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hubie writes:

The prevailing belief by researchers has been that mothers of twins are more fertile than other women. But a new study shows that isn't the case.

Twin births aren't exactly common. In humans, they occur in one to three per cent of all births.

Previous studies of the phenomenon have concluded that mothers of twins are more fertile than other women. This is because on average they give birth more often than other mothers. They have been called "supermothers" and are considered more robust and in better health than mothers of single babies.

Now an international research group has found that twin mothers are not actually more fertile than other women.

"On the contrary, when a woman gives birth several times, the chances increase that at least one of these births will be a twin birth. Twin mothers aren't supermothers, but have been given more chances," says Gine Roll Skjærvø, a senior engineer and human behavioural biologist at NTNU's Department of Biology.

[...] "Previous studies are problematic because they can't tell us whether mothers with twins give birth more often because they're especially fertile, or because giving birth more often increases the chance that one of these births will be to twins," said lead author Alexandre Courtiol at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany.

The new results show that women who give birth to twins are not unusually fertile. The previous research mixed up cause and effect.

"If a mother gives birth more often, it's more likely that one of these births will be to twins – just like you're more likely to win if you buy more lottery tickets, or to be in a car accident if you drive a lot," says Ian Rickard, a lead author from Durham University in the UK.

When taking into account this lottery effect, the researchers find that mothers of twins actually give birth less often than others, not more often. This new finding is in stark contrast to previous ones.

Journal Reference:
Rickard, Vullioud, Rousset, et al., Mothers with higher twinning propensity had lower fertility in pre-industrial Europe, Nat Comm, 2022. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30366-9

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takyon writes:

MIT Researchers Say All Network Congestion Algorithms Are Unfair

We're all using more data than ever before, and the bandwidth caps ISPs force on us do little to slow people down — they're just a tool to make more money. Legitimate network management has to go beyond penalizing people for using more data, but researchers from MIT say the algorithms that are supposed to do that don't work as well as we thought. A newly published study suggests that it's impossible for these algorithms to distribute bandwidth fairly.

[...] The new study contends that there will always be at least one sender who gets screwed in the deal. This hapless connection will get no data while others get a share of what's available, a problem known as "starvation." The team developed a mathematical model of network congestion and fed it all the algorithms currently used to control congestion. No matter what they did, every scenario ended up shutting out at least one user.

The problem appears to be the overwhelming complexity of the internet. Algorithms use signals like packet loss to estimate congestion, but packets can also be lost for reasons unrelated to congestion. This "jitter" delay is unpredictable and causes the algorithm to spiral toward starvation, say the researchers. This led the team to define these systems as "delay-convergent algorithms" to indicate that starvation is inevitable.

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upstart writes:

"Baaaaaaaaaa," Shaun bleated in a statement:

NASA's Artemis 1 test flight dummy will have company on its flight to the Moon. On Tuesday, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that Shaun the Sheep will join the unmanned mission when it hopefully takes off later this year. With the announcement, Aardman's beloved character will technically become the first ESA astronaut to participate in the Artemis program.

[...] Following a successful fueling test of its next-generation SLS rocket, NASA said Artemis 1 could launch as early as August 23rd. The mission will send the agency's Orion spacecraft – as well as Shaun and Commander Moonikin Campos – on a trip beyond the moon. If all goes according to plan, the capsule should return to Earth after spending 39 to 42 days in space. "The spacecraft will perform a flyby of the Moon, using lunar gravity to gain speed and propel itself 70 000 km beyond the Moon, almost half a million km from Earth – farther than any human, or sheep, has ever traveled," the ESA said.

Aardman didn't say as much, but Shaun will likely serve as the mission's zero-g indicator. Ever since Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin took a small doll with him on the first-ever human spaceflight, it's become a tradition for space crews to bring a plush toy on missions. Even some unmanned flights have taken part in the practice. In May, for instance, Boeing's Starliner capsule brought Jebediah Kerman from Kerbal Space Program to the International Space Station.

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upstart writes:

The new treatment was 80 to 100 percent effective in a phase 1 trial:

Methods for preventing malaria infections range from the low-tech, like mosquito bed nets and getting rid of standing water; to the uncannily high-tech, like genetically engineering sterile male mosquitoes and introducing them for population control. The World Health Organization approved a vaccine called Mosquirix in October 2021, but the shot is only 30 percent effective at preventing cases of severe malaria.

A new player may soon be entering the field: monoclonal antibodies, a lab-grown treatment that has shown promise for a wide variety of conditions, including cancer and COVID-19. Results from a phase 1 clinical trial published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine indicate that infusions and injections of a monoclonal antibody tailor-made for malaria are safe, and offer hints that the treatment could be highly effective.

[...] Still, it's too early to say how much of a game changer this treatment could be—in part because practical constraints could make it difficult to deliver monoclonal antibody treatments to those in need. "The current trial included intravenous administration, which is appropriate in an experimental setting but of questionable use in the field," malaria researchers Timothy Wells and Cristina Donini wrote in an editorial accompanying the study. The cost of the treatment is another consideration, though current estimates put the antibodies' price within a similar range as the vaccine.

[...] "Elimination is the aspiration," he said.

Journal Reference:
Richard L. Wu, Azza H. Idris, Nina M. Berkowitz, et al., Low-Dose Subcutaneous or Intravenous Monoclonal Antibody to Prevent Malaria [open], N Engl J Med, 2022. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2203067

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upstart writes:

Archaeologists have stumbled upon 88 ancient footprints dating back about 12,000 years in the Utah desert:

The "ghost footprints," which were discovered last month at Hill Air Force Base in Utah's Great Salt Lake Desert, get their name because they can only be seen after it rains, when the prints fill up with water, and vanish as they dry out in the sun.

The human footprints were found in the alkali flats on the Utah Test and Training Range. The 5,000-acre archaeological survey, which employs the use of non-invasive equipment such as magnetometers and ground-penetrating radar, holds other artifacts dating back to the Ice Age.

"Based on excavations of several prints, we've found evidence of adults with children from about 5 to 12 years of age that were leaving bare footprints," said Daron Duke, principal investigator with Far Western Anthropological Research Group. "People appear to have been walking in shallow water, the sand rapidly infilling their print behind them -- much as you might experience on a beach -- but under the sand was a layer of mud that kept the print intact after infilling."

The ancient footprints discovered in Utah are only the second found in the United States. Pleistocene-Age human footprints, dating between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, were identified last year in New Mexico's White Sands National Park.

[...] Archaeologists plan to study, preserve and protect the prints from wind and erosion that threaten to destroy them.

"We have also collected the infill of the prints to see if we can find organic materials to radiocarbon date," Duke said. "We want to further detail the prints themselves as to who comprised the group and how they were using the area. We are also talking to Native American tribes about their perspectives on the prints."

Look like Wolverine boot tread marks!

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

NASA recently awarded the University of Nebraska-Lincoln $100,000 through the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) at the University of Nebraska Omaha to ready the surgical robot for a 2024 test mission aboard the International Space Station.

"NASA has been a long-term supporter of this research and, as a culmination of that effort, our robot will have a chance to fly on the International Space Station," Farritor said.

[...] During the next year, Farritor and engineering graduate student Rachael Wagner will write software, configure MIRA to fit inside a space station experiment locker and exhaustively test the device to make sure it's robust enough to survive launch and its systems will perform as anticipated in space. Then, they will wait a year or so for the robot to get its turn aboard the station.

Wagner, who is from Lincoln, began working with Farritor as an undergraduate student and took a position with Virtual Incision after completing her bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 2018. A second graduate student may join the team later in 2022.

MIRA has two key advantages. First, it can be inserted through a small incision, enabling doctors to perform abdominal surgery in a minimally invasive manner. In previous tests, surgeons have successfully used the device to perform colon resections.

Secondly, the technology could enable surgeons to work remotely—perhaps someday repairing an astronaut's ruptured appendix on a mission to Mars or removing shrapnel from a soldier injured by an IED thousands of miles distant. In a previous experiment, retired NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson took the robot's controls while at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, directing MIRA to perform surgery-like tasks in an operating room 900 miles away at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

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An Anonymous Coward writes the following story:

I’ve long believed companies should offer workers a choice in the technology they use in the office and when working remote. Doing so lets employees use what they feel is the best choice of devices for their work, it can help attract and retain staff, it lessens the likelihood workers will go rogue and source their own technology (aka shadow IT), and it establishes a positive relationship between IT and the rest of an organization.

Companies like IBM and SAP have documented their experiences in moving to an employee-choice model and have declared it a success. But does that mean it would work for every company? And how do you decide which way to go?

The most important question in developing (or expanding) an employee-choice model is determining how much choice to allow. Offer too little and you risk undermining the effort's benefits. Offer too much and you risk a level of tech anarchy that can be as problematic as unfettered shadow IT. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Every organization has unique culture, requirements/expectations, and management capabilities. An approach that works in a marketing firm would differ from a healthcare provider, and a government agency would need a different approach than a startup.

Options also vary depending on the devices employees use — desktop computing and mobile often require differing approaches, particularly for companies that employ a BYOD program for smartphones.

Most employee-choice programs focus on desktops and laptops. The default choice is typically basic: do you want a Windows PC or a Mac? Most often, the choice only extends to the platform, not specific models (or in the case of PCs, a specific manufacturer). Keeping the focus on just two platforms eases administrative overhead and technical support requirements. It also allows companies to leverage volume purchases from one partner in order to receive bulk discounts.

Have you been allowed to choose your own technology and equipment at work? What were the choices offered to you and what restrictions were placed upon them?

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upstart writes:

Data recoverers finally cracks the locked down Apple M1 chip:

Apple's highly secure M1 chip is a tough nut to crack, but it appears the experts at DriveSavers have finally done it. The company announced they "may be the first" to recover data from the M1 in a recent press release.

DriveSavers is confident in this because the company's engineers successfully transplanted an M1 chip from a faulty logic board to a functional one, which enables them to access the data.

It's quite a feat, particularly because the M1 has a lot of security measures preventing outside users from manually accessing the data. For one, the SSD controller — the component that controls the input/output of data on the drive — is housed in M1 itself. That means, if the SoC fails, the ability to access the drive goes with it. Combine that with the T2 security chip's encrypted data storage functionality, and it's clear to see that accessing an Apple SSD is no easy feat anymore.

Then, there's the logic board itself. As DriveSavers mentions in the press release: "There are thousands of surface-mounted micro-components on a logic board, and Apple has done their best to obfuscate what is necessary to gain access to the encrypted data. Without that knowledge, data recovery from a failed logic board is impossible."

So, in order to access the M1 SSD, the data engineers had to remove the SoC from the faulty logic board and reattach it to a functioning one, all while nailing every micro-component needed to allow the logic board and the system components to communicate. It no doubt took a lot of trial and error, but this is a big step for data recovery on Macs.

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upstart writes:

Radio Shack's First PC: 45 Years of TRS-80:

45 years ago, Radio Shack released the TRS-80 Micro Computer System, a 1977 personal computer that launched an era of low-cost PCs along with computers from Apple and Commodore. Here's what was special about it.

On August 3, 1977, Radio Shack introduced the TRS-80 Micro Computer System for $599.95—about $2,904 today adjusted for inflation. This complete system included a main unit with a built-in keyboard, a cassette recorder, and a monochrome monitor. After the introduction of the Model II later, this first model became known as the TRS-80 Model I. In 1977, the TRS-80's $599.95 price was a big deal. To compare, the Apple II sold for $1298 with 4K of RAM (that's a whopping $6284 today), and it didn't include a monitor or a storage device.

But you always get what you pay for: The original TRS-80 was a fairly primitive machine. Under the hood, the TRS-80 utilized its Z-80 CPU at 1.77 MHz and included a mere 4 kilobytes (KB) of RAM. Its video could only display 64 columns and 16 rows of monochrome text (all uppercase) with no support for true bitmapped graphics (although by using a block-shaped text character, you could create a 128×48 pixel display). It also did not include any sound hardware, but many programs used a trick to output simple sounds through the cassette port.

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upstart writes:

US Attorneys General will take legal action against telecom providers enabling robocalls:

The Attorneys General of all 50 states have joined forces in hopes of giving teeth to the seemingly never-ending fight against robocalls. North Carolina AG Josh Stein, Indiana AG Todd Rokita and Ohio AG Dave Yost are leading the formation of the new Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force. In Stein's announcement, he said the group will focus on taking legal action against telecoms, particularly gateway providers, allowing or turning a blind eye to foreign robocalls made to US numbers.

He explained that gateway providers routing foreign phone calls into the US telephone network have the responsibility under the law to ensure the traffic they're bringing in is legal. Stein said that they mostly aren't taking any action to keep robocalls out of the US phone network, though, and they're even intentionally allowing robocall traffic through in return for steady revenue in many cases.

Recently: FCC Orders Phone Carriers to Block Scammers Behind 8 Billion Robocalls.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

400-year-old Ecuadoran beer resurrected from yeast:

Inside an old oak barrel, Ecuadoran bioengineer Javier Carvajal found the fungus of fortune: a 400-year-old yeast specimen that he has since managed to resurrect and use to reproduce what is believed to be Latin America's oldest beer.

That single-cell microorganism, taken from just a splinter of wood, was the key to recovering the formula for an elixir first brewed in Quito in 1566 by friar Jodoco Ricke, a Franciscan of Flemish origin who historians believe introduced wheat and barley to what is now the Ecuadoran capital.

"Not only have we recovered a biological treasure but also the 400-year-old work of silent domestication of a yeast that probably came from a chicha and that had been collected from the local environment," Carvajal told AFP.

Chicha is a fermented corn drink brewed by the Indigenous people of the Americas before Spanish colonization.

Carvajal, who already had experience recovering other yeasts, found out about the ancient Franciscan brewery in Quito while reading specialist beer magazines.

It took him a year to do so, but he finally managed to find a barrel from the old brewery in 2008.

It was stored in Quito's San Francisco Convent, an imposing three-hectare complex built between 1537 and 1680, which is now a museum.

After extracting a splinter, Carvajal used a microscope to find a tiny yeast specimen, which after a long period of cultivation he was able to resurrect.

[...] For Carvajal, resurrecting the yeast and the age-old methods used to make the ancient recipe was simply a labor of love for "the value of the intangible."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Porsche's new companies are all about electric bikes:

In the future, you may come across a lot more two-wheeled Porsches on the streets. The luxury automaker has launched two new joint ventures with Dutch company Ponooc Investment B.V., and they're both all about electric bikes. Porsche eBike Performance GmbH is based in Ottobrunn near Munich and will develop components, including motors and batteries. Anything it creates will then be used by P2 eBike GmbH, the second joint venture based in Stuttgart, to manufacture Porsche-branded e-bikes for consumers that the company plyans to launch starting in the middle of the decade. 

Porsche is far from a newcomer in the e-bike space. In 2021, it debuted two electric bikes inspired by the Taycan and were made to complement the Cross Turismo, which has a rear carrier. Those bikes, however, along with their motors and gear shifting systems, were manufactured by Japanese bicycle industry giant Shimano. With one company developing parts and another working on the consumer bikes themselves, the upcoming products the joint ventures will release will be all (or at least mostly) Porsche.

The components business will use the e-bike drive systems develop by Fazua, a company Porsche recently acquired, as noted by Electrek. However, it will also develop e-bike systems under the Porsche brand name — it will even sell the technology it designs to other brands. As with anything Porsche, the bikes under the new ventures will most likely not come cheap: Its Taycan-inspired bikes, for instance, set buyers back at least $8,500 at launch, with the sports model selling for prices that start at $10,700.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

North Korea-backed hackers have a clever way to read your Gmail:

Researchers have unearthed never-before-seen malware that hackers from North Korea have been using to surreptitiously read and download email and attachments from infected users' Gmail and AOL accounts.

The malware, dubbed SHARPEXT by researchers from security firm Volexity, uses clever means to install a browser extension for the Chrome and Edge browsers, Volexity reported in a blog post. The extension can't be detected by the email services, and since the browser has already been authenticated using any multifactor authentication protections in place, this increasingly popular security measure plays no role in reining in the account compromise.

The malware has been in use for "well over a year," Volexity said, and is the work of a hacking group the company tracks as SharpTongue. The group is sponsored by North Korea's government and overlaps with a group tracked as Kimsuky by other researchers. SHARPEXT is targeting organizations in the US, Europe, and South Korea that work on nuclear weapons and other issues North Korea deems important to its national security.

Volexity President Steven Adair said in an email that the extension gets installed "by way of spear phishing and social engineering where the victim is fooled into opening a malicious document. Previously we have seen DPRK threat actors launch spear phishing attacks where the entire objective was to get the victim to install a browser extension vs it being a post exploitation mechanism for persistence and data theft." In its current incarnation, the malware works only on Windows, but Adair said there's no reason it couldn't be broadened to infect browsers running on macOS or Linux, too.

The blog post added: "Volexity's own visibility shows the extension has been quite successful, as logs obtained by Volexity show the attacker was able to successfully steal thousands of emails from multiple victims through the malware's deployment."

upstart writes:

Who owns the rights to your face?:

Last year, I received an Instagram DM from someone I was friends with in college. It had been a couple years since we'd caught up: We lived in different cities, had pursued different careers and, of course, the pandemic had brought any plans of hanging out again to a standstill. I was surprised to see her name pop up on my screen but even more so by the contents of her message.

It was my face. Specifically, it was me in a sponsored Instagram Story ad, putting on a lip balm. In the video, I applied the balm and smiled at the camera, looking pleased with my newly moisturized lips. In real life, I was confused. I had never agreed to appear in a nationwide social campaign, otherwise my checking account would have a couple more zeroes to show for it. I worked in the media industry then, sourcing the right influencers to participate in sponsored articles. I've spent years casting with talent, negotiating contracts to ensure fair compensation and modest usage rights for influencers, models, and real people. Based on my experience, it was clear that my image was being exploited by a multibillion dollar brand.

Usage rights dictate who owns an image or asset, exactly how, where it's allowed to appear, and for how long: A video is pricier than a photo, one month costs more than one year, and you'd charge a global brand much more than what you'd charge a growing business. Depending on the talent, the scale of the client, and the length of the campaign, standard licensing of images on social media alone can cost anywhere from $250 to $20,000.

Despite this, anyone who has worked at a media company will tell you that employees are often pressured to serve as a stand-in or supplement to these influencers. However, these campaigns are not a part of the full-time job and likely go uncompensated.

upstart writes:

Robinhood is nearly $300 million down, lays off a quarter of its staff, and gets hit with $30 million fine:

What just happened? In a case of kicking someone when they're down, Robinhood, the company behind the popular investment app, has been hit with a $30 million fine just as it announced almost a quarter of its staff are being let go and a net loss of $295 million in Q2.

Starting with the staff-cut news, company CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev announced that Robinhood would reduce its headcount by approximately 23% as part of a broader company reorganization into a General Manager structure.

Tenev said while all parts of the business will be affected, the main areas will be operations, marketing, and program management functions. The move comes just a few months after Robinhood laid off around 9% of its staff in April.

[...] But Robinhood's woes haven't ended there. New York's top financial regulator has fined the company's crypto unit $30 million for alleged violations of anti-money-laundering and cybersecurity regulations.

The Wall Street Journal writes that The New York State Department of Financial Services found significant failures in the company's management and oversight of its compliance programs. A supervisory exam and investigation found Robinhood's Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money-laundering compliance program was insufficiently staffed and failed to move from a manual monitoring system following the company's increase in size.

[...] In addition to the fine, Robinhood must retain an independent consultant to evaluate its actions in addressing the issues highlighted by the regulator.

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