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fliptop writes:

Chinese scientists have significantly improved the performance of supercomputer simulations using domestically designed GPUs, surpassing systems powered by Nvidia's advanced hardware:

Professor Nan Tongchao and his team at Hohai University achieved the performance gains through a "multi-node, multi-GPU" parallel computing approach, using Chinese CPUs and GPUs for large-scale, high-resolution simulations.

The study highlights how U.S. sanctions aimed at limiting China's access to advanced semiconductors may have inadvertently spurred innovation, leading to technological self-sufficiency and reduced reliance on foreign hardware.

Also from Interesting Engineering:

The stakes are particularly high in fields that depend on extensive computational resources. Scientists frequently rely on large-scale, high-resolution simulations for real-world applications such as flood defense planning and urban waterlogging analysis.

These simulations require significant processing power and time, often limiting their broader application. For Chinese researchers, the challenge is compounded by the fact that the production of advanced GPUs like Nvidia's A100 and H100 is dominated by foreign manufacturers and the export restrictions imposed by the US.

Also at South China Morning Post.

Previously:

• Chinese Chipmaker Loongson Claims Their Next Gpu Will Match RTX 2080'S Performance
• China and US Chips

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Quanta Magazine is covering a notable advancement in a well-studied computer science algorithm for sorting books or files or database contents or other similar physical or digital objects. The foundation is a 1981 study which was followed by a significant advancement in 2004 and just recently by reaches rather close to the theoretical ideal in the list labeling problem aka the library sorting problem:

Bender, Kuszmaul and others made an even bigger improvement with last year's paper. They again broke the record, lowering the upper bound to (log n) times (log log n)³ — equivalent to (log n)^1.000...1. In other words, they came exceedingly close to the theoretical limit, the ultimate lower bound of log n.

Once again, their approach was non-smooth and randomized, but this time their algorithm relied on a limited degree of history dependence. It looked at past trends to plan for future events, but only up to a point. Suppose, for instance, you've been getting a lot of books by authors whose last name starts with N — Nabokov, Neruda, Ng. The algorithm extrapolates from that and assumes more are probably coming, so it'll leave a little extra space in the N section. But reserving too much space could lead to trouble if a bunch of A-name authors start pouring in. "The way we made it a good thing was by being strategically random about how much history to look at when we make our decisions," Bender said.

There are also significant implications for application as well.

Previously:
(2017) Google Algorithm Goes From Sorting Cat Pics to Analyzing DNA
(2014) A Dating Site for Algorithms
(2014) New Algorithm Simplifies the Categorization of Large Amount of Data

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The European Union regulation banning the use of bisphenol A in materials that come into contact with food officially took effect on 20 January, in an attempt to minimise exposure to the harmful endocrine disruptor:

The European Union has officially banned Bisphenol A (BPA) from all contact with food products as of Monday. This endocrine disruptor, commonly found in cans, food containers, and water bottles, has been linked to potential contamination of food.

The new regulations extend to the use of BPA in the manufacture of glue, rubbers, ion exchange resins, plastics, printing inks, silicone, varnishes, and coatings that may come into contact with food. Given the widespread presence of BPA in these materials, its ban marks a critical step in reducing significant sources of exposure.

"Bisphenol A has been on the list of substances of very high concern under REACH, the EU's flagship chemicals legislation, since 2006 for its reproductive toxicity, and since 2017 for its endocrine disrupting properties for human health," explains Sandra Jen, Head of the Health and Chemicals Programme at HEAL (Health and Environment Alliance). "It is associated with health problems such as breast cancer, neurobehavioural disorders and diabetes," she adds.

This ban follows the European Food Safety Authority's (EFSA) 2023 opinion, which determined that dietary exposure to BPA poses a health risk to consumers of all ages. BPA has already been banned in products intended for infants and young children, such as baby bottles, since 2011.

While the EU is leading the way in banning bisphenols, Sandra Jen notes that the process has been slow.

"Scientists have been calling for a ban on bisphenol A for over ten years. The European Environment Agency published a report on the concerns raised by Bisphenol A more than ten years ago," she points out. "The process has therefore been a long one, and we now hope that decisions and follow-up measures concerning the use of bisphenol in other consumer products will be taken quickly."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Astrobiologists in Germany are developing a new testing device that could help tease dormant alien microbes into revealing themselves — and its key ingredient is a common amino acid that’s found in abundance inside human blood.

"L-serine, this particular amino acid that we used, [...] we can build it in our bodies, ourselves," researcher Max Riekeles, who is helping to develop the alien-hunting device, told Mashable.

The compound is also prevalent across Earth’s oceans and even down near the dark and otherworldly ecosystems that surround deep sea hydrothermal vents, where life evolved far away from anywhere it could feed itself via photosynthesis. NASA investigators too have found L-serine and similar “proteinogenic” amino acids — which are vital to many organisms’ ability to synthesize their own proteins — buried within meteorites. These and other discoveries have left scientists wondering if any off-world amino acids might have once helped life evolve elsewhere out in the cosmos.

"It could be a simple way to look for life on future Mars missions," according to Riekeles, who trained as an aerospace engineer at the Technical University of Berlin, where he now works on extraterrestrial biosignature research. 

“But, it’s always, of course, the basic question: 'Was there ever life there?'"

Riekeles and his team’s device benefits from a phenomena called "chemotaxis," the mechanism whereby microbes, including many species of bacteria as well as another whole domain of microscopic organisms called archaea, migrate in response to nearby chemicals.  

[...] For their latest experiments, recently published in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, Riekeles and his co-researchers focused on three "extremophile" species capable of surviving and thriving in some of Earth’s harshest conditions. Each candidate was selected to approximate the kinds of tiny alien lifeforms that might really live on an inhospitable outer space world — like Mars’ cosmic ray-blasted, desert surface or Jupiter’s icy, watery moons: Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

upstart writes:

DOGE as a National Cyberattack - Schneier on Security:

In the span of just weeks, the US government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history—not through a sophisticated cyberattack or an act of foreign espionage, but through official orders by a billionaire with a poorly defined government role. And the implications for national security are profound.

First, it was reported that people associated with the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had accessedtheUSTreasury computer system, giving them the ability to collect data on and potentially control the department's roughly $5.45 trillion in annual federal payments.

Then, we learned that uncleared DOGE personnel had gained access to classified data from the US Agency for International Development, possibly copying it onto their own systems. Next, the Office of Personnel Management—which holds detailed personal data on millions of federal employees, including those with security clearances—wascompromised. After that, Medicaid and Medicare records were compromised.

Meanwhile, only partially redacted names of CIA employees were sent over an unclassified email account. DOGE personnel are also reported to be feeding Education Department data into artificial intelligence software, and they have also started working at the Department of Energy.

This story is moving very fast. On Feb. 8, a federal judge blocked the DOGE team from accessing the Treasury Department systems any further. But given that DOGE workers have already copied data and possibly installed and modified software, it's unclear how this fixes anything.

In any case, breaches of other critical government systems are likely to follow unless federal employees stand firm on the protocols protecting national security.

The systems that DOGE is accessing are not esoteric pieces of our nation's infrastructure—they are the sinews of government.

For example, the Treasury Department systems contain the technical blueprints for how the federal government moves money, while the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) network contains information on who and what organizations the government employs and contracts with.

What makes this situation unprecedented isn't just the scope, but also the method of attack. Foreign adversaries typically spend years attempting to penetrate government systems such as these, using stealth to avoid being seen and carefully hiding any tells or tracks. The Chinese government's 2015 breach of OPM was a significant US security failure, and it illustrated how personnel data could be used to identify intelligence officers and compromise national security.

In this case, external operators with limited experience and minimal oversight are doing their work in plain sight and under massive public scrutiny: gaining the highest levels of administrative access and making changes to the United States' most sensitive networks, potentially introducing new security vulnerabilities in the process.

But the most alarming aspect isn't just the access being granted. It's the systematic dismantling of security measures that would detect and prevent misuse—including standard incident response protocols, auditing, and change-tracking mechanisms—by removing the career officials in charge of those security measures and replacing them with inexperienced operators.

The Treasury's computer systems have such an impact on national security that they were designed with the same principle that guides nuclear launch protocols: No single person should have unlimited power. Just as launching a nuclear missile requires two separate officers turning their keys simultaneously, making changes to critical financial systems traditionally requires multiple authorized personnel working in concert.

This approach, known as "separation of duties," isn't just bureaucratic red tape; it's a fundamental security principle as old as banking itself. When your local bank processes a large transfer, it requires two different employees to verify the transaction. When a company issues a major financial report, separate teams must review and approve it. These aren't just formalities—they're essential safeguards against corruption and error. These measures have been bypassed or ignored. It's as if someone found a way to rob Fort Knox by simply declaring that the new official policy is to fire all the guards and allow unescorted visits to the vault.

owl writes:

https://hackaday.com/2025/02/15/octet-of-esp32s-lets-you-see-wifi-like-never-before/

Most of us see the world in a very narrow band of the EM spectrum. Sure, there are people with a genetic quirk that extends the range a bit into the UV, but it's a ROYGBIV world for most of us. Unless, of course, you have something like this ESP32 antenna array, which gives you an augmented reality view of the WiFi world.

According to [Jeija], "ESPARGOS" consists of an antenna array board and a controller board. The antenna array has eight ESP32-S2FH4 microcontrollers and eight 2.4 GHz WiFi patch antennas spaced a half-wavelength apart in two dimensions. The ESP32s extract channel state information (CSI) from each packet they receive, sending it on to the controller board where another ESP32 streams them over Ethernet while providing the clock and phase reference signals needed to make the phased array work. This gives you all the information you need to calculate where a signal is coming from and how strong it is, which is used to plot a sort of heat map to overlay on a webcam image of the same scene.

Original Submission

looorg writes:

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2025-66513-001?doi=1

Are women more talkative than men? An analysis of gender differences in daily word use says it is so.

The notion that women and men differ in their daily lexical budget has been around, largely empirically untested, for quite a long time, and it has become a pervasive fixture in gender difference arguments. The ubiquity and often negative connotation of this stereotype makes evaluating its accuracy particularly important.

Men spoke on average 11,950 and women 13,349 words per day.

A larger difference emerged for participants in early and middle adulthood (women speaking 3,275 words more). Due to the very large between-person variability and resulting statistical uncertainty, the study leaves open some questions around whether the two genders differ in a practically meaningful way in how many words they speak on a daily basis.

Possible explanations are children. Women speak more due to the children then men do. Or some other unknown reason they can't explain.

Perhaps the men want to speak more but we just can't get a word in ...

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Ancient ear-wiggling muscles kick on when people strain to hear. That auricular activity, described January 30 in Frontiers in Neuroscience, probably doesn’t do much, if anything. But these small muscles are at least present, and more active than anyone knew.

You’ve probably seen a cat or dog swing their ears toward a sound, like satellite dishes orienting to a signal. We can’t move our relatively rigid human ears this dramatically. And yet, humans still possess ear-moving muscles, as those of us who can wiggle our ears on demand know.

Neuroscientist Andreas Schröer and colleagues asked 20 people with normal hearing to listen to a recorded voice while distracting podcasts played in the background. All the while, electrodes around the ears recorded muscle activity. An ear muscle called the superior auricular muscle, which sits just above the ear and lifts it up, fired up when the listening conditions were difficult, the researchers found.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

One of the bulletproof hosting (BPH) providers used by the LockBit ransomware operation has been hit with sanctions in the US, UK, and Australia (AUKUS), along with six of its key allies.

Headquartered in Barnaul, Russia, Zservers provided BPH services to a number of LockBit affiliates, the three nations said today. On numerous occasions, affiliates purchased servers from the company to support ransomware attacks.

The trio said the link between Zservers and LockBit was established as early as 2022, when Canadian law enforcement searched a known LockBit affiliate and found evidence they had purchased infrastructure tooling almost certainly used to host chatrooms with ransomware victims.

"Ransomware actors and other cybercriminals rely on third-party network service providers like Zservers to enable their attacks on US and international critical infrastructure," said Bradley T Smith, acting under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.

[...] Bulletproof hosting services more generally are used in other types of cybercrime, such as child exploitation, misinformation, and hate speech, as well as ransomware gangs. The sanctions are being spun as a significant disruptor of a major cog in the cybercrime machine.

BPH providers operate just like normal hosting services but market themselves as ultra-secure alternatives that can't be touched by law enforcement, making them ideal for groups who want to ensure legal warrants won't bring their servers down.

They also claim to offer additional benefits such as the anonymization of locations, identities, and activities. Disrupting them can in turn scupper hundreds or thousands of other criminals in one fell swoop, the FCDO said.

It went on to claim that Zservers marketed itself explicitly to "illicit actors."

The UK led the way with sanctions, placing six individuals and the two entities on its list, while the US only placed two of the individuals – both alleged Zservers admins – on its equivalent.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Everyone I've talked to recently seems to have developed their own highly personalized strategies for dealing with the world news that now surrounds us.

It wasn't always like this. At the start of my nearly 45-year career in tech, everyone had the same four sources of news: TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. A lucky few might have accounts with early online services like Compuserve or Prodigy to learn what other geeks thought.

Then USENET spread from a few universities to a few well-connected tech companies – most of whom used it to talk tech and science or share facts … until the .alt groups proved that people can and will argue about anything online.

When the Web erupted, turning everyone into a (micro-)blogger, the number of news channels went to infinity - and beyond.

All that happened despite humans seeming not to be well-equipped for news flows larger than a stream of village gossip. We certainly can't filter at a scale that matches the torrent of information available in the global village.

Many of us are completely overwhelmed, every day, by an onslaught of information that may or may not be truthful, may or may not be personally meaningful, but more often than not feels unwanted and unneeded.

After years of this, we're so sensitive that approaches from anyone we don't already know or trust feel like an intrusion.

Some folks respond by dropping out completely, unplugging themselves permanently, an act of asceticism far too extreme for most of us.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

James Howells, a British IT worker, mined over 7,500 Bitcoins back in 2009, when they were worth next to nothing. Now a single Bitcoin is worth nearly $100,000, valuing his stash at well over $700 million. Unfortunately, Howells accidentally threw the hard drive he stored the key on in the trash. He has a scheme to get that money back, according to The Guardian. He wants to buy the landfill where it could be buried and dig it up.

Howells doesn’t exactly know where the hard drive is, but has a solid guess based on when he tossed it in the trash. He has it narrowed down to a particular section of a South Wales landfill that houses 15,000 metric tons of waste. The landfill is approaching maximum capacity, so Howells wants to buy it off the city. Officials have warned that the hard drive is “buried under 25,000 cubic meters of waste and earth” as it has been there for almost 12 years.

While the city hasn’t made a final decision, it doesn’t look good for Howells and his “needle in a haystack” plan. There are serious ecological dangers to haphazardly digging up a landfill. The excavation process would be risky and costly. Afterward, the landfill would have to be resealed, another expensive project. The city also has plans to build a solar farm on part of the land.

Finally, there’s the hard drive itself. Would there be anything recoverable after laying underneath tons and tons of trash for 12 years? It seems highly unlikely, though Howells and his investors must have some serious data retrieval specialists standing by.

[...] This is just the latest attempt by Howells to treat the landfill like an archaeological dig site, looking for his lost fortune. He’s been at this for over a decade. In 2017, he pleaded with the city to allow him to dig and officials said no, citing safety concerns and a fear of inciting treasure hunters to descend upon the landfill with shovels.

In 2021, he tried to sweeten the pot by offering the city 25 percent of the recovered Bitcoin. Once again, the city said no. In 2022, Howells came up with a particularly bizarre scheme that involved sending in Boston Dynamics robot dogs to do the digging. You can imagine what the city said to that one (it was no.)

There was another attempt to turn the landfill into a mining facility, which didn’t gain traction. Finally, Howells decided to sue the city of Newport for the right to go traipsing around in the landfill like a really gross, poop-encrusted Indiana Jones. A judge put the kibosh on the lawsuit, ruling that the case had “no realistic prospect of succeeding.”

Previously:
    • High Court Ruling Ends Man's Hopes of Recovering $750M Bitcoin Hard Drive From a Welsh Landfill
    • UK Man Sues City Over Discarded Bitcoin-filled Hard Drive

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A waste-water surveillance network of strategic international airports could quickly detect outbreaks of new diseases – and provide early warnings of future pandemics

A global early-warning system for disease outbreaks and even future pandemics is possible with minimal monitoring: testing the waste water from a fraction of international flight arrivals at just 20 airports around the world.

When passengers fly while infected with bacteria or viruses, they can leave traces of these pathogens in their waste, which airports collect from a plane after the flight lands. “If you’re going to the bathroom on an aircraft, and if you blow your nose and put that in the toilet – or if you do whatever you have to do – there’s some chance that some of the genetic material from the pathogen is going into the waste water,” says Guillaume St-Onge at Northeastern University in Massachusetts.

St-Onge and his colleagues used a simulator called the Global Epidemic and Mobility model to analyse how airport waste-water surveillance networks could detect emerging variants of a virus like the one that causes covid-19. By testing the model using different numbers and locations of airports, they showed that 20 strategically placed “sentinel airports” worldwide could detect outbreaks nearly as quickly and efficiently as a network involving thousands of airports. The larger network was just 20 per cent faster but cost much more.

To detect emerging threats from anywhere in the world, the network should include major international airports in cities such as London, Paris, Dubai and Singapore. But the team also showed how networks involving a different set of airports could provide more targeted detection of disease outbreaks that were likely to originate in certain continents.

[...] There are still some nuances to work out, such as how often to take waste-water samples to track different pathogens. Other challenges include figuring out the most efficient ways to sample waste water from aircraft and evaluating the system’s real-world effectiveness, says Li.

A long-term monitoring programme would also require cooperation from airlines and airports, along with a consistent source of funding, she says.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-protein-localization

A new deep-learning model can now predict how proteins sort themselves inside the cell. The model has uncovered a hidden layer of molecular code that shapes biological organization, adding new dimensions of complexity to our understanding of life and offering a powerful biotechnology tool for drug design and discovery.

Previous AI systems in biology, such as the Nobel Prize-winning AlphaFold, have focused on predicting protein structure. But this new system, dubbed ProtGPS, allows scientists to predict not just how a protein is built, but where it belongs inside the cell. It also empowers scientists to engineer proteins with defined distributions, directing them to cellular locations with surgical precision.

"Knowledge of where a protein goes is entirely complementary to how it folds," says Henry Kilgore, a chemical biologist at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., who co-led the research. Together, these properties shape its function and interactions within the cell. These insights—and the machine learning tools that make them possible—"will come to have a substantial impact on drug development programs," he says.

Kilgore and his colleagues described the new tool in a paper published 6 February in the journal Science.

Over the past few years, AI tools like AlphaFold have revolutionized structural biology by predicting protein shapes—much like the instruction manual that comes with a piece of IKEA furniture, showing how to assemble the chair or bed. But it turns out knowing a protein's structure isn't enough to understand its function. ProtGPS fills in this missing piece by determining where each molecular piece of "furniture" belongs within the cell's open-plan interior.

Some proteins have clear destinations. Researchers have known for decades that proteins headed for places like the nucleus or mitochondria—structures enclosed by membranes and walled off from the rest of the cell—carry short signaling tags that guide them.

But much of the cell is an open environment, where proteins rely on more subtle cues to sort themselves into what are called biomolecular condensates—dynamic, liquid-like clusters that help regulate gene activity, manage cellular stress, and contribute to disease. And just as a cozy armchair might naturally fit into a reading nook, proteins follow intrinsic molecular placement rules that guide them to specialized condensates suited to particular functions.

ProtGPS has now begun to decode these rules, uncovering hidden features in the sequence of amino acids that form the backbone of all proteins—intrinsic sorting cues that determine whether and where a protein will localize within different condensates in the cell.

Journal Reference: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adq2634

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The fresh funding from the EU comes a day after France announced a €109bn investment into AI.

“Action”, “investments” and “opportunities” were some of the key takeaways from the third global artificial intelligence (AI) summit which drew to a close in Paris this afternoon (11 February).

Concluding the two-day summit held at the Grand Palais, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced an additional €50bn in investments, on top of the €150bn already mobilised yesterday (10 February).

€10bn of the EU’s investment is earmarked for AI factories, of which 12 were already set up in “just a few months,” von der Leyen said.

“This is not a promise – it is happening right now, and it is the largest public investment for AI in the world”.

Over the weekend, French president Emmanuel Macron announced a more than €100bn AI investment over the next few years, in a bid to make France a leader in the latest chapter of the AI technology race.

While on Monday, the EU ‘AI Champions’ initiative – a collective of more than 60 European companies – has pledged €150bn for “AI-related opportunities” in the continent for the next five years.

The summit brought high-profile names under one roof, including US vice-president JD Vance, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman and Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin to discuss the future of AI as well as the safety and sustainability of the technology.

[...] The summit presented the opportunity for attending nations to sign an international agreement on AI that promotes ‘inclusivity’ and ‘sustainability’ for the people and the planet. The agreement’s main priorities also promote transparency, safety as well as security and trustworthiness.

However, while 60 countries signed the agreement – including China – the US and UK avoided inking their pledges to the agreement.

Responding to news outlets, a spokesperson for the UK’s prime minister said that the government would “only ever sign up to initiatives that are in UK national interests”.

However, “[France] remain one of our closest partners in all areas of AI,” the spokesperson added.

Meanwhile, Forrester VP and principal analyst Thomas Husson said: “I’d be very surprised if all participants were to sign a meaningful political declaration [at the summit]. At best, there might be some generic consensus on AI risks. Is it a failure? Definitely not.

[...] However, Macron’s enthusiastic pitch inviting AI investments and businesses in the country, along with France’s own more €100bn investment pledge, will ultimately not change much, explained Husson.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://defector.com/if-you-ever-stacked-cups-in-gym-class-blame-my-dad

The boxes came from Tokyo: first by tanker, then overland via container truck from a Pacific port, across the Continental Divide, and finally backed into a driveway at the end of a cul-de-sac in a south Denver suburban enclave. This was a neighborhood with Razor scooters dumped in trimmed front lawns. Where family walks with leashed dogs happened down the middle of intentionally curved streets named after long demolished natural landmarks like "Timbercrest" and "Forest Trails." Where the HOA (because of course there was an HOA) banned the installation of driveway basketball hoops.

Receiving industrial freight deliveries, freshly cleared through international customs, probably wasn't explicitly prohibited in the homeowner's handbook. But then, why would it need to be? Nobody would think to bring that kind of commercial chaos into the burgeoning middle-class peace of Castle Pines North in 1998.

If neighbors peeking behind curtains at the idling 18-wheeler thought to call in a complaint, the husband and wife receiving the delivery didn't notice. They were too busy unloading boxes—more than 800 of them.

[...]

At its peak, between 2002 and 2011, roughly 5,000 American schools included it as part of their annual curriculum, according to Mr. and Mrs. Fox. That means somewhere between five and eight percent of U.S. adults between the ages of 22 and 35 share the same core memory—and in the ensuing years have asked themselves, their friends, or social media the same question: Why did credentialed educational professionals make us do this ludicrous activity in gym class?

A cup stacking video is provided in the article, if you are unfamiliar with the concept.

Original Submission