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canopic jug writes:

Phys.org has a short summary of research into patterns of fiber transfer across clothing during different types of assaults. The club members wore specially dyed uniforms and then enacted various styles of assault and defense to allow researchers to observe how clothing fibers transferred as a result.

Researchers from Northumbria University and King's College London have published findings outlining the extent that textile fibers transfer during controlled assault scenarios.

Their work, recently published in the academic journal Science & Justice, is the first time the number of fibers transferred between garments during physical assaults has been assessed by simulating the act with real people through Northumbria University's Jiu Jitsu club.

[...] "The importance of this research is that many experimental studies in forensic science are often a far cry from real-life situations, and we wanted to address that in this study," [lead study author Dr. Kelly] Sheridan said. "We wanted to investigate the extent of fiber transfer during different types of physical assaults using real people for the first time and Dr. David Chalton, who leads the Jiu Jitsu club, made it possible."

Apparently thousands of fibers were cross-transferred between the participants' garments each time, varying per attack/defense scenario.

Journal Reference:
Sheridan, Kelly J., Ray Palmer, et. al, A quantitative assessment of the extent and distribution of textile fibre transfer to persons involved in physical assault, Science & Justice (DOI: 10.1016/j.scijus.2023.05.001)

Original Submission

hubie writes:

I first saw a link to this paper from a Mastodon post by John Carlos Baez:

For millennia people have been saying that morality has declined during their lifetime. But there's not much evidence for this continuing decline of morality.

If morality has not declined, then why do people think it has? Although there are surely many good answers to this question, we suggest that one of them has to do with the fact that when two well-established psychological phenomena work in tandem, they can produce an illusion of moral decline. First, numerous studies have shown that human beings are especially likely to seek and attend to negative information about others, and mass media indulge this tendency with a disproportionate focus on people behaving badly. As such, people may encounter more negative information than positive information about the morality of 'people in general', and this 'biased exposure effect' may help explain why people believe that current morality is relatively low. Second, numerous studies have shown that when people recall positive and negative events from the past, the negative events are more likely to be forgotten, more likely to be misremembered as their opposite and more likely to have lost their emotional impact. This 'biased memory effect' may help explain why people believe that past morality was relatively high.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/supplier-sues-boeing-over-alleged-theft-of-sls-rocket-tools/

A Colorado-based company, Wilson Aerospace, is suing Boeing for what it claims to be "theft" of its intellectual property. At issue is a specific tool, known as a Fluid Fitting Torque Device-3, that Wilson developed and Boeing said it needed to attach four main engines to the Space Launch System rocket.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in US District Court in Seattle, where Boeing was originally based. The lawsuit alleges that Boeing reached out to Wilson in March 2014 after learning that the company had created the special torque device, which can precisely install high-torque fittings and nuts in tightly confined spaces.

[...] For example, the lawsuit states, "Boeing's mismatched tools of inferior quality were a cause of the leaks experienced in the SLS projects, and likely caused leaks in equipment of Boeing's joint venture partners and licensees, which discovery will uncover."

Also at CNBC

Also see Complaint PDF

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/06/heres-what-happens-when-you-send-a-nascar-stock-car-to-le-mans/

When Le Mans renovated its facilities in 2012, it built 55 pit garages for regular entrants in its annual 24-hour race and one more for entrants that want to demonstrate something new (there are actually a total of 62 entrants this year, but the special one is still called Garage 56).

These have included the pint-size Nissan Deltawing in 2012 and the closely related electric Nissan ZEOD RC in 2014. In 2016, quadruple amputee Frédéric Sausset did something neither of those two Nissans could manage, finishing the race in a specially modified prototype with the SRT 41 team, which repeated the feat with a pair of paraplegic drivers in 2021. And there have been attempts to run a hydrogen-powered racer from Garage 56. But this year's entry is a bit different—and a little more familiar to Americans. It's a NASCAR stock car.

[...] While it will be racing on the same track at the same time as the other 61 cars in the race, the Garage 56 entry is in its own class, and it's there to entertain the fans and hopefully finish the race rather than fight for overall victory. The drivers appear to be having fun, too.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Barracuda Urges Replacing — Not Patching — Its Email Security Gateways:

It's not often that a zero-day vulnerability causes a network security vendor to urge customers to physically remove and decommission an entire line of affected hardware — as opposed to just applying software updates. But experts say that is exactly what transpired this week with Barracuda Networks, as the company struggled to combat a sprawling malware threat which appears to have undermined its email security appliances in such a fundamental way that they can no longer be safely updated with software fixes.

Campbell, Calif. based Barracuda said it hired incident response firm Mandiant on May 18 after receiving reports about unusual traffic originating from its Email Security Gateway (ESG) devices, which are designed to sit at the edge of an organization's network and scan all incoming and outgoing email for malware.

On May 19, Barracuda identified that the malicious traffic was taking advantage of a previously unknown vulnerability in its ESG appliances, and on May 20 the company pushed a patch for the flaw to all affected appliances (CVE-2023-2868).

In its security advisory, Barracuda said the vulnerability existed in the Barracuda software component responsible for screening attachments for malware. More alarmingly, the company said it appears attackers first started exploiting the flaw in October 2022.

But on June 6, Barracuda suddenly began urging its ESG customers to wholesale rip out and replace — not patch — affected appliances.

"Impacted ESG appliances must be immediately replaced regardless of patch version level," the company's advisory warned. "Barracuda's recommendation at this time is full replacement of the impacted ESG."

upstart writes:

Critical Schrödinger Cat Code: Quantum Computing Breakthrough for Better Qubits:

What is a "critical Schrödinger cat code?"

In 1935, physicist Erwin Schrödinger proposed a thought experiment as a critique of the prevailing understanding of quantum mechanics at the time – the Copenhagen interpretation. In Schrödinger's experiment, a cat is placed in a sealed box with a flask of poison and a radioactive source. If a single atom of the radioactive source decays, the radioactivity is detected by a Geiger counter, which then shatters the flask. The poison is released, killing the cat.

According to the Copenhagen view of quantum mechanics, if the atom is initially in superposition, the cat will inherit the same state and find itself in a superposition of alive and dead. "This state represents exactly the notion of a quantum bit, realized at the macroscopic scale," says Savona.

In past years, scientists have drawn inspiration from Schrödinger's cat to build an encoding technique called "Schrödinger's cat code." Here, the 0 and 1 states of the qubit are encoded onto two opposite phases of an oscillating electromagnetic field in a resonant cavity, similar to the dead or alive states of the cat.

"Schrödinger cat codes have been realized in the past using two distinct approaches," explains Savona. "One leverages anharmonic effects in the cavity, the other relying on carefully engineered cavity losses. In our work, we bridged the two by operating in an intermediate regime, combining the best of both worlds. Although previously believed to be unfruitful, this hybrid regime results in enhanced error suppression capabilities." The core idea is to operate close to the critical point of a phase transition, which is what the 'critical' part of the critical cat code refers to.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2023/06/rejoice-its-2023-and-you-can-still-buy-a-22-volume-paper-encyclopedia/

These days, many of us live online, where machine-generated content has begun to pollute the Internet with misinformation and noise. At a time when it's hard to know what information to trust, I felt delight when I recently learned that World Book still prints an up-to-date book encyclopedia in 2023. Although the term "encyclopedia" is now almost synonymous with Wikipedia, it's refreshing to see such a sizable reference printed on paper.
[...]
Its fiercest competitor of yore, The Encyclopedia Britannica, ended its print run in 2012 after 244 years in print.

In a nod to our present digital age, World Book also offers its encyclopedia as a subscription service through the web. Yet it's the print version that mystifies and attracts my fascination. Why does it still exist?

"Because there is still a demand!" Tom Evans, World Book's editor-in-chief, told Ars over email.
[...]
A World Book rep told Quartz in 2019 that the print encyclopedia sold mostly to schools, public libraries, and homeschooling families. Today, Evans says that public and school libraries are still the company's primary customers. "World Book has a loyal following of librarians who understand the importance of a general reference encyclopedia in print form, accessible to all."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Technology Review is running an unusual book review -- books about learning math, pure math, not applied math, https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/24/1071371/book-reviews-math-education/
The author admits to being adrift,

As a graduate student in physics, I have seen the work that goes into conducting delicate experiments, but the daily grind of mathematical discovery is a ritual altogether foreign to me. And this feeling is only reinforced by popular books on math, which often take the tone of a pastor dispensing sermons to the faithful.

An initial attempt led to a MasterClass by a "living legend of contemporary math", but the master is seated in a white armchair with no blackboards, pens or paper and does not enlighten.

A side story covers a writer for the New Yorker who plans a year to go back and learn the high school algebra/geometry/calculus that escaped him, but mostly fails. For backup he has a niece who is a math professor...but after months without getting it, he complains. Her answer?

"For a moment, think of it as a monastic discipline. You have to take on faith what I tell you." Where his niece and others see patterns and order, he perceives only "incoherence, obfuscation, and chaos"; he feels like a monk who sees lesser angels than everybody around him.

I won't spoil the end, but the author does make some progress with books by mathematician and concert pianist Eugenia Cheng, starting with "Cakes, Custard and Category Theory", where each chapter starts with an analogy to baking.

Unfortunately, for the SN audience, the article does not include any car analogies...

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/06/a-telescope-happened-to-be-pointing-at-the-brightest-supernova-yet-observed/

Supernovae are some of the most energetic events in the Universe. And a subset of those involves gamma-ray bursts, where a lot of the energy released comes from extremely high-energy photons. We think we know why that happens in general terms—the black hole left behind after the explosion expels jets of material at nearly the speed of light. But the details of how and where these jets produce photons are not at all close to being fully worked out.

Unfortunately, these events happen very quickly and very far away, so it's not easy to get detailed observations of them. However, a recent gamma-ray burst that's been called the BOAT (brightest of all time) may be providing us with new information on the events within a few days of a supernova's explosion.

[...] The "telescope" mentioned is the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO). Based nearly three miles (4,400 meters) above sea level, the observatory is a complex of instruments that aren't a telescope in the traditional sense. Instead, they're meant to capture air showers—the complex cascade of debris and photons that are produced when high-energy particles from outer space slam into the atmosphere.

Original Submission

Google DeepMind's Game-Playing AI Just Found Another Way to Make Code Faster

upstart writes:

Google DeepMind's game-playing AI just found another way to make code faster:

It has also found a way to speed up a key algorithm used in cryptography by 30%. These algorithms are among the most common building blocks in software. Small speed-ups can make a huge difference, cutting costs and saving energy.

"Moore's Law is coming to an end, where chips are approaching their fundamental physical limits," says Daniel Mankowitz, a research scientist at Google DeepMind. "We need to find new and innovative ways of optimizing computing."

"It's an interesting new approach," says Peter Sanders, who studies the design and implementation of efficient algorithms at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and who was not involved in the work. "Sorting is still one of the most widely used subroutines in computing," he says.

DeepMind published its results in Nature today. But the techniques that AlphaDev discovered are already being used by millions of software developers. In January 2022, DeepMind submitted its new sorting algorithms to the organization that manages C++, one of the most popular programming languages in the world, and after two months of rigorous independent vetting, AlphaDev's algorithms were added to the language. This was the first change to C++'s sorting algorithms in more than a decade and the first update ever to involve an algorithm discovered using AI.

hubie writes:

Fluid mechanics researchers found that surfactants give the celebratory drink its stable and signature straight rise of bubbles:

Here are some scientific findings worthy of a toast: Researchers from Brown University and the University of Toulouse in France have explained why bubbles in Champagne fizz up in a straight line while bubbles in other carbonated drinks, like beer or soda, don't.

The findings, described in a new Physical Review Fluids study, are based on a series of numerical and physical experiments, including, of course, pouring out glasses of Champagne, beer, sparkling water and sparkling wine. The results not only explain what gives Champagne its line of bubbles but may hold important implications for understanding bubbly flows in the field of fluid mechanics.

"This is the type of research that I've been working out for years," said Brown engineering professor Roberto Zenit, who was one of the paper's authors. "Most people have never seen an ocean seep or an aeration tank but most of them have had a soda, a beer or a glass of Champagne. By talking about Champagne and beer, our master plan is to make people understand that fluid mechanics is important in their daily lives."

[...] When it comes to Champagne and sparkling wine, for instance, the gas bubbles that continuously appear rise rapidly to the top in a single-file line and keep doing so for some time. This is known as a stable bubble chain. With other carbonated drinks, like beer, many bubbles veer off to the side, making it look like multiple bubbles are coming up at once. This means the bubble chain isn't stable.

upstart writes:

US Patent Office Proposes Rule To Make it Much Harder To Kill Bad Patents:

So, this is bad. Over the last few years, we've written plenty about the so-called "inter partes review" or "IPR" that came into being about a decade ago as part of the "America Invents Act," which was the first major change to the patent system in decades. For much of the first decade of the 2000s, patent trolls were running wild and creating a massive tax on innovation. There were so many stories of people (mostly lawyers) getting vague and broad patents that they never had any intention of commercializing, then waiting for someone to come along and build something actually useful and innovative... and then shaking them down with the threat of patent litigation.

The IPR process, while not perfect, was at least an important tool in pushing back on some of the worst of the worst patents. In its most basic form, the IPR process allows nearly anyone to challenge a bad patent and have the special Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) review the patent to determine if it should have been granted in the first place. Given that a bad patent can completely stifle innovation for decades this seems like the very least that the Patent Office should offer to try to get rid of innovation-killing bad patents.

However, patent trolls absolutely loathe the IPR process for fairly obvious reasons. It kills their terrible patents. The entire IPR process has been challenged over and over again and (thankfully) the Supreme Court said that it's perfectly fine for the Patent Office to review granted patents to see if they made a mistake.

But, of course, that never stops the patent trolls. They've complained to Congress. And, now, it seems that the Patent Office itself is trying to help them out. Recently, the USPTO announced a possible change to the IPR process that would basically lead to limiting who can actually challenge bad patents, and which patents could be challenged.

The folks over at EFF are rightly raising the alarm about just how bad this could be if it goes into effect.

The U.S. Patent Office has proposed new rules about who can challenge wrongly granted patents. If the rules become official, they will offer new protections to patent trolls. Challenging patents will become far more onerous, and impossible for some. The new rules could stop organizations like EFF, which used this process to fight the Personal Audio "podcasting patent," from filing patent challenges altogether.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/06/calif-hospital-staff-call-for-halt-of-surgeries-over-bizarre-particles/

More than 70 staff members of a San Diego-area hospital are calling for a halt of all surgeries at the facility due to unidentified black, brown, and gray specks on surgical trays, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The objecting staff have signed a petition to spur hospital officials to pause procedures until the issue is resolved. But officials at the facility, the Kaiser Permanente Zion Medical Center, have rejected the call, according to the Union-Tribune. A spokesperson for the facility did not respond to voicemails from Ars.

[...] Haynes [ a surgical technician at Zion] added that management had assured staff that the particles—whatever they are—are sterile. Surgical equipment goes through a two-step process before use: a wash and then a trip through an autoclave, a pressurized steam machine used for sterilization. But Haynes argued that simply being sterilized doesn't mean it's fit for surgery.

"The fact that a contaminant is "safe" (not a microbe) doesn't mean that contaminant is implantable," she said.

The Union-Tribune noted that the hospital's troubles seemed to begin last month when the facility reported a problem with its hot water lines.

[...] Earlier this year, researchers at a Boston hospital reported on water purification systems in hospital ice machines inadvertently stripping out chlorine, leading to the deaths of three patients.

Leapfrog, a national nonprofit watchdog of hospital quality and safety, recently gave the Zion Medical Center an "A" grade.

Original Submission

(Update appears at bottom.)

Most people who have been on the site more than a few months will know Martyb / bytram well. He has filled so many different roles, many simultaneously, and he has been with the site from well before the 'official' opening. He has done as much as anyone, if not more, to create the site we have today. He has worked as an editor, the Editor-in-Chief, bug squasher, QA, coder, and almost anything that he felt he could turn his hand to - and he could do most things.

Marty has always been known for his calm attitude and wisdom in many situations and if anyone needed help or advice Marty could be reliably called upon to assist. Nothing was ever too much trouble. He is a personal friend of mine - even though we have never met face-to-face - and he has also been the friend of every member of staff that he has encountered during the last 9 years or more.

Unfortunately, Marty suffered a severe stroke quite a while back, in fact two major strokes and quite a few 'minor' ones. It has affected his eyesight and his dexterity. If you know anyone who has had a stroke you will know that the recovery is long, slow and at times very disheartening. When Marty had to stand down from his post I stepped in to replace him - a task that I knew I could never really achieve to his standards. I have always told him that I am keeping his seat warm until he can return. He is not quite ready for that yet. However, Marty has achieved an unbelievable number of stories processed from submissions to front page stories - over 11,000 stories. Any editor will tell you that is an enormous amount of effort for anybody.

But Marty had one more objective and aim that has kept him going through much of his recovery to date. He wanted to reach the 11,111 story mark. Because of his current condition he can often only type at a very slow rate, less than 1 character per second and with only 1 hand. That has been furthered hindered by his poor eyesight. He reached that mark in November - and immediately had his milestone snatched away when there was a system crash and several weeks of his work disappeared.

So Marty did what he always does. He gritted his teeth and started again. Yesterday Marty reached the 11,111 story milestone and I am writing this to make sure that as many people as possible are aware of it so that, in the event of another disaster, we will remember what he has achieved. In fact, he has overshot his target and as I type this he stands at 11,112 stories processed, but I can forgive him that.

Marty, I tip my hat to you, and on behalf of this community I offer you our congratulations and best wishes for your continued recovery. Your contribution is unequaled in so many areas, and many of us have learned so much from you. You are also noted for your use of terrible puns - which is not improving at all! That is, I think, a good sign too.

I am still keeping your seat warm...

janrinok

mrpg writes:

Big-name researchers cited the plot of a major movie among a series of AI "disaster scenarios" they said could threaten humanity's existence:

Two of the three so-called "godfathers of AI" are worried - though the third could not disagree more, saying such "prophecies of doom" are nonsense.

When trying to make sense of it in an interview on British television with one of the researchers who warned of an existential threat, the presenter said: "As somebody who has no experience of this... I think of the Terminator, I think of Skynet, I think of films that I've seen."

He is not alone. The organisers of the warning statement - the Centre for AI Safety (CAIS) - used Pixar's WALL-E as an example of the threats of AI.

Science fiction has always been a vehicle to guess at what the future holds. Very rarely, it gets some things right.

Using the CAIS' list of potential threats as examples, do Hollywood blockbusters have anything to tell us about AI doom?

CAIS says "enfeeblement" is when humanity "becomes completely dependent on machines, similar to the scenario portrayed in the film WALL-E".

If you need a reminder, humans in that movie were happy animals who did no work and could barely stand on their own. Robots tended to everything for them.

[...] But there is another, more insidious form of dependency that is not so far away. That is the handing over of power to a technology we may not fully understand, says Stephanie Hare, an AI ethics researcher and author of Technology Is Not Neutral.

[...] So what happens when someone has "a life-altering decision" - such as a mortgage application or prison parole - refused by AI?

Today, a human could explain why you didn't meet the criteria. But many AI systems are opaque and even the researchers who built them often don't fully understand the decision-making.

"We just feed the data in, the computer does something.... magic happens, and then an outcome happens," Dr Hare says.

The technology might be efficient, but it's arguable it should never be used in critical scenarios like policing, healthcare, or even war, she says. "If they can't explain it, it's not okay."