in an announcement on Saturday. Four named plaintiffs will get separate payouts: $75,000 for lead plaintiff Kelly Ellis and $50,000 each for the other three, in addition to their regular share from the net settlement fund. The settlement class covers a wide range of workers with 236 job titles.

[...] Google violated the California Equal Pay Act and other state laws, plaintiffs alleged in the gender-discrimination lawsuit. The settlement is pending a judge's approval in San Francisco County Superior Court.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Japanese craftsmanship improves fiber quality, as company plans Europe sales:

HighChem, a Tokyo-based chemical trading company, has applied Japanese traditional craftsmanship to improve a Chinese-made biodegradable plastic fiber so it can be used in fashionable apparel and is marketing the fiber and fabrics to European garment makers.

[...] Yuichi Taka said he had gotten the idea of using PLA as an apparel fiber but his father opposed it at first. Major Japanese chemical makers had tried to commercialize PLA fibers but had not had success in dealing with the fibers' technical weaknesses, such as insufficient heat resistance. President Taka, an engineer, knew their unsuccessful attempts well.

He decided to make a business of PLA fibers despite his father's opposition in early 2021, saying he "would like to draw on the wisdom of the Japanese fiber and textile industries." HighChem has hired four apparel and fabric specialists so far and has marketed the fibers to traditional textile producers across Japan, including makers of synthetic fibers in Fukui Prefecture and denim fabrics in Okayama Prefecture.

Fiber and textile craftspeople who did not have preconceptions steadily improved the PLA fibers to the level of apparel quality by mixing them with natural fibers like cotton and plant-derived modifying agents. "The quality fibers have been realized because we are in Japan, where craftspeople propose the ways of improvement. We are in a business environment that is not available in China," Taka said.

[...] The fiber still has problems with heat resistance, requiring restrictions on ironing, and sells at $12 per kilogram, three times the price of polyester fibers. However, Europe's high-quality apparel brands are expanding the use of sustainable materials despite their higher costs. In view of this favorable factor, HighChem targets sales of Highlact of 5 billion yen ($37.7 million) for 2024.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Hopes melanoma breakthrough could save Scientists working on 'heat-seeking missile' to destroy deadly skin cancers:

Scientists think they might be on the verge of a melanoma breakthrough that could save the lives of thousands of people.

Adelaide researchers are working to develop a new treatment that would aim to wipe out dangerous cancer cells with a simple injection. The researchers have discovered that the most aggressive melanoma cells contain a protein known as Desmoglein-2.

[...] They're confident if they can target that protein, they can disarm those cancer cells.

Professor Claudine Bonder from the University of South Australia described how it works. "Research has shown that if we target Desmoglein-2 on the melanoma cells then the cancer cells are less likely to survive," she said. "They'll be like a heat-seeking missile that can be injected into the blood."

They are now working on a treatment that would involve injecting patients with nanoparticles programmed to find the protein. The researchers hope to have that treatment ready to go within five to 10 years, potentially a life-saving breakthrough for thousands of Australians.

The university is now seeking funding from the government and private donors to continue its research.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

FAA environmental review to allow Starship orbital launches after changes

A Federal Aviation Administration environmental review has concluded that SpaceX can conduct orbital launches of its Starship vehicle from its Texas test site, but only after completing dozens of mitigations to reduce impacts on the environment and the public.

The FAA issued June 13, after nearly half a year of delays, what is formally known as a mitigated Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for SpaceX's proposal to perform orbital launches of its Starship vehicle, atop its Super Heavy booster, from Boca Chica, Texas. The mitigated FONSI means that SpaceX is cleared, from an environmental standpoint, to carry out those launches once it implements more than 75 measures to mitigate environmental effects.

Among those mitigations is changes in closures in the road that leads to both the SpaceX site, called Starbase, as well as a public beach. SpaceX will provide more advanced notice of closures for testing and launches. It will be prohibited from closing access during 18 holidays and will be limited to five weekend closures per year. Closures will be limited to 500 hours a year for normal operations and up to 300 more hours "to address anomalies," according to FAA documents. The review is for up to five orbital launches per year, as well as five suborbital launches and ground tests.

Final Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) Executive Summary for Starship/Super Heavy (43 pages)

Assessment for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Launch Vehicle Program at the SpaceX Boca Chica (183 pages)

DannyB writes:

CNBC: FAA requires SpaceX to make environmental adjustments to move forward with its Starship program in Texas

Among the requirements, SpaceX will coordinate with a "qualified biologist" on lighting inspections to minimize the impact on sea turtles, operate an employee shuttle between the city of Brownsville and the facility, and perform quarterly cleanups of the local Boca Chica Beach.

[...] SpaceX has already made changes to its expansion of the Starbase facility, according to the FAA, with the company removing infrastructure plans for a desalination plant, natural gas pretreatment system, liquefier and a power plant.

Space is hard. SpaceX makes space look easy, routine and reusable. The SLS cost plus contracting spice must flow!

Also at Reuters, CNN, and Bloomberg.

Original Submission #1   Original Submission #2

upstart writes:

Lilium achieves main wing transition on its Phoenix 2 eVTOL aircraft:

German company Lilium, developer of the first electric vertical take-off and landing (eVOTL) aircraft, announced that it has successfully achieved the transition of the main wing of its Phoenix 2 model.

«This is a landmark moment for Lilium and for electric aviation as a whole», the company said. For the first time, it successfully completed a transition test of the aircraft's main wing from a stationary flight position to a configuration for horizontal flight.

A transition like this has never been completed in flight on a full-size demonstrator aircraft before. It is also one of the biggest hurdles in eVTOL operations.

From an aerodynamic point of view, completing the transition means that the aircraft is able to switch from generating lift solely from the engines (as occurs in the hover phase) to generating lift from the airflow above and below the wing (as occurs during horizontal flight).

[...] The Phoenix 2, unlike many of Lilium's competitors' models, uses a series of thirty fans located in the wings and powered by batteries.

Original Submission

Crocodile-faced Dinosaur May Have Been Europe's Largest Ever Predator

upstart writes:

Crocodile-faced dinosaur may have been Europe's largest ever predator:

An enormous crocodile-faced, spiny-backed dinosaur that prowled what is now England roughly 125 million years ago was one of the largest predatory animals to ever stalk across Europe.

Paleontologists unearthed the remains of this behemoth on the Isle of Wight off the southern coast of England. The researchers nicknamed the newfound species the "White Rock spinosaurid," after the chalky geological layer found on the island where it was discovered. As the scientists unearthed only pieces of fossils, the animal has yet to be given an official scientific name.

The fragments are the youngest spinosaurid fossils ever found in the U.K., according to a new study, published June 9 in the journal PeerJ Life and Environment. Spinosaurids were bipedal carnivorous dinosaurs with crocodile-like skulls, slender necks and sturdy arms, and they lived during the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago). The new species is a close relative of the older, potentially amphibious Spinosaurus, which was bigger than Tyrannosaurus rex and had a large, flattened sail extending from its back.

Spinosaurids are somewhat mysterious as few fossils of the group have been discovered. Scientists suspect that the creatures hunted in lakes, rivers and lagoons, but how they captured their quarry is a subject of debate. Some paleontologists have proposed that spinosaurids actively swam after their prey (opens in new tab), propelling themselves by swishing their large tails as modern crocodiles do. Other experts suggest the monsters behaved more like herons, wading the lagoons and jabbing their long jaws into the water to snatch up fish. Either way, the creatures were enormous, and the newly discovered White Rock spinosaurid was among the biggest.

''This was a huge animal, exceeding 10m [33 feet] in length, and judging from some of the dimensions, [it] probably represents the largest predatory dinosaur ever found in Europe,'' study lead author Chris Barker, a paleontologist at the University of Southampton in England, said in a statement. ''It's just a shame it's only known from such scant material.''

hubie writes:

Hydrogen Peroxide E-Bandages Treat Wound Infections:

According to new research by investigators at the Mayo Clinic and Washington State University, e-bandages could be an effective alternative to antibiotics for managing wound infections. The findings are presented at ASM Microbe 2022, the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

In a recent study conducted in mice, novel hydrogen peroxide producing bandages with electrical/chemical properties (electro-chemical bandages or e-bandages), under the control of wearable voltage devices, reduced methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) biofilm bacteria present in the wound by 99% after 2 days of treatment.

[...] Hydrogen peroxide solution is used to clean wounds. Although hydrogen peroxide has antibacterial and wound healing properties, hydrogen peroxide solution is unstable chemically and therefore, its effects are short-lived. Dr. Raval and colleagues have developed e-bandages to continuously produce hydrogen peroxide as a treatment of wound infections.

"Specifically, we have developed and examined antibacterial properties of a novel kind of bandage which continuously produces hydrogen peroxide through application of a specific negative voltage," said Dr. Raval.

E-bandages to treat your e-burns from your e-cigarettes.

Original Submission

Google Engineer Suspended After Claiming AI Bot Sentient

Frosty Piss writes:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/12/google-engineer-ai-bot-sentient-blake-lemoine

A Google engineer who claimed a computer chatbot he was working on had become sentient and was thinking and reasoning like a human being has been suspended with pay from his work

Google placed Blake Lemoine on leave last week after he published transcripts of conversations between himself, a Google "collaborator", and the company's LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications) chatbot development system. He said LaMDA engaged him in conversations about rights and personhood, and Lemoine shared his findings with company executives in April in a GoogleDoc entitled "Is LaMDA sentient?"

The decision to place Lemoine, a seven-year Google veteran with extensive experience in personalization algorithms, on paid leave was made following a number of "aggressive" moves the engineer reportedly made? Including seeking to hire an attorney to represent LaMDA, the newspaper says, and talking to representatives from the House judiciary committee about Google's allegedly unethical activities.

Google said it suspended Lemoine for breaching confidentiality policies by publishing the conversations with LaMDA online, and said in a statement that he was employed as a software engineer, not an ethicist. Brad Gabriel, a Google spokesperson, also strongly denied Lemoine's claims that LaMDA possessed any sentient capability.