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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The antibody could greatly improve our ability to defend against future variants.

Therapeutic antibodies that were effective early in the pandemic have lost their efficacy as SARS-CoV-2 has changed and mutated, and more recent variants, particularly Omicron, have learned how to circumvent the antibodies our systems produce in response to vaccinations. We may be able to better guard against possible variations thanks to a new, widely neutralizing antibody created at Boston Children’s Hospital. In tests, it neutralized all known SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, including all Omicron variants.

“We hope that this humanized antibody will prove to be as effective at neutralizing SARS-CoV-2 in patients as it has proven to be thus far in preclinical evaluations,” says Frederick Alt, Ph.D., of the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, who co-led the research.

In a study that was published in Science Immunology, Alt and Sai Luo, Ph.D., utilized a modified version of a humanized mouse model that his lab had previously used to look for broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV, another virus that often mutates. Since the mice effectively have built-in human immune systems, the model closely resembles how the trial-and-error process our immune system uses to create increasingly effective antibodies.

The researchers initially introduced two human gene segments into the mice, causing their B cells to create a wide repertoire of humanized antibodies in a short period of time. They subsequently exposed the mice to the original Wuhan-Hu-1 strain of the virus’s SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which is the main protein targeted by our antibodies and current vaccines. The modified mice developed nine lineages, or “families,” of humanized antibodies that bonded to the spike in response.

Journal Reference:
Sai Luo, Jun Zhang, Alex J.B. Kreutzberger, et aj. An Antibody from Single Human VH-rearranging Mouse Neutralizes All SARS-CoV-2 Variants Through BA.5 by Inhibiting Membrane Fusion 11 August 2022, Science Immunology. DOI: 10.1126/sciimmunol.add5446

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

NASA issued a Request For Information (RFI) "to assess industry's capability to design, develop, manufacture, launch, and provide the on-orbit operation to enable a controlled re-entry and the safe deorbit [of] the ISS." The general plan lays out possible steps in the deorbit process, ending with "the final reentry burn resulting in a controlled reentry of the ISS within a pre-defined, uninhabited entry corridor." The RFI and its attached presentation slides are very interesting reading, even if you're not preparing for an eventual proposal.

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upstart writes:

AMD Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs Reportedly Run Hot, Up to 95C - ExtremeTech:

Right after AMD's launch of Zen 4, we now have a report of its new CPUs running at blistering temperatures. This isn't a huge shock since AMD is notably increasing TDP for Zen 4 in order to crank the clocks. However, Zen 3 was famous for its efficiency, especially compared with its competition from Intel. So while Intel's chips have always run a bit hot under full load, that wasn't the case with AMD's consumer CPUs. That might change with Zen 4, though. According to a new report, the Ryzen 9 7950X can get as hot as 95C. The mainstream Ryzen 5 7600X can also hit temps as high as 90C. Keep in mind these are engineering samples though, so this might not be the case with actual retail CPUs.

News of the surprisingly high temps comes from a normally reliable source: Enthusiast Citizen at Bilibili, via Wccftech. It was previously reported that AMD would allow for up to 230W to be consumed by its flagship CPU. In a post, he notes when that happens, the 7950X can hit 95C [203F]. This is a CPU with a 5.7GHz boost clock, but he says it struggles to maintain 5GHz at that temperature. The 7600X is also reported to consume 120W under full load, and to run at 90C.

This could be partially due to the tiny size of AMD's triplets, which the company says are half the size of Alder Lake's monolithic dies. Raptor Lake has the same design, and Enthusiast Citizen concludes Intel's 13th generation CPU will easily vanquish AMD's Zen 4 flagship. "Multi-core 7950X will basically lose to 13900K without suspense. The heat accumulation combined with the temperature wall will cause 7950X under heavy loads to be unable to maintain 5G, 230W 95 degrees, and it will be ashes when it comes out," he wrote.

It should be noted that 230W is in the vicinity of the Core i9-13900K's power envelope, which is reportedly around 250W. However, Intel is also reportedly planning an "extreme performance" mode on some high-end motherboards that will let it consume up to 350W. However, we doubt a lot of people will use that feature given the cooling requirements. It also needs to be said that like Alder Lake and assumedly Raptor Lake, the Ryzen CPU will only hit those temps under intense, all-core workloads. That's not something that will typically happen when casually gaming.

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upstart writes:

The chips are down: Putin scrambles for high-tech parts as his arsenal goes up in smoke:

It's the microchips that look set to get Vladimir Putin in the end. Six months into its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is being throttled by a severe technology deficit inflicted by sanctions.

Having fired off (or lost in combat) way more of their missile firepower than they originally anticipated, Moscow's soldiers are now increasingly relying on ancient stocks of primitive Soviet-era munitions while Western-armed Ukrainian forces are battling to turn the tide in a southern counteroffensive with pinpoint strikes on munition dumps and key infrastructure such as bridges.

Kyiv is acutely aware that the outcome of the war is likely to hinge on whether Russia finds a way to regain access to high-tech chips, and is out to ensure it doesn't get them. In order to flag the danger, Ukraine is sending out international warnings that the Kremlin has drawn up shopping lists of semiconductors, transformers, connectors, casings, transistors, insulators and other components, most made by companies in the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, the U.K., Taiwan and Japan, among others, which it needs to fuel its war effort.

POLITICO has seen one of the Russian lists, which is divided into three priority categories, from the most critical components to the least. It even includes the price per item that Moscow expects to pay, down to the last kopeck. While POLITICO could not independently verify the provenance of the list, two experts in military supply chains confirmed it was in line with other research findings about Russia's military equipment and needs.

At first glance, Russia shouldn't be able to acquire the most sensitive tech on the lists. With only very basic domestic technology, the Kremlin has relied on key players in the U.S., the EU and Japan for semiconductors as suppliers over the past years and these should be out of grasp thanks to sanctions. The difficulty would emerge in whether an intermediary country such as China were to buy technologies, then sell them on to Moscow. In extreme cases, Russians appear to be clawing chips out of household appliances like fridges.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal stressed the war had come to an inflection point where the technological edge was proving decisive.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Microsoft Defender falsely detects Win32/Hive.ZY in Google Chrome, Electron apps

A recent bug in security intelligence updates for Microsoft Defender is causing it to incorrectly detect Chrome-based browsers and other Electron-based apps as potential malware. Microsoft Edge and other such apps are flagged as suspicious, reporting the threat as Behavior:Win32/Hive.ZY. The issue seems to be resolved when upgrading to version 1.373.1537.0 of the security intelligence updates, and the changelog reports an update to the threat detection for Behavior:Win32/Hive.ZY. After updating Microsoft Defender's security intelligence, the false positive disappears, and no further action is needed.

The false positive appears to be linked to detecting behaviors that would indicate the presence of Hive ransomware. It's obviously a good thing to detect Hive ransomware and block it, but this panicked many users over the weekend whose computers warned them upon opening many trusted applications. Details are scarce as to what went wrong in the Microsoft Defender definitions and how the false positive occurred, but the issue seems to have been resolved with the latest definitions.

Although Microsoft Edge does not contain the Hive ransomware, some users might suggest that Edge was correctly identified as malware, and that the rest of Windows should have been flagged as well.

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hubie writes:

Washing Dishes with Superheated Steam More Effective, Earth-Friendly:

Conventional dishwashers often do not kill all the harmful microorganisms left on plates, bowls, and cutlery. They also require long cycle times that use large quantities of electricity, and the soap pumped in and out is released into water sources, polluting the environment.

Superheated steam dishwashers could provide a more effective, environmentally friendly solution. In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers from the Technical University of Dortmund and the Technical University of Munich simulated such a dishwasher, finding that it killed 99% of bacteria on a plate in just 25 seconds.

[...] "Steam comes out of the nozzle at a very high velocity. We can see shocks, and the turbulent flow that is created has eddies and vortices," said author Natalie Germann, of the Technical University of Dortmund. "We also include heat transfer, which shows how the heat changes in the simulation box and the condensation on the solid surfaces."

[...] The superheated steam dishwasher would initially cost more but would pay off in the long run with savings on water, electricity, and detergent. It would be ideal for use in restaurants, hotels, and hospitals, which must meet high hygienic standards.

"We confirmed that the dishwasher application using superheated steam is promising," said Germann. "This is the first work combining fluid dynamics and heat transfer with phase change and bacterial inactivation. It thus lays the foundation for future computational research and further technical work."

Journal Reference:
L. Abu-Farah and N. Germann. Simulations of thermal phase changes and bacterial inactivation in a superheated steam dishwasher [open], Phys Fluids, 2022. DOI: 10.1063/5.0090418

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legont writes:

Why half the scientists in some eastern European countries are women

Science is still a man's world. Since 1903, when Marie Curie first won the Nobel Prize, almost 600 blokes but only 19 women have taken home the coveted award in physics, chemistry or medicine. In the realms of more ordinary talent, just 28% of the world's researchers are women. Even in the EU, where the sexes are more equal than in other parts of the world, a mere two-fifths of scientists and engineers are women. In Germany and Finland, it is less than one in three.

Eastern Europe bucks the global trend, according to a recent report from Leiden University in the Netherlands. In Lithuania, 57% of scientists and engineers are women. Bulgaria and Latvia follow close behind, at 52%. Universities in Poland and Serbia were ranked among the best in the world for sexual equality in research publications. South-east Europe is roughly at parity: 49% of scientific researchers in the region are women. Some of this is a legacy of Soviet times, when communist regimes pressed both men and women into scientific careers and did not always give them a choice about it. The coercion has gone, but the habit of women working in labs has remained.

"Coercion" of women and even men into science. Is it good or bad? Note that it created a generational habit.

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upstart writes:

UK looks to Sweden for a solution to nuclear waste:

Even after some 60 years of commercial and military programmes the UK's stockpile of the most dangerous high-level waste amounts to a few thousand tonnes, although there are also several hundred thousand tonnes of intermediate-level waste which will have to be dealt with as well.

[...] "Used fuel assemblies are intensely radioactive, and that radioactivity takes a long time to decay," explains Prof Neil Hyatt, chief scientific adviser to the UK's Nuclear Waste Services.

"After about 1,000 years, about 10% of the original radioactivity is left, and that will slowly decay away over about 100,000 years or so."

[...] "We can't rely on institutional control for timescales of much longer than a few centuries," says Prof Hyatt.

"The Roman Empire lasted about 500 years. The last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago.

"So the surface of the Earth and human civilisations change much more quickly than the rate at which the radioactivity in this spent nuclear fuel can decay."

Sweden has already reached its own conclusions. It plans to bury its waste in rock deep underground and leave it there for good.

This is a process known as geological disposal, and the country's scientists have spent decades studying different ways in which it could be carried out.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Researchers have developed a new type of high-efficiency photodetector inspired by the photosynthetic complexes plants use to turn sunlight into energy. Photodetectors are used in cameras, optical communication systems and many other applications to turn photons into electrical signals.

[...] The photosynthetic complexes found in many plants consist of a large light absorbing region that delivers molecular excited state energy to a reaction center where the energy is converted to a charge. While this setup is very efficient, mimicking it requires achieving long-range energy transport in an organic material, which has proven difficult to accomplish.

To achieve this seemingly impossible task, the researchers used unique quasiparticles known as polaritons. In Optica journal, Forrest and colleagues report their new detector, which generates polaritons in an organic thin film.

"A polariton combines a molecular excited state with a photon, giving it both light-like and matter-like properties that allow long-range energy transport and conversion," said Forrest. "This photodetector is one of the first demonstrations of a practical optoelectronic device based on polaritons."

[...] The results showed that the new photodetector is more efficient at converting light to electrical current than a comparable silicon photodiode. It can also gather light from areas about 0.01 mm² and achieve conversion of light to electrical current over exceptionally long distances of 0.1 nm. This distance is three orders larger than the energy transfer distance of photosynthetic complexes.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Since their relatively recent appearance on the commercial scene, rare-earth magnets have made quite a splash in the public imagination. The amount of magnetic energy packed into these tiny, shiny objects has led to technological leaps that weren’t possible before they came along, like the vibration motors in cell phones, or the tiny speakers in earbuds and hearing aids. And that’s not to mention the motors in electric vehicles and the generators in wind turbines, along with countless medical, military, and scientific uses.

These advances come at a cost, though, as the rare earth elements needed to make them are getting harder to come by. It’s not that rare earth elements like neodymium are all that rare geologically; rather, deposits are unevenly distributed, making it easy for the metals to become pawns in a neverending geopolitical chess game. What’s more, extracting them from their ores is a tricky business in an era of increased sensitivity to environmental considerations.

Luckily, there’s more than one way to make a magnet, and it may soon be possible to build permanent magnets as strong as neodymium magnets, but without any rare earth metals. In fact, the only thing needed to make them is iron and nitrogen, plus an understanding of crystal structure and some engineering ingenuity.

upstart writes:

France is working on a program to let people lease EVs for €100 per month:

France is preparing to launch a new electric vehicle subsidy program that would give people the ability to lease an EV for €100 ($100) per month. Budget Minister Gabriel Attal announced the plan over the weekend on the country's LCI news channel, reports Bloomberg. "We know that for many French [EVs] remain very expensive," he said, adding that the government was working to figure out how quickly it could implement the measure.

For context, France is significantly behind on that front compared to countries like Norway. Last year, battery-electric and hybrid vehicles made up nearly two-thirds of all new car sales within the Nordic country. Much of what's driving adoption there is a subsidy scheme that allows car buyers to avoid taxes that are found on internal combustion engine cars.

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hubie writes:

Novel music intervention sparks emotional connection between patients and caregivers:

People with dementia often lose their ability to communicate verbally with loved ones in later stages of the disease. But a Northwestern Medicine study, in collaboration with Institute for Therapy through the Arts (ITA), shows how that gap can be bridged with a new music intervention.

In the intervention — developed at ITA and called "Musical Bridges to Memory" — a live ensemble plays music from a patient's youth such as songs from the musicals "Oklahoma" or "The Sound of Music." This creates an emotional connection between a patient and their caregiver by allowing them to interact with the music together via singing, dancing and playing simple instruments, the study authors said.

The program also enhanced patients' social engagement and reduced neuropsychiatric symptoms such as agitation, anxiety and depression in both patients and caregivers.

[...] Music memories often remain in the brain even as language and other memories disappear in dementia, Bonakdarpour said. This is because regions of the brain that are involved in musical memory and processing (e.g., the cerebellum) are not as affected by Alzheimer's or dementia until much later in the disease course. Thus, patients can retain the ability to dance and sing long after their ability to talk has diminished.

Before the intervention, some individuals would not communicate much with their partners. However, during the intervention, they started to play, sing and dance together, which was a significant change for the family. These changes generalized to their behavior outside the sessions as well.

"As the program progressed, caregivers invited multiple family members," said Jeffrey Wolfe, a neurologic music therapist-fellow at ITA and leader of the Musical Bridges to Memory program. "It became a normalizing experience for the whole family. All could relate to their loved one despite their degree of dementia."

This brings to my mind Lady Gaga's description of Tony Bennett's last concert where he was well into Alzheimer's, but once he was on stage in front of a band and people, he recognized her, sang his songs, and was his old self. The human brain is a strange and interesting piece of hardware.

Journal Reference:
Rhiana Schafer, Aimee Karstens, Emma Hospelhorn, et al. Musical Bridges to Memory A Pilot Dyadic Music Intervention to Improve Social Engagement in Dementia, Alz Dis Assoc Dis, 2022. DOI: 10.1097/WAD.0000000000000525

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MostCynical writes:

'RUTAN FIELD' is now listed on aeronautical charts

Mojave Airport has been renamed in honour of Burt Rutan:

[...] At the first 2022 Mojave Air and Space Port board meeting on Jan. 18, directors voted unanimously to approve a resolution officially changing the name of the airport by adding the Rutan name. During discussions at the meeting, it was said that introduction of the new name will be done gradually. General Manager/CEO Todd Lindner said, "The plan is to start with the items most visible to the public, such as the monument signs at the entrances of the airport."

According to the staff report, "Adding the Rutan name to the facility would recognize aerospace designer Burt Rutan and record-setting brother Dick. Their aviation achievements have played a key role in the evolution of the aerospace industry and the success of the Mojave Air and Space Port organization.

"Many thanks to Lindner for working with the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) to accomplish the mission of putting 'Rutan Field' on the Aeronautical Chart with the Mojave Air and Space Port name."

[...] Rutan's last design to fly was the Rutan SkiGull, an all-terrain float plane designed to be able to fly from California to Hawaii and land and take off on rough water, assisted by two electric motors.

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upstart writes:

Why is newborn baby skin-to-skin contact with dads and non-birthing parents important? What the science says:

Soon after a baby is born, it's getting more common these days for the father or non-birthing parent to be encouraged to put the newborn directly on their chest. This skin-to-skin contact is often termed "kangaroo care," as it mimics the way kangaroos provide warmth and security to babies.

Mothers have been encouraged to give kangaroo care for decades now and many do so instinctively after giving birth; it has been shown to help mum and baby connect and with breastfeeding.

So what does the evidence say about kangaroo care for other parents?

A growing body of research shows kangaroo care brings benefits for both baby and parent.

One study that measured cortisol (a stress hormone) levels and blood pressure in new fathers found: "Fathers who held their baby in skin-to-skin contact for the first time showed a significant reduction in physiological stress responses."

upstart writes:

When will the space agency get another shot? They're still figuring that out:

NASA will not slingshot a spacecraft around the moon this week following two previous called-off launch attempts, officials confirmed at a news conference Saturday evening.

That means the team will likely haul the gigantic, 322-foot Space Launch System rocket back to its hangar, the Vehicle Assembly Building, and perhaps take another shot at the moon in October. The U.S. space agency is bumping up against a launch blackout period and can't conflict with a SpaceX flight carrying astronauts to the International Space Station in a few weeks.

[...] Mission leaders are weighing various options and will announce next steps in about a week. Engineers and technicians may perform some work at the platform before the rocket leaves the launchpad.

Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson canceled the second launch attempt a little after 11 a.m. on Saturday, after the team discovered a large fuel leak that engineers couldn't stop. The liquid hydrogen seeping out was two or three times the permissible level, Sarafin said. When high concentrations of hydrogen are mixed in the air, there is a high risk for flammability.

"It was pretty clear that we weren't going to be able to work our way through it like we did on Monday, in terms of managing the leak," he said.

NASA is still investigating the cause of the leak. One possibility the team will look into is whether an accidental overpressurization of the fuel line earlier in the morning could have been the culprit.

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