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U.S. May Lose Silicon Wafer Factory If Congress Can't Fund CHIPS Act, Commerce Secretary Says

upstart writes:

U.S. may lose silicon wafer factory if Congress can't fund CHIPS Act, commerce secretary says:

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told CNBC's Jim Cramer on Monday that she believes GlobalWafers will follow through on its plan to build a silicon wafer factory in Texas — but only if Congress passes funding for the CHIPS for America Act by the time the August recess begins.

"This investment that they're making is contingent upon Congress passing the CHIPS Act [funding]. The CEO told me that herself, and they reiterated that today," Raimondo said in an interview on "Mad Money."

"It has to be done before they go to August recess. I don't know how to say it any more plainly. This deal ... will go away, I think, if Congress doesn't act," she added.

GlobalWafers, a Taiwan-based semiconductor silicon wafer firm, said Monday that it plans to build a facility to produce the component in Sherman, Texas. The facility could create up to 1,500 jobs and produce 1.2 million wafers a month, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.

The CHIPS (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors) for America Act incentivizes investment in the U.S. semiconductor industry. While it was passed in January 2021, a funding package has not been approved by Congress.

McConnell Warns Dems of Fallout for Reviving Biden Bill

upstart writes:

McConnell warns Dems of fallout for reviving Biden bill:

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell threatened Thursday to derail a bill designed to boost semiconductor manufacturing in the United States if Democrats revive their stalled climate and social policy package.

The rejuvenation of the Democratic reconciliation package, central to President Joe Biden's agenda, remains a work in progress and is far from certain. But with some signs of progress in the negotiations, McConnell is moving to complicate Democratic plans by warning that Republicans would react by stopping separate semiconductor legislation from moving over the finish line in the coming weeks, despite its bipartisan support.

"Let me be perfectly clear: there will be no bipartisan USICA as long as Democrats are pursuing a partisan reconciliation bill," McConnell tweeted, referring to the shorthand name for the computer chips bill that passed the Senate last year.

Both chambers of Congress have passed their versions of the legislation, which would include $52 billion in incentives for companies to locate chip manufacturing plants in the U.S. Lawmakers are now trying to reconcile the considerable differences between the two bills, but at a pace that has many supporters worried the job won't get done before lawmakers break for their August recess.

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upstart writes:

The hawk has landed: Braking mid-air to prioritize safety over energy or speed:

Researchers at the University of Oxford have found that hawks control their flight to ensure the safest landing conditions when perching, even if it takes longer and more energy to do so. Understanding how birds optimise their landing manoeuvres through learning may help in developing small aircraft capable of perching like birds.

In new research published in Nature, four Harris' hawks wearing tiny retroreflective markers were tracked flying back and forth between two perches. Their precise movements were recorded by 20 motion capture cameras positioned around the room, allowing the research team to reconstruct their flight paths on over 1,500 flights. The research team then used computer simulations to understand why the birds chose their particular path to the perch.

Aircraft have the luxury of using a runway for braking after landing to reduce speed. In contrast, birds must brake before they arrive at the perch -- however slowing down to a safe speed while in flight risks stall, leading to a sudden loss of flight control. The researchers discovered that the hawks follow a flight path that slows them down to a safe speed but minimises the distance from the perch at which they stall.

To minimise stall, the hawks dived downwards while flapping, before spreading their wings into a gliding posture as they swooped up to the perch. By selecting just the right speed and position from which to swoop up to the perch, the birds were already within grabbing distance of the perch when they stalled, keeping their landings as safe and controllable as possible.

upstart writes:

A ceramic aerogel made with nanocrystals and embedded in a matrix for use in thermal insulation applications:

A team of researchers at the Harbin Institute of Technology, in China, working with a colleague in the U.S., has developed a new kind of aerogel for use in flexible thermal insulation material applications. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes how they made their aerogel and how well it worked when extreme heat was applied.

Prior work has shown that aerogels made using ceramic materials work very well as thermal insulators—their very low densities have very low thermal conductivity. But such materials are brittle, making them unavailable for use in flexible material applications, such as suits for firefighters. They also tend to break down when exposed to very high temperatures. In this new effort, the researchers have developed a method for making a ceramic based aerogel that can be used in flexible applications and also does not break down when exposed to very high temperatures.

To create their aerogel, the researchers took a novel approach—they pushed a zirconium-silicon precursor, using a plastic syringe, into a chamber with turbulent airflow—an electrospinning approach that produced a ceramic material that resembled cotton candy. They then folded the resulting material into a zig-zag pattern and heated it to 1100° C. Heating it in such a way changed the texture of the material from a glassy state to a nanocrystal. Study of the resulting material using a spectroscope showed that their approach had resulted in the creation of a material with nanocrystalline bits embedded in an amorphous zircon matrix—a flexible aerogel made using a ceramic that was not prone to breaking down under high temperatures.

Journal Reference:
Guo, Jingran, Fu, Shubin, Deng, Yuanpeng, et al. Hypocrystalline ceramic aerogels for thermal insulation at extreme conditions [open], Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04784-0)

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upstart writes:

Yes, Boeing's Starliner spacecraft really could fly astronauts this year:

Five weeks have passed since Boeing's Starliner spacecraft returned from a largely successful test flight to the International Space Station, and the company continues to review data from the mission alongside engineers from NASA.

So far, there have been no showstoppers. In fact, sources say, the relatively clean performance of Starliner has increased the possibility that the vehicle could make its first crewed flight this year in December.

This mission, called the Crew Flight Test, will likely carry two astronauts to the space station. If successful, it would clear the way for long-duration, operational missions to the space station in 2023 and give NASA a much-coveted second means of getting astronauts into space.

Two weeks ago, NASA publicly announced that veteran astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams would serve as the prime crew for this test flight. NASA also said a short-duration mission with two astronaut test pilots is sufficient to meet all of the test objectives for the flight test. However, the agency added, this mission could be extended or shortened based on the staffing needs of the station. For example, NASA said it might even add an astronaut and extend the mission if the need arose.

upstart writes:

Road injuries are killing young people, and it's hardly slowing down:

Using the latest data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 Study, the researchers analysed deaths and Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) from transport and unintentional injuries in adolescents across 204 countries in the past three decades. They found that despite transport injury death rates falling by a third since 1990, the number of deaths attributed to road fatalities for adolescents still increased in some countries.

"We've seen a high increase in the absolute number of injury-related deaths and DALYs, specifically in low and low-middle income countries. It indicates neglect for a growing population at risk of injury," says lead author Dr Amy Peden, research fellow with the School of Population Health at UNSW Medicine & Health.

According to the research, reductions in transport injury and death rates in high-income countries have slowed in the most recent decade. They dropped just 1.7 per cent a year between 2010 and 2019 compared to the fall of 2.4 per cent a year between 1990 and 2010.

[...] "In high-income countries like Australia, there's been a real decline in progress. In the past 10 years, we've seen reductions in rates of road transport injury essentially stall, showing a lack of attention to the issue," Dr Peden says.

[...] Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to injury risk due to increasing independence and risk-taking tendencies. However, there has been little research to date that has examined injury patterns in this vulnerable age group.

Journal Reference:
The Lancet Adolescent transport and unintentional injuries: a systematic analysis using the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019,
(DOI: 10.1016/S2468-2667(22)00134-7)

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upstart writes:

Humans Hear Much Better Underwater Than Previously Thought – At Times Better Than Seals:

All mammals lived on land millions of years ago, but eventually, certain species abandoned the land and adapted to life in the sea: take seals and whales, which both can now live underwater.

The remainder of the species that persisted on land has similarly adapted to a life on land. That is why it shouldn't be a surprise that a group of experts came to the conclusion that people today hear better on land than under water in a recent study. However, the research also offers unexpected information on human hearing.

[...] "It is 26 dB lower than hypothesized in previous studies, so we must conclude that humans hear significantly better under water than previously reported by science. In fact, the threshold at 500 Hz is in line with how well animals such as cormorants and seals hear underwater," says Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard.

[...] "You should not expect to be able to jump into the sea and orient yourself perfectly using only your sense of hearing," says Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard, "Sense of hearing is not just about being able to pick up a sound. It is also about determining the direction of the sound — and this is very difficult for a person underwater."

Journal Reference:
K. Sørensen, J. Christensen-Dalsgaard, M. Wahlberg, Is human underwater hearing mediated by bone conduction?, Hearing Research, Volume 420, 2022, 108484, (DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2022.108484)

Original Submission

hubie writes:

A formidable space tourism industry may have a greater climate effect than the aviation industry and undo repair to the protective ozone layer if left unregulated:

Published today in the journal Earth's Future, researchers from UCL, the University of Cambridge and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used a 3D model to explore the impact of rocket launches and re-entry in 2019, and the impact of projected space tourism scenarios based on the recent billionaire space race.

The team found that black carbon (soot) particles emitted by rockets are almost 500 times more efficient at holding heat in the atmosphere than all other sources of soot combined (surface and aircraft) – resulting in an enhanced climate effect.

Furthermore, while the study revealed that the current loss of total ozone due to rockets is small, current growth trends around space tourism indicate potential for future depletion of the upper stratospheric ozone layer in the Arctic in spring. This is because pollutants from solid-fuel rockets and re-entry heating of returning spacecraft and debris are particularly harmful to stratospheric ozone.

Study co-author Dr Eloise Marais (UCL Geography) said: "Rocket launches are routinely compared to greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions from the aircraft industry, which we demonstrate in our work is erroneous.

Journal Reference:
Robert G. Ryan, Eloise A. Marais, Chloe J. Balhatchet, and Sebastian D. Eastham, Impact of Rocket Launch and Space Debris Air Pollutant Emissions on Stratospheric Ozone and Global Climate [open], Earth's Future, 10, 6, 2022. DOI: 10.1029/2021EF002612

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I realise that this has been an unpleasant time for many of our anonymous community members, but I can assure you that it has been necessary. I am not yet prepared to go into details but I can at least update you with our findings so far. But first we have to look at some historical data.

Anonymous Cowards (ACs) have always been - and will hopefully continue to be - welcome members of our community. There are many perfectly understandable reasons for wishing to post as AC and how you chose to live your own personal life is of no concern of this site. Equally, you are welcome to use VPNs and other security measures to protect your privacy. We take similar measures to protect all of your data so that you will not be compromised by us. These measures are effective and to the SN administration ACs appear as a single user with the user identity of #1.

We cannot treat some ACs differently from others. While we can manage to sort out your comments etc with the aid of the hashes that we produce, they change so frequently as to be useless for any purpose outside of this site. But the Administration is only concerned with what happens within this site and so this point is moot. We have no interest in the rest of the internet so IP addresses are also of no interest to us. How your comments get from wherever you are to us is irrelevant. The bottom line is that ACs can only be treated as a single account. That account is granted certain permissions or not granted those permissions and they apply to every AC interaction.

Most of our community, both logged in and AC, participate in the discussions in an reasonable manner and discuss the topic that has been outlined and any threads that resulting from it. It is true that, particularly at weekends, there is a slight increase in the number of ACs appearing but on their own they are little more than a minor irritant. There is, however, a 3rd group, consisting of ACs who sole purpose seems to be to derail any sensible discussion. Over recent years they have become more aggressive and often use personal attacks rather than challenging what is being said. Some are more obvious than others and I am sure that you can all think of examples of such people for yourself. A very small number have stated that it is their aim to prevent SoylentNews from continuing.

upstart writes:

Birds warned of food shortages by neighbor birds change physiology and behavior to prepare:

Songbirds learning from nearby birds that food supplies might be growing short respond by changing their physiology as well as their behavior, research by the Oregon State University College of Science shows.

After receiving social information from food-restricted neighbors for three days, the red crossbills in the study raised their pace of consumption, increased their gut mass and maintained the size of the muscle responsible for flight when their own eating opportunities were subsequently limited to two short feeding periods per day.

Findings of the study by OSU's Jamie Cornelius, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggest that birds can use social information about food shortages to effect an adaptive advantage for survival.

Journal Reference:
Advance social information allows red crossbills (Loxia curvirostra) to better conserve body mass and intestinal mass during food stress, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.0516)

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Identifying Toxic Content Can Be a First Step To Addressing It:

Trolls, haters, flamers and other ugly characters are, unfortunately, a fact of life across much of the internet. Their ugliness ruins social media networks and sites like Reddit and Wikipedia.

But toxic content looks different depending on the venue, and identifying online toxicity is a first step to getting rid of it.

[...] To better understand what toxicity looked like in the open-source community, the team first gathered toxic content. They used a toxicity and politeness detector developed for another platform to scan nearly 28 million posts on GitHub made between March and May 2020. The team also searched these posts for "code of conduct" — a phrase often invoked when reacting to toxic content — and looked for locked or deleted issues, which can also be a sign of toxicity.

[...] "Toxicity is different in open-source communities," Miller said. "It is more contextual, entitled, subtle and passive-aggressive."

Only about half the toxic posts the team identified contained obscenities. Others were from demanding users of the software. Some came from users who post a lot of issues on GitHub but contribute little else. Comments that started about a software's code turned personal. None of the posts helped make the open-source software or the community better.

"Worst. App. Ever. Please make it not the worst app ever. Thanks," wrote one user in a post included in the dataset.

[...] "We've been hearing from developers and community members for a really long time about the unfortunate and almost ingrained toxicity in open-source," Miller said. "Open-source communities are a little rough around the edges. They often have horrible diversity and retention, and it's important that we start to address and deal with the toxicity there to make it a more inclusive and better place."

Paper pre-print and video of the talk.

Journal Reference:
Courtney Miller, Sophie Cohen, Daniel Klug, et al., "Did You Miss My Comment or What?" Understanding Toxicity in Open Source Discussions, 44th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2022), Pittsburgh, PA, 2022.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Millennials about to overtake Boomers as the largest generation:

Australians aged 25 to 39 years are overtaking Baby Boomers as the largest share of the population, with newly released census data placing Millennials neck-and-neck with their cashed-up parents.

Millennials, born between 1981 and 1995, have increased from 20.4 per cent of the population in 2011 to 21.5 per cent last year. Boomers, people born between 1946 and 1965, have decreased from 25.4 per cent of the population to 21.5 per cent in the same period.

[...] Census results categorise anyone born before 1945 as the Interwar generation. After Baby Boomers, Generation X covers births between 1966 and 1980. Generation Z takes over from Millennials, also known as Gen Y, covering births from 1996 until 2010. Generation Alpha covers births to 2021.

[...] The generational shift is also reflected in religious affiliation in Australia. Nearly 60 per cent of Boomers report a Christian religious affiliation, compared with 30 per cent of Millennials.

More than 45 per cent of Millennials reported having no religion, compared with 30 per cent of Boomers.

How someone born in the 1960s can be considered part of the same generation as the post-WWII "baby boom" babies has always mystified me.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Internet on the go: FCC greenlights Starlink service on moving cars, boats, and planes:

If you're ready for connectivity on the move, SpaceX's Starlink satellite broadband may soon be the answer. The US Federal Communications Commission on Thursday gave the internet provider the greenlight to provide service on moving vehicles, boats, and planes.

The new authority should help SpaceX meet "the growing user demands that now require connectivity while on the move," wrote FCC International Bureau Chief Tom Sullivan in the approval, "whether driving an RV across the country, moving a freighter from Europe to a U.S. port, or while on a domestic or international flight."

The new approval specifically grants SpaceX authority to operate consumer and enterprise Ku-band Earth Stations in Motion (ESIM) in the 12 GHz band. However, the FCC granted the approval with some conditions.

First, SpaceX has to accept that there could be interference from other current and future operators in the 12 GHz band. SpaceX's authority to operate in the band is unprotected, so if other services interfere with the quality of SpaceX's service, that's simply too bad. The FCC also is requiring SpaceX to disclose to its customers that there's no expectation of interference protection.

The FCC granted SpaceX its new authority over the objections of a handful of other service providers. Satellite broadband provider Viasat, RS Access (a wireless network service backed by Michael Dell), and DISH all petitioned against it. DISH and RS Access already operate in the 12 GHz band, while Viasat is a manufacturer of Ku-band equipment, a provider of Ku-band satellite connectivity, and a Ku-band ESIM licensee.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Ukraine targeted by almost 800 cyberattacks since the war started:

Ukrainian government and private sector organizations have been the target of 796 cyberattacks since the start of the war on February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.

According to Ukraine's cybersecurity defense and security agency SSSCIP (State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection), the country's networks have been under a constant barrage of hacking attempts since the war started.

"Enemy hackers continue to attack Ukraine. The intensity of cyberattacks has not decreased since the beginning of Russia's full-scale military invasion, although their quality has been declining," SSSCIP said on Thursday.

The country's government and local authorities, as well as its defense organizations, are the key sectors that have been targeted the most during the first months of the war, in a total of 281 attacks.

The list of industry sectors heavily impacted by cyberattacks also includes the financial, telecom, infrastructure, and energy sectors.

Some Viruses Make You Smell Tastier to Mosquitoes

hubie writes:

A sneaky way of increasing a virus's odds of transmission:

Zika and dengue fever viruses alter the scent of mice and humans they infect, researchers report in the June 30 issue of Cell. The altered scent attracts mosquitoes, which bite the host, drink their infected blood, and then carry the virus to its next victim.

[...] These viruses require ongoing infections in animal hosts as well as mosquitoes in order to spread. If either of these are missing—if all the susceptible hosts clear the virus, or all the mosquitoes die—the virus disappears. For example, during the yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia in 1793, the coming of the fall frosts killed the local mosquitoes, and the outbreak ended.

In tropical climates without killing frosts, there are always mosquitoes; the virus just needs one to bite an infected host animal in order to spread. Zika and dengue viruses seem to have developed a sneaky way of increasing the odds.

[...] "The virus can manipulate the hosts' skin microbiome to attract more mosquitoes to spread faster!" says Penghua Wang, an immunologist at UConn Health and one of the study authors. The findings could explain how mosquito viruses manage to persist for such a long time.

Wang and his coauthors also tested a potential preventative. They gave mice with dengue fever a type of vitamin A derivatives, isotretinoin, known to increase the production of the skin's antimicrobial peptide. The isotretinoin-treated mice gave off less acetophenone, reducing their attractiveness to mosquitoes and potentially reducing the risk of infecting others with the virus.

Wang says the next step is to analyze more human patients with dengue and Zika to see if the skin odor-microbiome connection is generally true in real world conditions, and to see if isotretinoin reduces acetophenone production in sick humans as well as it does in sick mice.

Journal Reference:
HongZhang, YibinZhu, ZiwenLiu, et al., A volatile from the skin microbiota of flavivirus-infected hosts promotes mosquito attractiveness, Cell, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.05.016

upstart writes:

'Urgent' action needed in Europe over monkeypox spread: WHO:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for 'urgent' action to prevent the spread of monkeypox in Europe, noting that cases had tripled there over the past two weeks.

To date, more than 5,000 monkeypox cases have been reported from 51 countries worldwide, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Infections in Europe represent about 90 percent of the global total of cases, and 31 countries in the European region have now identified cases, WHO Regional Director for Europe Dr Hans Henri Kluge said on Friday.

"Today, I am intensifying my call for governments and civil society to scale up efforts ... to prevent monkeypox from establishing itself across a growing geographical area," Kluge said in a statement.

[...] Kluge also said in his statement that there are no reported deaths from the current outbreak so far.

[...] The UN agency estimates that the disease can be fatal, but smallpox vaccines are protective and some antiviral drugs are also being developed.

To date, there have been about 1,800 suspected monkeypox cases including more than 70 deaths in Africa. Vaccines have never been used to stop monkeypox outbreaks in Africa. The WHO's Africa office said this week that countries with vaccine supplies "are mainly reserving them for their own populations".

Original Submission