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upstart writes:

According to genetic tests conducted by academics at the University of Queensland, drinking a daily latte or long black does not raise the risk of pregnancy:

Genetic analysis of coffee drinking behavior by Drs. Gunn-Helen Moen, Daniel Hwang, and Caroline Brito Nunes from the University of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience revealed that limited coffee consumption during pregnancy did not increase the risk of miscarriage, stillbirth, or premature birth.

"Current World Health Organisation guidelines say pregnant women should drink less than 300mg of caffeine or two to three cups per day," Dr. Moen said.

"But that's based on observational studies where it's difficult to separate coffee drinking from other risk factors like smoking, alcohol, or poor diet. We wanted to find out if coffee alone really does increase the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, and the research shows this isn't the case."

Dr. Hwang said coffee-drinking behavior is partly due to genetics, with a specific set of genetic variants affecting how much coffee we drink.

"We showed that these genetic variants not only affect coffee consumption in the general population but also in pregnant women," he said.

[...] The researchers emphasize the study only looked at certain adverse pregnancy outcomes, and it is possible caffeine consumption could affect other important aspects of fetal development.

"For that reason, we don't recommend a high intake during pregnancy, but a low or moderate consumption of coffee," Dr. Moen said.

Journal Reference:
Brito Nunes, Caroline, Huang, Peiyuan, Wang, Geng, et al. Mendelian randomization study of maternal coffee consumption and its influence on birthweight, stillbirth, miscarriage, gestational age and pre-term birth [open], International Journal of Epidemiology, 2022. (DOI: 10.1093/ije/dyac121)

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hubie writes:

An ongoing study reveals the multiple ways people now seek information about genetic relatives:

People conceived by sperm and egg donation, as well as their parents and donors, are making use of commercial genetic DNA testing in a variety of ways little considered in earlier reports, according to the interim results of a qualitative study presented here at ESHRE's 38th annual meeting in Milan. The widespread availability of commercial DNA databanks 'is transforming how people involved in donor conception seek information about genetic relatives', said the study's first author Dr Lucy Frith, Reader in Bioethics at the University of Manchester, UK.

With the emerging availability of commercial genetic testing and the possibility of tracking family history via a saliva sample matched against a database of DNA sequences, it has been noted that the 'anonymity' of sperm and egg donors whose gametes have been used in donor conception can no longer be guaranteed.(1) Similarly, donor-conceived children whose parents have not told them of their origins could be exposed to the possibility of accidental and potentially distressing revelations. [...]

The many ways in which commercial consumer genetic testing services are now being used to gather donor information - as illustrated by this study – have huge implications. Donor-conceived people can use these services to conduct a DNA test to search for their genetic parent; recipient parents can test the child to identify the donor and any other half-siblings; and donors themselves can also take a DNA test to search for the offspring of their donations. And crucially for the implications of these possibilities, the donor (or the donor-conceived child) need not be in a database to be identified – as a close genetic relative may be in the database and thereby traceable.

These developments, said Dr Frith, have been rapid and seemingly irrevocable, even in the fast-moving world of fertility. They have also meant that the fertility sector itself is now suddenly faced with a new responsibility to ensure that both gamete recipients and donors are aware of the wide-ranging possibilities of identification and that those who are unexpectedly exposed to that risk have access to adequate support and counselling.

If you made an anonymous donation many years ago, would you want to be contacted?

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fliptop writes:

The new law goes into effect Thursday:

Posting "online insults" will be punishable by up to a year in prison time in Japan starting Thursday, when a new law passed earlier this summer will go into effect.

People convicted of online insults can also be fined up to 300,000 yen (just over $2,200). Previously, the punishment was fewer than 30 days in prison and up to 10,000 yen ($75).

The law will be reexamined in three years to determine if it's impacting freedom of expression — a concern raised by critics of the bill. Proponents said it was necessary to slow cyberbullying in the country.

The issue of online harassment has gained prominence in the past few years, with growing calls for anti-cyberbullying laws after the death of professional wrestler and reality television star Hana Kimura:

Kimura, 22, who was known for her role in the Netflix show "Terrace House," died by suicide in 2020. The news triggered grief and shock nationwide, with many pointing to online abuse she had received from social media users in the months leading up to her death.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/youtube-flags-horror-video-as-for-kids-wont-let-creator-change-rating/

Google's wonderful content moderation bots are at it again. After previously doing things like including suicide instructions in a children's video, and the whole Elsagate problem, YouTube is now flagging a horror video as "for kids." Worst of all, this is against the creator's wishes. The video was previously flagged as for ages 18 and up, and YouTube decided it was for kids and won't let the creator restore its content rating.

The video in question is from horror series Local58TV. The creator, Kris Straub, checked his account over the weekend to find that his not-for-kids content has been spotted by YouTube's content moderation AI, and automatically marked for kids.

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Original Submission

hubie writes:

Thriving in a Series of Sudden Global Chills That Killed Competitors:

Many of us know the conventional theory of how the dinosaurs died 66 million years ago: in Earth's fiery collision with a meteorite, and a following global winter as dust and debris choked the atmosphere. But there was a previous extinction, far more mysterious and less discussed: the one 202 million years ago, which killed off the big reptiles who up until then ruled the planet, and apparently cleared the way for dinosaurs to take over. What caused the so-called Triassic-Jurassic Extinction, and why did dinosaurs thrive when other creatures died?

We know that the world was generally hot and steamy during the Triassic Period, which preceded the extinction, and during the following Jurassic, which kicked off the age of dinosaurs. However, a new study turns the idea of heat-loving dinosaurs on its head: It presents the first physical evidence that Triassic dinosaur species—then a minor group largely relegated to the polar regions—regularly endured freezing conditions there. [...]

"Dinosaurs were there during the Triassic under the radar all the time," said Paul Olsen, a geologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and lead author of the study. "The key to their eventual dominance was very simple. They were fundamentally cold-adapted animals. When it got cold everywhere, they were ready, and other animals weren't."

[...] How did they do it? Evidence has been building since the 1990s that many if not all non-avian dinosaurs including tyrannosaurs had primitive feathers. If not for flight, some coverings could have used for mating display purposes, but the researchers say their main purpose was insulation. There is also good evidence that, unlike the cold-blooded reptiles, many dinosaurs possessed warm-blooded, high-metabolism systems. Both qualities would have helped dinosaurs in chilly conditions.

[...] The findings defy the conventional imagery of dinosaurs, but some prominent specialists say they are convinced. "There is a stereotype that dinosaurs always lived in lush tropical jungles, but this new research shows that the higher latitudes would have been freezing and even covered in ice during parts of the year," said Stephen Brusatte, a professor of paleontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh. "Dinosaurs living at high latitudes just so happened to already have winter coats [while] many of their Triassic competitors died out."

Journal Reference:
Paul Olsen, Jingeng Sha, Yanan Fang, et al., Arctic ice and the ecological rise of the dinosaurs [open], Sci Adv, 8, 26, 2022. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abo6342

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Good News Everyone!

Systemd Creator Lands At Microsoft

Yesterday's surprise was that Lennart Poettering quietly had left Red Hat following a decade and a half there leading PulseAudio among other projects and ultimately going on to start systemd that has fundamentally reshaped modern Linux distributions. It turns out he had joined Microsoft and continuing his work on systemd.

After yesterday's article about Lennart no longer being at Red Hat, I began receiving tips that the systemd creator had some time back quietly joined Microsoft along with various public comments on Twitter and other mediums by individuals suggesting he joined the Redmond company... At first I thought they were jokes or just snarky remarks, but after a day of following up with folks, it actually turns out not to be a joke.

The prominent open-source developer responsible for several prominent projects joined Microsoft and continuing his focus on systemd development.

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upstart writes:

Motorless sailplane for exploring Mars soars like albatross:

The huge success of the Mars helicopter Ingenuity has proven it's possible to explore other planets from the air, and researchers are working on a variety of flying craft concepts for future planetary missions. To fill in our knowledge of Mars between rovers on the surface and orbiters in space, researchers from the University of Arizona have proposed an experimental sailplane that operates without a motor and that could sail through the Martian air for days at a time.

"You have this really important, critical piece in this planetary boundary layer, like in the first few kilometers above the ground," said Alexandre Kling, a research scientist in NASA's Mars Climate Modeling Center, in a statement. "This is where all the exchanges between the surface and atmosphere happen. This is where the dust is picked up and sent into the atmosphere, where trace gases are mixed, where the modulation of large-scale winds by mountain-valley flows happen. And we just don't have very much data about it."

The idea is to fill this gap with a wind-powered sailplane that could glide through the air when there is enough wind, and also use a technique called dynamic soaring when the vertical wind isn't strong enough to keep it in the air. Similar to the way birds like albatrosses can soar on extremely long journeys, the technique takes advantage of the way higher altitudes tend to have stronger winds, allowing a craft to continue flying by changing both direction and altitude as required.

A big problem I see is that once it lands, it can't get back up into the sky.

Journal Reference:
by Adrien Bouskela, Alexandre Kling, Tristan Schuler, et al., Mars Exploration Using Sailplanes, Aerospace 2022, 9(6), 306; DOI: 10.3390/aerospace9060306

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Original Submission

takyon writes:

Shinzo Abe, Japan's former prime minister, shot and hospitalized

Japanese former prime minister Shinzo Abe was shot on Friday while campaigning in the city of Nara, a government spokesman said, with public broadcaster NHK saying he appeared to have been shot from behind by a man with a shotgun.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said he did not know Abe's condition. Kyodo news agency and NHK said Abe, 67, appeared to be in a state of cardiac arrest when taken to hospital.

See also: Former Japan PM Abe Unconscious After Shooting; Man in Custody
Live Updates: Shinzo Abe Is Unconscious After Apparently Being Shot

NHK, citing the police, said a suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, 42, had been taken into custody. He was a Nara resident, the report said. Images shared on social media showed a man being tackled after the shooting.

Boris Johnson Agrees to Resign as Prime Minister

Boris Johnson said on Thursday that he would step down as Britain's prime minister, after a wholesale rebellion of his cabinet, a wave of government resignations and a devastating loss of party support prompted by his handling of the the latest scandal that has engulfed his leadership.

Mr. Johnson said he would stay on in his post until the Conservative Party chooses a new leader, which could take several months. He said he expected the timetable for his departure and the selection of a successor to be decided on Monday by a committee of senior Conservative lawmakers.

"It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader," Mr. Johnson said in remarks outside Downing Street. "The process of choosing that new leader should begin now."

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/killing-people-technology-made-car-120013196.html

In the late 1980s, the U.S. Army turned to outside experts to study how pilots of Apache attack helicopters were responding to the torrent of information streaming into the cockpit on digital screens and analog displays. The verdict: not well.

The cognitive overload caused by all that information was degrading performance and raising the risk of crashes, the researchers determined. Pilots were forced to do too many things at once, with too many bells and whistles demanding their attention. Over the next decade, the Army overhauled its Apache fleet, redesigning cockpits to help operators maintain focus.

Cognitive psychologist David Strayer was among those called in to help the Army with its Apache problem. Since then, he has watched as civilian cars and trucks have filled up to an even greater extent with the same sorts of digital interfaces that trained pilots with honed reflexes found so overwhelming — touch screens, interactive maps, nested menus, not to mention ubiquitous smartphones. In his lab at the University of Utah, he's been documenting the deadly consequences.

[...] When companies do talk about distracted driving, they tend to frame it as a problem with cellphones. Their solution: Integrate the same functionality and more into dashboard interfaces and voice-recognition systems.

upstart writes:

Found: The 'holy grail of catalysis'—turning methane into methanol under ambient conditions using light:

An international team of researchers, led by scientists at the University of Manchester, has developed a fast and economical method of converting methane, or natural gas, into liquid methanol at ambient temperature and pressure. The method takes place under continuous flow over a photo-catalytic material using visible light to drive the conversion.

[...] Industry has long sought an economical and efficient way to convert methane into methanol, a highly marketable and versatile feedstock used to make a variety of consumer and industrial products. This would not only help reduce methane emissions, but it would also provide an economic incentive to do so.

Methanol is a more versatile carbon source than methane and is a readily transportable liquid. It can be used to make thousands of products such as solvents, antifreeze and acrylic plastics; synthetic fabrics and fibers; adhesives, paint and plywood; and chemical agents used in pharmaceuticals and agrichemicals. The conversion of methane into a high-value fuel such as methanol is also becoming more attractive as petroleum reserves dwindle.

[...] By eliminating the need for high temperatures or pressures, and using the energy from sunlight to drive the photo-oxidation process, the new conversion method could substantially lower equipment and operating costs. The higher speed of the process and its ability to convert methane to methanol with no undesirable byproducts will facilitate the development of in-line processing that minimizes costs.

Explanatory video

Journal Reference:
An, Bing, Li, Zhe, Wang, Zi, et al. Direct photo-oxidation of methane to methanol over a mono-iron hydroxyl site, Nature Materials, 2022. (DOI: 10.1038/s41563-022-01279-1)

[Ed's Comment: AC Friendly withdrawn. You can blame you-know-who for the spamming]

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Over at ACM.org, Doug Meil posits that programming languages are often designed for certain tasks or workloads in mind, and in that sense most languages differ less in what they make possible, and more in terms of what they make easy:

I had the opportunity to visit the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, a few years ago. It's a terrific museum, and among the many exhibits is a wall-size graph of the evolution of programming languages. This graph is so big that anyone who has ever written "Hello World" in anything has the urge to stick their nose against the wall and search section by section to try find their favorite languages. I certainly did. The next instinct is to trace the "influenced" edges of the graph with their index finger backwards in time. Or forwards, depending on how old the languages happen to be.

[...] There is so much that can be taken for granted in computing today. Back in the early days everything was expensive and limited: storage, memory, and processing power. People had to walk uphill and against the wind, both ways, just to get to the computer lab, and then stay up all night to get computer time. One thing that was easier during that time was that the programming language namespace was greenfield, and initial ones from the 1950's and 1960's had the luxury of being named precisely for the thing they did: FORTRAN (Formula Translator), COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language), BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), ALGOL (Algorithmic Language), LISP (List Processor). Most people probably haven't heard of SNOBOL (String Oriented and Symbolic Language, 1962), but one doesn't need many guesses to determine what it was trying to do. Had object-oriented programming concepts been more fully understood during that time, it's possible we would be coding in something like "OBJOL" —an unambiguously named object-oriented language, at least by naming patterns of the era.

It's worth noting and admiring the audacity of PL/I (1964), which was aiming to be that "one good programming language." The name says it all: Programming Language 1. There should be no need for 2, 3, or 4. Though PL/I's plans of becoming the Highlander of computer programming didn't play out like the designers intended, they were still pulling on a key thread in software: why so many languages? That question was already being asked as far back as the early 1960's.

The author goes on to reason that new languages are mostly created for control and fortune, citing Microsoft's C# as an example of their answer to Java for a middleware language they could control.

Related:
Non-Programmers are Building More of the World's Software
Twist: MIT's New Programming Language for Quantum Computing
10 Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Decision will be binding on many companies and change the way they protect your data:

In the not-too-distant future—as little as a decade, perhaps, nobody knows exactly how long—the cryptography protecting your bank transactions, chat messages, and medical records from prying eyes is going to break spectacularly with the advent of quantum computing. On Tuesday, a US government agency named four replacement encryption schemes to head off this cryptopocalypse.

Some of the most widely used public-key encryption systems—including those using the RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman algorithms—rely on mathematics to protect sensitive data. [...]

Researchers have known for decades these algorithms are vulnerable and have been cautioning the world to prepare for the day when all data that has been encrypted using them can be unscrambled. Chief among the proponents is the US Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is leading a drive for post-quantum cryptography (PQC).

On Tuesday, NIST said it selected four candidate PQC algorithms to replace those that are expected to be felled by quantum computing. They are: CRYSTALS-Kyber, CRYSTALS-Dilithium, FALCON, and SPHINCS+.

[...] While no one knows exactly when quantum computers will be available, there is considerable urgency in moving to PQC as soon as possible. Many researchers say it's likely that criminals and nation-state spies are recording massive amounts of encrypted communications and stockpiling them for the day they can be decrypted.

See also: NIST announcement, particularly if you have any digital signature algorithms you want to enter for consideration.

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Original Submission

upstart writes:

NASA Restores Contact With CAPSTONE Spacecraft – Prepares for Trajectory Correction Maneuver:

The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, is a CubeSat that will fly a unique orbit around the Moon intended for NASA's future Artemis lunar outpost Gateway. Its six-month mission will help launch a new era of deep space exploration. Credit: NASA Ames Research Center

Mission crews for NASA's Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) have re-established contact with the spacecraft via NASA's Deep Space Network after experiencing communications problems.

Data downloaded from CAPSTONE indicate that the spacecraft is in good health and that it operated safely on its own when it was not in communication with Earth. Teams are preparing to perform CAPSTONE's first trajectory adjustment maneuver as early as 11:30 a.m. EDT (8:30 a.m. PDT) on July 7. It will more accurately target CAPSTONE's transfer orbit to the Moon. CAPSTONE is still on schedule to arrive in lunar orbit on November 13, as originally planned.

See Yesterday's story: NASA Loses Contact With Just-Launched Spacecraft Headed Toward Moon

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Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Microsoft security researchers have discovered new variants of the one-year-old Hive ransomware that was written in the Go programming language but has been re-written in Rust:

Hive emerged in June 2021 and was spotlighted by the FBI in an alert two months later. In November, European electronics retail giant MediaMarkt also got stung by Hive. It's another ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) double-extortion gang that has recently been targeting vulnerable Microsoft Exchange Servers, vulnerable RDP servers, compromised VPN credentials, and phishing to deploy their ransomware and steal leak-worthy information.

Hive's Rust migration has been underway for a few months as it adopted lessons from BlackCat ransomware, which is also written in Rust. Via BleepingComputer, Group-IB researchers in March found that Hive had converted its Linux encryptor (for targeting VMware ESXi servers) to Rust to make it harder for security researchers to spy on its ransom talks with victims.

Microsoft's analysis indicates that Hive's Rust rewrite is much more comprehensive, but backs up the importance of the change to its encryption methods noted in March.

[...] "Instead of embedding an encrypted key in each file that it encrypts, it generates two sets of keys in memory, uses them to encrypt files, and then encrypts and writes the sets to the root of the drive it encrypts, both with .key extension," Microsoft notes.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A gentler, more precise laser cutting technique:

Laser cutting techniques are usually powered by high energy beams, so hot that they melt most materials. Now scientists from McGill University have developed a gentler, more precise technique using low-power visible light.

The new process called 'cold photo-carving' uses a fraction of the energy required in traditional laser cutting techniques. "We engineered crystal building blocks that can be cut by low-power light with amazing precision. Unlike traditional heat cutting methods, sculpting down to a resolution of nanometers is possible with our approach because light can be focused more precisely than heat can," says Professor Tomislav Friščić of the Department of Chemistry.

According to the researchers, the new technique could also be used to engrave complex patterns into surfaces. "Imagine taking the famous geoglyphs in the Nazca Desert in Peru and engraving that pattern at a million-times the reduced size," say Professor Friščić. The researchers hope that the new approach could one day be developed to create new materials like metals or ceramics that are easily shaped or cut using low-power light and are now looking at potential applications in solar cell materials.

Journal Reference:
Borchers, T. H., Topić, F., Christopherson, J.-C., et al. Cold photo-carving of halogen-bonded co-crystals of a dye and a volatile co-former using visible light, Nature Chemistry (DOI: 10.1038/s41557-022-00909-0)

Original Submission