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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The loss of the male sex chromosome as many men age causes the heart muscle to scar and can lead to deadly heart failure, new research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine shows. The finding may help explain why men die, on average, several years younger than women.

UVA researcher Kenneth Walsh, PhD, says the new discovery suggests that men who suffer Y chromosome loss -- estimated to include 40% of 70-year-olds -- may particularly benefit from an existing drug that targets dangerous tissue scarring. The drug, he suspects, may help counteract the harmful effects of the chromosome loss -- effects that may manifest not just in the heart but in other parts of the body as well.

[...] "Particularly past age 60, men die more rapidly than women. It's as if they biologically age more quickly," said Walsh, the director of UVA's Hematovascular Biology Center. "There are more than 160 million males in the United States alone. The years of life lost due to the survival disadvantage of maleness is staggering. This new research provides clues as to why men have shorter lifespans than women."

While women have two X chromosomes, men have an X and a Y. But many men begin to lose their Y chromosome in a fraction of their cells as they age. This appears to be particularly true for smokers. The loss occurs predominantly in cells that undergo rapid turnover, such as blood cells. [...]

upstart writes:

San Francisco reaches $58m opioid settlement with Teva, Allergan:

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and AbbVie's Allergan unit on Tuesday reached a $58m settlement with the United States city of San Francisco just before completion of a trial over claims that they fuelled an opioid epidemic in the city.

Under the deal announced by City Attorney of San Francisco David Chiu, Israel-based Teva will pay $25m in cash and contribute a $20m supply of the overdose-reversal drug Narcan. AbbVie will pay $13m.

"This will bring significant resources to help with education, prevention and treatment, and the addition of tens of millions of dollars worth of overdose reversal medication will save lives in the Bay Area," said Paul Geller, a lawyer who represented the city in negotiating the settlement.

Teva's settlement also resolves the city's claims against drug distributor Anda Inc, which is owned by Teva.

San Francisco will receive $54m, while $4m will go toward attorneys' fees.

[...] San Francisco's lawsuit, filed in 2018, initially included claims against drugmakers Purdue Pharma LP, Johnson & Johnson and Endo International Plc, and the three largest US drug distributors – McKesson Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and AmerisourceBergen Corp.

The city settled with those defendants ahead of trial. It signed onto a $26bn nationwide settlement with Johnson & Johnson and the drug distributors, and agreed to support Purdue Pharma's bankruptcy plan. Teva has been attempting to reach a nationwide settlement of its opioid liability.

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hubie writes:

Traditional advertising is making a comeback

Recent studies show that marketers are increasingly turning from online advertising to traditional media such as TV, in part to exploit its high reach. In February 2022, marketers predicted that traditional advertising spending would increase by 2.9%.

However, effective TV advertising requires exposure, which is jeopardized when viewers deliberately avoid ads. For instance, when viewers resort to changing the channel (i.e., zapping) during ad breaks, advertisers lose the ability to communicate the brand message, leading to wasted investment. Zapping is also a problem for broadcasters because it diminishes the attractiveness of the channel for advertisers.

[...] Becker says that "Our results show that the content of ads does indeed influence consumers' zapping behavior. While a high level of creativity in the ads reduces zapping, highly informational content, strong brand presence, and early brand timing increase zapping. Thus, to discourage zapping behavior, managers should invest in creativity and refrain from too much information and branding cues. Furthermore, the brand should be placed more toward the end of the ad."

The researchers also conclude that the effects of advertising content on zapping vary significantly with category characteristics. As Scholdra explains, "We find, for example, that informativeness is more detrimental in terms of zapping for goods where consumers can only judge quality after consumption, or experiential goods like restaurants, than for goods where consumers can judge quality before consumption, or search goods like electronics." The effects of other content factors, are category dependent as well, thereby underscoring the need for managers to consider category characteristics when selecting advertising content.

[...] Results of the second study indicate that content drives zapping through irritation, but not through enjoyment. "For advertisers, it is more important to avoid psychological reactions reflecting irritation, such as annoyance or offense, than to elicit favorable reactions reflecting enjoyment, such as entertainment, or interest" says Berkmann. Informativeness, brand presence, and brand timing drive zapping by triggering irritation and creativity mitigates zapping by reducing it.

Journal Reference:
Maren Becker, Thomas P. Scholdra, Manuel Berkmann, The Effect of Content on Zapping in TV Advertising, J Marketing, 2022. DOI: 10.1177/00222429221105818

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canopic jug writes:

The MIT Technology Review writes in a long form article about how DARPA has rediscovered Free and Open Source Software, or at least the latter, and how it is now found everywhere across the board. As far as the Internet and the World Wide Web goes, its ubiquity has been a given since they were founded on it, but nowadays even at least 70% of closed source, proprietary products also contain lots of it. DARPA is worried about the kernel Linux in particular and the vetting process for adding code to the project specifically.

Now DARPA, the US military's research arm, wants to understand the collision of code and community that makes these open-source projects work, in order to better understand the risks they face. The goal is to be able to effectively recognize malicious actors and prevent them from disrupting or corrupting crucially important open-source code before it's too late.

DARPA's "SocialCyber" program is an 18-month-long, multimillion-dollar project that will combine sociology with recent technological advances in artificial intelligence to map, understand, and protect these massive open-source communities and the code they create. It's different from most previous research because it combines automated analysis of both the code and the social dimensions of open-source software.

"The open-source ecosystem is one of the grandest enterprises in human history," says Sergey Bratus, the DARPA program manager behind the project.

"It's now grown from enthusiasts to a global endeavor forming the basis of global infrastructure, of the internet itself, of critical industries and mission-critical systems pretty much everywhere," he says. "The systems that run our industry, power grids, shipping, transportation."

Recently, software appears to have been occupying a lot of attention over in Washington, DC. Unfortunately occasional lines in mainstream articles indicate that it is M$ and M$ lobbyists are steering the policy discussion there. It appears that they are spending an enormous amount of time in direct contact with politicians and policy makers, all the while log4j is still getting milked by them as a distraction from all the actively exploited vulnerabilities in their own products.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Organ transplant recipients take life-long immunosuppressive drugs to prevent their bodies from mounting an immune response against the donated organ, yet a substantial number of them still reject the organs. A new study by researchers from the University of Chicago shows that transplant recipients also mount an immune response against commensal bacteria in the organ graft, adding to the immune response against the genetic makeup of the tissue and reducing the effectiveness of immunosuppressive drugs.

The study, published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, also shows that this anti-microbial immune response can be triggered by immune cell memory of previous encounters with bacteria, further complicating the body's ability to accept a lifesaving new organ.

"Before, we thought the reason why transplanted organs in humans are less easily accepted than in sheltered laboratory animals is that humans can have immune memory responses that cross-react on the cells of the organ, and memory responses are more difficult to suppress with drugs than naïve responses," said Maria-Luisa Alegre, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at UChicago and senior author of the study. "Now, we see that it's not only memory cells that recognize the organ itself that are the problem, but also memory responses that recognize bacteria in the organ."

upstart writes:

DNA from ancient population in Southern China suggests Native Americans' East Asian roots:

For the first time, researchers successfully sequenced the genome of ancient human fossils from the Late Pleistocene in southern China. The data, published July 14 in the journal Current Biology, suggests that the mysterious hominin belonged to an extinct maternal branch of modern humans that might have contributed to the origin of Native Americans.

"Ancient DNA technique is a really powerful tool," Su says. "It tells us quite definitively that the Red Deer Cave people were modern humans instead of an archaic species, such as Neanderthals or Denisovans, despite their unusual morphological features," he says.

The researchers compared the genome of these fossils to that of people from around the world. They found that the bones belonged to an individual that was linked deeply to the East Asian ancestry of Native Americans. Combined with previous research data, this finding led the team to propose that some of the southern East Asia people had traveled north along the coastline of present-day eastern China through Japan and reached Siberia tens of thousands of years ago. They then crossed the Bering Strait between the continents of Asia and North America and became the first people to arrive in the New World.

[...] "Such data will not only help us paint a more complete picture of how our ancestors migrate but also contain important information about how humans change their physical appearance by adapting to local environments over time, such as the variations in skin color in response to changes in sunlight exposure," Su says.

Journal Reference:
Xiaoming Zhang, Xueping Ji, Chunmei Li, Tingyu Yang, et al., A Late Pleistocene human genome from Southwest China [open], Current Biology, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.06.016

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The liquid metal batteries invented by Donald Sadoway consist of three liquid layers of different densities, which naturally separate in the same way as oil and vinegar do in a salad dressing. The middle layer of molten liquid salt is surrounded by the top and bottom layers made from molten metals.

For his work on liquid metal batteries that could enable the long-term storage of renewable energy, MIT Professor Donald Sadoway has won the 2022 European Inventor Award, in the category for Non-European Patent Office Countries.

“By enabling the large-scale storage of renewable energy, Donald Sadoway’s invention is a huge step towards the deployment of carbon-free electricity generation,” says António Campinos, President of the European Patent Office. “He has spent his career studying electrochemistry and has transformed this expertise into an invention that represents a huge step forward in the transition to green energy.”

[...] Sadoway’s liquid metal batteries consist of three liquid layers of different densities, which naturally separate in the same way as oil and vinegar do in a salad dressing. The top and bottom layers are made from molten metals, with a middle layer of molten liquid salt.

To keep the metals liquid, the batteries need to operate at extremely high temperatures, so Sadoway designed a system that is self-heating and insulated, requiring no external heating or cooling. They have a lifespan of more than 20 years, can maintain 99 percent of their capacity over 5,000 charging cycles, and have no combustible materials, meaning there is no fire risk.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

The greater the surprise, the greater the appreciation, study says:

People consistently underestimate how much others in their social circle might appreciate an unexpected phone call, text or email just to say hello, and the more surprising the connection, the greater the appreciation, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"People are fundamentally social beings and enjoy connecting with others," said lead author Peggy Liu, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh. "There is much research showing that maintaining social connections is good for our mental and physical health. However, despite the importance and enjoyment of social connection, our research suggests that people significantly underestimate how much others will appreciate being reached out to."

Across all experiments, those who initiated the communication significantly underestimated the extent to which recipients would appreciate the act of reaching out. [...] "We found that people receiving the communication placed greater focus than those initiating the communication on the surprise element, and this heightened focus on surprise was associated with higher appreciation," said Liu. [...]

Many people have lost touch with others in their lives, whether they're friends from high school or college or co-workers they used to see at the water cooler before work went remote, according to Liu. Initiating social contact after a prolonged period of disconnect can feel daunting because people worry about how such a gesture might be received. These findings suggest that their hesitations may be unnecessary, as others are likely to appreciate being reached out to more than people think.

"I sometimes pause before reaching out to people from my pre-pandemic social circle for a variety of reasons. When that happens, I think about these research findings and remind myself that other people may also want to reach out to me and hesitate for the same reasons," Liu said. "I then tell myself that I would appreciate it so much if they reached out to me and that there is no reason to think they would not similarly appreciate my reaching out to them."

Journal Reference:
Peggy Liu, SoYon Rim, Lauren Min, and Kate Min, The Surprise of Reaching Out: Appreciated More than We Think [pdf], J Pers Soc Psychol, 2022. DOI: 10.1037/pspi0000402

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Two-dimensional ionic liquids to effectively capture carbon dioxide:

In the context of global concerns about climate change and greenhouse gas control, a new technology for CO2 capture, utilization, and storage has attracted broad attention.

Ionic liquids, composed of only cations and anions, are considered a new type of CO2 adsorbent due to their ultralow vapor pressure and environmentally friendly features.

[...] The researchers found that ionic liquids can form a two-dimensional-monolayer, ordered, checkerboard structure when supported by a metal surface. The two-dimensional ionic liquids exhibited anomalous stepwise melting processes, involving localized-rotated, out-of-plane-flipped, and fully disordered states, rather than the single melting point for the bulk ionic liquids.

"Anions and cations are arranged together in a checkerboard manner, thus forming a two-dimensional, ordered Z-bond network. This makes it more likely for the multi-step melting behaviors such as ionic rotation and flip," said Prof. He.

The massive molecular dynamics simulation indicates that the two-dimensional ionic liquids show excellent performance for CO2 capture due to the unsaturated and exposed Z-bonds. The mole fraction of CO2 adsorbed by two-dimensional [Mmim] PF6 was improved by at least one order of magnitude compared with the corresponding bulk ionic liquids.

[...] This two-dimensional editing technique for ionic liquids is expected to provide a new method for the precise control and functional design of liquids, which is promising for various chemical engineering applications involving solvents, electrolytes, and liquid catalysts.

Question for our resident chemistry experts: can you make consumer devices that contain 2-D liquid surfaces?

Journal Reference:
Hongyan He, Two dimensional ionic liquids with anomalous stepwise melting process and ultrahigh CO2 adsorption capacity, Cell Reports Physical Science (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2022.100979

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

This story is part of Crossing the Broadband Divide, CNET's coverage of how the country is working toward making broadband access universal.

The US Federal Communications Commission wants to make it easier for tribal communities to get access to wireless spectrum to provide broadband and mobile service in areas where traditional broadband and wireless providers don't offer it. 

On Thursday, the agency voted unanimously to establish the Enhanced Competition Incentive Program, or ECIP, which will offer incentives to large carriers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile to make their unused wireless spectrum available to small carriers and tribal groups so they can establish service in unserved areas. The hope is that this program, along with other FCC programs like the Universal Service Fund, as well as newer efforts like the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment Program and Affordable Connectivity Program, will help close the digital divide.

[...] Building networks in rural America is incredibly expensive, and in some places it's nearly impossible. The terrain can be a problem, with mountain ranges or inclement weather making deployment difficult and more costly. But the bigger barrier in rural and tribal regions is more often due to low population density. Broadband providers simply won't offer service if they can't get enough customers to pay for it. 

upstart writes:

Ex-CIA Employee Convicted of Leaking 'Vault 7' Secrets to Wikileaks:

The leak, among the largest ever to affect the CIA, showed the agency could hack smart TVs, Skype accounts, and lots of common web applications.

A former Central Intelligence Agency computer engineer has been convicted of leaking a large tranche of classified material that revealed some of the agency's most powerful hacking techniques. Joshua Schulte, 33, worked for an elite software team within the CIA when he stole a cache of documents in 2016 and shared them with Wikileaks, which published the material in 2017. It was one of the worst breaches in the CIA's history.

Schulte was found guilty of nine charges, including illegally gathering and distributing national defense information, by a federal jury in Manhattan on Wednesday. The convictions could net him up to 80 years in prison.

[...] "Vault 7" consisted of some 9,000 pages and shed light on a host of creepy hacking techniques used by the agency. The leak demonstrated that the CIA had developed the capability to hack into smart TVs and turn them into a surveillance devices (very 1984), that it had enlisted a previously unknown army of hackers, and that those keyboard warriors work around the clock to penetrate all sorts of smart phones, operating systems, popular communication services like Skype, and even common anti-virus software. According to Wikileaks, the CIA also "hoarded" zero-day vulnerabilities—unknown bugs that could be exploited to gain access to technical systems with extreme speed. The government says that these tactics are used to break into the networks of terrorists and foreign adversaries.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Airbus A380 Completes Flight Powered By Cooking Oil:

Fossil fuels are making news for all the wrong reasons of late. Whether it's their contribution to global climate change or the fact that the price and supply hinges on violent geopolitics, there are more reasons than ever to shift to cleaner energy sources.

In the world of aviation, that means finding a cleaner source of fuel. A test earlier this year took place in pursuit of that very goal, where an Airbus A380 airliner was flown solely on fuel derived from cooking oil.

[...] The fuel supplied for the test came from French company TotalEnergies. The specific type of SAF fuel used is known as HEFA-SPK, or Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids – Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene. It's made by chemical treatment of waste cooking oils and fats, which processes it into a usable substitute for kerosene-type jet fuels.

They're not the only company working in this space, either. Where Airbus elected to run just one engine on SAF, others are going further. Swedish SAF supplier Neste recently completed a test in partnership with ATR and Braathens Regional Airlines. The successful test ran both engines of a ATR 72-600 small regional airliner on SAF. It builds on several prior tests on single engines, and the companies hope to get certified for 100% SAF use by 2025.

There needs to be more sustainable fuel options, but do you think the economics of this could ever work out, or is this just some startup company PR and perhaps a bit of Airbus greenwashing thrown in?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Influencers are supposed to disclose their ads, but nothing happens when they don't:

In spring 2020, several large, family-friendly TikTok accounts posted videos where they pulled pranks on their friends and family members. They all used toys from Basic Fun!'s Joker Prank Shop line, and all of the videos prominently featured them buying the merchandise at their local Walmart.

The posts sure seemed like ads, but few of them indicated that their creators were paid to promote the toys to an especially vulnerable audience: kids. Many of the creators themselves were kids.

But they were ads, according to Influencer Marketing Factory, an agency that took credit for the campaign on its website and its own TikTok account. [...]

Very few parties seem interested in knowing or following the rules. So much so that a marketing agency seems perfectly comfortable displaying what appear to be violations of them that it helped to create. [...]

This problem isn't unique to TikTok. Instagram has been dealing with it for years, giving brands plenty of time to figure out influencer advertising strategies before TikTok came along. By the time the platform was just a year old, it was already awash in sponsored content — some labeled, some not.

owl writes:

https://hackaday.com/2022/07/11/burn-pictures-on-a-cd-r-no-special-drive-needed/

When we routinely carry devices holding tens or hundreds of gigabytes of data, it's sometimes a shock to remember that there was once a time when 650 MB on a CD was a very big deal indeed. These now archaic storage media came first as silver pre-recorded CD-ROMs, then later as recordable CD-Rs. Most people eventually owned CD writer drives, and some fancy ones came with the feature of etching pictures in the unused portions of the disc.

Haven't got a fancy drive and desire an etched CD-R? No worries, [arduinocelentano] has a solution, in software which writes a disk image for a standard CD writer whose data makes the visible image on the disc.

[Ed: I didn't quite grasp what this was about until clicking through to the project page. Very cool way to be artistic, assuming you still have a CD drive and CD-R disks available. --hubie]

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Former bosses of Fukushima operator ordered to pay $97 billion damages:

A Tokyo court Wednesday ordered former executives from the operator of the devastated Fukushima nuclear plant to pay 13.32 trillion yen ($97 billion) for failing to prevent the disaster, plaintiffs said.

Four ex-bosses from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) were ordered to pay the damages in a suit brought by shareholders over the nuclear disaster triggered by a massive tsunami in 2011.

Plaintiffs emerged from the Tokyo court holding banners reading "shareholders win" and "responsibility recognised".

Lawyers for the plaintiffs hailed the ruling, and said they believed it to be the largest amount of compensation ever awarded in a civil lawsuit in Japan.

"Nuclear power plants can cause irreparable damage to human lives and the environment," the plaintiffs said in a separate statement after the ruling.

"Executives for firms that operate such nuclear plants bear enormous responsibility, which cannot compare with that of other companies."

The shareholders argued that the disaster could have been prevented if TEPCO bosses had listened to research and carried out preventative measures like placing an emergency power source on higher ground.

Original Submission