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hubie writes:

Linguistics and genetics combine to suggest a new hybrid hypothesis for the origin of the Indo-European languages:

An international team of linguists and geneticists led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig has achieved a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the origins of Indo-European, a family of languages spoken by nearly half of the world's population.

For over two hundred years, the origin of the Indo-European languages has been disputed. Two main theories have recently dominated this debate: the 'Steppe' hypothesis, which proposes an origin in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe around 6000 years ago, and the 'Anatolian' or 'farming' hypothesis, suggesting an older origin tied to early agriculture around 9000 years ago. Previous phylogenetic analyses of Indo-European languages have come to conflicting conclusions about the age of the family, due to the combined effects of inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the datasets they used and limitations in the way that phylogenetic methods analyzed ancient languages.

[...] The team used recently developed ancestry-enabled Bayesian phylogenetic analysis to test whether ancient written languages, such as Classical Latin and Vedic Sanskrit, were the direct ancestors of modern Romance and Indic languages, respectively. Russell Gray, Head of the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution and senior author of the study, emphasized the care they had taken to ensure that their inferences were robust. "Our chronology is robust across a wide range of alternative phylogenetic models and sensitivity analyses", he stated. These analyses estimate the Indo-European family to be approximately 8100 years old, with five main branches already split off by around 7000 years ago.

These results are not entirely consistent with either the Steppe or the farming hypotheses. The first author of the study, Paul Heggarty, observed that "Recent ancient DNA data suggest that the Anatolian branch of Indo-European did not emerge from the Steppe, but from further south, in or near the northern arc of the Fertile Crescent — as the earliest source of the Indo-European family. Our language family tree topology, and our lineage split dates, point to other early branches that may also have spread directly from there, not through the Steppe."

Meeting Announcement: The next meeting of the SoylentNews governance committee is scheduled for Tomorrow, Wednesday, November 15th, 2023 at 21:00 UTC (4pm Eastern) in #governance on SoylentNews IRC. Logs of the meeting will be available afterwards for review, and minutes will be published when complete.

The agenda for the upcoming meeting will also be published when available. Minutes and agenda, and other governance committee information are to be found on the SoylentNews Wiki at: https://wiki.staging.soylentnews.org/wiki/Governance

Highlights expected in tomorrow's meeting are discussion of Draft 8 of the bylaws, and a statement from janrinok.

The community is welcome to observe and participate, and is invited to the meeting.

upstart writes:

Surgeons transplanted part of a face and an entire eyeball into a man with severe electrical burns:

This week doctors announced they had completed the first successful transplant of a partial face and an entire eye. In May at NYU Langone Health in New York City, the surgery was performed on a 46-year-old man who had suffered severe electrical burns to his face, left eye and left arm. He does not yet have vision in the transplanted eye and may never regain it there, but early evidence suggests the eye itself is healthy and may be capable of transmitting neurological signals to the brain.

The feat opens up the possibility of restoring the appearance—and maybe even sight—of people who have been disfigured or blinded by injuries. Researchers caution there are many technical hurdles before such a procedure can effectively treat vision loss, however.

"I think it's an important proof of principle," says Jeffrey Goldberg, a professor and chair of ophthalmology at the Byers Eye Institute at Stanford University, who was not involved in the surgery but has been part of a team working toward whole-eye transplants in humans. "I think it points to the opportunity and importance that we really stand on the verge of being able to [achieve] eye transplants and vision restoration for blind patients more broadly. "But he cautions that the main obstacle is achieving regeneration of the optic nerve, which carries visual signals from the retina to the brain; this step has not yet been successfully demonstrated in humans.

Face and cornea transplants have been performed before, yet to the NYU Langone team's knowledge, this is the first time a whole eye has been transplanted successfully (with or without a face). The first partial face transplant was performed in 2005 in France. As of 2021, nearly 50 face transplants had been conducted worldwide. In 1969 Texas physician Conard Moore claimed to have attempted the first whole-eye transplant in a human, but it was not successful. Amid criticism, Moore later retracted his claim, saying he had only transplanted the eye's outer portion—the sclera and cornea. Although a subsequent analysis suggested he may, in fact, have transplanted the whole eye, it did not develop a blood supply.

hubie writes:

The new dating system doesn't change estimates of the moon's age as a whole, which remains around 4.53 billion years:

The "Man in the Moon" is older than we thought.

Scientists have proposed resetting the lunar clock after reassessing impact craters on the surface of the moon. This means that some features of the moon, like the formation that makes up the face of the "Man in the Moon" formation could be 200 million years older than previously theorized.

The new dating system could help to better tell the story of the evolution of the lunar surface and has important implications for our understanding of the violent and turbulent early history of the solar system during which bodies like Earth and the moon were subject to intense bombardment by space rocks.

The new evaluation involved reexamining two separate ways of dating the lunar surface: Counting the number of craters caused by the impact of space rocks; and the assessment of moon rocks collected by the Apollo missions. These two dating methods have traditionally given different results, especially for the ages of the heavily cratered and mountainous highlands of the moon.

[...] "Looking at the signs of these impacts on the moon shows what Earth would be like without the geological churning of plate tectonics which took place here on Earth," Werner said. "What we have done is to show that large portions of the lunar crust are around 200 million years older than had been thought."

The team behind the findings explains that the new dating system doesn't change estimates of the moon's age as a whole, which remains around 4.53 billion years. Instead, it changes the age of all areas of the moon's surface but not in a uniform way; the new dating system suggests older areas are subject to the greatest shift in age due to the new system.

[...] "Such a heavy bombardment period must have affected the origin and early evolution of life on Earth and potentially other planets such as Mars," Bouvier said in a statement. "Bringing back rock samples from Jezero Crater on Mars will be the next giant leap forward to search for signs of ancient life on another planet in the solar system, and when."

The team's research was presented at the Goldschmidt Conference held in Lyon, France, between July 9 and July 14. It has been accepted for publication in the Planetary Science Journal.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Sick of sports? WVU study shows flu deaths rise when pro sports teams move into cities:

West Virginia University economists, whose research shows flu deaths increase when a city becomes home to a new professional sports team, say their data should make even the biggest fans reconsider support for taxpayer-funded stadium subsidies.

According to their paper in Sports Economic Review, U.S. cities that gained pro teams between 1962 and 2016 saw increased influenza mortality of up to 24% after the teams came to town. The researchers analyzed cities with new teams in the four major North American professional leagues: Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League.

[...] "Most, if not all, of the sports venues in the cities we studied received direct and/or indirect public financing," Humphreys said. "Since 2000, U.S. state and local governments have committed nearly $20 billion to new stadiums — roughly a billion dollars per year. These subsidies usually come in the form of governments essentially cutting team owners a check, funded by issuing bonds, to build their stadiums. The fact that teams basically extort cities to get these subsidies by threatening to move elsewhere makes this of even more interest to economists.

"Our finding, that people in cities with sports teams are likely to be sicker than they would be without the team, has the potential to shift how we think about hosting professional sporting events. We hope taxpayers will be less likely to subsidize professional sports facilities if they realize those teams are making them sicker, burdening health care systems and harming businesses' bottom lines as workers use sick days."

When NFL teams moved to cities that never had pro sports teams before, those cities saw an average increase in flu deaths of 17%, or about 13 additional deaths a year. Becoming home to an NBA team increased a city's flu mortality by 4.7%, and MLB — whose games generally occur outside flu season — had the smallest impact, driving three additional deaths each year.

The largest increase in a city's weekly flu mortality came from the NHL. An NHL team moving into a city caused a 24.6% increase in flu deaths per 100,000 residents, Ruseski said, a total increase of about 20 flu deaths a year in each city.

"As for why hockey is so deadly, we believe it is both the timing of the season and location of the teams," she said. "The NHL season overlaps almost perfectly with the flu season and NHL teams are more likely to be in colder cities."

Journal Reference:
Cardazzi et al., Do sporting events amplify airborne virus transmission? Causal evidence from US professional team sports, Sports Economic Rev., 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.serev.2023.100013

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

I have recently read many discussions in places like r/youtube where users who block ads are described as immature freeloaders or selfish for expecting others to watch ads so they don't have to. I believe most users understand that it's expensive to host a video streaming service, and that YouTube has to pay their bills somehow. However, at this point in time, there are very valid reasons for users to continue blocking YouTube ads. YouTube also has better solutions to increase revenue without resorting to their recent aggressive tactics.

Many ads contain NSFW content or obvious scams

YouTube clearly has the ability to detect content that violates the platform's rules, and videos are regularly demonetized for doing so. Because YouTube can moderate user-submitted content in this manner, they also have the ability to moderate sponsor-submitted content. Users have a reasonable expectation to not be subjected to NSFW content without their consent. I have read many reports of ads with cartoon characters engaging in sexual acts, and that is inappropriate. YouTube also does not have the ability to detect who is actually watching a video at a specific time, meaning that they could be exposing children to this content.

YouTube should not be sending content to users that is actively attempting to harm them, and scam ads are doing exactly that. Although many of these scams are obvious, which should make it easier to detect them using YouTube's moderation tools, there are still people who will be fooled. YouTube is not very responsive to user complaints about abusive ads, probably because they don't want to risk losing money from sponsors. One of the main reasons users block ads on other sites is because they are often deceptive or contain malicious payloads. At this time, that is also the best recourse users have to protect themselves from harmful ads on YouTube.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Since their inception in the 1940s, the so-called forever chemicals have woven themselves into the fabric of our modern world. But recently, they've been appearing in alarming news headlines about their damaging effects on our health.

PFAS have, in fact, come under intense scrutiny due to new research showing their persistent nature in the environment and potential health impacts.

[...] The strength of their carbon-fluorine bonds is also what makes them resist breakdown by natural processes. Their longevity, often measured in centuries, has earned them the moniker of "legacy compounds."

Their presence has been detected in worrying concentrations in drinking water, soil, air and even in Arctic ice. Recent scientific investigations have unveiled a concerning connection between PFAS exposure and damage to health, both in humans and animals.

These effects include an increased risk of cancer, liver damage, compromised immune function, developmental disorders and hormonal disruption.

The adverse health effects can be traced to their persistence within the human body. Unlike many substances that are metabolized and eliminated over time, PFAS accumulate in bodily tissues and fluids without breaking down.

This accumulation creates a perpetual, self-sustaining cycle: PFAS contamination permeates rivers, soil and the food chain. These chemicals find their way into the bodies of humans and animals, where they continue to accumulate over time.

hubie writes:

Employees in financial, sales and management occupations are more likely to conclude that their jobs are of little use to society:

In recent years, research showed that many professionals consider their work to be socially useless. Various explanations have been proposed for the phenomenon. The much-discussed "bullshit jobs theory" by the American anthropologist David Graeber, for example, states that some jobs are objectively useless and that this occurs more frequently in certain occupations than others.

Other researchers suggested that the reason people felt their jobs were useless was solely because they were routine and lacked autonomy or good management rather than anything intrinsic to their work. However, this is only one part of the story, as a recent study by sociologist Simon Walo of the University of Zurich shows. It is the first to give quantitative support to the relevance of the occupations.

[...] "The original evidence presented by Graeber was mainly qualitative, which made it difficult to assess the magnitude of the problem," says Walo. "This study extends previous analyses by drawing on a rich, under-utilised dataset and provides new evidence. This paper is therefore the first to find quantitative evidence supporting the argument that the occupation can be decisive for the perceived pointlessness." Walo also found that the share of workers who consider their jobs socially useless is higher in the private sector than in the non-profit or the public sector.

However, Walo's study also confirms other factors that influence employees' perceptions of their own work, including, e.g., alienation, unfavorable working conditions and social interaction. "Employees' assessment of whether their work is perceived as socially useless is a very complex issue that needs to be approached from different angles," the author therefore concludes. "It depends on various factors that do not necessarily have anything to do with the actual usefulness of work as claimed by Graeber. For example, people may also view their work as socially useless because unfavorable working conditions make it seem pointless."

Journal Reference:
Simon Walo: 'Bullshit' After All? Why People Consider Their Jobs Socially Useless. Work, Employment and Society. 21 July 2023. DOI:10.1177/09500170231175771

Related:
    Bullshit Jobs and the Yoke of Managerial Feudalism
    Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs

Original Submission

upstart writes:

OEMs are increasingly focused on using TVs as a way to show customers ads:

People who buy a Fire TV from Amazon are probably looking for a cheap and simple way to get an affordable 4K smart TV. When Amazon announced its first self-branded TVs in September 2021, it touted them as being a "great value." But owners of the devices will soon be paying for some of those savings in the form of more prominently displayed advertisements.

[...] Some of the changes targeting advertisers, like connecting display placement ads with specific in-stream video ads, seem harmless enough. Others could jeopardize the TV-watching experience for owners.

For example, Amazon is preparing to make Alexa with generative AI more useful for finding content on Fire TVs. This could help Alexa, which has struggled alongside other tech giants' voice assistants to generate significant revenue. Amazon gets money every time someone interacts with digital content through Alexa.

However, the company is double-dipping on this idea by also tying ads to generative AI on Fire TVs. When users ask Alexa to help them find media with queries such as "play the show with the guy who plays the lawyer in Breaking Bad," they will see ads that are relevant to the search.

[...] Maines told StreamTV Insider that advertisers had been asking for a way to advertise against Fire TV searches. "It just makes sense to expand our existing sponsor tile offering to show advertisements on the search screen with no extra effort or cost for the advertiser," she said.

[...] Amazon Fire TV users will also start seeing banner ads on the device's home screen for things that have nothing to do with entertainment or media. This ad space was previously reserved for advertising media and entertainment, making the ads feel more relevant, at least. Amazon opening the ad space to more types of advertisers is similar to a move Google TV made early this year.

The company seems to be aware of how dominating these types of advertisements can be. Maines emphasized to StreamTV Insider how the native ads are "right at the top of the Fire TV's home screen" and take "up half the screen."

[...] The banner ads will occupy the first slot in the rotating hero area, which Amazon believes is the first thing Fire TV users see. These users may have purchased a Fire TV primarily for streaming content from ad-free subscriptions, but Maines described how Fire TVs can still manage to force ads on these users.

owl writes:

https://www.righto.com/2023/11/reverse-engineering-intel-386.html

The groundbreaking Intel 386 processor (1985) was the first 32-bit processor in the x86 line. It has numerous internal registers: general-purpose registers, index registers, segment selectors, and more specialized registers. In this blog post, I look at the silicon die of the 386 and explain how some of these registers are implemented at the transistor level. The registers that I examined are implemented as static RAM, with each bit stored in a common 8-transistor circuit, known as "8T". Studying this circuit shows the interesting layout techniques that Intel used to squeeze two storage cells together to minimize the space they require.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The Swedish firm's system will now be transferred to the Faroe Islands in Denmark for installation and commissioning:

The global movement of the seas through tidal streams and ocean currents generates a rich supply of energy that may be transformed into a dependable and local renewable energy source.

Aiming to further this mission, Swedish firm Minesto has now completed onshore testing on its 1.2 MW Dragon 12 tidal energy kite system. The system will be directly transferred to the Faroe Islands in Denmark for installation and commissioning.

[...] According to the firm, its kite system technology is a lightweight, flexible, and scalable solution to harvest tidal energy, which unlocks a predictable renewable energy resource.

[...] The firm's power plant comprises a wing that houses a turbine directly connected to a generator in a nacelle. The control system directs the kite's trajectory by manipulating the rudders and elevators at the back of the kite. The tether holds the tether as well as communication and power lines. The tether is attached to the seabed foundation via a simple connection that is locked and unlatched for installation and retrieval.

The kite is moved by the wing's utilization of the hydrodynamic lift force provided by the underwater stream. An onboard control system autonomously controls the kite in a predefined figure-of-eight trajectory, dragging the turbine through the water at a water flow several times greater than the stream speed.

The turbine shaft drives the generator, sending power to the grid via a cable in the tether and a seabed umbilical to the coast. According to Minesto, the subsea kite is intended to fly in the opposite direction of the main flow, attaining a relative speed several times that of the current rate. Compared to a stationary turbine, this speed increase minimizes the size of the kite and rotor necessary to capture energy. As a result, it is inexpensive to install, run, and maintain.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

'Lice are like living fossils we carry around on our own heads':

Reviled the world over for making our scalps itch and rapidly spreading in schools, lice have hitched their destiny to our hair follicles. They are the oldest known parasites that feed on the blood of humans, so learning more about lice can tell us quite a bit about our own species and migratory patterns.

A study published November 8 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE found that lice likely came into North America in two waves of migration. First when some humans potentially crossed a land bridge that connected Asia with present day Alaska roughly 16,000 years ago during the end of the last ice age and then again during European colonization.

[...] Lice are wingless parasites that live their entire lives on their host and there are three known species that infest humans. Humans and lice have coevolved for thousands of years. The oldest louse specimen known to scientists is 10,000 years old and was found in Brazil in 2000. Since lice and humans have a very intertwined relationship, studying lice can offer clues into human migratory patterns.

[...] Researchers found genetic evidence that head lice mirrored both the movement of people into the Americas from Asia and European colonization after Christopher Columbus's arrival in the late 1400's.

"Central American head lice harbored the Asian background associated with the foundation of the Americas, while South American lice had marks of the European arrival," Ariel Toloza, a study co-author and insect toxicologist at Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnica (CONICET) in Argentina, tells PopSci. "We also detected a recent human migration from Europe to the Americas after WWII."

hubie writes:

NuScale and the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems determined that the 462-MW project would likely not reach a sufficient subscription level to continue toward deployment:

NuScale Power and the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems announced Wednesday that they've agreed to terminate the small modular reactor Carbon Free Power Project, or CFPP.

"Despite significant efforts by both parties to advance the CFPP, it appears unlikely that the project will have enough subscription to continue toward deployment. Therefore, UAMPS and NuScale have mutually determined that ending the project is the most prudent decision for both parties," NuScale and UAMPS said in a press release.

[...] The project, which was expected to be the first commercial SMR in the U.S. faced rising costs. In January, NuScale raised the target price for power from the SMR to $89/MWh from $58/MWh, citing a "changing financial landscape for the development of energy projects nationwide."

Despite the termination of the CFPP, NuScale President and Chief Executive Officer John Hopkins said Wednesday during NuScale's Q3 earnings call that the company is focused on deploying its SMR modules and is "poised to expand into new markets, applications and capabilities." Hopkins highlighted a number of other partnerships and projects, including plans to develop two NuScale VOYGR-12 power plants that will have a combined capacity of nearly 2 GW and power nearby data centers in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

"Though there are risks to any project, the CFPP presented unique challenges that NuScale does not expect will be replicated with other customers," Diane Hughes, vice president of marketing and communications at NuScale, said in a statement to Utility Dive.

Industry groups expressed disappointment but understanding of the decision.

"Innovation — particularly in new technologies — is defined by fits and starts. And innovation in next-generation nuclear is no different," a spokesperson for the Nuclear Energy Institute said in an email.

Previously: First Major Modular Nuclear Project Having Difficulty Retaining Backers

Original Submission

Booga1 writes:

From The Electronic Frontier Foundation: Debunking the Myth of "Anonymous" Data

Personal information that corporations collect from our online behaviors sells for astonishing profits and incentivizes online actors to collect as much as possible. Every mouse click and screen swipe can be tracked and then sold to ad-tech companies and the data brokers that service them.

In an attempt to justify this pervasive surveillance ecosystem, corporations often claim to de-identify our data. This supposedly removes all personal information (such as a person's name) from the data point (such as the fact that an unnamed person bought a particular medicine at a particular time and place). Personal data can also be aggregated, whereby data about multiple people is combined with the intention of removing personal identifying information and thereby protecting user privacy.

...

However, in practice, any attempt at de-identification requires removal not only of your identifiable information, but also of information that can identify you when considered in combination with other information known about you. Here's an example:

• First, think about the number of people that share your specific ZIP or postal code.
• Next, think about how many of those people also share your birthday.
• Now, think about how many people share your exact birthday, ZIP code, and gender.

According to one landmark study, these three characteristics are enough to uniquely identify 87% of the U.S. population. A different study showed that 63% of the U.S. population can be uniquely identified from these three facts.

We cannot trust corporations to self-regulate. The financial benefit and business usefulness of our personal data often outweighs our privacy and anonymity. In re-obtaining the real identity of the person involved (direct identifier) alongside a person's preferences (indirect identifier), corporations are able to continue profiting from our most sensitive information. For instance, a website that asks supposedly "anonymous" users for seemingly trivial information about themselves may be able to use that information to make a unique profile for an individual.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The US Commerce Department has promised to stop promoting American-made commercial spyware to foreign governments.

In a letter sent to US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the federal government dept finally provided details about the policies adopted by its International Trade Administration (ITA) intended to prevent any further promotion of US surveillance technology overseas.

"For the first time the department is making clear that the United States will not help companies find foreign markets for products or services that undermine democracy or enable repressive surveillance and discrimination," Wyden said in a statement. 

The ITA, which is part of the Commerce Department, promotes American goods and services abroad. In May, Wyden sent a letter to US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo demanding answers about its pushing of commercial spyware overseas. 

[...] Last year, the ITA confirmed to Senator Wyden that it has encouraged foreign governments to buy this type of tech, but it refused to answer the senator's questions about which products it endorsed and in which markets. The Department of Commerce still seems to be stonewalling on both, but more on that later.

[...] "Promoting the use of surveillance tech and spyware under the guise of 'advocating for US businesses' smacks uncomfortably of eroding global human rights for a profit," Schroeder said. "The very nature of the technology makes it impossible to promote use of spyware in a way that does not threaten human rights values." 

While a review process is "helpful," the US has no business exporting things like spyware and facial recognition tech, and others, including advanced data analytics and automated license plate readers, should be added to the list, she said. 

"We've repeatedly seen this technology abused and, once exported, the ITA and the US as a whole has very little control over whether it will be abused or fall into the hands of repressive regimes," Schroeder said.

Original Submission