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hubie writes:

Researchers show the positive impacts of musical activities to counteract brain ageing:

Normal ageing is associated with progressive cognitive decline. But can we train our brain to delay this process? A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), HES-SO Geneva and EPFL has discovered that practicing and listening to music can alter cognitive decline in healthy seniors by stimulating the production of grey matter. To achieve these results, the researchers followed over 100 retired people who had never practiced music before. They were enrolled in piano and music awareness training for six months. These results open new prospects for the support of healthy ageing. They are reported in NeuroImage: Reports.

Throughout our lives, our brain remodels itself. Brain morphology and connections change according to the environment and the experiences, for instance when we learn new skills or overcome the consequences of a stroke. However, as we age, this ''brain plasticity'' decreases. The brain also loses grey matter, where our precious neurons are located. This is known as ''brain atrophy''.

Gradually, a cognitive decline appears. Working memory, at the core of many cognitive processes, is one of the cognitive functions suffering the most. Working memory is defined as the process in which we briefly retain and manipulate information in order to achieve a goal, such as remembering a telephone number long enough to write it down or translating a sentence from a foreign language.

[...] The participants were randomly assigned to two groups, regardless of their motivation to play an instrument. The second group had active listening lessons, which focused on instrument recognition and analysis of musical properties in a wide range of musical styles. The classes lasted one hour. Participants in both groups were required to do homework for half an hour a day.

upstart writes:

Always Be Closing – deals to grab that sweet, sweet renminbi:

The US semiconductor industry wants to have its cake and eat it, or rather it wants to have continued access to the huge Chinese market despite Washington's ongoing campaign to limit Beijing's access to advanced chip technology.

This latest turn in the chip wars is due to concern among US chipmakers over the rules governing what investments companies will be able to make in China. These need to be clearer, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), so that the companies know where they stand.

The SIA wants clear "guardrails" regarding the rules Washington plans to attach to the subsidies it will dole out as part of the CHIPS Act funding designed to boost semiconductor manufacturing in America.

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo last year warned that companies receiving CHIPS Act cash would be forbidden from building advanced technology plants in China for a period of 10 years, and would only be allowed to expand any mature node facilities in China for the purpose of serving the Chinese market.

In an interview with Bloomberg, SIA president and CEO John Neuffer claimed that China was the semiconductor industry's biggest market: "Our view is that we need to play in that market."

The SIA said it just wants "clear rules of the road" so that what the US government deems a national security concern is well defined and the companies are able to take heed and plan ahead accordingly.

It isn't just US companies that are unhappy with strings attached to CHIPS Act funding. Semiconductor giant TSMC is said to be seeking up to $15 billion in subsidies to help build two chip fabrication plants in Arizona, but has expressed concerns about rules that may require it to share profits from the fabs with the US government as well as provide detailed information about its operations.

The 10-year ban on Chinese investments is a bone of contention for Samsung Electronics and SK hynix too.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Multiple sites have been reporting that former Audi CEO, Rupert Stadler, will plead guilty for his role in the 2015 emissions scandal where Audi and VW software was modified to evade emissions testing. The proprietary software embedded in the cars was modified to detect when the cars were being operated in testing conditions and modified the vehicle's operation to reduce emissions enough to pass the inspection. However, during normal operation, they polluted like crazy, up to 40x the NOx shown during testing conditions. The plea deal he has been offered to him in this trial which started 2020 is expected to be a €1.1 million fine and serve a suspended sentence of up to two years. Stadler has spent several months in pre-trial detention to prevent him from interfering with witnesses further.

Remember Dieselgate? It's been nearly a decade since a whistleblower outed Volkswagen and its sister brands in 2015 over tech invented in 1999 that was designed to fool emission testing. Despite the company facing fines worldwide, having involvement in further probes, and being forced to buy back affected cars, the automaker and its problem-era executives are still facing legal backlash.

The scandal has cost those automakers tens of billions so far. There was an initial attempt to blame only low level employees. However, as the trial shows there was more to it than that and that plans came from the highest levels. Further documents show that the emissions software had been in cheat mode for many years.

• Engadget: Former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler will plead guilty to Dieselgate involvement
• New York Times: Former Audi Chief to Plead Guilty in Emissions Scandal
• The Drive: Former Audi Boss Set to Confess for Role in VW Dieselgate Scandal
• VOA: Ex-Audi CEO to Plead Guilty Over 'Dieselgate' Scandal
• The Verge: Germany charges ex-Audi CEO for alleged role in Dieselgate
• Deutsche Welle: Former head of Audi to confess in 'dieselgate' fraud trial

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Google will remove secure website indicators in Chrome 117:

Google announced today that the lock icon, long thought to be a sign of website security and trustworthiness, will soon be changed with a new icon that doesn't imply that a site is secure or should be trusted.

While first introduced to show that a website was using HTTPS encryption to encrypt connections, the lock symbol is no longer needed given that more than 99% of all web pages are now loaded in Google Chrome over HTTPS.

These also include websites used as landing pages in phishing attacks or other malicious purposes, designed to take advantage of the lock icon to trick the targets into thinking they're safe from attacks.

"This misunderstanding is not harmless — nearly all phishing sites use HTTPS, and therefore also display the lock icon," Google said.

[...] The lock icon will be changed in Chrome 117 with a "variant of the tune icon," a user interface element commonly linked to app settings and designed to show that it's a clickable item.

[...] This move was first announced almost two years ago, in August 2021, when the company revealed that secure website indicators are no longer needed and would be removed from Google Chrome's address bar since over 90% of connections are made over HTTPS.

​"When HTTPS was rare, the lock icon drew attention to the additional protections provided by HTTPS. Today, this is no longer true, and HTTPS is the norm, not the exception, and we've been evolving Chrome accordingly," Google said.

[...] It's worth noting that Google Chrome will continue to alert users of insecure plaintext HTTP connections on all platforms.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The bid includes large players such as Airbus Defence and Space, Eutelsat, and SES:

A consortium of nearly every major European satellite company announced Tuesday that it plans to bid for a proposed satellite constellation to provide global communications. Essentially, such a constellation would provide the European Union with connectivity from low-Earth orbit similar to what SpaceX's Starlink offers.

The bid, which includes large players such as Airbus Defence and Space, Eutelsat, SES, and Thales Alenia Space, comes in response to a request by the European Union for help in constructing a sovereign constellation to provide secure communications for government services, including military applications.

[...] At present, Europe estimates the cost of this constellation at about 6 billion euro and desires it to be ready to provide global coverage by the year 2027. Both the budget and the timeline for this project are likely very ambitious, given the amount of coordination needed and the unlikelihood that Europe's Ariane 6 rocket will have the spare launch capacity to get hundreds of satellites into low-Earth orbit starting in the mid-2020s. The Ariane 6 rocket will not debut until 2024 at the earliest.

However, European officials felt as though they had to make this move. Fundamentally, the continent faced a difficult choice. Europe seeks to remain a major player in spaceflight activities, which increasingly includes satellite-based communications. However, European officials did not want to be beholden to Elon Musk and his Starlink constellation, which already provides secure global communications like those to be delivered by IRIS². European government leaders are already wary of relying on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for the launch of some if its satellites. Officials were similarly disposed toward Amazon's Project Kuiper constellation.

fliptop writes:

The agency continues its post-quantum cryptography push as it looks to create guidance for all sectors:

The latest step in post-quantum cryptography guidance is helping organizations identify where current public-key algorithms will need to be replaced, as the National Institute of Standards and Technology continues its push to fortify U.S. digital networks ahead of the maturity of quantum computing.

A new draft document previews—and solicits public commentary on—NIST's current post-quantum cryptography guidance.

Current goals outlined in the working draft include helping entities locate where and how public key algorithms are utilized in encryption schemes, developing a strategy to migrate these algorithms to quantum-resilient substitutes and performing interoperability and performance testing.

[...] A major theme of the document is to help organizations understand the security architecture in their networks so that they firmly grasp where post-quantum security measures will need to be implemented and where to prioritize modernization. NIST also aims to compile a definitive inventory of software vendors to support post-quantum cryptography migration.

[...] The new guidance follows NIST's ongoing effort to finalize its quantum-resistant algorithms in 2024 after identifying four in 2022.

Originally spotted on Schneier on Security.

Related: 2023 Will See Renewed Focus on Quantum Computing

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

My wife just SMS'd me this, since I've never had one of those Tweeter things . . .

From JMS on Twitter . . .

BABYLON 5 ANIMATED MOVIE coming from Warner Bros. Animation & WB Home Entertainment! Classic B5: raucous, heartfelt, nonstop, a ton of fun through time and space & a love letter to the fans. Movie title, release date and other details coming one week from today.

#B5AnimatedMovie

JMS posts . . .

And just to be clear, this brand new original animated movie is already finished and in the can. So it's 100% real, happening, and coming out very soon.

Not what I imagined or wanted, but I'm not opposed to it. I would very much like to know more about the original story plan before JMS had to use some of his "trap doors" due to cast changes.

What animated movies would you like to see made? Alternatively, are there some stories that you think an animated movie would spoil as far as your are concerned? [JR]

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Photonic circuits are a very promising technology for neural networks because they make it possible to build energy-efficient computing units. For years, the Politecnico di Milano has been working on developing programmable photonic processors integrated on silicon microchips only a few mm2 in size for use in the field of data transmission and processing, and now these devices are being used to build photonic neural networks:

"An artificial neuron, like a biological neuron, must perform very simple mathematical operations, such as addition and multiplication, but in a neural network consisting of many densely interconnected neurons, the energy cost of these operations grows exponentially and quickly becomes prohibitive. Our chip incorporates a photonic accelerator that allows calculations to be carried out very quickly and efficiently, using a programmable grid of silicon interferometers. The calculation time is equal to the transit time of light in a chip a few millimeters in size, so we are talking about less than a billionth of a second (0.1 nanoseconds)," says Francesco Morichetti, Head of the Photonic Devices Lab of the Politecnico di Milano.

"The advantages of photonic neural networks have long been known, but one of the missing pieces to fully exploit their potential was network training.. It is like having a powerful calculator, but not knowing how to use it. In this study, we succeeded in implementing training strategies for photonic neurons similar to those used for conventional neural networks. The photonic 'brain' learns quickly and accurately and can achieve precision comparable to that of a conventional neural network, but faster and with considerable energy savings. These are all building blocks for artificial intelligence and quantum applications," adds Andrea Melloni, Director of Polifab the Politecnico di Milano micro and nanotechnology center.

Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.

Journal Reference: Sunil Pai et al, Experimentally realized in situ backpropagation for deep learning in photonic neural networks, Science (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.ade8450

Related: New Chip Can Process and Classify Nearly Two Billion Images Per Second

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A baby girl who developed a life-threatening brain condition was successfully treated before she was born:

Her parents signed up for a clinical trial of an in-utero surgical treatment to see if doctors could intervene before any of these outcomes materialized. It seems to have worked. The team behind the operation now plans to treat more fetuses in the same way. Other, similar brain conditions might benefit from the same approach. For conditions like these, fetal brain surgery could be the future.

The baby's condition, known as vein of Galen malformation, was first noticed during a routine ultrasound scan at 30 weeks of pregnancy. The condition occurs when a vein connects with an artery in the brain. These two types of vessels have different functions and should be kept separate—arteries ferry high-pressure flows of oxygenated blood from the heart, while thin-walled veins carry low-pressure blood back the other way.

When the two combine, the high-pressure blood flow from an artery can stretch the thin walls of the vein. "Over time the vein essentially blows up like a balloon," says Darren Orbach, a radiologist at Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts, who treats babies born with the condition.

The resulting balloon of blood can cause serious problems for a baby. "It's stealing blood from the rest of the circulation," says Mario Ganau, a consultant neurosurgeon at Oxford University Hospitals in the UK, who was not involved in this particular case. Other parts of the brain can end up being starved of oxygenated blood, causing brain damage, and there's a risk of bleeding in the brain. The extra pressure put on the heart to pump blood can lead to heart failure. And other organs can suffer too—especially the lungs and kidneys, says Ganau.

Fetuses with the condition are thought to be protected by the placenta to some degree. But that changes from the moment the umbilical cord is clamped at birth. "All of a sudden there's this enormous burden placed right on the newborn heart," says Orbach. "Most babies with this condition will become very sick, very quickly."

Journal Reference:
Darren B. Orbach, Louise E. Wilkins-Haug, Carol B. Benson, et al., Transuterine Ultrasound-Guided Fetal Embolization of Vein of Galen Malformation, Eliminating Postnatal Pathophysiology [open], Stroke, 2023. DOI: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/STROKEAHA.123.043421

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The notorious Monopoly Market site has been seized and 288 suspects have been arrested:

Monopoly Market has been seized by authorities, while 288 suspects have been arrested. These individuals are believed to have bought or sold drugs on the dark web through this site.

The international operation – called SpecTor – involved "separate complementary actions" in Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Brazil, the UK, the US and Switzerland. The information used to conduct the operation stemmed from "troves of evidence provided by German authorities", according to Europol which coordinated the international law enforcement action. These German authorities successfully seized "criminal infrastructure" in December 2021, which was used to create evidence for hundreds of national investigations.

"A number of investigations to identify additional individuals behind dark web accounts are still ongoing," Europol wrote in a statement. "As law enforcement authorities gained access to the vendors' extensive buyer lists, thousands of customers across the globe are now at risk of prosecution as well."

The US Department of Justice claims that Operation SpecTor led to more seizures "than any prior operation". The total seizures include 117 firearms, 850kg of different drugs and $53.4m in both cash and virtual currencies.

Commenting on the successful operation, Europol executive director Catherine De Bolle said the law enforcement coalition proves that "we all do better when we work together".

"This operation sends a strong message to criminals on the dark web: international law enforcement has the means and the ability to identify and hold you accountable for your illegal activities, even on the dark web," De Bolle said.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Hydrated dunes suggest water can persist on some parts of the Martian surface, according to data from China's troubled Zhurong rover:

China's Zhurong rover has found evidence of liquid water on present-day Mars, according to a team that reviewed data from the rover's cameras.

To be clear, the team claims they've collected evidence of liquid water on Mars—not the liquid water itself. Water was once plentiful on Mars. NASA, the European Space Agency, and others have found a plethora of evidence for ancient water on the planet; it's proving the recent presence of water that's trickier.

[...] "According to the measured meteorological data by Zhurong and other Mars rovers, we inferred that these dune surface characteristics were related to the involvement of liquid saline water formed by the subsequent melting of frost/snow falling on the salt-containing dune surfaces when cooling occurs," Qin Xiaoguang, a geophysicist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an academy release.

Mars' atmosphere is only 1% the density of Earth's, making it difficult for liquid water to exist on Mars today. But frozen water crops up regularly, in the form of possible subsurface lakes and even relict glaciers on the planet's surface.

[...] Based on the age of the dunes, they may have been hydrated when water vapor moved from the planet's polar ice sheet to its equator, making the planet's lower latitudes more humid. Like the discovery of the glacial remnants on Mars, these findings boost humankind's hopes for water's ability to persist near Mars' relatively balmy equator, where potential human missions would be based.

Journal Reference:
Xiaoguang Qin, Xin Ren, Xu Wang, et al., Modern water at low latitudes on Mars: Potential evidence from dune surfaces [open], Sci. Adv., 2023. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.add8868

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Samsung to pay out $303M for memory patent infringement:

Samsung Electronics has been stung for more than $303 million in a patent infringement case brought by US memory company Netlist.

Netlist, headquartered in Irvine, California, styles itself as a provider of high-performance modular memory subsystems. The company initially filed a complaint that Samsung had infringed on three of its patents, later amended to six [PDF]. Following a six-day trial, the jury found for Netlist in five of these and awarded a total of $303,150,000 in damages.

[...] The patents appear to apply to various aspects of DDR memory modules. According to reports, Samsung's representatives had argued that Netlist's patents were invalid because they were already covered by existing technology and that its own memory chips did not function in the same way as described by the patents, but this clearly did not sway the jurors.

[...] The company states that Samsung and Netlist were initially partners under a 2015 Joint Development and License Agreement (JDLA), which granted Samsung a five-year paid-up license to Netlist's patents.

[...] Under the terms of the agreement, Samsung was to supply Netlist certain memory products at competitive prices, but Netlist claimed Samsung repeatedly failed to honor these promises. As a result, Netlist claims, it terminated the JDLA on July 15, 2020.

Netlist alleged in its court filing that Samsung has continued to make and sell memory products "with materially the same structures" as those referenced in the patents, despite the termination of the agreement.

upstart writes:

Yet another piece of hardware becomes junk

Amazon Halo is dead, and it's a bigger deal than you think:

Does paying a subscription fee to own and use a piece of hardware feel reassuring? Does that monthly commitment make you feel safe, as the company has income past any original purchase, encouraging it to support and update the product so it never becomes useless?

As Amazon's decision to end support for its Halo line of health products proves, it absolutely shouldn't. What it should do, however, is make you seriously consider whether any subscription-based health and fitness product is a good idea at all.

On April 26, Amazon discontinued its Halo product line, which consists of the Halo Band, Halo View, and the Halo Rise. The app will stop working on August 1, when the hardware will also cease to provide any functionality. It's not good for owners and also bad news for staff at Amazon working on the projects, as many will lose their jobs.

[...] Halo is now a failure, and regardless of why it has happened, it's one that the subscription model couldn't help save. The Halo products weren't the best of their type you could get, but Amazon's massive reach, brand recognition, and willingness of its core customers to pay a subscription for its services should have helped mitigate at least some of that issue. But Amazon isn't going to discontinue successful product lines that make it money — it's going to get rid of the ones that do the opposite. The subscription fee absolutely wasn't a lifeline for Halo and provided no protection to you as a consumer at all.

upstart writes:

Neither war nor bad sensors nor a nautical journey will keep this probe from building a 3D map of space:

It's been a decade since it was announced, but the Euclid mission to build a 3D map of the universe is finally getting close to launch with the spacecraft landing in Florida ahead of an expected July liftoff.

The Euclid mission will send the eponymous probe to Earth-Sun Lagrange point 2 – the same spot as NASA's James Webb Telescope, where it will observe more than a third of the sky and detect galaxies as distant as 10 billion light years away.

[...] The ultimate goal of the European Space Agency mission – which has enjoyed important contributions from NASA – is to build a 3D map of the large-scale structure of the universe to help scientists better understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy, which make up more than 95 percent of the mass and energy of the universe. Scientists with the European Space Agency also hope Euclid will help them better understand how the expansion of the universe has changed over time, and whether we have a complete understanding of gravity.

"No test of the [general theory of relativity] has been made with high precision over the large distances and times that Euclid will cover. This way, Euclid will reveal if general relativity breaks down at the largest scales. If it does, physicists will need to go back to the drawing board," ESA said.

[...] If everything in the clean room goes to plan, Euclid will then be mounted atop its Falcon 9 ride to begin the final leg of its journey. If the James Webb's trip to L2 is any indicator, Euclid should reach its destination in around 30 days.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.righto.com/2022/11/a-bug-fix-in-8086-microprocessor.html

While reverse-engineering the 8086 from die photos, a particular circuit caught my eye because its physical layout on the die didn't match the surrounding circuitry. This circuit turns out to implement special functionality for a couple of instructions, subtlely changing the way they interacted with interrupts. Some web searching revealed that this behavior was changed by Intel in 1978 to fix a problem with early versions of the 8086 chip. By studying the die, we can get an idea of how Intel dealt with bugs in the 8086 microprocessor.

In modern CPUs, bugs can often be fixed through a microcode patch that updates the CPU during boot.1 However, prior to the Pentium Pro (1995), microprocessors could only be fixed through a change to the design that fixed the silicon.

Original Submission