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upstart writes:

Ancient brains archive created as Oxford boffins challenge historic theory:

Oxford University researchers have created a new archive of ancient human brains.

The record of ancient brains highlights the different environments they can be saved in, ranging from the frozen Arctic to deserts.

The collection of shrunken, discoloured samples was found preserved in all manner of people including Egyptian and Korean royalty as well as explorers and victims of war.

It gives researchers the chance to analyse the early evolution of humans.

Many of the brains were up to 12,000 years old and found in records dating back to the mid-17th century.

The ancient human brains were found across a range of different sites, including the shores of a lakebed in Stone Age Sweden and the depths of an Iranian salt mine around 500 BC.

Experts say preservation of soft tissue such as brains is relatively rare in the geological record.

[...] The findings, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, bring together the records of more than 4,000 preserved human brains from some two hundred sources, across six continents.

The analyses revealed patterns in the environmental conditions associated with different modes of preservation through time.

More than 1,300 of the human brains were the only soft tissues preserved, prompting questions as to why the brain may persist when other organs perish.

These brains also represent the oldest in the archive with several dating to the last Ice Age.

Alexandra Morton-Hayward, lead author of the study, said: "In the forensic field, it's well known that the brain is one of the first organs to decompose after death yet this huge archive clearly demonstrates that there are certain circumstances in which it survives.

"Whether those circumstances are environmental, or related to the brain's unique biochemistry, is the focus of our ongoing and future work.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

According to YouTube channel Bellular Warcraft, World of Warcraft currently has around 7.25 million subscribers. While the game appears to have recovered from the disaster following the Warlords of Draenor expansion almost 10 years ago, it remains far from its peak of 12 million in 2010 during Wrath of the Lich King.

Subscriptions had been declining steadily since Cataclysm in late 2010, when Draenor managed to boost them up to 10 million. Unfortunately, the spike was short-lived, and Blizzard soon confirmed that WoW had plummeted to 5.5 million subscribers – the last hard number the company ever released.

However, sources recently provided Bellular Warcraft with slides from the company's GDC 2024 postmortem, which included a graph showing WoW subscription growth since 2016. The only exact numbers on the chart are the years displayed on the X-axis, but comments from Blizzard over the years gave Bellular Warcraft just enough context to estimate the real figures.

An earnings report from the first quarter of 2017 mentioned that the 2016 expansion, Legion, slightly surpassed its immediate predecessor, Draenor. From there, Bellular Warcraft estimated that the game had around 5.8 million subscribers at that time. They arrived at the current number of 7.25 million by counting the chart's pixels upward from early 2017.

[...] After War for Azeroth sank subscriptions to approximately 4.07 million, Classic bounced them back to 8.27 million. Then, the ensuing pandemic likely helped sustain subscriber counts at a higher average compared to the earlier trend of peaks and troughs. However, the critically panned Shadowlands, which Blizzard's panel admitted was badly executed, led to a collapse to 4.5 million in 2022. Subscriptions then recovered somewhat leading to Dragonflight later that year, which missed Blizzard's projections.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

EU leaders have gathered today (22 March) to sign what they are calling a Quantum Pact that recognises the importance of advancing quantum computing technologies to enhance the bloc’s scientific and industrial competitiveness.

Quantum computing has been rapidly advancing with major breakthroughs taking place around the world. The emerging technology has potential to transform a range of sectors, including medicine, energy, communications, cybersecurity, space, defence, as well as climate and weather modelling.

“It will enable huge productivity gains, revitalise industry and open up new markets, applications and job opportunities,” said Thomas Skordas, deputy director-general responsible for communications networks, content and technology in the European Commission.

Skordas was filling in for EU commissioner Thierry Breton at the Shaping Europe’s Quantum Future conference held in Brussels, Belgium today. He describes the Quantum Pact as the EU’s attempt to make Europe the “Quantum Valley” of the world.

“Only by building on our strengths, by working together, by being ambitious, by targeting the whole spectrum of activities – research, industry, infrastructures, talent, external partnerships and more – can we transform Europe into the leading region globally for quantum excellence and innovation. Quantum will help us to challenge the boundaries of what is possible.”

An Anonymous Coward writes:

xz-utils are compromised and inject malicious code

= Debian:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2024/msg00057.html
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2024-3094

Debian Security Advisory DSA-5649-1
[SECURITY] [DSA 5649-1] xz-utils security update

Package : xz-utils
CVE ID : CVE-2024-3094

Andres Freund discovered that the upstream source tarballs for xz-utils,
the XZ-format compression utilities, are compromised and inject
malicious code, at build time, into the resulting liblzma5 library.

Right now no Debian stable versions are known to be affected.
Compromised packages were part of the Debian testing, unstable and
experimental distributions, with versions ranging from 5.5.1alpha-0.1
(uploaded on 2024-02-01), up to and including 5.6.1-1. The package has
been reverted to use the upstream 5.4.5 code, which we have versioned
5.6.1+really5.4.5-1.

Users running Debian testing and unstable are urged to update the
xz-utils packages.

For the detailed security status of xz-utils please refer to
its security tracker page at:
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/xz-utils

Further information about Debian Security Advisories, how to apply
these updates to your system and frequently asked questions can be
found at: https://www.debian.org/security/

Mailing list: debian-security-announce@lists.debian.org

upstart writes:

This camera captures 156.3 trillion frames per second:

Scientists have created a blazing-fast scientific camera that shoots images at an encoding rate of 156.3 terahertz (THz) to individual pixels — equivalent to 156.3 trillion frames per second. Dubbed SCARF (swept-coded aperture real-time femtophotography), the research-grade camera could lead to breakthroughs in fields studying micro-events that come and go too quickly for today's most expensive scientific sensors.

SCARF has successfully captured ultrafast events like absorption in a semiconductor and the demagnetization of a metal alloy. The research could open new frontiers in areas as diverse as shock wave mechanics or developing more effective medicine.

Leading the research team was Professor Jinyang Liang of Canada's Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS). He's a globally recognized pioneer in ultrafast photography who built on his breakthroughs from a separate study six years ago. The current research was published in Nature, summarized in a press release from INRS and first reported on by Science Daily.

Professor Liang and company tailored their research as a fresh take on ultrafast cameras. Typically, these systems use a sequential approach: capture frames one at a time and piece them together to observe the objects in motion. But that approach has limitations. "For example, phenomena such as femtosecond laser ablation, shock-wave interaction with living cells, and optical chaos cannot be studied this way," Liang said.

The new camera builds on Liang's previous research to upend traditional ultrafast camera logic. "SCARF overcomes these challenges," INRS communication officer Julie Robert wrote in a statement. "Its imaging modality enables ultrafast sweeping of a static coded aperture while not shearing the ultrafast phenomenon. This provides full-sequence encoding rates of up to 156.3 THz to individual pixels on a camera with a charge-coupled device (CCD). These results can be obtained in a single shot at tunable frame rates and spatial scales in both reflection and transmission modes."

c0lo writes:

Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a bill that bans children aged under 14 from social media platforms and requires 14- and 15-year-olds to get parental consent, a measure supporters say will protect them from online risks to their mental health.

The measure requires social media platforms to terminate the accounts of people under 14 and those of people under 16 who do not have parental consent. It requires them to use a third-party verification system to screen out those who are underage.

The amended version allows for parents to provide consent for older children to engage on social media platforms. It will become law on Jan. 1, 2025.

[...] "Social media harms children in a variety of ways," DeSantis said in a statement. He said the legislation "gives parents a greater ability to protect their children."

[...] Critics have said the bill violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment protections for free speech and that parents, not the government, should make decisions about the online presence of their children of all ages.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A newly devised procedure to de-ice Euclid's optics has performed significantly better than hoped. Light coming in to the visible "VIS" instrument from distant stars was gradually decreasing due small amounts of water ice building up on its optics. Mission teams spent months devising a procedure to heat up individual mirrors in the instrument's complex optical system, without interfering with the finely tuned mission's calibration or potentially causing further contamination. After the very first mirror was warmed by just 34°, Euclid's sight was restored.

Euclid is on a mission to uncover the secrets of dark matter and dark energy, which are thought to make up 95% of the universe yet cannot be directly observed. But a few nanometers of ice—the width of a large molecule—have been accumulating on the mission's optics each month, causing a drop in the light coming in from distant galaxies.

[...] "It was an enormous team effort over the last months to plan, execute and analyze the heating of selected mirrors onboard Euclid, resulting in the fantastic result we see now," explains Ralf Kohley, Euclid instrument scientist and in charge of the anomaly review board.

"The mirrors, and the amount of light coming in through VIS will continue being monitored, and the results from this first test will continue to be analyzed as we turn this experiment into a core part of flying and operating Euclid."

One by one, then group by group, they planned to heat up mirrors in Euclid's optics and test the effect on the light coming in. They had reason to believe, but couldn't know for sure, that the first mirror they would heat was causing most of the problems.

"It was midnight at ESOC mission control when we de-iced the first two mirrors in the procedure. We were very careful with our timings, ensuring we had constant contact between the spacecraft and our ground station in Malargüe, Argentina, so we could be ready to react in real time if there were any anomalies," explains Micha Schmidt, Euclid Spacecraft Operations Manager.

"Thankfully, it all went as planned. When we saw the first analysis provided by the science experts, we knew that they would be very happy—the result was significantly better than expected."

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/reddit-faces-new-reality-after-cashing-in-on-its-ipo/

In an interview on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor ahead of Reddit's market debut on Thursday, chief executive Steve Huffman acknowledged that the mischievous retail investors that congregate on the social media platform might deliberately drive down its share price.

"It's a free market!" he said.

For Reddit, as for Huffman, the bet on a public offering for a site he described as a "fun and special, but sometimes crazy place" has appeared to pay off.

[...] The chief executive sold 500,000 of his shares in the IPO, cashing out a plump $17 million, and is due to receive additional equity awards as a result of listing the company above a $5 billion valuation. He also received an estimated $193 million pay package last year, mostly made up of equity awards, according to filings.

[...] "Reddit, more so than many social media platforms, has been a very community-based, non-commercial space and people know and love it for [this]," said Samuel Woolley, a propaganda expert and assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

"I think the big question that should be on everyone's mind for Reddit is to what extent the IPO will change the very nature and fabric of the platform."

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/03/heres-our-comprehensive-in-depth-guide-to-viewing-the-total-solar-eclipse/

If you enter "how to see the eclipse" into your favorite search engine, you're bound to see thousands—millions?—of helpful guides. Some of these are extremely detailed and thorough, almost as if the author were getting paid by the word or augmented by AI.

In reality, seeing a solar eclipse is just about the easiest thing one can do in one's life. Like, it's difficult to think of anything else that has the greatest reward-lowest effort ratio in life. You just need to know a couple of things. For the sake of simplicity, here is Ars' four-step guide to having a four-star eclipse-viewing experience. Steps are listed in order of ascending importance.

[...] In reality, a total solar eclipse is probably going to be the most spectacular celestial event most of us see in our lifetimes. Certainly, there could be more spectacular ones. A supernova within 100 light-years of Earth would be amazing. Witnessing a large asteroid streaking through Earth's atmosphere before impact would be incredible.

Unfortunately, those would also be lethal.

Related stories on SoylentNews:
Daily Telescope: A Solar Eclipse From the Surface of Mars - 2024-02-14
Annular Solar Eclipse October 2023 and Total in April 2024 - 2023-10-02
NASA's Perseverance Rover Captures Video of Solar Eclipse on Mars - 2022-04-22
How to Watch Rare "Ring of Fire" Solar Eclipse - 2021-06-09
Coming Jan 31st: a Super Blue Blood Moon Eclipse - First Time in 150 Years - 2018-01-05

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries are a promising alternative to lithium–ion batteries (LiBs), the most common rechargeable battery technology. As sulfur is abundant on Earth, these batteries could be cheaper and more environmentally friendly than LiBs, while also potentially exhibiting higher energy densities.

Despite these advantages, the deployment of Li–S batteries has so far been limited, as many of these batteries also have a low cycle life and a high self-discharge rate. In addition, the predicted high energy density of Li–S batteries often becomes far lower when in real applications, due to the high rates at which they charge and discharge.

A chemical reaction that plays a central role in ensuring the high capacity of Li–S batteries is the so-called sulfur reduction reaction (SRR). This reaction has been widely studied, yet its kinetic tendencies at high current rates remain poorly understood.

Researchers at the University of Adelaide, Tianjin University and Australian Synchrotron recently carried out a study aimed at delineating the kinetic trend of SRR, to inform the future development of high-power Li–S batteries. Their paper, published in Nature Nanotechnology, also introduces a nanocomposite carbon electrocatalyst that was found to boost the performance of Li–S batteries, attaining a discharge capacity retention of approximately 75%.

[...] Building on their observations, the researchers already introduced one electrocatalyst that was found to enhance the capacity retention and cyclic stability of an Li–S battery. In the future, their work could inspire the design of other promising catalysts, potentially contributing to the development of new high-power Li–S battery technologies.

More information: Huan Li et al, Developing high-power Li||S batteries via transition metal/carbon nanocomposite electrocatalyst engineering, Nature Nanotechnology (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-024-01614-4

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

As spotted by German tech site DeskModder, Microsoft has begun automatically installing a Copilot app on Windows 11. The new application doesn't seem to have any functionality, and further investigation revealed that it has 0 bytes of data, suggesting that it's actually a placeholder shell for the most part. Thankfully, users can uninstall the app by simply using the built-in 'Uninstall' option in Windows.

[...] It's unclear how the Copilot app is getting installed on systems that have automatic updates turned off, but according to Ghacks, it showed up on their test PC after the Edge browser was updated to the latest version. Interestingly, the application's AppxManifest.xml lists Windows 10 as the minimum compatible version, while the maximum version is listed as Windows 12.0.0.0.

[...] Microsoft recently started rolling out Copilot to more Windows 10/11 devices, enabling users to experience the AI features on their desktop. According to the company, users can access up to ten Copilot requests before needing to sign-in with a Microsoft ID. The feature is still in preview as of now, but is enabled by default in Windows 11 version 23H2. It is, however, disabled by default in Windows 11 version 22H2.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

AI models were better than human experts at predicting the ratings Belgian beers received on a popular review site:

To compare the models, they split the data into a training set and a test set. Once a model was trained on the data within the training set, they evaluated its ability to predict the test set.

The researchers found that all the models were better than the trained panel of human experts at predicting the rating a beer had received from RateBeer.

Through these models, the researchers were able to pinpoint specific compounds that contribute to consumer appreciation of a beer: people were more likely to rate a beer highly if it contained these specific compounds. For example, the models predicted that adding lactic acid, which is present in tart-tasting sour beers, could improve other kinds of beers by making them taste fresher.

"We had the models analyze these beers and then asked them 'How can we make these beers better?'" says Kevin Verstrepen, a professor at KU Leuven and director of the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Microbiology, who worked on the project. "Then we went in and actually made those changes to the beers by adding flavor compounds. And lo and behold—once we did blind tastings, the beers became better, and more generally appreciated."

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Researchers explain the dissimilar smells of babies and teenagers:

A team of aroma chemists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, working with psychologist colleagues from the Technical University of Dresden, has uncovered the reasons for the dissimilar smells between babies and teenagers. The study is published in the journal Communications Chemistry.

Prior research and anecdotal evidence have shown that babies have a pleasant smell, often described as sweet. Teenagers, on the other hand, especially males, have often been described as smelling less pleasant. In this new effort, the research team sought to find out what causes the difference.

[...] The researchers found that most of the chemicals responsible for body odor were similar between the two groups of volunteers. But there were a few that made the difference. Teenage sweat, for example, had high levels of many kinds of carboxylic acids, which the assessors described as "earthy, musty or cheesy."

They also found two steroids in the teen sweat not present in the baby sweat, one of which resulted in "musk or urine-like" emanations—the other, the assessors suggested, smelled more like "musk and sandalwood." Without such chemicals, the sweat of babies smelled much sweeter.

The researchers suggest that study of the chemical compounds in teen sweat could prove fruitful for makers of odor-control products. They also suggest that more work could [be] done to better understand the impact of such odors on parents.

Journal Reference:
Diana Owsienko et al, Body odor samples from infants and post-pubertal children differ in their volatile profiles, Communications Chemistry (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s42004-024-01131-4

Original Submission

Outages

I would like to thank you all for your patience during the recent outages. Something is causing a problem with the database itself. It appears to be running out of room and thus having problems when creating backups. This is not a new phenomenon - NCommander observed that the database was corrupted in Nov/Dec 2022, and he fixed the corruptions that were present at that time. I know that others have done similar 'repairs' over the years. Those of you who have been with us a while will know that we have had various site outages since the site's inception in 2014. We try to get the site up as quickly as possible but we currently have a single active sys-admin who has to find the time to fix the site in between running his own business and having a decent work/life balance. The cause of these corruptions has not been identified despite speculation by some individuals.

New Site

The administration associated with creating a business continues and we think that we are now at the final stage. The paperwork has to be signed by several people and this means sending mail around the USA in order to get real signatures from specific individuals. However, we think that this should only take a week or two.

Deleting Spam

For the last month or so we have been deleting Spam from the Polls and journals. Deleting content is not new. Spam, doxxing, abusive material, CEOS, inappropriate ASCII art etc has often been deleted in the last 10 years. In fact, most of our registered community have the ability to delete some material (their own journals for example), and this has happened from time to time in the past. We also delete outdated submissions on a daily basis. The site software provides a means of making such deletions and it can cope with them. The software that is being used is not new - it has been in Rehash since the site became active. We have received some positive feedback regarding this measure - the Polls and journals are looking much tidier as a result. Unfortunately, we are going to temporarily suspend this measure to simplify the investigations into the database corruption problems. So, as unsightly as they are, we will be returning to the use of Spam moderations on a hopefully temporary basis. We have, of course, also received some negative feedback but it only seems to have come from a couple of Anonymous Cowards, one of whom is our most prolific spammer.

Participation

Finally, I would like to thank the staff for their continued efforts in keeping the site online and active. The participating user count continues to climb, as does the number of pages served each day. Many usernames that have existed for a long time but appear to have been inactive for a while are reappearing and participating in the discussions. I hope that we will soon be able to restructure our site in an affordable yet more robust structure in the very near future.

Jan

canopic jug writes:

Two months ago, Condé Nast bought and folded the music site Pitchfork. For many music fans that marked the end of an era of music criticism and pop culture. Slate magazine has an oral history of the late, great Pitchfork and how it started, what made it unique, and about its demise.

In January, Condé Nast announced that it was folding Pitchfork into GQ, laying off much of the staff of the influential, independent-minded music publication. The outcry was immediate. Why was one album-review website, founded nearly three decades ago in a suburban Minnesota bedroom, loved by so many music fans—and hated by so many others? Pitchfork transformed indie rock, but did pop transform Pitchfork? And does the Condé news really mean that Pitchfork is dead?

Over the past two months, Slate spoke to more than 30 Pitchfork writers, editors, and executives, past and present—as well as critics, industry luminaries, and some of the musicians whose careers Pitchfork made and destroyed—to tell the story behind the raves, the pans, the festivals, the fights, the indie spirit, the corporate takeover, and, of course, the scores. This is the complete oral history of Pitchfork.

[...] The gutting of Pitchfork is not just a loss for writers and editors, but all music fans. Spotify's algorithm can introduce you to new music but it can't contextualise it or tell its stories. Replacing media "gatekeepers" with AI ones has not enriched the culture. There are new formats for music journalism – the YouTuber Anthony Fantano is perhaps the world's most influential music critic, while Cole Cuchna's podcast Dissect is a masterclass in analysis – but like any art form, popular music deserves a thriving critical culture in the written word. While some music websites survive, notably the defiantly left-field digital magazine, the Quietus, it is striking that the alleged dinosaurs of print, led in the UK by Mojo and Uncut, have outlasted most of their supposed successors.

Condé Nast is the media company which owns one of the highly censorious, anti-FOSS "orange sites".

Original Submission