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hubie writes:

New research reveals more about the magnitude of January eruption, as researchers call for better preparedness:

The initial tsunami wave created by the eruption of the underwater Hunga Tonga Ha'apai volcano in Tonga in January 2022 reached 90 metres in height, around nine times taller than that from the highly destructive 2011 Japan tsunami, new research has found.

An international research team says the eruption should serve as a wake-up call for international groups looking to protect people from similar events in future, claiming that detection and monitoring systems for volcano-based tsunamis are '30 years behind' comparable tools used to detect earthquake-based events.

[...] By comparison, the largest tsunami waves due to earthquakes before the Tonga event were recorded following the Tōhoku earthquake near Japan in 2011 and the 1960 Chilean earthquake, reaching 10 metres in initial height. Those were more destructive as they happened closer to land, with waves that were wider.

[...] The research team found that the tsunami was unique as the waves were created not only by the water displaced by the volcano's eruption, but also by huge atmospheric pressure waves, which circled around the globe multiple times. This 'dual mechanism' created a two-part tsunami – where initial ocean waves created by the atmospheric pressure waves were followed more than one hour later by a second surge created by the eruption's water displacement.

[...] The research team also found that the January event was among very few tsunamis powerful enough to travel around the globe – it was recorded in all world's oceans and large seas from Japan and the United States' western seaboard in the North Pacific Ocean to the coasts within the Mediterranean Sea.

Journal Reference:
Mohammad Heidarzadeh, Aditya Riadi Gusman, Takeo Ishibe, et al. Estimating the eruption-induced water displacement source of the 15 January 2022 Tonga volcanic tsunami from tsunami spectra and numerical modelling [open], Ocean Engineering, 261, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.oceaneng.2022.112165

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Conventional dental photography technology has had a limitation in using inconvenient tools such as mirrors and cheek retractors. Dentists require basic teeth images from various angles, such as right/left buccal and maxillary/mandibular occlusal, for dental health inspection. To acquire these images, patients feel discomfort because dentists must put a mirror into the mouth to capture the reflected teeth image through a handheld camera.

A compact intraoral dental camera can overcome the discomfort and scan the condition of teeth. However, due to the restricted depth of field and field-of-view, the conventional device has limitations in close-up imaging for observing tooth decay in detail and wide-angle imaging for capturing the entire arrangement of teeth.

Various species of compound insect eyes have superior visual characteristics, such as wide viewing angle and large depth of field with compact visual organs made up of tiny lenses. Insect eyes give inspiration for miniaturized cameras, and insect-inspired cameras can solve the problems of conventional compact cameras, such as limited observation range. However, previously developed insect cameras have drawbacks in low-resolution or limited functions.

[...] The BIOC involves a new configuration of convex-concave lens and inverted microlens arrays (iMLA) and a single CMOS image sensor on a flexible printed circuit board in a handpiece holder. The convex-concave lens substantially increases the field of view up to 143 degrees, and iMLAs reduce optical aberration by the scaling law. In addition, the new camera overcomes many chronic issues of conventional intraoral cameras, such as limited depth-of-field, thick total-track-length, and limited functional imaging.

There must be more potential uses for a camera such as this - any ideas?

More information: Kisoo Kim et al, Biologically inspired intraoral camera for multifunctional dental imaging, Journal of Optical Microsystems (2022).
DOI: 10.1117/1.JOM.2.3.031202

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hubie writes:

Coffee and cigarettes: UF Health research sheds new light on nicotine and morning brew:

For some smokers, the first cigarette of the day is just not as satisfying without a cup of coffee. That could be more than just a morning habit: Chemical compounds in roasted coffee beans may help lighten the effects of morning nicotine cravings, University of Florida [UF] researchers have found.

In a cell-based study, the researchers identified two compounds in coffee that directly affect certain high-sensitivity nicotine receptors in the brain. In smokers, these brain receptors can be hypersensitive after a night of nicotine withdrawal.

The recently published findings have yet to be tested in humans but are an important step toward better understanding how coffee and cigarettes affect nicotine receptors in the brain, said Roger L. Papke, Ph.D., a pharmacology professor in the UF College of Medicine. Caffeine is coffee's feel-good ingredient for most people but smokers may get another kind of boost.

[...] The findings have led Papke to a broader hypothesis: One of the compounds in brewed coffee, known as n-MP, may help to quell morning nicotine cravings.

[...] The findings, he said, provide a good foundation for behavioral scientists who could further study nicotine withdrawal in animal models.

Journal Reference:
Roger L. Papkea, Madison Karaffaa, Nicole A. Horenstein, et al. Coffee and cigarettes: Modulation of high and low sensitivity α4β2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors by n-MP, a biomarker of coffee consumption☆, Neuropharmacology, 216, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropharm.2022.109173

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upstart writes:

Qualcomm is jumping back into the server CPU market with Nuvia acquisition:

Qualcomm is apparently plotting a return to the server chip market. The company is overhauling its CPU offerings after acquiring the upstart chip design company Nuvia in 2021. Nuvia was founded by three high-ranking engineers from Apple's chip division, with the original goal of designing ARM server chips (though it never launched a product). After Qualcomm bought the company, it seemingly pivoted its new chip division from server chips to laptops and phones. Now, according to a new report from Bloomberg, Nuvia's original goal of building server chips will be allowed to continue.

The report says Qualcomm is "seeking customers for a product stemming from last year's purchase of chip startup Nuvia" with Amazon Web Services as one of the first companies that "agreed to take a look at Qualcomm's offerings." Apple has proven to the world that ARM chips can scale up, and on laptops, they've proven to be more efficient than the x86 chips from Intel and AMD. Companies like Amazon have even started making their in-house server chips based on ARM's licensable CPU designs.

There's no timeline for when Qualcomm's server chips will be available, but Qualcomm's current schedule has Nuvia technology showing up in laptops in "late 2023."

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hubie writes:

By combining seawater data taken from clam shells and thousands of climate simulations, researchers found that 900 years of cooling in the Gulf of Maine were suddenly reversed in the late 1800s:

The "recent, rapid ocean warming" was "likely due to increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and changes in western North Atlantic circulation," the researchers wrote in a paper just published by the scientific journal Communications Earth & Environment.

[...] The researchers also wrote that because of projected increases in greenhouse gas concentrations, plus projected weakening of the ocean currents that continually mix warm surface water and cooler, deeper water, "this warming trend in the Gulf of Maine is likely to continue, leading to continued and potentially worsening ecologically and economically devastating temperature increases in the region in the future."

[...] "The Gulf of Maine has naturally been cooling for the last 1,000 years, and now the reverse is happening," Wanamaker said. "It took 900 years to cool 2 degrees Celsius and 100 years to warm 2 degrees Celsius."

The research team traces the change back to the spread of industrialization, writing that cooling caused by the ash and gases produced by volcanic activity and ocean dynamics quickly reversed as machines, manufacturing and industry developed in the 1800s.

[...] "It is clear that the mid- to late-1800s were a time of dramatic change in the North Atlantic, as documented both in the Gulf of Maine geochemical records presented and discussed in this study, as well as other records of temperature and ocean circulation changes throughout the North Atlantic," the researchers wrote.

Journal Reference:
N.M. Whitney, A.D. Wanamaker, C.C. Ummenhofer, et al. Rapid 20th century warming reverses 900-year cooling in the Gulf of Maine [open]. Commun Earth Environ 3, 179 (2022). 10.1038/s43247-022-00504-8

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upstart writes:

Australian Army reveals electric Bushmaster development - Asian Military Review:

The Australian Army has unveiled a prototype of a new hybrid electric-powered Bushmaster 4×4 protected mobility vehicle at the Chief of Army Symposium 2022 that was from 9-11 August in Adelaide.

The symposium includes the Army Innovation Day, Army Future Forum, Army Robotics Exposition and the Army Quantum Technology Challenge, bringing together industry, academia and the Australian Defence Force (ADF).

[...] the prototype vehicle, called the electric Protected Military Vehicle (ePMV), is a key part of the Australian Army's modernisation effort.

The prototype ePMV features a series hybrid propulsion system that comprises a diesel engine that produces up to 400 kW of continuous power for vehicle electronics and mission systems, as well as charge batteries that enable the vehicle to operate for up to 24-36 hours on 'silent watch' or travel distances of 200-300 km. In contrast, a conventionally powered Bushmaster vehicle offers an unrefuelled range of up to 800 km.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

At 6:28 a.m. EDT on Aug. 21, 1972, NASA's Copernicus satellite, the heaviest and most complex space telescope of its time, lit up the sky as it ascended into orbit from Launch Complex 36B at what is now Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Initially known as Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (OAO) C, it became OAO 3 once in orbit in the fashion of the time. But it was also renamed to honor the 500th anniversary of the birth of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). The Polish astronomer formulated a model of the solar system with the Sun in the central position instead of Earth, breaking with 1,300 years of tradition and triggering a scientific revolution.

Fitted with the largest ultraviolet telescope ever orbited at the time as well as four co-aligned X-ray instruments, Copernicus was arguably NASA's first dedicated multiwavelength astronomy observatory. This makes it a forebear of operating satellites like NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which watches the sky in visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray light.

[...] Copernicus returned UV and X-ray observations for 8.5 years before its retirement in 1981, and it still orbits Earth today. It departed space astronomy's center stage as more advanced observatories appeared, notably Einstein and the International Ultraviolet Explorer, which launched in 1978 and operated for nearly 19 years. Copernicus observations appear in more than 650 scientific papers. Its instruments studied some 450 unique objects targeted by more than 160 investigators in the United States and 13 other countries.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A new kind of "phase transition" in water was first proposed 30 years ago in a study by researchers from Boston University. Because the transition has been predicted to occur at supercooled conditions, however, confirming its existence has been a challenge. That's because at these low temperatures, water really does not want to be a liquid, instead it wants to rapidly become ice. Because of its hidden status, much is still unknown about this liquid-liquid phase transition, unlike the everyday examples of phase transitions in water between a solid or vapor phase and a liquid phase.

This new evidence, published in Nature Physics, represents a significant step forward in confirming the idea of a liquid-liquid phase transition first proposed in 1992. Francesco Sciortino, now a professor at Sapienza Università di Roma, was a member of the original research team at Boston University and is also a co-author of this paper.

The team has used computer simulations to help explain what features distinguish the two liquids at the microscopic level. They found that the water molecules in the high-density liquid form arrangements that are considered to be "topologically complex," such as a trefoil knot (think of the molecules arranged in such a way that they resemble a pretzel) or a Hopf link (think of two links in a steel chain). The molecules in the high-density liquid are thus said to be entangled.

[...] "First, their elegant and experimentally amenable colloidal model for water opens entirely new perspectives for large-scale studies of liquids. Beyond this, they give very strong evidence that phase transitions that may be elusive to traditional analysis of the local structure of liquids are instead readily picked up by tracking the knots and links in the bond network of the liquid.

More information:
Andreas Neophytou, Dwaipayan Chakrabarti, Francesco Sciortino. Topological nature of the liquid–liquid phase transition in tetrahedral liquids, Nature Physics (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-022-01698-6 Journal information: Nature Physics

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Google Cloud says it protected one customer from a Mēris botnet attack that peaked at 46 million requests per second:

Google Cloud has revealed it blocked the largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on record, which peaked at 46 million requests per second (rps). 

The June 1 attack targeted one Google Cloud customer using the Google Cloud Armor DDoS protection service. 

[...] Google says it is the largest ever attack at Layer 7, referring to the application layer — the top layer — in the OSI model of the Internet. 

The attack on Google's customer was almost twice the size of a HTTPS DDoS attack on a Cloudflare customer in June that peaked at 26 million rps. That attack also relied on a relatively small botnet consisting of 5,067 devices spread over 127 countries.

[...] Google noted that this Mēris-related botnet abused unsecured proxies to obfuscate the true origin of the attacks.     

It also noted that around 22% or 1,169 of the source IPs corresponded to Tor exit nodes, but the request volume coming from those nodes amounted to just 3% of the attack traffic. 

"While we believe Tor participation in the attack was incidental due to the nature of the vulnerable services, even at 3% of the peak (greater than 1.3 million rps) our analysis shows that Tor exit nodes can send a significant amount of unwelcome traffic to web applications and services."

Previously: Massive DDoS Attack Delivered By Tiny Botnet

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Europe's drought exposes WWII ships, bombs and prehistoric stones:

Weeks of baking heat and drought across Europe have seen water levels in rivers and lakes fall to levels few can remember, exposing long-submerged treasures – and some deadly hazards.

In Spain, archaeologists have been delighted by the emergence of a prehistoric stone circle dubbed the “Spanish Stonehenge” that is usually covered by waters of a dam that have fallen in the worst drought in decades.

[...] The stone circle was discovered by German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier in 1926, but the area was flooded in 1963 in a rural development project under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. Since then it has only become fully visible four times.

Another of Europe’s mighty rivers, the Danube, has fallen to one of its lowest levels in almost a century as a result of the drought, exposing the hulks of more than 20 German warships sunk during World War II near Serbia’s river port town of Prahovo.

[...] Memories of past droughts have also been rekindled in Germany by the reappearance of so-called “hunger stones” along the Rhine river. Many such stones have become visible along the banks of Germany’s largest river in recent weeks.

Bearing dates and people’s initials, their re-emergence is seen by some as a warning and reminder of the hardships people faced during former droughts.

Dates visible on stones seen in Worms, south of Frankfurt, and Rheindorf, near Leverkusen, included 1947, 1959, 2003 and 2018.

See also:
    Europe's Rhine River Runs Dry
    European Drought Dries Up Rivers, Kills Fish, Shrivels Crops
    Drought Forces Water Use Rethink In Spain

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Urine has lots of nitrogen and phosphorus—a problem as waste, great as fertilizer:

Removing urine from wastewater and using it as fertilizer has the potential to decrease nutrient loading in water bodies and boost sustainability by making use of a common waste material.

In excess, nitrogen and phosphorus in our waste streams can stimulate algal blooms and create conditions dangerous to marine and lake ecosystems and human health. According to the website of the Rich Earth Institute, a Vermont-based company focused on using human waste as a resource, most of the nitrogen and phosphorus in wastewater comes from human urine, even though it makes up only 1 percent of wastewater. Removing urine could remove 75 percent of the nitrogen and 55 percent of the phosphorus from municipal wastewater treatment plants. And those nutrients could then be recycled for use as fertilizer.

[...] If it can be separated, urine can act to partly sterilize itself. The nitrogen in urine leaves the body as urea, a simple organic compound. Bacteria in pipes typically break down urea into ammonia. When urine is sitting in a container, the ammonia raises the pH of the solution to about eight or nine. The high pH environment kills any pathogens from the body that might have entered the urine, Vinnerås said.

“It’s like a Twinkie,” Noe-Hays said, referring to urine’s long shelf-life.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Water levels on the Rhine River, Europe's second-largest river, have continued to drop owing to soaring temperatures and lack of rainfall, preventing many vessels from navigating through the waters at full capacity. The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission has captured part of the Rhine River near Cologne, showing the stark difference between August 2021 and August 2022.

Flowing from the Swiss Alps to the North Sea, the Rhine River is an important shipping route for many products from grains to chemicals to coal. When water levels drop, cargo vessels need to sail with reduced load, so they don't run aground.

Water levels at the chokepoint of Kaub, near Frankfurt, fell to 32 cm in depth on Monday, down from 42 cm last week. Ships, however, need around 1.5 m to be able to sail fully loaded making it difficult for larger ships to navigate through the waters. Freight ships continue to sail, but only with around 25% to 35% of the ship's capacity.

The low water levels are emerging earlier than usual, with the lowest water levels typically recorded in September or October. However, reduced temperatures and predicted rainfall forecasted for this week may offer relief to the Rhine.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Samsung said on Friday that it will spend 20 trillion won, approximately $15 billion, by 2028 to build a new advanced chip research complex in South Korea.

The new facility to be built at its Giheung campus will lead advanced research on innovative new technologies and new wafer fabrication processes for memory and system semiconductors, the South Korean tech giant said.

The groundbreaking ceremony on Friday was attended by Samsung vice chairman Jay Y Lee, his first official move since he received a presidential pardon last week for his bribery conviction

"We are taking on a new challenge from the very location where we broke ground 40 years ago to build our first semiconductor plant," Lee, the de facto leader of Samsung, told executives and employees at the ceremony.

"If we hadn't made bold R&D investments for next-generation products and in products that came after that, there would be no semiconductor business for Samsung today. We need to continue our tradition of investing preemptively and emphasizing technology," he added.

The facility will cover 109,000 square meters at Samsung's Giheung campus, located just south of Seoul and one of three of the company's major semiconductor production facilities, or fabs, in South Korea. Along with the other campuses in Hwaseong and Pyeongtaek, it manufactures the company's latest chips.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

SAN FRANCISCO – Ball Aerospace and Seagate Technology Holdings are working together to develop and test high-capacity commercial data processing and storage devices for spaceflight applications.

The companies are conducting laboratory demonstrations to determine how Seagate storage devices can be integrated with Ball spaceflight avionics and software.

[...] The two companies plan to conduct further testing of a Seagate storage device providing memory for a Ball payload on a small satellite in low Earth orbit in 2023.

The growth of the space sector along with surging demand for data processing and storage is attracting the attention of firms focused primarily on terrestrial markets.

“Lots of data is coming off focal planes and RF sensors,” Ellis said. “There are a lot of things that we can do onboard [satellites] if [they] can keep up with what the sensors are putting out. We can do a little bit of processing, downlink important things first, stack frames to get better signal-to-noise.”

Original Submission

hubie writes:

People are touched by small kindnesses and led to greater generosity, new research shows:

Anyone who has given a friend a ride, baked cookies for a sick family member, or even bought a stranger a cup of coffee knows acts of kindness can enhance happiness.

But such random acts of kindness are still somewhat rare. Texas McCombs Assistant Professor of Marketing Amit Kumar set out to discover why people don't engage in prosocial acts — such as helping, sharing, or donating — more often.

In a new study, Kumar, along with Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago, found that people often underestimate how good these actions make recipients feel. Givers tend to focus on the object they're providing or action they're performing, while receivers instead concentrate on the feelings of warmth the act of kindness has conjured up. Givers' "miscalibrated expectations" — that receivers are solely concerned with the gift itself — can function as a barrier to performing more prosocial behaviors.

[...] The researchers' findings offer practical implications and advice for people going about their everyday lives. When people realize their small actions have a large impact, they can choose to be nicer and carry out more acts of random kindness, enhancing both their well-being and that of others.

"Positive interpersonal contact is a powerful source of happiness," Kumar says. "It will make you feel better and someone else feel better, even better than you think they'll feel. A little good doesn't just go a long way — it goes an unexpectedly long way."

Video summary

See also: Friends Enjoy Being Reached Out to More Than We Think

Journal Reference:
Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2022). A little good goes an unexpectedly long way: Underestimating the positive impact of kindness on recipients. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 10.1037/xge0001271

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