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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Researchers at Queen's University Belfast have developed a plastic film that can kill viruses that land on its surface with room light. The self-sterilizing film is the first of its kind—it is low cost to produce, can be readily scaled and could be used for disposable aprons, tablecloths, and curtains in hospitals. It is coated with a thin layer of particles that absorb UV light and produce reactive oxygen species—ROS. These kill viruses, including SARS-CoV-2.

The technology used to create the film also ensures it is degradable—unlike the current disposable plastic films it would replace, which is much more environmentally friendly. The breakthrough could lead to a significant reduction in the transmission of viruses in healthcare environments but also in other settings that uses plastic films—for example, food production factories.

[...] They found that the film is effective at killing all of the viruses—even in a room lit with just white fluorescent tubes.

[...] Professor Andrew Mills comments, "This film could replace many of the disposable plastic films used in the healthcare industry as it has the added value of being self-sterilizing at no real extra cost. Through rigorous testing we have found that it is effective at killing viruses with just room light—this is the first time that anything like this has been developed and we hope that it will be a huge benefit to society."

Journal Reference:
Ri Han, Jonathon D.Coey, Christopher O'Rourke, et al., Flexible, disposable photocatalytic plastic films for the destruction of viruses [open], Photochem Photobiol, 235, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.jphotobiol.2022.112551

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upstart writes:

Sunday evening's launch will be the second orbital flight attempt for Firefly's Alpha rocket:

Firefly Aerospace will take another crack at reaching orbit on Sunday (Sept. 11), and you can watch it live.

The Texas-based company plans to launch its Alpha rocket on a test mission from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on Sunday (Sept. 11) at 6 p.m. EDT (3 p.m. local California time; 2200 GMT). You can watch the liftoff via Firefly and its livestream partner, EverydayAstronaut.com ; Space.com will carry that webcast as well, if possible.

This will be Alpha's second attempt to make it to orbit. The first try, which launched from Vandenberg on Sept. 2, 2021, ended in a dramatic fireball after the 95-foot-tall (29 meters) rocket suffered a major anomaly.

Related:
    Northrop Grumman Picks Firefly to Replace Russian Engines on Antares Rocket
    Rocket 'Terminated' in Fiery Explosion Over Pacific Ocean

Press kit for this launch

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upstart writes:

The director of the Korean research centre said the 2020 experiment marked an 'important turning point' in making commercial nuclear fusion reactors:

A fusion device in South Korea made a breakthrough when it maintained a temperature nearly seven times hotter than the sun for 20 seconds.

The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) reactor managed to maintain an ion temperature of more than 100m degrees Celsius "without plasma edge instabilities or impurity accumulation". The heat of centre of the sun is estimated to be around 15m degrees Celsius.

The record was hit in 2020, but the associated research paper was published this month in the journal Nature after being peer-reviewed.

The researchers noted that other fusion devices have briefly managed plasma at temperatures of 100m degrees Celsius or higher. However, none of them managed to maintain this for 10 seconds or longer.

[...] "KSTAR's success in maintaining the high-temperature plasma for 20 seconds will be an important turning point in the race for securing the technologies for the long high-performance plasma operation, a critical component of a commercial nuclear fusion reactor in the future."

The final goal of the KSTAR is to succeed in a continuous operation of 300 seconds with an ion temperature higher than 100m degrees Celsius by 2025.

I'm noticing the use more and more in these kind of articles of odd or incorrect units, here using "m" for million. What's up with that? [hubie]

Journal Reference:
Han, H., Park, S.J., Sung, C. et al. A sustained high-temperature fusion plasma regime facilitated by fast ions. Nature 609, 269–275 (2022). 10.1038/s41586-022-05008-1

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upstart writes:

Archeologists Discover 17th Century Remains of Suspected 'Vampire' - ExtremeTech:

Archeologists in Poland recently made an unexpected discovery: the remains of a 17th-century female who was suspected of being a vampire.

[...] While human remains are to be expected in a cemetery, anti-vampiric customs are a little less common. The archeologists uncovered the intact skeleton of an adult female whose neck was pinned to the earth with the blade of a sickle. A padlock was also on the big toe of the skeleton's left foot.

The team instantly recognized that the woman had been buried by someone (or a group of people) who had suspected she was a vampire. Both the sickle and the padlock were placed there by design: the sickle to injure or sever her head if she began to rise from the dead, and the padlock to "symbolize the impossibility of returning." Her large, protruding front tooth also suggests the woman's appearance had startled those around her, prompting cruel or superstitious people to assume she were a vampire or a witch.

Back when people more habitually labeled their neighbors as supernatural beings, it was somewhat common to bury suspected evildoers in a way that prevented any potential return. This is why we often associate cinematic vampire-killing with a wooden stake through the heart. In specific German and Slavic cultures, suspected vampires would be decapitated prior to burial, with the head placed away from the body or between the feet. Some would be cremated, dismembered, or buried upside down for similar reasons. Still, a sickle placed over the deceased's neck is a first for excavated Polish graves—even those from hundreds of years ago.

The suspected vampire from Bydgoszcz was, however, wearing a silk cap, suggesting some people in her community revered her. [...]

Additional details

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upstart writes:

Blockchain analysis keeps getting better. Expect more seizures to come:

Cryptocurrency analytics firm Chainalysis said on Thursday that it helped the US government seize $30 million worth of digital coins that North Korean-backed hackers stole earlier this year from the developer of the non-fungible token-based game Axie Infinite.

When accounting for the more than 50 percent fall in cryptocurrency prices since the theft occurred in March, the seizure represents only about 12 percent of the total funds stolen. The people who pulled off the heist transferred 173,600 ethereum worth about $594 million at the time and $25.5 million in USDC stablecoin, making it one of the biggest cryptocurrency thefts ever.

The seizures "demonstrate that it is becoming more difficult for bad actors to successfully cash out their ill-gotten crypto gains," Erin Plante, senior director of investigations at Chainalysis, wrote. "We have proven that with the right blockchain analysis tools, world-class investigators and compliance professionals can collaborate to stop even the most sophisticated hackers and launderers."

The FBI attributed the theft to Lazarus, the name used to track a hacking group backed by and working on behalf of the North Korean government. According to Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis, the hackers pulled off the transfers after gaining access to five of nine private keys held by transaction validators for the Ronin Networks cross-bridge, a dedicated blockchain for the game.

upstart writes:

A brief walk down memory lane about Unix and its beginning:

The world today runs on Linux. Billions of mobile phones and servers today run Linux. But before Linux, there was Unix, and without it, Linux would not have existed today.

Unix's origin can be traced back to the moon landing days. In 1965, three famous institutions started a joint venture to create an operating system that could serve multiple users and share data and resources.

They are the famous Bell Telephone Laboratories, the General Electric Company and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This project or the joint venture is called "Multics" – an acronym for "Multiplex Information and Computing Service".

But, the project did not see much success. Unfortunately. Due to complexity and poor outcome, Bell Labs discontinued the project.

Ken Thomson from Bell Labs, who worked in Multics, started afresh. He started writing a new operating system for an ancient computer PDP-7 of Digital Equipment Corporation. Later, Dennis Ritchie joined, and they created a hierarchical file system, device files, command line interpreter and processes. This is how the Unix was born, named by another member of the Multics project – Brian Kernighan.

hubie writes:

Breaking down rich gameplay into cognitive skills:

Parents and pundits may no longer argue that gamers are indulging in brainless activities in front of their screens. And gamers may finally feel a sense of vindication.

[...] "Video games can be made to engage and characterize distinct cognitive abilities while still retaining the entertainment value that popular titles offer," says Tomihiro Ono, lead author of the joint study in Scientific Reports.

He adds, "For example, we found that there are in-game micro-level connections such as between stealth behavior and abstract thinking, aiming and attention, and targeting and visual discrimination."

[...] Although existing literature and general beliefs regarding similar action video games already suggest the advantage that younger males may have over other demographic groups, the researchers did not expect to obtain measurements reflecting stark differences even after accounting for gaming experience.

"The lack of a connection between cognitive abilities and video game elements in aged players came as a surprise," Ono notes.

To attain more scientific insight into the psyche of gamers, such as in why computer games have positive influences on some players, the researchers posit that studies using games ought to avoid one-size-fits-all approaches, as demographic factors and game experience can be assumed to affect results.

Journal Reference:
Ono, T., Sakurai, T., Kasuno, S. et al. Novel 3-D action video game mechanics reveal differentiable cognitive constructs in young players, but not in old [open]. Sci Rep 12, 11751 (2022). 10.1038/s41598-022-15679-5

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upstart writes:

Mozilla wants FTC to fine Big Tech's surveillance giants:

Mozilla's Chief Security Officer Marshall Erwin urged federal regulators to crack down on internet giants and web browser makers that don't protect their users' privacy — and to make them pay penalties for bad behavior.

"Privacy online is a mess, consumers are stuck in this vicious cycle in which their data is collected, often without their understanding, and then used to manipulate them," Erwin said during a US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) forum today on commercial surveillance and data security. "We see this rule-making process as a real opportunity to break that cycle."

The FTC is considering imposing stricter privacy rules on corporations to deter unwelcome online monitoring and shoddy data security. Thursday's public session was an early step in that rule-making process.

In August, the watchdog issued "advance notice of proposed rulemaking," and now, through October 21, it's seeking public comment about the "harms" related to businesses' collecting, analyzing, and monetizing people's information.

While any proposed rule will be put to a vote by FTC commissioners, it's worth noting that the regulator's choice of words — using the term "surveillance" rather than a euphemism such as "data gathering" — along with a recent lawsuit against data broker Kochava — seem to indicate it is inclined to codify some type of privacy regulations to limit companies' appetite for information harvesting.

hubie writes:

Chapman University biologist says physiology shifts gears from anticipating sickness to defense mode:

Surrounded by coworkers who are sniffling and sneezing?

You may not be able to ask for sick leave preemptively, but your body is already preparing for battle, says Patricia C. Lopes, assistant professor of biological sciences at Chapman University's Schmid College of Science and Technology.

[...] Lopes' article in the British Ecological Society journal Functional Ecology "Anticipating infection: How parasitism risk changes animal physiology" highlights research showing that there are scenarios in which our physiology changes prior to becoming sick, when disease risk is high.

"In other words," Lopes, explains, "our brains can obtain information from diseased people and then elicit changes to our physiology. For example, observing images of sick people can already trigger activation of the immune system."

From a big picture perspective, this means that parasites affect our lives much more than previously considered, because they are already affecting our physiology even before they invade us, she says.

Journal Reference:
Patricia C. Lopes, Anticipating infection: How parasitism risk changes animal physiology [open], Functional Ecology, 2022. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2435.14155

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Court: Yeah, No One's Going To Feel They're Free To Go When Cops Are Firing Bullets Through Their Front Door:

Consent can mean a lot of things when you're accosted by cops. Law enforcement officers tend to feel it's always voluntary, even when you're sitting in an interrogation room for what the "good cop" refers to as a "friendly chat" meant to "clear everything up."

Whenever a seizure is challenged, if cops didn't have the requisite reasonable suspicion or probable cause to support the stop, they and their lawyers will almost always claim the stop was consensual and the person now suing or trying to suppress evidence was free to go.

[...] The timeline leading the Fourth Amendment violation is pretty clear. There are recordings of the incident, which alone makes it an anomaly. From those recordings and testimony of all involved, the Sixth Circuit reconstructs the late evening welfare check that devolved into (police) violence.

Officers were sent to the home of Mark and Sherrie Campbell following two hangup calls to 911. The deputies did not activate their emergency lights once on the property but aimed their headlights at the front door. Deputy Fox knocked on the front door but did not state he was a law enforcement officer. Mark Campbell answered and asked the deputy through the closed door if the officer had a gun. This conversation (such as it were...) continued for a few more seconds.

Mark Campbell then told the deputy he "had one too" (referring to gun possession). He then opened the door. Deputy Fox then turned back to the door and fired two shots through it. The other deputy (Christopher Austin) tripped and fell to the ground. Deputy Fox asked if Deputy Austin was OK and then turned and fired six more shots through the front door. All of this occurred within 30 seconds of the officers' arrival.

upstart writes:

NASA to try again with SLS Moon rocket launch this month:

NASA will attempt, for the third time now, to blast off its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to the Moon in late September.

Officials are targeting September 23 at the earliest, and September 27 as a potential backup should it have to scrub the launch yet again. Jim Free, NASA's associate administrator of Exploration Systems Development, confirmed at a briefing on Thursday the American space agency had asked the US Space Force division for approval to fly on those dates.

Designed to fly the first woman and another man to the Moon sometime this decade (ideally) under the Artemis program, the SLS is NASA's most powerful rocket to date.

Its launch, if and when it happens, will be the rocket's first major test, during which it will carry an unmanned crew capsule into space so that the pod can detach and circle the Moon before returning to Earth. When it is time to set foot on the lunar surface again, an SLS rocket will be used to send a capsule carrying astronauts to the Moon, using a SpaceX lander to bring them down to the regolith.

But with two failed SLS launches so far and costs totaling more than $20 billion for an expendable launch vehicle that was once planned to lift off in 2016, skeptics say NASA should stop building its own rockets and just subcontract it all out to private companies, such as SpaceX.

The SLS has remained grounded at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida since it was rolled out in August. The first attempt to launch on August 29 was called off due to a faulty sensor reading that led officials to believe one of its engines may be running too hot. The second attempt on September 3 was also cancelled after a hydrogen leak was detected.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The natural world possesses its own intrinsic electrical grid composed of a global web of tiny bacteria-generated nanowires in the soil and oceans that "breathe" by exhaling excess electrons.

In a new study, Yale University researchers discovered that light is a surprising ally in fostering this electronic activity within biofilm bacteria. Exposing bacteria-produced nanowires to light, they found, yielded an up to a 100-fold increase in electrical conductivity.

[...] Almost all living things breathe oxygen to get rid of excess electrons when converting nutrients into energy. Without access to oxygen, however, soil bacteria living deep under oceans or buried underground over billions of years have developed a way to respire by "breathing minerals," like snorkeling, through tiny protein filaments called nanowires.

When bacteria were exposed to light, the increase in electrical current surprised researchers because most of the bacteria tested exist deep in the soil, far from the reach of light. Previous studies had shown that when exposed to light nanowire-producing bacteria grew faster.

[...] "It is a completely different form of photosynthesis," Malvankar said. "Here, light is accelerating breathing by bacteria due to rapid electron transfer between nanowires."

Malvankar's lab is exploring how this insight into bacterial electrical conductivity could be used to spur growth in optoelectronics—a subfield of photonics that studies devices and systems that find and control light—and capture methane, a greenhouse gas known to be a significant contributor to global climate change.

Journal Reference:
Neu, J., Shipps, C.C., Guberman-Pfeffer, M.J. et al. Microbial biofilms as living photoconductors due to ultrafast electron transfer in cytochrome OmcS nanowires. Nat Commun 13, 5150 (2022). 10.1038/s41467-022-32659-5

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A joint U.S.-French Earth science mission is ready to be delivered to California for a launch now scheduled for early December, a slight delay caused in part because of transportation issues.

Thales Alenia Space, the prime contractor for the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) spacecraft, said Sept. 6 it is making final preparations to ship the two-ton spacecraft from its factory in Cannes, France, to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. There, it will be integrated with a SpaceX Falcon 9 for a launch no earlier than Dec. 5.

SWOT, a joint mission of NASA and the French space agency CNES, with participation from the Canadian Space Agency and U.K. Space Agency, will carry out observations for oceanography and hydrology using a synthetic aperture radar, altimeter and other instruments. Scientists plan to use SWOT to conduct a global survey of the Earth’s water, including measuring changes in lakes and rivers as well as ocean currents.

[...] “We had a slight issue with the transport of it,” said Kathleen Boggs, acting associate director for flight programs in NASA’s Earth science division, at an Aug. 2 advisory committee meeting. “It was supposed to come back on a Ukrainian Antonov aircraft that was provided by CNES.”

Those aircraft, though, have largely been grounded because of sanctions and other issues linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

FCC Does The Bare Minimum: Asks Wireless Carriers To Be Honest About Location Data:

It took fifteen years filled with constant scandal, but the FCC finally recently announced that it would be "cracking down on" wireless carrier abuse of consumer location data, thanks to pressure from our new post-Roe reality. This "crackdown" involves politely asking the nation's top wireless carriers to disclose what kind of location data they were collecting, and who they've been sharing and selling it to.

Wireless carriers have now shared their responses with the FCC, all of which have been posted to the agency's website:

[...] So basically the FCC is asking an industry with a history of lying about this stuff to be transparent about what they're collecting and selling, and if they're very clearly breaking fairly flimsy agency rules, they might face penalties. Someday. If those enforcements can survive an agency that's been intentionally vote gridlocked by the telecom industry.

[...] While there are some wireless carriers who claim to never collect or sell user location data, others (notably Verizon and AT&T) utilize familiar legalese to suggest the collection and sale of this data is tightly controlled, anonymous, and secure, despite the fact that, again, fifteen years of scandals have shown that's very much never been the case.

upstart writes:

Ireland fines Instagram a record $400 Million over children's data:

[...] Ireland's data privacy regulator has agreed to levy a record fine of 405 million euros ($402 million) against social network Instagram following an investigation into its handling of children's data, a spokesperson for the watchdog said.

Instagram plans to appeal against the fine, a spokesperson for parent Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) said in an emailed statement.

The investigation, which started in 2020, focused on child users between the ages of 13 and 17 who were allowed to operate business accounts, which facilitated the publication of the user's phone number and/or email address.

"We adopted our final decision last Friday and it does contain a fine of 405 million euro," said the spokesperson for Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), the lead regulator of Instagram's parent company Meta Platforms Inc (META.O).

Full details of the decision will be published next week, he said.

Instagram updated its settings over a year ago and has since released new features to keep teens safe and their information private, the Meta spokesperson said.

Original Submission