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upstart writes:

Beer and meat production take a hit as fertilizer plants shut down due to soaring energy prices:

Europe's soaring energy bills are triggering a wave of shutdowns at major fertilizer plants across the Continent, causing disruption for farmers, food manufacturers and — to the horror of bar owners everywhere — brewers of beer.

On Thursday, the world's largest fertilizer company Yara, based in Norway, announced a 50 percent cut to its ammonia-based urea and nitrogen fertilizer production in Europe, citing "record high prices."

[...] Fertilizer is not only vital for boosting crop soil fertility, but its production creates a byproduct, CO2 gas, which is used to add fizz to beer and soft drinks, supply hospitals for surgical procedures and allow animals to be slaughtered humanely.

Farmers, food manufacturers and even pub landlords are therefore deeply worried about the wider implications of a looming fertilizer crunch.

Carlsberg Polska, the third largest brewing company in Poland and subsidiary of the Danish multinational, told POLITICO it plans to stop beer production almost immediately — and that other brewers are bound to follow suit.

"Few people realize that carbon dioxide is a byproduct of fertilizer making. And it cannot be stored for a very long time, so we only have a few days' worth of reserves left," said Carlsberg Polska spokesperson Beata Ptaszyńska-Jedynak, who added that the company uses the CO2 to hermetically seal bottles, cans and kegs.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is a major contributor to climate change and a significant product of many human activities, notably industrial manufacturing. A major goal in the energy field has been to chemically convert emitted CO₂ into valuable chemicals or fuels. But while CO₂ is available in abundance, it has not yet been widely used to generate value-added products. Why not?

The reason is that CO₂ molecules are highly stable and therefore not prone to being chemically converted to a different form. Researchers have sought materials and device designs that could help spur that conversion, but nothing has worked well enough to yield an efficient, cost-effective system.

[...] The challenge begins with the first step in the CO₂ conversion process. Before being transformed into a useful product, CO₂ must be chemically converted into carbon monoxide (CO). [...]

To explore opportunities for improving this process, Furst and her research group focused on the electrocatalyst, a material that enhances the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed in the process. The catalyst is key to successful operation. [...]

But there's one stumbling block: The catalyst and the CO₂ must meet on the surface of the electrode for the reaction to occur. [...]

[...] What was needed was a way to position the small-molecule catalyst firmly and accurately on the electrode and then release it when it degrades. For that task, Furst turned to what she and her team regard as a kind of "programmable molecular Velcro": deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA.

upstart writes:

Rocket Lab, Sierra Space sign agreements under US military's rocket cargo project:

Rocket Lab and Sierra Space have signed separate agreements with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to explore how their respective flight systems — Rocket Lab's Electron and Neutron rockets, Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spaceplane — could be used for superfast cargo delivery on Earth.

[...] Under its agreement, Sierra Space and the military will jointly explore using its Dream Chaser plane for hypersonic space transportation for terrestrial cargo and personnel delivery. Under Rocket Lab's agreement, it will work with the military to investigate using the Electron and Neutron launch vehicles, also for cargo delivery.

[...] "Point-to-point space transportation offers a new ability to move equipment quickly around the world in hours, enabling a faster response to global emergencies and natural disasters," Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said in a statement. "We're excited to be collaborating with USTRANSCOM on this forward-thinking, innovative research program that could ultimately shift the way the Department of Defense considers logistics response options."

[...] As the Air Force acknowledges in a statement on the new Vanguard program, "Delivering cargo via rocket transportation is not a new concept." However, it goes on to state that the sharp decreases in the cost of launch, combined with higher payload capability, have made rocketry a more enticing prospect for terrestrial delivery.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

New Shepard suffers in-flight abort on uncrewed suborbital flight

A problem with Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital vehicle caused an in-flight flight a minute after liftoff Sept. 12, causing a capsule filled with payloads but not people to fire its launch abort motor and parachute to a safe landing.

New Shepard lifted off on the NS-23 mission at 10:27 a.m. Eastern from Blue Origin's Launch Site One in West Texas. The mission, postponed from the end of August because of bad weather at the launch site, had its liftoff delayed by nearly an hour, although the company did not disclose the reason for the holds during the countdown.

The launch appeared to be going normally until about T+1 minutes. The plume from the BE-3 engine that powers the vehicle's booster changed appearance, and the vehicle then appeared to veer slightly from the vertical. At T+1:05, the capsule's launch escape motor activated, sending the capsule clear of the booster.

Also at Ars Technica and CNN.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

As a child swimming off the coast of south Devon in the 1960s, I believed the warm water passing through my legs was the Gulf Stream current. Now, as an adult, I realize it was actually raw sewage being discharged into the ocean.

In those days, it was not unusual for coastal towns to pump sewage out to sea where it was believed to be safely diluted. These pollution problems are now resurfacing because of poor management rather than ignorance six decades on.

[...] The U.K.'s wastewater network comprises both sewage and surface water pipes. Homes flush sewage to treatment works, where solids, bacteria and other contaminants are removed. The treated water is then discharged to rivers or the sea.

[...] Sewage and surface water occupy separate systems, but the pipe network is interconnected and combined in parts, the idea being that during heavy rain, the surface water will flow into sewage pipes and dilute it. Today, the opposite is often likely to happen, and it's partly due to the country's ancient and overburdened system for managing wastewater.

The network was designed by Joseph Bazalgette. Construction began in 1858 and was completed in the mid-1870s. There has been little investment to update the pipes or expand the treatment facilities in the intervening 150 years.

One exception is London's new super sewer, which is due to enter service in 2025. Even so, the company responsible admitted it would need to be twice as big to prevent waste spilling into the Thames.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

New research into gender pay equity in Aotearoa New Zealand universities from the University of Canterbury (UC) explores interventions that will improve representation of women at higher levels of academia and therefore address pay equity.

"Levers of change: Using mathematical models to compare gender equity interventions in universities" by Professors Alex James and Ann Brower was published by Royal Society Open Science today. The research builds on the authors' previous work published in 2020 which found that over her career, a woman employed on academic staff at a New Zealand university can expect to earn about $400,000 less than a man.

"It's not new to find a gender pay gap; we've known this for decades," Professor Brower says. "What's important now is to find out what to do about it. Our research is globally unique because we measured research performance and put people into categories. From there we could find out which of these three levers works best for the different categories. So, our research should give universities a plan of action."

The study was the first of its kind to differentiate between moderate and high achieving researchers, based on national Performance Based Research Fund data. The authors concluded that for academics who focused on research, fairer hiring practices would influence pay parity, but for moderately achieving researchers, changes to promotions processes would have a positive change impact.

The authors argue that time will not bridge the gender representation gap in academia and call for bold action across three levers of change—hiring, promotion and attrition.

The study found that the women made up 25% of professors at UC, much improved from 3% in 2005 but still a long way behind men at the top academic level. The gap persists despite women making up more than 50% of postgraduate students in many disciplines for many years, yet remaining over-represented at the levels of lecturer and senior lecturer. UC was representative of the tertiary sector.

More information: Alex James et al, Levers of change: using mathematical models to compare gender equity interventions in universities, Royal Society Open Science (2022). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.220785

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

In the old days, if you wanted to snoop on a piece of serial gear, you probably had a serial monitor or, perhaps, an attachment for your scope or logic analyzer. Today, you can get cheap logic analyzers that can do the job, but what if you want a software-only solution? Recently, I needed to do a little debugging on a USB serial port and, of course, there isn’t really anywhere to easily tie in a monitor or a logic analyzer. So I started looking for an alternate solution.

If you recall, in a previous Linux Fu we talked about pseudoterminals which look like serial ports but actually talk to a piece of software. That might make you think: why not put a piece of monitor software between the serial port and a pty? Why not, indeed? That’s such a good idea that it has already been done. When it works, it works well. The only issue is, of course, that it doesn’t always work.

The software in question is interceptty. You may have to build it from source, but there aren’t any oddball dependencies. [...]

[...] The software uses the concept of a backend device and a frontend device. The back device is, usually, your normal serial port. The frontend device is something that interceptty creates. So the idea is that you connect the program to the backend, it creates the front end, and then you connect some other program to the front end. The program will log all the traffic between the program connected to the front end and the port on the back end.

upstart writes:

The EU's AI Act could have a chilling effect on open source efforts, experts warn:

The nonpartisan think tank Brookings this week published a piece decrying the bloc's regulation of open source AI, arguing it would create legal liability for general-purpose AI systems while simultaneously undermining their development. Under the EU's draft AI Act, open source developers would have to adhere to guidelines for risk management, data governance, technical documentation and transparency, as well as standards of accuracy and cybersecurity.

If a company were to deploy an open source AI system that led to some disastrous outcome, the author asserts, it's not inconceivable the company could attempt to deflect responsibility by suing the open source developers on which they built their product.

"This could further concentrate power over the future of AI in large technology companies and prevent research that is critical to the public's understanding of AI," Alex Engler, the analyst at Brookings who published the piece, wrote. "In the end, the [E.U.'s] attempt to regulate open-source could create a convoluted set of requirements that endangers open-source AI contributors, likely without improving use of general-purpose AI."

In 2021, the European Commission — the EU's politically independent executive arm — released the text of the AI Act, which aims to promote "trustworthy AI" deployment in the EU as they solicit input from industry ahead of a vote this fall, EU. institutions are seeking to make amendments to the regulations that attempt to balance innovation with accountability. But according to some experts, the AI Act as written would impose onerous requirements on open efforts to develop AI systems.

In a recent example, Stable Diffusion, an open source AI system that generates images from text prompts, was released with a license prohibiting certain types of content. But it quickly found an audience within communities that use such AI tools to create pornographic deepfakes of celebrities.

upstart writes:

Classified UFO videos would 'harm national security' if released, Navy says:

The U.S. Navy holds unseen videos of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) — or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), as the Department of Defense (DOD) prefers to call them — but will not release the footage publicly because it would "harm national security," a Navy spokesperson wrote Wednesday (Sept. 7).

The admission came in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the government transparency site The Black Vault, which has previously shared thousands of pages of UFO-related documents received via FOIA requests to the CIA and other government agencies. The Black Vault filed the FOIA request to the U.S. Navy in April 2020 — just one day after the Navy declassified three now-infamous videos shot by Navy pilots showing high-tech aircraft moving in seemingly impossible ways. The Black Vault requested that the Navy now turn over any and all other videos related to UAP.

More than two years later, the government responded with a letter that both confirmed that more UAP videos exist and denied the request to turn them over due to national security concerns.

"The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities," Gregory Cason, deputy director of the Navy's FOIA office, wrote in a response letter. "No portions of the videos can be segregated for release."

[...] It's clear, however, that the U.S. military takes the potential threat of UAP very seriously. In May 2022, the DOD held its first public hearing on UFOs since the 1960s. The hearing primarily discussed a June 2021 Pentagon report that revealed U.S. Navy pilots had reported 144 UAP sightings since 2004. More recently, the DOD announced that it will receive federal funding to open a new office focused exclusively on managing reports of UFO sightings by the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Scientists at the University of Southampton have discovered that the evolution of land plants caused a sudden shift in the composition of Earth's continents:

The evolution of land plants took place about 430 million years ago during the Silurian Period, when North America and Europe were conjoined in a landmass called Pangaea.

[...] "Plants caused fundamental changes to river systems, bringing about more meandering rivers and muddy floodplains, as well as thicker soils," says Dr Christopher Spencer, Assistant Professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, lead author of the study. "This shift was tied to the development of plant rooting systems that helped produce colossal amounts of mud (by breaking down rocks) and stabilised river channels, which locked up this mud for long periods."

The team recognised that Earth's surface and deep interior are linked by plate tectonics – rivers flush mud into the oceans, and this mud then gets dragged into the Earth's molten interior (or mantle) at subduction zones where it gets melted to form new rocks.

"When these rocks crystallise, they trap in vestiges of their past history," says Dr Tom Gernon, Associate Professor of Earth Science at the University of Southampton and co-author of the study. "So, we hypothesised that the evolution of plants should dramatically slow down the delivery of mud to the oceans, and that this feature should be preserved in the rock record – it's that simple."

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

Original Submission

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

Original Submission

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

Original Submission

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

Original Submission

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.