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liar writes:

Two decades of Alzheimer's research may be based on deliberate fraud that has cost millions of lives

Over the last two decades, Alzheimer's drugs have been notable mostly for having a 99% failure rate in human trials. It's not unusual for drugs that are effective in vitro and in animal models to turn out to be less than successful when used in humans, but Alzheimer's has a record that makes the batting average in other areas look like Hall of Fame material.

And now we have a good idea of why. Because it looks like the original paper that established the amyloid plaque model as the foundation of Alzheimer's research over the last 16 years might not just be wrong, but a deliberate fraud.

The suspicion that something was more than a little wrong with the model that is getting almost all Alzheimer's research funding ($1.6 billion in the last year alone) began with a fight over the drug Simufilam. The drug was being pushed into trials by its manufacturer, Cassava Sciences, but a group of scientists who reviewed the drug maker's claims about Simufilam believed that it was exaggerating the potential [...] and hired an investigator to provide some support for this position.

[...] In 2006, Nature published a paper titled "A specific amyloid-β protein assembly in the brain impairs memory." Using a series of studies in mice, the paper concluded that "memory deficits in middle-aged mice" were directed caused by accumulations of a soluble substance called "Aβ*56." [...]

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Meetings don't work. Or, at least, the majority of staff meetings are time-wasting, productivity-killing, creativity-stifling products of wishful or delusional thinking. Before the pandemic and its mass movement to remote and hybrid work, meetings were already problematic.

We've all seen how meetings fail.

Most meetings in the office result from a policy to hold regular — often weekly — staff "update" meetings. Or they're the result of procrastination. We can't make a decision right now, so let's schedule a meeting. Or some new initiative, problem, or idea inspires action, and scheduling a meeting feels like action.

Once the meeting begins, eyes glaze, and some meeting participants start mentally tuning out the conversation while pretending to pay attention. (Others don't even pretend; it's become increasingly normal or acceptable to stay glued to a laptop or phone screen during meetings.

Meetings are often dominated by attention-seekers, ladder climbers, extroverts, and long-winded speech-makers. In contrast, others mostly remain silent with little to no correlation between saying something and having something to say. Meetings suppress creative thought. Most end in a fog of vagueness, without clear objectives, deadlines, and assignments.

And employees hate them.

[...] Making meeting matters worse, flex work schedules and the globalization of workforces mean that getting everybody into the same meeting simultaneously has become impractical.

[...] So it's time to cancel your meetings, clear your calendar and embrace the available new technology. And you definitely don't need to set up a meeting to decide to do so.

Is there anybody in our community who thinks that the meetings they have to attend are productive and worthwhile? In what way do they differ from those described here. What is your favourite ploy when you have to attend and want to appear interested without actually being so? [JR]

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hubie writes:

Sleep quality and circadian rhythms in night shift workers was found to be poorer than in those who worked day shifts:

Scientists at the University of Warwick, jointly with those at Université Paris-Saclay, Inserm and Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (France), have challenged the widespread belief that shift workers adjust to the night shift, using data drawn from wearable tech.

By monitoring groups of French hospital workers working day or night shifts during their working and free time, the researchers have not only shown that night work significantly disrupts both their sleep quality and their circadian rhythms, but also that workers can experience such disruption even after years of night shift work.

Their findings, reported in a study in the Lancet group journal eBioMedicine, are the most detailed analysis of the sleep and circadian rhythm profiles of shift workers yet attempted, and the first to also monitor body temperature. This key circadian rhythm is driven by the brain pacemaker clock, and coordinates the peripheral clocks in all organs.

[...] Analysis by the University of Warwick statisticians of interruptions to sleep and rhythmic variations in core body temperature showed that night-shift workers had less than half the median regularity and quality of sleep of their day-shift colleagues. 48% of the night-shift workers had a disrupted circadian temperature rhythm.

[...] Importantly, even workers who had been on night shifts for many years still showed these negative effects on circadian and sleep health. The more years they had been on night work, the more severe the circadian disruption, contradicting widespread assumptions about adaptation to night work.

[...] Professor Bärbel Finkenstädt from the University of Warwick Department of Statistics said: "There's still an assumption that if you do night work, you adjust at some stage. But you don't. We saw that most workers compensate in terms of quantity of sleep, but not in terms of quality during the work time."

Journal Reference:
Yiyuan Zhang, Emilie Cordina-Duverger, Sandra Komarzynski, et al., Digital circadian and sleep health in individual hospital shift workers: A cross sectional telemonitoring study [open], eBioMedicine, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2022.104121

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upstart writes:

Strange New Phase of Matter Created in Quantum Computer Acts Like It Has Two Time Dimensions:

By shining a laser pulse sequence inspired by the Fibonacci numbers at atoms inside a quantum computer, physicists have created a remarkable, never-before-seen phase of matter. The phase has the benefits of two time dimensions despite there still being only one singular flow of time, the physicists report July 20 in Nature.

This mind-bending property offers a sought-after benefit: Information stored in the phase is far more protected against errors than with alternative setups currently used in quantum computers. As a result, the information can exist without getting garbled for much longer, an important milestone for making quantum computing viable, says study lead author Philipp Dumitrescu.

The approach's use of an "extra" time dimension "is a completely different way of thinking about phases of matter," says Dumitrescu, who worked on the project as a research fellow at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Quantum Physics in New York City. "I've been working on these theory ideas for over five years, and seeing them come actually to be realized in experiments is exciting."

[...] The workhorses of the team's quantum computer are 10 atomic ions of an element called ytterbium. Each ion is individually held and controlled by electric fields produced by an ion trap, and can be manipulated or measured using laser pulses.

Each of those atomic ions serves as what scientists dub a quantum bit, or 'qubit.' Whereas traditional computers quantify information in bits (each representing a 0 or a 1), the qubits used by quantum computers leverage the strangeness of quantum mechanics to store even more information. Just as Schrödinger's cat is both dead and alive in its box, a qubit can be a 0, a 1 or a mashup — or 'superposition' — of both. That extra information density and the way qubits interact with one another promise to allow quantum computers to tackle computational problems far beyond the reach of conventional computers.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged a former Coinbase manager and two co-conspirators with wire fraud conspiracy and scheme to commit insider trading in cryptocurrency assets.

This is the first case of its kind in litigation history and a signal that those performing cryptocurrency and NFT fraud will be targeted by law enforcement.

Coinbase is an American cryptocurrency exchange platform with almost 90 million registered users and a revenue of $7.84 billion (2021).

Defendant Ishan Wahi, who worked as a product manager for the company, is accused of abusing his position and insider knowledge to make cryptocurrency investments that were almost guaranteed to rise in price.

“Although the allegations in this case relate to transactions made in a crypto exchange – rather than a more traditional financial market – they still constitute insider trading,” commented FBI’s Assistant Director, Michael J. Driscoll.

[...] Coinbase periodically adds new crypto assets on its platform to provide its users with fresh investment opportunities.

The value of these coins and tokens typically increases when a large platform like Coinbase makes them available for purchase, so those investing in them before the event are set to make a profit.

Ishan Wahi knew when Coinbase was planning to add new cryptocurrency assets before the company announced it publicly, so he coordinated with his co-conspirators to purchase large amounts in advance.

[...] “Our message with these charges is clear: fraud is fraud is fraud, whether it occurs on the blockchain or on Wall Street.  And the Southern District of New York will continue to be relentless in bringing fraudsters to justice, wherever we may find them,” warned U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.

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upstart writes:

Even young babies are aware of the basic physics of everyday objects:

Inspired by research into how infants learn, computer scientists have created a program that can pick up simple physical rules about the behaviour of objects — and express surprise when they seem to violate those rules. The results were published on 11 July in Nature Human Behaviour.

Developmental psychologists test how babies understand the motion of objects by tracking their gaze. When shown a video of, for example, a ball that suddenly disappears, the children express surprise, which researchers quantify by measuring how long the infants stare in a particular direction.

Luis Piloto, a computer scientist at Google-owned company DeepMind in London, and his collaborators wanted to develop a similar test for artificial intelligence (AI). The team trained a neural network — a software system that learns by spotting patterns in large amounts of data — with animated videos of simple objects such as cubes and balls.

[...] Developmental psychologists test how babies understand the motion of objects by tracking their gaze. When shown a video of, for example, a ball that suddenly disappears, the children express surprise, which researchers quantify by measuring how long the infants stare in a particular direction.

Luis Piloto, a computer scientist at Google-owned company DeepMind in London, and his collaborators wanted to develop a similar test for artificial intelligence (AI). The team trained a neural network — a software system that learns by spotting patterns in large amounts of data — with animated videos of simple objects such as cubes and balls.

Journal Reference:
Piloto, Luis S., Weinstein, Ari, Battaglia, Peter, et al. Intuitive physics learning in a deep-learning model inspired by developmental psychology [open], Nature Human Behaviour (DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01394-8)

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A restaurant in southwestern China was discovered to be harboring ancient history, as dinosaur footprints—dating back 100 million years—were found in the establishment's outdoor courtyard.

Footprints of two sauropods, a type of dinosaur that lived during the early Cretaceous period, were found along several stones in the outdoor courtyard at the restaurant in Leshan, Sichuan province according to paleontologists. The restaurant previously had been a farm and the footprints had been buried by layers of dirt to shield them from weather damage.

[...] Sauropods' species include the popularized brontosaurus and were known for their long necks and tails. They're considered to be the largest animals ever to walk the Earth—extending the length of three school buses—according to research by the University of California, Berkeley. Xing noted that the footprints of the dinosaurs that roamed the Earth found in the restaurant measured around 26 feet in body length.

The find in Sichuan is also rare because it dates back to the Cretaceous period, believed to be a glory era for the dinosaurs by many paleontologists.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Nikon is reportedly halting DSLR camera development:

Nikon will stop developing new single lens reflex (SLR) cameras and focus exclusively on mirrorless models, according to a report from Nikkei. The news marks the end of an era and essentially confirms what most observers already expected, as the Japanese company hasn't released a new digital SLR (DSLR) camera since the D6 came out in June of 2020. While it reportedly won't design any more new models, Nikon will continue to produce and distribute existing DSLRs like the D6 and D3500 (above).

Nikon released its first single-lens reflex film camera, the Nikon F, back in 1959. It was one of the most advanced cameras of its time, thanks to features like a large bayonet mount, depth-of-field preview button, titanium focal-plane shutter, modular design and more. The company's first true professional digital SLR was the 2.7-megapixel D1, launched in 1999.

SLR cameras use a mirror and prism to give the user a direct optical view through the camera lens, with the mirror moving out of the way when the photo is taken. Mirrorless cameras, by contrast, take light directly from the lens to the sensor and give the user a view via an electronic viewfinder or rear display. Mirrorless cameras, as we discussed in our explainer and video below, allow for more compact bodies, advanced AI subject recognition, improved video features and more.

[...] Update 7/12/2022 9:57 AM ET: Update gave the following statement on its website: "There was a media article regarding Nikon's withdrawal of SLR development. This media article is only speculation and Nikon has made no announcement in this regards. Nikon is continuing the production, sales and service of digital SLR. Nikon appreciate your continuous support."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google Engineers Lift The Lid On Carbon - A Hopeful Successor To C++

In addition to Dart, Golang, and being involved with other programming language initiatives over the years, [Google's] latest effort that was made public on Tuesday is Carbon. The Carbon programming language hopes to be the gradual successor to C++ and makes for an easy transition path moving forward.

The hope is that Carbon is a more natural migration path to C++ than the popular Rust programming language. Carbon aims for performance that matches C++, seamless bidirectional interoperability with C++, a easier learning curve for C++ developers, comparable expressivity, and scalable migration.

Carbon Language on GitHub.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Professional Athletes Perform Better against Former Clubs, According to Research:

A team of Russian researchers affiliated with the HSE University, RANEPA, and NES found professional athletes to perform better against their former clubs. At least in some circumstances, emotions seem to have a greater effect on their performance than knowledge of the opponent's tactics. The study's findings are published in the Journal of Behavioural and Experimental Economics and may be useful for coaches, sports managers, and bookmakers.

By hiring a competitor's former employee, companies bring in their social capital, knowledge and skills, potentially weakening the competition. Since measuring employee performance may be difficult in a typical business environment, this study examined the sphere of professional sports, where such data is abundant, to track changes in athletes' performance against their former teams.

The study used econometric models on game data of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Hockey League (NHL), and six major European football leagues, available from the NBA.com, Hockey-Reference and Understat. The authors examined player performance data over time, taking into account history of transactions and players' matches against their former clubs. The variables included the dates and venues of the games, players' home and opposing teams, playing time, basic individual game statistics, and several more advanced performance indicators.

[...] The researchers assumed that the knowledge of opponents' tactics and the additional motivation both contributed to athletes' better performance against former clubs. While these two factors are likely to complement each other, the researchers ultimately found emotions to prevail over a better understanding of the other team's game.

upstart writes:

Imagine that you built something that even the most optimistic person thought would last 4-5 years, and yet almost 45 years later it is still carrying out the task of discovering the secrets of our solar system and beyond. And they, for there are two of them, are not quite finished yet. This is a remarkable story. [JR]

Record-Breaking Voyager Spacecraft Begin to Power Down:

If the stars hadn't aligned, two of the most remarkable spacecraft ever launched never would have gotten off the ground. In this case, the stars were actually planets—the four largest in the solar system. Some 60 years ago they were slowly wheeling into an array that had last occurred during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson in the early years of the 19th century. For a while the rare planetary set piece unfolded largely unnoticed. The first person to call attention to it was an aeronautics doctoral student at the California Institute of Technology named Gary Flandro.

It was 1965, and the era of space exploration was barely underway—the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, only eight years earlier. Flandro, who was working part-time at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., had been tasked with finding the most efficient way to send a space probe to Jupiter or perhaps even out to Saturn, Uranus or Neptune. Using a favorite precision tool of 20th-century engineers—a pencil—he charted the orbital paths of those giant planets and discovered something intriguing: in the late 1970s and early 1980s, all four would be strung like pearls on a celestial necklace in a long arc with Earth.

This coincidence meant that a space vehicle could get a speed boost from the gravitational pull of each giant planet it passed, as if being tugged along by an invisible cord that snapped at the last second, flinging the probe on its way. Flandro calculated that the repeated gravity assists, as they are called, would cut the flight time between Earth and Neptune from 30 years to 12. There was just one catch: the alignment happened only once every 176 years. To reach the planets while the lineup lasted, a spacecraft would have to be launched by the mid-1970s.

As it turned out, NASA would build two space vehicles to take advantage of that once-in-more-than-a-lifetime opportunity. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, identical in every detail, were launched within 15 days of each other in the summer of 1977. After nearly 45 years in space, they are still functioning, sending data back to Earth every day from beyond the solar system's most distant known planets. They have traveled farther and lasted longer than any other spacecraft in history. And they have crossed into interstellar space, according to our best understanding of the boundary between the sun's sphere of influence and the rest of the galaxy. They are the first human-made objects to do so, a distinction they will hold for at least another few decades. Not a bad record, all in all, considering that the Voyager missions were originally planned to last just four years.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The sword was found in three pieces by two metal detector enthusiasts, independent of each other, in the Jåttå/Gausel area in Stavanger, already renowned for the grave of the so-called Gausel queen. Found in 1883, it is considered to be one of the richest women's graves from the Viking Age.

Like the women buried in the Oseberg ship, the Gausel queen had rich artifacts from the British Isles with her in her grave.

The sword would have been one of the most spectacularly ornamented and heaviest types of swords from the Viking Age. The blade is missing, but the hilt has unique details in gold and silver, and exquisite details not previously known.

[...] "The décor suggests that the sword was made in France or England, and that it can be dated to the early 800s, like the sword found on the island Eigg," Glørstad says.

It has previously been speculated whether the Jåttå/Gausel-area was the starting point for extensive alliances and looting.

"The location of the find, close to the Gausel queen, means that we have to take a new look at the entire Jåttå/Gausel area," says Håkon Reiersen, researcher at the Museum of Archaeology in Stavanger.

"The outstanding collection of imported spectacular finds connected to both men and women in this area shows that this has been an important hub for the contact across the North Sea," he says.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A new ransomware family dubbed Luna can be used to encrypt devices running several operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and ESXi systems.

Discovered by Kaspersky security researchers via a dark web ransomware forum ad spotted by the company's Darknet Threat Intelligence active monitoring system, Luna ransomware appears to be specifically tailored to be used only by Russian-speaking threat actors.

"The advertisement states that Luna only works with Russian-speaking affiliates. Also, the ransom note hardcoded inside the binary contains spelling mistakes. For example, it says 'a little team' instead of 'a small team'," Kaspersky said.

[...] The group behind this new ransomware developed this new strain in Rust and took advantage of its platform-agnostic nature to port it to multiple platforms with very few changes to the source code.

Using a cross-platform language also enables Luna ransomware to evade automated static code analysis attempts.

"Both the Linux and ESXi samples are compiled using the same source code with some minor changes from the Windows version. The rest of the code has no significant changes from the Windows version," the researchers added.

Luna further confirms the latest trend adopted by cybercrime gangs developing cross-platform ransomware that use languages like Rust and Golang to create malware capable of targeting multiple operating systems with little to no changes.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The all-private mission aims to launch a Mars-bound spacecraft and lander atop a 3D-printed rocket:

Private space companies Impulse Space and Relativity Space have announced an ambitious joint venture poised to be the first commercial mission to Mars, which will feature the launch of a payload as soon as 2024.

A revived interest in space has private companies shifting their attention to Mars, and a new collaboration announced Tuesday between Impulse Space and Relativity Space could be the first commercial landing on the red planet. Impulse Space is a company founded by Tom Mueller, a SpaceX alum, that specializes in getting payloads into and around space. Relativity Space, meanwhile, focuses on the production of spacecrafts using 3D metal printing, artificial intelligence, and autonomous robotics. Impulse will contribute their Mars Cruise Vehicle and Mars Lander to Relativity's Terran R, which is a completely 3D printed launch vehicle. The launch will occur from Florida's Cape Canaveral as early as 2024, and the companies have an exclusive agreement to launch there until 2029.

The companies say that the Mars lander will support the research and development of future planetary settlements, but additional details on how the lander will do that specifically are thin. [...] In other words, Relativity as a company hasn't even launched a rocket yet, and Impulse Space has not yet tested one of their payloads in orbit, according to Eric Berger from Ars Technica.

The first step on any successful journey is to create a slick concept video.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/07/netflix-loses-970000-subscribers-says-ads-and-new-fees-are-key-to-recovery/

Netflix yesterday reported a loss of 970,000 paid streaming subscribers in its Q2 earnings after having lost 200,000 customers in the first quarter of 2022. The company's worldwide paid memberships decreased from 221.64 million to 220.67 million in Q2, and revenue growth has slowed dramatically.

It's the first time in Netflix's history that the company reported consecutive quarters of subscriber losses, The Wall Street Journal wrote. But the result was better than forecasted, as Netflix had told investors to expect a second-quarter loss of 2 million subscribers.

Original Submission