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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Images of damaged coastlines, oily sheens, containment booms and endangered wildlife are part of every offshore oil spill.

And while a response team arrives and the clean up gets underway, UBC Okanagan researchers are now exploring how to effectively handle the waste created from that spill.

As part of a Multi-Partner Research Initiative sponsored by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, UBCO engineers are conducting new research to help the oil spill response industry and its regulators enhance response preparedness and efficiency in Canadian waters. A new research study, published recently in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, conducts a lifecycle assessment of oil spill waste mitigation and how to properly dispose of the refuse.

"We never want to experience any sort of spill, but when it happens we need to be prepared," explains Dr. Guangji Hu, a School of Engineering postdoctoral fellow and report co-author. "If a spill is on land, contaminated soil can be removed and remediated off-site, but that simply isn't feasible on the water."

Using a lifecycle assessment approach, the researchers developed a framework to help decision-makers effectively manage the waste of an offshore oil spill cleanup. The lifecycle assessment quantifies the environmental impacts associated with products and services at different points of their life cycle.

upstart writes:

How I Hacked my Car:

Last summer I bought a 2021 Hyundai Ioniq SEL. It is a nice fuel-efficient hybrid with a decent amount of features like wireless Android Auto/Apple CarPlay, wireless phone charging, heated seats, & a sunroof.

One thing I particularly liked about this vehicle was the In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) system. As I mentioned before it had wireless Android Auto which seemed to be uncommon in this price range, and it had pretty nice, smooth animations in its menus which told me the CPU/GPU in it wasn't completely underpowered, or at least the software it was running wasn't super bloated.

As with many new gadgets I get, I wanted to play around with it and ultimately see what I could do with it.

The IVI in the car, like many things these days, is just a computer. My goal was to hack the IVI to get root access and hopefully be able to run my own software on it. Of course, the first step in hacking a device like this is research.

Some of the obvious things that I looked up were:

• What is the device running?
  • There are two versions of the IVI, the navigation one that runs Android, and a Linux based one.
• Has anyone else hacked this before?
  • The Android based, navigation version is easy to hack by installing your own APKs through the engineering menu.
  • The linux based one has not been hacked.
• Does the non-navigation IVI have an Engineering Mode?
  • Yes it does

I love developer settings and test apps. There is usually tons of fun to be had playing around with them. I thought I might even get lucky and it would have an option to enable an SSH server or the like.

This is one of those summaries that can never do the full article justice. The only option is to read the linked article - I found it well worth the read! [JR]

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Farmland values in the Midwest increase when no-till farming becomes more prevalent:

No-till farming, considered to be a more environmentally friendly farming practice that reduces soil disturbance when compared with conventional practices, appears to have an important benefit besides reducing soil erosion and nutrient runoff.

A new study from North Carolina State University, capturing county-level data from 12 states in the U.S. Midwest, shows that no-till farming increases agricultural land values, with a 1% increase in no-till farming translating to a $7.86 per acre increase in land values across the Midwest. In Iowa, the data show a $14.75 per acre increase in land value with a 1% increase in no-till farming.

[...] "This study suggests that farmland benefits translate into land value benefits, which is typically not considered in debates on no-till pros and cons, and ultimately whether or not conventional-till farmers should convert to no-till practices," Rejesus said.

No-till farming practices leave crop residue on farmlands after harvesting. Farmers plant seeds the following season through the remaining residue. No-till farming typically reduces labor and fuel costs for farmers when compared with traditional practices, although the academic literature also shows disparities in terms of no-till effects on crop yields and soil productivity. About 37% of U.S. farm acreage uses no-till farming, with strong adoption rates in the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic states and the Midwest.

A side benefit is that if farmers don't need their tillers, they can use them to play Doom.

Journal Reference:
Le Chen, Roderick M. Rejesus, Serkan Aglasan, et al., The impact of no-till on agricultural land values in the United States Midwest [open], Amer J Agr Econ, 2022. DOI: 10.1111/ajae.12338

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Superconductors are the key to lossless current flow. However, the realization of superconducting diodes has only recently become an important topic of fundamental research. An international research team involving the theoretical physicist Mathias Scheurer from the University of Innsbruck have now succeeded in reaching a milestone: the realization of a superconducting diode effect without an external magnetic field, thus proving the assumption that superconductivity and magnetism coexist. They report on this in Nature Physics.

One speaks of a superconducting diode effect when a material behaves like a superconductor in one direction of current flow and like a resistor in the other. In contrast to a conventional diode, such a superconducting diode exhibits a completely vanishing resistance and thus no losses in the forward direction. This could form the basis for future lossless quantum electronics. Physicists first succeeded in creating the diode effect about two years ago, but with some fundamental limitations. "At that time, the effect was very weak and it was generated by an external magnetic field, which is very disadvantageous in potential technological applications," explains Mathias Scheurer from the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Innsbruck.

The new experiments carried out by experimental physicists at Brown University, described in the current issue of Nature Physics, do not require an external magnetic field. In addition to the aforementioned application-relevant advantages, the experiments confirm a thesis previously theorized by Mathias Scheurer: Namely, that superconductivity and magnetism coexist in a system consisting of three graphene layers twisted against each other. The system thus virtually generates its own internal magnetic field, creating a diode effect.

More information:Jiang-Xiazi Lin et al, Zero-field superconducting diode effect in small-twist-angle trilayer graphene, Nature Physics (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-022-01700-1
Journal information: Nature Physics

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Today's heat waves feel a lot hotter than heat index implies:

If you looked at the heat index during this summer's sticky heat waves and thought, "It sure feels hotter!," you may be right.

An analysis by climate scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, finds that the apparent temperature, or heat index, calculated by meteorologists and the National Weather Service (NWS) to indicate how hot it feels — taking into account the humidity — underestimates the perceived temperature for the most sweltering days we're now experiencing, sometimes by more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

[...] The finding has implications for those who suffer through these heat waves, since the heat index is a measure of how the body deals with heat when the humidity is high, and sweating becomes less effective at cooling us down. Sweating and flushing, where blood is diverted to capillaries close to the skin to dissipate heat, plus shedding clothes, are the main ways humans adapt to hot temperatures.

[...] The heat index was devised in 1979 by a textile physicist, Robert Steadman, who created simple equations to calculate what he called the relative "sultriness" of warm and humid, as well as hot and arid, conditions during the summer. He saw it as a complement to the wind chill factor commonly used in the winter to estimate how cold it feels.

His model took into account how humans regulate their internal temperature to achieve thermal comfort under different external conditions of temperature and humidity — by consciously changing the thickness of clothing or unconsciously adjusting respiration, perspiration and blood flow from the body's core to the skin.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A security researcher says that Apple's iOS devices don't fully route all network traffic through VPNs, a potential security issue the device maker has known about for years.

Michael Horowitz, a longtime computer security blogger and researcher, puts it plainly—if contentiously—in a continually updated blog post. "VPNs on iOS are broken," he says.

Any third-party VPN seems to work at first, giving the device a new IP address, DNS servers, and a tunnel for new traffic, Horowitz writes. But sessions and connections established before a VPN is activated do not terminate and, in Horowitz's findings with advanced router logging, can still send data outside the VPN tunnel while it's active.

In other words, you'd expect a VPN to kill existing connections before establishing a connection so they can be re-established inside the tunnel. But iOS VPNs can't seem to do this, Horowitz says, a finding that is backed up by a similar report from May 2020.

"Data leaves the iOS device outside of the VPN tunnel," Horowitz writes. "This is not a classic/legacy DNS leak, it is a data leak. I confirmed this using multiple types of VPN and software from multiple VPN providers. The latest version of iOS that I tested with is 15.6."

Privacy company Proton previously reported an iOS VPN bypass vulnerability that started at least in iOS 13.3.1. Like Horowitz's post, ProtonVPN's blog noted that a VPN typically closes all existing connections and reopens them inside a VPN tunnel, but that didn't happen on iOS. Most existing connections will eventually end up inside the tunnel, but some, like Apple's push notification service, can last for hours.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

After dealing with booming demand and global shortages since the start of the pandemic, the semiconductor industry is facing a sudden downturn.

But even for an industry accustomed to frequent cyclical slumps, this one has defied easy analysis and left researchers struggling to predict how the setback will play out.

The sudden glut in memory chips, PC processors, and some other semiconductors has come at a time when manufacturers in many automotive and industrial markets still lack a reliable supply of chips.

It has also forced some of the biggest US chipmakers to slash billions of dollars from planned capital spending, at the very moment that Washington has passed a long-awaited law to subsidize a huge increase in domestic chip manufacturing capacity.

The speed of the turn, and the conflicting forces at work, had been unprecedented, said Dan Hutcheson, the veteran chief executive of VLSI Research who has analyzed chip cycles since the 1980s.

“I’ve never seen a time when we had excessive inventory and we had shortages,” he said.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Researchers at UCLA have created an edible particle that helps make lab-grown meat, known as cultured meat, with more natural muscle-like texture using a process that could be scaled up for mass production.

Led by Amy Rowat, who holds UCLA's Marcie H. Rothman Presidential Chair of Food Studies, the researchers have invented edible particles called microcarriers with customized structures and textures that help precursor muscle cells grow quickly and form muscle-like tissues. Edible microcarriers could reduce the expense, time, and waste required to produce cultured meat with a texture that appeals to consumers. The results are published in the journal Biomaterials.

[...] Mass production of cultured meat will involve surmounting several challenges. Current methods can produce a cultured steak that mimics the structure of T-bone, but not at the volume needed for food production. In an animal's body, the muscle cells most commonly eaten as food grow on a structure called the extracellular matrix, which determines the shape of the mature tissue. Animal tissue can be grown in a lab using scaffolds made from collagen, soy protein or another material to replace the extracellular matrix. This process, necessary to produce whole tissues resembling steaks or chops, is labor intensive and takes weeks, making it hard to scale up for industrial production. It takes about 100 billion muscle cells to produce a single kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of cultured meat.

upstart writes:

Physical buttons are increasingly rare in modern cars. Most manufacturers are switching to touchscreens – which perform far worse in a test carried out by Vi Bilägare.:

The screens in modern cars keep getting bigger. Design teams at most car manufacturers love to ditch physical buttons and switches, although they are far superior safety-wise.

That is the conclusion when Swedish car magazine Vi Bilägare performed a thurough test of the HMI system (Human-Machine Interface) in a total of twelve cars this summer.

Inspiration for the screen-heavy interiors in modern cars comes from smartphones and tablets. Designers want a "clean" interior with minimal switchgear, and the financial department wants to lower the cost. Instead of developing, manufacturing and keeping physical buttons in stock for years to come, car manufacturers are keen on integrating more functions into a digital screen which can be updated over time.

So in what way have these screens affected safety? Vi Bilägare gathered eleven modern cars from different manufacturers at an airfield och measured the time needed for a driver to perform different simple tasks, such as changing the radio station or adjusting the climate control. At the same time, the car was driven at 110 km/h (68 mph). We also invited an "old-school" car without a touchscreen, a 17-year-old Volvo V70, for comparison.

takyon writes:

Official Ubuntu RISC-V Images Released For StarFive's VisionFive Board

Canonical engineers spent the past few months back-porting various patches and ensuring that Ubuntu 22.04 LTS could run well on this RISC-V board. The StarFive VisionFive is a currently $179 USD RISC-V board that is intended to run full-blown RISC-V Linux distributions. The board is powered by a dual-core SiFive U74 RV64 SoC @ 1.0GHz, there is 8GB of system memory, a NVDLA deep learning accelerator engine, Tensilica-VP6 Vision DSP, and a neural network engine. The board also has WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.2, HDMI output, four USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and powered via USB-C or from the 40-pin GPIO header.

[...] Meanwhile StarFive is already teasing that the VisionFive V2 RISC-V SBC will be coming out soon as its successor.

Now you can run Ubuntu on a VisionFive single-board PC with a RISC-V processor

Aimed at developers, the first model launched last year with a dual-core processor, while a second-gen version with a quad-core chip and other upgrades is expected to be announced August 23, 2022.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

We often think of astronomy as a visual science with beautiful images of the universe. However, astronomers use a wide range of analysis tools beyond images to understand nature at a deeper level.

Data sonification is the process of converting data into sound. It has powerful applications in research, education and outreach, and also enables blind and visually impaired communities to understand plots, images and other data.

[...] Imagine this scene: you're at a crowded party that's quite noisy. You don't know anyone and they're all speaking a language you can't understand—not good. Then you hear bits of a conversation in a far corner in your language. You focus on it and head over to introduce yourself.

While you may have never experienced such a party, the thought of hearing a recognizable voice or language in a noisy room is familiar. The ability of the human ear and brain to filter out undesired sounds and retrieve desired sounds is called the "cocktail party effect".

Similarly, science is always pushing the boundaries of what can be detected, which often requires extracting very faint signals from noisy data. In astronomy we often push to find the faintest, farthest or most fleeting of signals. Data sonification helps us to push these boundaries further.

[...] Data sonification is useful for interpreting science because humans interpret audio information faster than visual information. Also, the ear can discern more pitch levels than the eye can discern levels of color (and over a wider range).

upstart writes:

Assange lawyers sue CIA for spying on them:

Lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sued the US Central Intelligence Agency and its former director Mike Pompeo on Monday, alleging it recorded their conversations and copied data from their phones and computers.

[...] They said the CIA worked with a security firm contracted by the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where Assange was living at the time, to spy on the Wikileaks founder, his lawyers, journalists and others he met with.

[...] Richard Roth, the New York attorney representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said the alleged spying on Assange's attorneys means the Wikileaks founder's right to a fair trial has "now been tainted, if not destroyed."

[...] It said Undercover Global, which had a security contract with the embassy, swept information on their electronic devices, including communications with Assange, and provided it to the CIA.

In addition it placed microphones around the embassy and sent recordings, as well as footage from security cameras, to the CIA.

This, Roth said, violated privacy protections for US citizens.

Anyone knowledgeable on the law who can help unpack all the legal angles here (non-US citizen, US lawyers, in an embassy in a foreign country involving a private company)?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Planned Obsolescence Rears Its Ugly Head in Epson Printer Spat - ExtremeTech:

A recent tweet about a self-bricking Epson printer has reminded everyone how important the right to repair is. The printer in question alerted its owners that it had reached the end of its lifespan, and then promptly stopped working. Epson's response is a reminder that many of the devices you own come with secret expiration dates.

While most technologies have become more versatile and reliable over the years, printers are an outlier: They're terrible. In this instance, the cause of the end-of-life message is the ink pads. These components are designed to soak up excess ink so it doesn't get smeared on your pages or leak from the printer. Epson has determined how long these parts usually last, and when the timer is up, the printer just stops working.

The solution is also a problem: Epson says you can ship the printer back for service or have a certified repair technician replace the parts. In either case, the parts, labor, and shipping won't be cheap. [...]

[...] According to The Verge, Epson has updated a support article to downplay the ludicrousness of its decisions. Previously, the page noted that servicing an aging printer is often not worth the money, so most people just buy new ones. This is, of course, entirely thanks to the way Epson has opted to design its printers. The page does point out you can recycle the old printer, and recycling is good. True, Epson, but continuing to use a device that's perfectly functional is better.

At least I'm not getting robocalls telling me my Epson printer is about to expire.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Ask meat eaters and most would likely agree that one of the carnivorous delights non-meat-eaters are most missing out on is bacon. Salty, smoky, chewy, delectable on sandwiches, crumbled up in recipes, or eaten by hand—there’s really nothing like it.

Except now there is, according to startup MyForest Foods and its customers in New York and Massachusetts. The clincher? The vegetarian-friendly bacon substitute is made from mushroom roots.

Mushroom roots are technically called mycelium, which isn’t the sort of root you’d see attached to most plants or trees; rather, it’s a root-like structure of fungus composed of a mass of branching, thread-like strands called hyphae. The hyphae absorb nutrients from soil or another substrate so the fungus can grow.

[...] A batch of the mycelium MyForest Foods is using to make its bacon grows in 12 days. Last month the company announced the opening of a vertical farm near Albany, New York where it plans to grow around three million pounds of mycelium a year, enough for a million pounds of imitation bacon.

hubie writes:

New Curtin research has provided the strongest evidence yet that Earth's continents were formed by giant meteorite impacts:

Dr Tim Johnson, from Curtin's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said the idea that the continents originally formed at sites of giant meteorite impacts had been around for decades, but until now there was little solid evidence to support the theory.

"By examining tiny crystals of the mineral zircon in rocks from the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia, which represents Earth's best-preserved remnant of ancient crust, we found evidence of these giant meteorite impacts," Dr Johnson said.

"Studying the composition of oxygen isotopes in these zircon crystals revealed a 'top-down' process starting with the melting of rocks near the surface and progressing deeper, consistent with the geological effect of giant meteorite impacts.

"Our research provides the first solid evidence that the processes that ultimately formed the continents began with giant meteorite impacts, similar to those responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, but which occurred billions of years earlier."

[...] "These mineral deposits are the end result of a process known as crustal differentiation, which began with the formation of the earliest landmasses, of which the Pilbara Craton is just one of many.

Journal Reference:
Johnson, T.E., Kirkland, C.L., Lu, Y. et al. Giant impacts and the origin and evolution of continents. Nature 608, 330–335 (2022). 10.1038/s41586-022-04956-y

Original Submission