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upstart writes:

Is accidentally stumbling across the unknown a key part of science?:

The three princes of Sarandib—an ancient Persian name for Sri Lanka—get exiled by their father the king. They are good boys, but he wants them to experience the wider world and its peoples and be tested by them before they take over the kingdom. They meet a cameleer who has lost his camel and tell him they've seen it—though they have not—and prove it by describing three noteworthy characteristics of the animal: it is blind in one eye, it has a tooth missing, and it has a lame leg.

After some hijinks the camel is found, and the princes are correct. How could they have known? They used their keen observational skills to notice unusual things, and their wit to interpret those observations to reveal a truth that was not immediately apparent.

It is a very old tale, sometimes involving an elephant or a horse instead of a camel. But this is the version written by Amir Khusrau in Delhi in 1301 in his poem The Eight Tales of Paradise, and this is the version that one Christopher the Armenian clumsily translated into the Venetian novel The Three Princes of Serendip, published in 1557; a publication that, in a roundabout way, brought the word "serendipity" into the English language.

In no version of the story do the princes accidentally stumble across something important they were not looking for, or find something they were looking for but in a roundabout, unanticipated manner, or make a valuable discovery based on a false belief or misapprehension. Chance, luck, and accidents, happy or otherwise, play no role in their tale. Rather, the trio use their astute observations as fodder for their abductive reasoning. Their main talent is their ability to spot surprising, unexpected things and use their observations to formulate hypotheses and conjectures that then allow them to deduce the existence of something they've never before seen.

This is how Telmo Pievani, the first Italian chair of Philosophy of Biological Sciences at the University of Padua, eventually comes to define serendipity in his new book, Serendipity: the Unexpected in Science. It's hardly a mind-bending or world-altering read, but it is a cute and engaging one, especially when his many stories of discovery veer into ruminations on the nature of inquiry and of science itself.

He starts with the above-mentioned romp through global literature, culminating in the joint coining and misunderstanding of the term as we know it today: in 1754, after reading the popular English translation entitled The Travels and Adventures of Three Princes of Serendip, the intellectual Horace Walpole described "Serendipity, a very expressive word," as "discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of."

Pievani knows a lot, but like a lot, about the history of science, and he puts it on display here. He quickly debunks all of the instances of alleged serendipity that are always trotted out: Fleming the microbiologist had been studying antibiotics and searching for a commercially viable one for years before his moldy plate led him to penicillin. Yes, Röntgen discovered X-rays by a fluke, but it was only because of the training he received in his studies of cathode rays that he recognized he was observing a new form of radiation. Plenty of people over the course of history splashed some volume of water out of the baths they were climbing into and watched apples fall, but only Archimedes—who had recently been tasked by his king to figure out if his crown was made entirely of gold—and Newton—polymathic inventor of calculus—leapt from these (probably apocryphal) mundane occurrences to their famous discoveries of density and gravity, respectively.

After dispensing with these tired old saws, Pievani then suggests some cases of potentially real—or strong, as he deems it—serendipity. George de Mestral's inventing velcro after noticing burrs stuck to his pants while hiking in the Alps; he certainly wasn't searching for anything, and he parlayed his observation into a useful technology. DuPont chemists' developing nylon, Teflon, and Post-it notes while playing with polymers for assorted other purposes. Columbus "discovering" the Americas (for the fourth time) since he thought the Earth was about a third smaller than Eratosthenes of Cyrene had correctly calculated it to be almost two thousand years earlier, forgotten "due to memory loss and Eurocentric prejudices."

Original Submission

quietus writes:

The European Court of Justice has ruled that Apple has gotten an unfair tax advantage by the Irish tax authorities over the period 1991 to 2014.

During this period, Apple only paid taxes in the European Union through 2 subsidiaries in Ireland, Apple Sales International and Apple Operations Europe. Both companies were granted exemption tax rules by the Irish government in 1991 and 2007. As a result of the allocation method endorsed in these tax rulings, Apple only paid an effective corporate tax rate that declined from 1% in 2003 to 0.005% in 2014 on the profits of Apple Sales International.

This selective tax treatment of Apple in Ireland is illegal under EU state aid rules, because it gives Apple a significant advantage over other businesses that are subject to the normal national taxation rules, according to the European Commission.

After a long legal battle, the European Court of Justice has now ruled that this viewpoint of the Commission is correct, and Apple needs to pay illegal tax benefits worth €13 billion, plus rent, to the Irish authorities.

There is no appeal possible to this decision.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2024/09/ukrainian-drones-now-spray-2500-c-thermite-streams-right-into-russian-trenches/

Wars of necessity spawn weapons innovation as each side tries to counter the other's tactics and punch through defenses. For instance—as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has made drone warfare real, both sides have developed ways to bring down drones more easily. One recent Ukrainian innovation has been building counter-drone ramming drones that literally knock Russian drones from the sky.

In the case of the trench warfare that currently dominates the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainians have another new tactic: dragon's fire. Delivered by drone.
[...]
This drone type is allegedly called "Dragon" and is said to feature thermite, a mixture of metal powder (usually aluminum) and metal oxide (in this case, said to be iron). When a thermite mixture is ignited, it undergoes a redox reaction that releases an enormous amount of heat energy and can burn anywhere.
[...]
Update, Sept. 5: WarTranslated, an X account that posts translations into English from Russian-speaking Telegram channels, has just posted a Russian writer's thoughts about the new drones. The Dragon drones' "effectiveness now looks much higher than in the initial videos," the writer says, adding that they are "capable of burning out vegetation (grass, bushes, trees with foliage) in a short period of time. This will open up the enemy's view of camouflaged positions, which will deprive the defending units of property and ammunition, and the assault groups concentrated for the attack of the element of surprise."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Optical Character Recognition converts passwords shown in images to machine-readable text:

Researchers have discovered more than 280 malicious apps for Android that use optical character recognition to steal cryptocurrency wallet credentials from infected devices.

The apps masquerade as official ones from banks, government services, TV streaming services, and utilities. In fact, they scour infected phones for text messages, contacts, and all stored images and surreptitiously send them to remote servers controlled by the app developers. The apps are available from malicious sites and are distributed in phishing messages sent to targets. There's no indication that any of the apps were available through Google Play.

The most notable thing about the newly discovered malware campaign is that the threat actors behind it are employing optical character recognition software in an attempt to extract cryptocurrency wallet credentials that are shown in images stored on infected devices. Many wallets allow users to protect their wallets with a series of random words. The mnemonic credentials are easier for most people to remember than the jumble of characters that appear in the private key. Words are also easier for humans to recognize in images.

[...] Optical character recognition is the process of converting images of typed, handwritten, or printed text into machine-encoded text. OCR has existed for years and has grown increasingly common to transform characters captured in images into characters that can be read and manipulated by software.

[...] People who are concerned they may have installed one of the malicious apps should check the McAfee post for a list of associated websites and cryptographic hashes.

The malware has received multiple updates over time. Whereas it once used HTTP to communicate with control servers, it now connects through WebSockets, a mechanism that's harder for security software to parse. WebSockets have the added benefit of being a more versatile channel.

Developers have also updated the apps to better obfuscate their malicious functionality. Obfuscation methods include encoding the strings inside the code so they're not easily read by humans, the addition of irrelevant code, and the renaming of functions and variables, all of which confuse analysts and make detection harder. While the malware is mostly restricted to South Korea, it has recently begun to spread within the UK.

"This development is significant as it shows that the threat actors are expanding their focus both demographically and geographically," Ryu wrote. "The move into the UK points to a deliberate attempt by the attackers to broaden their operations, likely aiming at new user groups with localized versions of the malware."

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

A multinational automaker prepared to lay off more than 2,000 American workers in August after benefiting handsomely from the Biden administration's subsidies for electric-vehicle production:

Stellantis, the parent company to famous brands like Ram and Jeep, has been awarded hundreds of millions in grants from the federal government to promote its EV manufacturing. But the Biden administration's largesse has not prevented the company from laying off American workers.

In July, the Department of Energy awarded Stellantis subsidiary Chrysler a $334.8 million grant to convert a shuttered Illinois plant into a facility for building EVs and another $250 million grant to make a ...(aaaand, paywall)

The AP ran a story a few weeks ago foreshadowing this action:

The statement comes as the company faces increased capital spending to make the transition from gasoline vehicles to electric autos. It also has reported declining U.S. sales in the first quarter, and it has higher costs due to a new contract agreement reached last year with the United Auto Workers union. Stellantis has about 43,000 factory workers.

[...] Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares has said his company has to work on cutting costs globally in order to keep electric vehicles affordable for the middle class. Electric vehicles, he has said, cost about 40% more than those powered by gasoline. Without cost reductions, EVs will be too expensive for the middle class, shrinking the market and driving costs up more, Tavares has said.

I've been working on cars for most of my life and my observation is Chrysler/Ram are the worst vehicles on the road. I also own two Jeeps that are 50+ years old, however Chrysler has ruined the Jeep name by what I assume is cutting corners to save money because they're poorly designed and flimsy. Interesting the powers that be at Stellantis don't seem to be concerned about these issues.

Previously: Chrysler to Go All-Electric by 2028, Starting with the Airflow in 2025

Related:
    • General Motors Lays Off Hundreds Of US Workers
    • Tesla Lays Off 'More Than 10%' of its Global Workforce

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Core drilling is tricky. Getting a 6 GHz signal through concrete is now easier.

One issue in getting office buildings networked that you don't typically face at home is concrete—and lots of it. Concrete walls are an average of 8 inches thick inside most commercial real estate.

Keeping a network running through them is not merely a matter of running cord. Not everybody has the knowledge or tools to punch through that kind of wall. Even if they do, you can't just put a hole in something that might be load-bearing or part of a fire control system without imaging, permits, and contractors. The bandwidths that can work through these walls, like 3G, are being phased out, and the bandwidths that provide enough throughput for modern systems, like 5G, can't make it through.

That's what WaveCore, from Airvine Scientific, aims to fix, and I can't help but find it fascinating after originally seeing it on The Register. The company had previously taken on lesser solid obstructions, like plaster and thick glass, with its WaveTunnel. Two WaveCore units on either side of a wall (or on different floors) can push through a stated 12 inches of concrete. In their in-house testing, Airvine reports pushing just under 4Gbps through 12 inches of garage concrete, and it can bend around corners, even 90 degrees. Your particular cement and aggregate combinations may vary, of course.

The spec sheet shows that a 6 GHz radio is the part that, through "beam steering," blasts through concrete, with a 2.4 GHz radio for control functions. There's PoE or barrel connector power, and RJ45 ethernet in the 1, 2.5, 5, and 10Gbps sizes.

6 GHz concrete fidelity (Con-Fi? Crete-Fi?) is just one of the slightly uncommon connections that may or may not be making their way into office spaces soon. LiFi, standardized as 802.11bb, is seeking to provide an intentionally limited scope to connectivity, whether for security restrictions or radio frequency safety. And Wi-Fi 7, certified earlier this year, aims to multiply data rates by bonding connections over the various bands already in place.

Original Submission

owl writes:

http://www.theradiohistorian.org/fm/fm.html

Before FM, There was APEX

In the early and mid-1930s, radio communication was confined to the Low [or Long] Waves (100-500 kHz), Medium Waves (500-1500 kHz), and the Short Waves (1,500 to 30,000 kHz). The frequencies above that, referred to as the "ultra-high frequencies", were truly the "Wild West" of radio. It was a place for experimentation and a possible home to future radio services. Commercial broadcasting to the public took place entirely on the standard broadcast band (540-1600 kHz), but it was affected by a number of defects that annoyed the public – natural and man-made static, local and skip interference, atmospheric fading, and limited fidelity. Starting about 1932, a number of brave and daring broadcasters sought permission from the FCC to conduct experiments in the Ultra-Short Waves in an attempt to find solutions to these problems. In particular, these experimental stations wanted to transmit wideband, high fidelity audio. Amplitude modulation, the only known method of transmitting audio at the time, was the method utilized on these so-called "Apex" stations. Experimental licenses were being issued for up to 1,000 watts on frequencies at 25-26 MHz and 42 MHz. By 1939, these Apex stations were operating in 34 U.S. cities in 22 states They suffered less skip interference than standard AM stations, but static was still a problem.

At the same time that these Apex broadcasters were gaining a foothold in the upper frontiers of the radio spectrum, an entirely new type of radio service was also being demonstrated - one that was destined to cause Apex AM to become obsolete. That service was called Frequency Modulation, or FM.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

"We will review the data and determine the next steps for the program," says Boeing's Starliner manager:

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft sailed to a smooth landing in the New Mexico desert Friday night, an auspicious end to an otherwise disappointing three-month test flight that left the capsule's two-person crew stuck in orbit until next year.

Cushioned by airbags, the Boeing crew capsule descended under three parachutes toward an on-target landing at 10:01 pm local time Friday (12:01 am EDT Saturday) at White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico. From the outside, the landing appeared just as it would have if the spacecraft brought home NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who became the first people to launch on a Starliner capsule on June 5.

But Starliner's cockpit was empty as it flew back to Earth Friday night. Last month, NASA managers decided to keep Wilmore and Williams on the International Space Station (ISS) until next year after agency officials determined it was too risky for the astronauts to return to the ground on Boeing's spaceship. Instead of coming home on Starliner, Wilmore and Williams will fly back to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in February. NASA has incorporated the Starliner duo into the space station's long-term crew.

[...] After streaking through the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean and Mexico, Starliner deployed three main parachutes to slow its descent, then a ring of six airbags inflated around the bottom of the spacecraft to dampen the jolt of touchdown. This was the third time a Starliner capsule has flown in space, and the second time the spacecraft fell short of achieving all of its objectives.

"I'm happy to report Starliner did really well today in the undock, deorbit, and landing sequence," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's commercial crew program, which manages a contract worth up to $4.6 billion for Boeing to develop, test, and fly a series of Starliner crew missions to the ISS.

While officials were pleased with Starliner's landing, the celebration was tinged with disappointment.

[...] Boeing's Starliner managers insisted the ship was safe to bring the astronauts home. It might be tempting to conclude the successful landing Friday night vindicated Boeing's views on the thruster problems. However, the spacecraft's propulsion system, provided by Aerojet Rocketdyne, clearly did not work as intended during the flight. NASA had the option of bringing Wilmore and Williams back to Earth on a different, flight-proven spacecraft, so they took it.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The multiple constellations of broadband-beaming satellites planned by Chinese companies could conceivably run the nation's "Great Firewall" content censorship system, according to think tank The Australian Strategic Policy Institute. And if they do, using the services outside China will be dangerous.

A Monday note by the Institute's senior fellow Mercedes Page notes that Chinese entities plan to launch and operate three low-Earth-orbit satellite constellations to provide terrestrial internet services. As The Register has reported, the first of 15,000-plus planned satellites launched earlier in August.

Page thinks the satellites show "China is not only securing its position in the satellite internet market but laying the groundwork for expanding its digital governance model far beyond its borders."

"Central to China's ambition is the concept of cyber sovereignty – the notion that each nation has the right to govern its digital domain," she wrote, adding that "China has used this principle to build a heavily censored surveillance system supporting the Chinese Communist Party's power, widely condemned for violating human rights."

Page also notes that satellite broadband services rely on a small number of ground stations, or gateways, and that those facilities are ideal locations to run systems that monitor, block and filter content.

[...] Page also warned "The centralized nature of satellite internet may also make countries more vulnerable to cyber espionage by the Chinese government or malicious actors." Another security risk comes from Chinese laws that require companies to store data within China and make it accessible to the Chinese government. "As China's satellite projects are intended to provide global coverage, the data of international users – spanning communication, location, and internet activity – would be subject to Chinese data laws." And that could mean "Chinese authorities could potentially access any data transmitted through Chinese satellite internet services."

Editor's note: This TechCrunch piece quotes extensively from the source. For brevity, the quoted pieces were removed, but can be seen if one clicks through to TFA.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Last month, we shared the details of a really good “Dear Colleague” letter that Senator Rand Paul sent around urging other Senators not to vote for KOSA [Kids Online Safety Act]. While the letter did not work and the Senate overwhelmingly approved KOSA (only to now have it stuck in the House), Paul has now expanded upon that letter in an article at Reason.

It’s well worth the read, though the title makes the point clear: Censoring the Internet Won’t Protect Kids.

It starts out by pointing out how much good the internet can be for families:

[...] He correctly admits that the internet can also be misused, and that not all of it is appropriate for kids, but that’s no reason to overreact:

[...] He points out that the law empowers the FTC to police content that could impact the mental health of children, but does not clearly define mental health disorders, and those could change drastically with no input from Congress.

What he doesn’t mention is that we’re living in a time when some are trying to classify normal behavior as a mental health disorder, and thus this law could be weaponized.

From there, he talks about the “duty of care.” That’s a key part of both KOSA and other similar bills and says that websites have a “duty of care” to make efforts to block their sites from causing various problems. As we’ve explained for the better part of a decade, a “duty of care” turns itself into a demand for censorship, as it’s the only way for companies to avoid costly litigation over whether or not they were careful enough.

Just last week, I got into a debate with a KOSA supporter on social media. They insisted that they’re not talking about content, but just about design features like “infinite scroll.” When asked about what kind of things they’re trying to solve for, I was told “eating disorders.” I pointed out that “infinite scroll” doesn’t lead to eating disorders. They’re clearly targeting the underlying content (and even that is way more complex than KOSA supporters realize).

Senator Paul makes a similar point in the other direction. Things like “infinite scroll” aren’t harmful if the underlying content isn’t harmful:

oaklandwatch writes:

A half century later Steve Wozniak reunited with nine members of the "Homebrew Computer Club" for a special YouTube event (hosted by John "Captain Crunch" Draper).

And Woz remembers that it was that club that inspired him to rig his own continent-spanning connection to ARPAnet. Later the club passed around a datasheet for an upcoming 8-bit microprocessor, Woz did some tinkering, and "You can hear the excitement in Wozniak's voice as he remembers what happened next..."

HP had a single computer that 40 people were sharing. But now, "I had this little tiny computer with my own TV set, sitting on my desk at Hewlett-Packard, and I could type in my own programs and come up with solutions ... I was just having the time of my life!" Wozniak, of course, would go on to build Apple's first personal computers, which helped Apple become the most profitable company on earth. But Wozniak closes by saying the Homebrew Computer Club "was the heart of it all. It's what turned me on to the fact that people were interested in things like computers we could afford."

Woz also says he even gave tens of millions of his Apple stock to early Apple employees who'd come from the Homebrew Computer Club, because "I just felt they deserved it as much as I did. Because that was really where all my inspiration came from." And he would also fly into computer clubs around the U.S., "because I wanted to tell them where Apple came from, where I came from: It was the Homebrew Computer Club."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

It's not easy making green. For years, scientists have fabricated small, high-quality lasers that generate red and blue light. However, the method they typically employ—injecting electric current into semiconductors—hasn't worked as well in building tiny lasers that emit light at yellow and green wavelengths.

Researchers refer to the dearth of stable, miniature lasers in this region of the visible-light spectrum as the "green gap." Filling this gap opens new opportunities in underwater communications, medical treatments and more.

Green laser pointers have existed for 25 years, but they produce light only in a narrow spectrum of green and are not integrated in chips where they could work together with other devices to perform useful tasks.

Now scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have closed the green gap by modifying a tiny optical component: a ring-shaped microresonator, small enough to fit on a chip. The research is published in the journal Light: Science & Applications.

A miniature source of green laser light could improve underwater communication because water is nearly transparent to blue-green wavelengths in most aquatic environments. Other potential applications are in full-color laser projection displays and laser treatment of medical conditions, including diabetic retinopathy, a proliferation of blood vessels in the eye.

Compact lasers in this wavelength range are also important for applications in quantum computing and communication, as they could potentially store data in qubits, the fundamental unit of quantum information. Currently, these quantum applications depend on lasers that are larger in size, weight and power, limiting their ability to be deployed outside the laboratory.

For several years, a team led by Kartik Srinivasan of NIST and the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), a research partnership between NIST and the University of Maryland, has used microresonators composed of silicon nitride to convert infrared laser light into other colors. When infrared light is pumped into the ring-shaped resonator, the light circles thousands of times until it reaches intensities high enough to interact strongly with the silicon nitride. That interaction, known as an optical parametric oscillation (OPO), produces two new wavelengths of light, called the idler and the signal.

upstart writes:

Here's what the science says in the wake of actress Danielle Fishel's diagnosis:

Stage 0 cancer is a condition where cells in the body look like cancer cells under a microscope but haven't left their original location. It's also known as carcinoma in situ or noninvasive cancer, because it hasn't invaded any of the surrounding tissues. Sometimes it's not even called cancer at all.

"A lot of people think of these as kind of precancer lesions," says Julie Nangia, an oncologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

There are many different types of Stage 0 cancer, depending on which tissue or organ the cells are from. Some cancers, like sarcomas (cancers of the bones or skin), don't have a Stage 0.

Fishel's diagnosis is called ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS. This means some cells in the milk ducts in the breast look abnormal, but those cells haven't grown outside the milk ducts and moved into the rest of the breast tissue.

The trouble is, they could. If the abnormal cells do break through the milk duct, the severity of the ensuing cancer can range from Stage 1 to the most advanced Stage 4, depending on how big the tumor is and how far the cancer has spread throughout the body.

Before regular screening mammograms became the norm, DCIS accounted for just 5 percent of breast cancer diagnoses, says breast cancer surgeon Sara Javid of the Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle (SN: 6/13/14).

Now, DCIS accounts for about 20 percent of newly diagnosed breast cancers. About 50,000 cases are diagnosed in the United States every year, and it turns up in one out of every 1,300 mammograms.

Still, because Stage 0 breast cancer doesn't really have any symptoms, it's possible to have it and never notice. "A lot of women have DCIS and don't know, especially older women, as it's typically a disease of aging," Nangia says.

For other Stage 0 cancers, the situation is different. Stage 0 cancers in other internal organs are often too small to show up on a scan. Widespread screening tests in other organs might be unsafe or take too many resources to run on a whole population.

The main exception is melanoma in situ, or Stage 0 skin cancer, which can be visible on the skin. That diagnosis is even more common than DCIS: Nearly 100,000 cases are expected in the United States in 2024.

"This is exactly why we want women to have screening mammograms," Nangia says. "We want to catch cancer at its earliest stages where it's incredibly easy to cure."

Journal References:
    • DOI: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2214122
    • DOI: https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2019.37.15_suppl.TPS603
    • DOI: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2214122
    • DOI: https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2019.37.15_suppl.TPS603

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Internet Archive Responds to Appellate Opinion in Hachette v. Internet Archive:

We are disappointed in today's opinion about the Internet Archive's digital lending of books that are available electronically elsewhere. We are reviewing the court's opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books.

Take Action
Sign the open letter to publishers, asking them to restore access to the 500,000 books removed from our library: https://change.org/LetReadersRead

The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case:

The Internet Archive has lost a major legal battle—in a decision that could have a significant impact on the future of internet history. Today, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled against the long-running digital archive, upholding an earlier ruling in Hachette v. Internet Archive that found that one of the Internet Archive's book digitization projects violated copyright law.

Notably, the appeals court's ruling rejects the Internet Archive's argument that its lending practices were shielded by the fair use doctrine, which permits for copyright infringement in certain circumstances, calling it "unpersuasive."

In March 2020, the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, launched a program called the National Emergency Library, or NEL. Library closures caused by the pandemic had left students, researchers, and readers unable to access millions of books, and the Internet Archive has said it was responding to calls from regular people and other librarians to help those at home get access to the books they needed.

The NEL was an offshoot of an ongoing digital lending project called the Open Library, in which the Internet Archive scans physical copies of library books and lets people check out the digital copies as though they're regular reading material instead of ebooks. The Open Library lent the books to one person at a time—but the NEL removed this ratio rule, instead letting large numbers of people borrow each scanned book at once.

The NEL was the subject of backlash soon after its launch, with some authors arguing that it was tantamount to piracy. In response, the Internet Archive within two months scuttled its emergency approach and reinstated the lending caps. But the damage was done. In June 2020, major publishing houses, including Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley, filed the lawsuit.

upstart writes:

What were previously thought to be pristine archaeological deposits, ripe for investigation, could be contaminated with plastics:

Scientists in the UK have found evidence that microplastics are contaminating archaeological soil samples. The discovery has the potential to upend the way historical remains are preserved.

Tiny particles of microplastics were discovered seven metres underground in samples dating from the first or early second century. They were first excavated in the 1980s.

"This feels like an important moment, confirming what we should have expected: that what were previously thought to be pristine archaeological deposits, ripe for investigation, are in fact contaminated with plastics, and that this includes deposits sampled and stored in the late 1980s," says Professor John Schofield from the University of York's Department of Archaeology.

[...] "We think of microplastics as a very modern phenomenon as we have only really been hearing about them for the last 20 years," says David Jennings, chief executive of York Archaeology.

But, he adds, research from 2004 revealed that they have been prevalent in our seas since the 1960s due to the post-Second World War boom in plastic pollution.

"This new study shows that the particles have infiltrated archaeological deposits and, like the oceans, this is likely to have been happening for a similar period, with particles found in soil samples taken and archived in 1988 at Wellington Row in York," Jenning explains.

[...] The team says that the concern for archaeologists is whether microplastics compromise the scientific value of preserved remains. Preserving archaeology in the place where it was found has been the preferred approach to conservation for a number of years. But these new findings could change that.

"Our best-preserved remains - for example, the Viking finds at Coppergate - were in a consistent anaerobic waterlogged environment for over 1,000 years, which preserved organic materials incredibly well," Jennings says.

"The presence of microplastics can and will change the chemistry of the soil, potentially introducing elements which will cause the organic remains to decay. If that is the case, preserving archaeology in situ may no longer be appropriate."

The team says further research into the impact of microplastics will be a priority for archaeologists given their potential impact on historical sites.

Original Submission