SoylentNews

upstart writes:

Oldest evidence of human cannibalism as a funerary practice:

The remains of human bones with cutmarks, breaks and human chewing marks found across northern Europe show that some human groups living around 15,000 years ago were eating their dead not out of necessity, but as part of their culture.

While in the modern day most people will either bury or cremate their dead, some of our ancestors did things a little differently.

Gough's Cave is a well-known paleolithic site in south-eastern England. Nestled in the Cheddar Gorge, the cave is perhaps best known for the discovery of 15,000 years old human skulls shaped into what are believed to have been cups and bones that had been gnawed by other humans.

But were the people living in Gough's Cave a gruesome outlier, or where they actually part of a wider cannibalistic culture of northern Europe? A new paper now suggests that they were not alone. Human remains dating to the same time period from across northern and western Europe and attributed to the same culture, known as the Magdalenian, also show evidence that they were cannibalized. This suggests that the eating of the dead was a shared behavior during the late Upper Paleolithic.

[...] "Instead of burying their dead, these people were eating them," explains Silvia. "We interpret the evidence that cannibalism was practiced on multiple occasions across north-western Europe over a short period of time, as this practice was part of a diffuse funerary behavior among Magdalenian groups."

"That in itself is interesting, because it is the oldest evidence of cannibalism as a funerary practice."

This cannibalistic behavior was seemingly fairly common among Magdalenian people of north-western Europe, but it didn't last particularly long. There was a shift towards people burying their dead, a behavior seen widely across south central Europe and attributed to a second distinct culture, known as the Epigravettian.

This then raises the question of whether the eventual relative ubiquity of burial culture towards the end of the Paleolithic was the result of Magdalenian people adopting primary burial as a funerary behavior, or if their population was replaced.

During the late Upper Paleolithic, between around 23,000 and 14,000 years ago, there were two dominate cultures in western Europe, largely distinguished by the stone and bone tools the crafted.

The Epigravettian culture was mainly found living in south and eastern Europe, and buried their dead with graves goods in a way that we would perhaps consider more usual by modern standards. The Magdalenian culture from the north-west of Europe, however, were doing things differently. They were processing the bodies of their dead, removing the flesh from the corpse, eating it, and in some cases modifying the remaining bones to create new objects.

One of the main questions was whether or not this cannibalism was driven by necessity, when perhaps food was scarce or the winter long and so the people responsible were in survival mode, or whether it was a cultural behavior.

hubie writes:

Dogs and humans process body postures similarly in their brains:

Humans and primates have brain regions in the temporal lobe that are specialised in perceiving faces and bodies. Dogs also possess a temporal lobe that evolved independently of the primate brain. In recent years, behavioural research has shown that dogs, like humans, are experts in perceiving facial expressions and bodily gestures such as hand signals. "Whether this behavioural expertise is also reflected in the dog brain was the content of our study. Only a few research groups can conduct comparative magnetic resonance imaging studies with dogs," explains first author Magdalena Boch.

[...] The study with 40 human participants and 15 pet dogs now provided the first evidence that dogs, like humans, have a brain region in the temporal lobe that is specialised in the visual perception of body postures. In addition, further regions in the dog brain are equally involved in perceiving faces and bodies. In contrast to humans, however, this did not only affect visual brain regions. When dogs look at faces and bodies, there are also differences in activation in areas responsible for processing smells.

In humans, the authors additionally identified already known regions specialised exclusively in face perception. "We humans often focus on the face when communicating with others. Our results suggest that faces are also an important source of information for dogs. However, body postures and holistic perception seem to play a superior role," Magdalena Boch explains.

The specialised brain regions were equally active in dogs when they looked at pictures of conspecifics or humans. This underlines the close bond between dogs and humans, says Ludwig Huber. "Dogs and humans may not be closely related, but they have been close companions for thousands of years. Therefore, comparing dogs and humans also gives us new insights into the so-called convergent evolution of social perception and information processing processes," Claus Lamm concludes.

Journal Reference:
Magdalena Boch, Isabella C. Wagner, Sabrina Karl, Ludwig Huber, & Claus Lamm: Functionally analogous body- and animacy-responsive areas are present in the dog (Canis familiaris) and human occipito-temporal lobe. Communications Biology (2023). https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-023-05014-7

Original Submission

hubie writes:

People endorse conspiracy theories due to complex combination of personality traits, motivations:

People can be prone to believe in conspiracy theories due to a combination of personality traits and motivations, including relying strongly on their intuition, feeling a sense of antagonism and superiority toward others, and perceiving threats in their environment, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

[...] "Conspiracy theorists are not all likely to be simple-minded, mentally unwell folks—a portrait which is routinely painted in popular culture," said Bowes. "Instead, many turn to conspiracy theories to fulfill deprived motivational needs and make sense of distress and impairment."

[...] The researchers found that overall, people were motivated to believe in conspiracy theories by a need to understand and feel safe in their environment and a need to feel like the community they identify with is superior to others.

Even though many conspiracy theories seem to provide clarity or a supposed secret truth about confusing events, a need for closure or a sense of control were not the strongest motivators to endorse conspiracy theories. Instead, the researchers found some evidence that people were more likely to believe specific conspiracy theories when they were motivated by social relationships. For instance, participants who perceived social threats were more likely to believe in events-based conspiracy theories, such as the theory that the U.S. government planned the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, rather than an abstract theory that, in general, governments plan to harm their citizens to retain power.

[...] The researchers also found that people with certain personality traits, such as a sense of antagonism toward others and high levels of paranoia, were more prone to believe conspiracy theories. Those who strongly believed in conspiracy theories were also more likely to be insecure, paranoid, emotionally volatile, impulsive, suspicious, withdrawn, manipulative, egocentric and eccentric.

The Big Five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism) had a much weaker relationship with conspiratorial thinking, though the researchers said that does not mean that general personality traits are irrelevant to a tendency to believe in conspiracy theories.

Journal Reference:
Shauna M. Bowes, Thomas H. Costello, and Arber Tasimi, The Conspiratorial Mind: A Meta-Analytic Review of Motivational and
Personological Correlates, Psychological Bulletin, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000392 [pdf]

Original Submission

upstart writes:

"VAR!" 100 years ago tonight, Edwin Hubble found a star that revealed the vastness of the Universe:

How big is the Universe? Humanity made it all the way into the 1920s having no idea. Many people at that time thought that the Milky Way was the entire Universe. Yes, big, but not crazy big. Others thought that maybe those spirals and smudges we could see were in fact other galaxies altogether, which would mean the Universe is unfathomably large.

On the night of October 5-6, 1923 — 100 years ago tonight — Edwin Hubble made an observation that would settle the question once and for all. He took a 45-minute exposure of Andromeda, one of the largest and thus apparently nearest "spiral nebulae", and within it he spotted a single compelling star that we now call Hubble V1. We here on Earth will forever have a very special relationship with that star, because Hubble used its characteristics to show conclusively that Andromeda was not a "spiral nebula" within the Milky Way at all, but rather an entirely separate galaxy which he later estimated to be about 1 million (now understood to be closer to 2.5 million) light-years away.

In Hubble's time, many other "spiral nebulae" were known that appeared much smaller than Andromeda and were therefore presumably quite a bit farther away. Because of his observation a hundred years ago tonight, Hubble realized that even Andromeda, close enough to be seen with the naked eye, is on the order of 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) miles away from Earth. And that must mean that the Universe is absurdly, almost comically, huge.

Imagine what Edwin Hubble felt like sitting there at Mt. Wilson Observatory, probably by himself late one evening, when he became the first person ever to know that for sure. His use of red ink and an exclamation point in the main figure of this diary illustrates that he knew darn well the significance of what he had found the minute he realized what it was.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/10/we-now-know-how-cats-purr-why-they-purr-is-still-up-for-debate/

There are few things more gratifying to cat lovers than a contentedly purring feline. But the precise mechanisms by which kitties produce those pleasant, low-frequency rumblings has been a matter of some debate among scientists. Now a team of Austrian scientists has determined that connective tissues embedded in cats' vocal cords play a crucial role in this ability, according to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology. The authors argue that their findings call for a reassessment of the current prevailing hypothesis about how cats purr.

Purring is mostly exclusive to cats, although certain other species can produce purr-like sounds, including raccoons, mongooses, kangaroos, badgers, rabbits, and guinea pigs. And cats are usually divided into those that purr (Felinae) and those that roar (Pantherinae); no cat species can do both. The latter category includes lions, tigers, jaguars, and leopards, and scientists have suggested that the roaring capability is due to an incompletely ossified hyoid bone in the larynx. "Purrers," by contrast, have a completely ossified hyoid, although the purring snow leopard is a rare exception.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Magneto X "levitates" the tool head on magnetic linear motors:

Resin printer company Peopoly created quite a buzz with the unveiling of a prototype beltless FDM 3D printer, the Magneto X, at the East Coast RepRap Festival. The new printer is a desk top machine with a huge 400 x 300 x 300 mm build volume and print speeds up to 800mm/s. It borrows a design feature seen on CNC machines: magnetic linear motors. Normally, 3D printers move their components with rotating stepper motors attached to gears and pulleys. The linear motor can be thought of as a flat, unrolled motor with the "rotor" attached to the moving component – the tool head – and the stator forming a track along one axis.

Dubbed the "MagXY" system, the tool head seems to levitate across the gantry without obvious means. It has a top print speed of 800 mm/s with a max acceleration of 22,000 mm/s², which would make it faster than modern Core XY printers from Bambu Lab.

[...] Peopoly is known for high end, large scale, liquid resin 3D printers and the Magneto X will be it's first plastic pushing printer. The printer will likewise be a premium machine with a price tag starting at $1999, currently on sale for $1399 during the pre-order phase. The optional enclosure will cost $79 more. Printers are expected to begin shipping in late November.

[...] Peopoly is leaning hard into the Open Source community. Not only have they become backers of Klipper firmware, they are also using – and supporting – Open Source OcraSlicer. The Magneto X's nozzles are compatible with the popular E3D's V6 volcano which suggests the machine will be open to modification by users. Peopoly also states its machine can be used without joining a cloud-based system and promises customer data will not be collected.

The 3D printer will have a load cell sensor for precise auto leveling and four independent Z-axis stepper motors for dynamic adjustments. The hotend is rated to 300 degrees Celsius, and with an available enclosure will be able to print engineering grade materials. Prints will be monitored with an included camera which can also take time lapses.

Damn that's fast!

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Fear of being exploited is stagnating our progress in science:

Science is a collaborative effort. What we know today would have never been, had it not been generations of scientists reusing and building on the work of their predecessors.

However, in modern times, academia has become increasingly competitive and indeed rather hostile to the individual researchers. This is especially true for early-career researchers yet to secure tenure and build a name in their fields. Nowadays, scholars are left to compete with each other for citations of their published work, awards and funding.

So, understandably, many scientists have grown unwilling to cooperate and help their peers by sharing their work. They would "hide" their raw data, despite having taken years-long efforts to collect it. They would also conceal experiments that have failed or proved insignificant. All these practices would then result in different teams wasting precious time in running the same useless studies, rather than making further progress and contributing to the world's knowledge.

[...] According to their findings, a specific personality trait called "victim sensitivity" predicted knowledge hiding in science. Researchers with this personality trait are characterized by a latent fear of being exploited by others, and thus, are more suspicious about their colleagues.

[...] The good news, point out the authors of the study, is that—among the participants—the intention to hide knowledge was rather low.

However, the authors warn about a potential bias. It is likely that researchers who volunteered to take part in these studies were more cooperative to begin with. Additionally, it might be that in the context of self-reporting, the participants tried to present themselves as more likable.

"We may need to change the stereotypical way we think about ourselves as researchers, in order to build trust and create a sharing environment among scientists," concludes the research team. "Identifying as a researcher should include being cooperative, other-oriented, and trustworthy: a social identity that stands for knowledge sharing—not knowledge hiding."

Journal Reference:
Marlene Sophie Altenmüller et al, Among us: Fear of exploitation, suspiciousness, and social identity predict knowledge hiding among researchers, Social Psychological Bulletin (2023). DOI: 10.32872/spb.10011

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/4chan-pushing-bing-dall-e-as-quick-methods-to-spread-racist-images/

Despite leading AI companies' attempts to block users from turning AI image generators into engines of racist content, many 4chan users are still turning to these tools to "quickly flood the Internet with racist garbage," 404 Media reported.

404 Media uncovered one 4chan thread where users recommended various AI tools, including Stable Diffusion and DALL-E, but specifically linked to Bing AI's text-to-image generator (which is powered by DALL-E 3) as a "quick method." After finding the right tool—which could also be a more old-school photo-editing tool like Photoshop—users are instructed to add incendiary captions and share the images on social media to create a blitz of racist images online.
[...]
Perhaps because Bing AI's tool has seemingly been deemed the quickest method, it has potentially become the most popular tool in the thread. 404 Media concluded that—"judging by the images' default square format, the uniform 1024 x 1024 resolution"—"most of the images in the thread appear to be generated with Bing," then spread on social media platforms, including Telegram, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram.

It's unclear what steps that makers of the AI image generators seemingly favored by 4chan users have taken to block methods 404 Media said were used to circumvent filters.
[...]
Microsoft's spokesperson told Ars that the "Bing Image Creator is a tool designed to help inspire people's creativity. As with any new technology, some are trying to use it in unintended ways. We are investigating these reports and will take action as needed in accordance with our content policy, which prohibits the creation of harmful content.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The annual Draconid meteor shower peaks this weekend, and viewing conditions are favorable this year.:

The Draconid meteor shower will be active from Oct. 6 to Oct. 10, with the peak happening around Sunday (Oct. 8) or Monday (Oct. 9). This year, the moon will be less than 20% illuminated, offering fairly dark skies for skywatchers hoping to catch sight of a few of these meteors streaking through the sky.

To see this shower, first locate the Draco constellation, from where the Draconids appear to originate (hence their name). From North America, look high to the northwest after sunset. If you can locate Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, Draco will be about 30 degrees above it, or three widths of your fist at arm's length. Otherwise, a stargazing app could help you locate it. Find a spot away from as much light as possible, set up a comfortable chair and allow your eyes time to adjust. With a little luck, you just might catch a few of these "falling stars."

The Draconids are caused by pieces of rock and ice trailing away from Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. As it makes its way through our solar system, the comet leaves this debris behind it. When our planet passes through these "comet crumbs," bits of them burn up in Earth's atmosphere, creating the streaks of light we call a meteor shower.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

"It's really spectacular to have all that material there":

Last month, NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission successfully dropped off incredibly rare samples it collected from the asteroid Bennu, tens of millions of miles away, which could provide tantalizing glimpses into the earliest stages of our solar system.

[...] Scientists soon cracked open the canister to find an abundance of material — and that's not even counting the still-sealed chamber of the spacecraft's TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head, which holds most of the treasure.

In fact, there are so many "dark particles" coating the canister's interior that it's slowing down the curation process, according to a NASA statement.

[...] The spacecraft rendezvoused with the 1,600-foot asteroid back in 2020. It slowly approached Bennu with its TAGSAM stretched out in front of it, briefly making contact and sending dust and small rocks flying.

It took OSIRIS-REx years to finally make it back to the Earth's orbit. After successfully dropping off its loot, it's now on its way to a different asteroid called Apophis, a journey that will take roughly 5.5 years.

Scientists are now performing a preliminary analysis of initial samples taken from outside of the TAGSAM head, scanning them with an electron microscope, X-ray, and infrared instruments.

They're hoping to find out if the samples contain any organic-rich particles or hydrated minerals, which could offer us clues about Bennu's origins.

Also at MIT Technology Review, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://searchengineland.com/youtubes-crackdown-on-ad-blockers-intensifies-432213

YouTube appears to be ramping up its efforts to crackdown on ad blocks

The platform has reportedly been sending users with ad blockers enabled more aggressive prompts, warning them to either "Allow YouTube ads" or subscribe to YouTube Premium. The notification appears in place of videos or as a pop-up when playing videos on fullscreen.

If the viewer fails to comply, the platform threatens to block video playback after three plays. Why we care. This is promising news for advertisers in terms of extending your ad's reach. However, it's important to consider that pushing ads onto people who have no interest may not yield great results, as they're less likely to convert into customers.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

AI chip startup Tenstorrent announced on Monday that it will use Samsung's foundry to manufacture its next generation of products, with both partners alluding to potential future RISC-V collaborations.

"Samsung Foundry's commitment to advancing semiconductor technology aligns with our vision for advancing RISC-V and AI and makes them an ideal partner to bring our AI chiplets to market," beamed Tenstorrent CEO Jim Keller.

Samsung's head of US Foundry business echoed those sentiments: "Samsung's advanced silicon manufacturing nodes will accelerate Tenstorrent's innovations in RISC-V and AI for datacenter and automotive solutions."

Tenstorrent hopes to become an alternative to Nvidia for AI hardware. It builds some of its products – such as its 2023 standalone ML computer, Black Hole – on RISC-V CPU cores. Sixteen of them, to be exact.

In June, Samsung announced it was an official member of the RISC-V Software Ecosystem, which develops code to run on open processor architecture.

The current deal for next-gen products, however, has the Korean megalith manufacturing Tenstorrent's Quasar chiplet using Samsung's SF4X process and 4nm architecture.

[...] "We leave the decision to them where the chips get made," said [Tenstorrent vice president of strategy and corporate communications Bob] Grim. The veep noted that his current customers – LG Electronics and Hyundai – are both in Korea.

Samsung is a licensee of Arm processor designs – a rival to RISC-V. Working with Tenstorrent gives Samsung potential exposure to the open processor design that could help it to win more fabrication work from other RISC-V players.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

X.Org Hit By New Security Vulnerabilities - Two Date Back To 1988 With X11R2:

It was a decade ago that a security researcher commented on X.Org Server security being even "worse than it looks" and that the GLX code for example was "80,000 lines of sheer terror" and hundreds of bugs being uncovered throughout the codebase. In 2023 new X.Org security vulnerabilities continue to be uncovered, two of which were made public today and date back to X11R2 code from the year 1988.

Made public today was CVE-2023-43785 as an out-of-bounds memory access within the libX11 code that has been around since 1996. A second libX11 flaw is stack exhaustion from infinite recursion within the PutSubImage() function of libX11... This vulnerability has been around since X11R2 in February of 1988.

A third libX11 vulnerability made public today is an integer overflow within XCreateImage() that leads to a heap overflow... That too has been around since X11R2 in 1988.

Two libXpm vulnerabilities were also disclosed today related to out-of-bounds reads and both of those date back to 1998.

Due to these issues coming to light, libX11 1.8.7 and libXpm 3.5.17 were released today with the necessary security fixes. More details on these latest X.Org security vulnerabilities via today's X.Org security advisory.;

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Sandra Rivera is off as executive veep of Intel's Datacenter and AI group, and will instead be CEO of the x86 giant's now-soon-to-be-spun-off FPGA business.

On a call with investors late Tuesday, Intel boss Pat Gelsinger discussed the chipmaker's decision to hive off its Platform Solutions Group (PSG), arguing the move ought to provide the unit the autonomy it needs to compete more aggressively in the FPGA market.

"We haven't been managing it as well as we could have," Gelsinger said of PSG on the call. "We also see that we have the opportunity to execute more effectively in the lower margin, mid and low-end areas of the business."

For those who don't recall, Intel bought its way into the FPGA market in 2015 with the $16.7 billion acquisition of Altera. Since then we've seen a flurry of FPGAs from Intel for a variety of applications, particularly as of late. So far this year, the Xeon processor goliath has rolled out 11 products, including an update to its Agilex programmable array portfolio that we took a look at last month.

And also for those who don't know, FPGAs – or Field Programmable Gate Arrays – are chips packed with circuitry that can be configured as needed to perform specific tasks at relatively high speed in hardware. You can program FPGAs to handle stuff like glue logic, peripheral control, data processing on the line, and many more things. They are quite useful in solving application-specific problems, especially when they ship with accelerators and CPU cores already on the die.

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-prehistoric-cosmic-airburst-advent-agriculture.html

Agriculture in Syria started with a bang 12,800 years ago as a fragmented comet slammed into the Earth's atmosphere. The explosion and subsequent environmental changes forced hunter-gatherers in the prehistoric settlement of Abu Hureyra to adopt agricultural practices to boost their chances for survival.

That's the assertion made by an international group of scientists in one of four related research papers, all appearing in the journal Science Open: Airbursts and Cratering Impacts. The papers are the latest results in the investigation of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, the idea that an anomalous cooling of the Earth almost 13 millennia ago was the result of a cosmic impact.

"In this general region, there was a change from more humid conditions that were forested and with diverse sources of food for hunter-gatherers, to drier, cooler conditions when they could no longer subsist only as hunter-gatherers," said Earth scientist James Kennett, a professor emeritus of UC Santa Barbara . The settlement at Abu Hureyra is famous among archaeologists for its evidence of the earliest known transition from foraging to farming. "The villagers started to cultivate barley, wheat and legumes," he noted. "This is what the evidence clearly shows."
...
In the 12,800-year-old layers corresponding to the shift between hunting and gathering and agriculture, the record at Abu Hureyra shows evidence of massive burning. The evidence includes a carbon-rich "black mat" layer with high concentrations of platinum, nanodiamonds and tiny metallic spherules that could only have been formed under extremely high temperatures—higher than any that could have been produced by man's technology at the time.

The airburst flattened trees and straw huts, splashing meltglass onto cereals and grains, as well as on the early buildings, tools and animal bones found in the mound—and most likely on people, too.