upstart writes:

The hypothesis could help in the search for other Earthlike worlds:

The leading explanation for the origin of the moon proposes that a Mars-sized planet, dubbed Theia, struck the nascent Earth, ejecting a cloud of debris into space that later coalesced into a satellite (SN: 3/2/18). New computer simulations suggest that purported remains of Theia deep inside the planet could have also triggered the onset of subduction, a hallmark of modern plate tectonics, geodynamicist Qian Yuan of Caltech reported March 13 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

[...] Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain the initiation of subduction, a tectonic process in which one plate slides under another (SN: 5/2/22; SN: 6/5/19; SN: 1/2/18). Yuan and his colleagues chose to focus on two continent-sized blobs of material in Earth's lower mantle known as large low-shear velocity provinces (SN: 5/12/16). These are regions through which seismic waves are known to move anomalously slow. Researchers had previously proposed these regions could have formed from old, subducted plates. But in 2021, Yuan and colleagues alternatively proposed that the mysterious masses could be the dense, sunken remnants of Theia.

[...] While the simulations suggest the large low-shear velocity provinces could have had a hand in starting subduction, it's not yet clear whether these masses came from Theia. "The features ... are a fairly recent discovery," says geodynamicist Laurent Montsi of the University of Maryland in College Park. "They're very fascinating structures, with a very unknown origin." As such, he says, it's too early to say that Theia triggered plate tectonics.

"It's provoking. This material down there is something special," Montsi says of the large low-shear velocity provinces. "But whether it has to be originally extraterrestrial, I don't think the case is made."

Journal Reference:
Q. Yuan. A giant impact origin for the first subduction on Earth. Lunar and Plan...

upstart writes:

Tiny data center makes for a comfortable swim:

A data center about the size of a washing machine is being used to heat a public swimming pool in England.

Data centers' servers generate heat as they operate, and interest is growing in finding ways to harness it to cut energy costs and offset carbon emissions.

In this latest example, the computing technology has been placed inside a white box and surrounded by oil, which captures the heat before being pumped into a heat exchanger, according to a BBC report.

The setup is effective enough to heat a council-run swimming pool in Exmouth, about 150 miles west of London, to about 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) for about 60% of the time, saving the operator thousands of dollars. And with energy costs rising sharply in the U.K., and councils looking for ways to save money, an initiative like this could be the difference between the pool staying open and closing down.

Behind the idea is U.K.-based tech startup Deep Green. In exchange for hosting its kit, Deep Green installs free digital boilers at pools and pays for the energy that they use. Meanwhile, tech firms pay Deep Green to use its computing power for various artificial intelligence and machine learning projects.

Related:
    Commercial Underwater Datacenter Goes Online This Year
    Microsoft's Underwater Server Experiment Resurfaces After Two Years
    Heating Homes and Businesses with "Data Furnaces"

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upstart writes:

Hopes to avoid paying up for crushing a rival while helping Huawei and ZTE to prosper:

Qualcomm on Monday began an attempt to convince the European Union's Court of Justice that it should not pay a 242 million ($258 million) fine imposed on it for anti-competitive behavior.

The fine worth about two percent of Qualcomm's 2022 profits was levied against the US chipmaker in 2019. At the time, the European Commission found that Qualcomm had sold 3G baseband chipsets at a loss to harm British rival Icera's ability to compete.

[...] In order to prevent Nvidia-controlled Icera from claiming a larger slice of the market, the European Commission says Qualcomm began selling its UMTS chipsets to the likes of Huawei and ZTE at prices its rival couldn't match.

[...] The European Commission ultimately smacked Qualcomm with a 242 million fine for its behavior. As Qualcomm's profits reached $12.9 billion last year, the fine is significant but not very damaging.

Qualcomm is nevertheless trying to avoid paying the fine. In court Monday, Reuters reports that Qualcomm Attorney, Miguel Rato claimed the European Commission was on a "crusade" against the company. Rato also called into question the basis for the Commission's argument, arguing the specific market for 3G baseband chips accounted for less than a percent of the overall UMTS market at the time.

[...] Despite handing down several billion-dollar-plus fines for anticompetitive behavior over the past few years, the European Commission hasn't had great luck getting them to stick.

Intel escaped a $1.2 billion antitrust fine imposed by Brussels for offering hardware partners rebates for its x86 processors. Chipzilla even bribed German electronics retailer Media Saturn Holding to ensure it did not sell rival AMD's parts.

But after a years-long legal battle, Intel overturned the penalty and was told it didn't have to pay. To add insult to injury, Intel returned to court last spring demanding that the EU pay 593m ($623.5m) in interest charges.

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upstart writes:

JWST will help scientists investigate the troublesome dust budget surplus of the universe:

NASA released a new image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which depicts a star named "WR 124" that is located 15,000 light years away from Earth, in the Sagittarius constellation. WR 124 is a Wolf Rayet-type star, a rare kind of star which is among the most luminous, most massive, and most briefly detectable stars known, NASA explained.

WR 124 was actually one of the first observations made by JWST in June 2022, the space agency said, but the image has been unveiled just now. The Wolf-Rayet phase is a brief condition some stars go through during their lifetime before turning into supernovae, which makes Webb's observations a valuable asset to astronomers studying the life of stars.

WR 124 is 30 times the mass of our Sun, NASA said, and it has "shed" 10 Suns' worth of material so far. The ejected gas moves away from the central body and cools down, forming cosmic dust and glowing in the infrared light that is detectable by Webb's advanced instruments.

[...] Before Webb, astronomers investigating cosmic dust simply had no way to capture detailed images and information about a dust-rich environment like the WR 124 nebula. And dust, NASA said, plays an essential role in the inner working of the universe as it shelters forming stars, and gathers together to help shape planets, molecules and even the building blocks of life on Earth.

Dust is a fundamental element for our universe, and yet scientists still have to explain why the universe seemingly contains more dust than our current dust-formation theories can justify. The universe is "operating with a dust budget surplus," NASA remarked.

Released NASA picture, and a 30-second video panning across the image.

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upstart writes:

In high-risk contexts, a racing heart can make a formerly relaxed mouse nervous:

When you're stressed and anxious, you might feel your heart race. Is your heart racing because you're afraid? Or does your speeding heart itself contribute to your anxiety? Both could be true, a new study in mice suggests.

By artificially increasing the heart rates of mice, scientists were able to increase anxiety-like behaviors ones that the team then calmed by turning off a particular part of the brain. The study, published in the March 9 Nature, shows that in high-risk contexts, a racing heart could go to your head and increase anxiety. The findings could offer a new angle for studying and, potentially, treating anxiety disorders.

The idea that body sensations might contribute to emotions in the brain goes back at least to one of the founders of psychology, William James, says Karl Deisseroth, a neuroscientist at Stanford University. In James' 1890 book The Principles of Psychology, he put forward the idea that emotion follows what the body experiences. "We feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble," James wrote.

The brain certainly can sense internal body signals, a phenomenon called interoception. But whether those sensations like a racing heart can contribute to emotion is difficult to prove, says Anna Beyeler, a neuroscientist at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Bordeaux. She studies brain circuitry related to emotion and wrote a commentary on the new study but was not involved in the research. "I'm sure a lot of people have thought of doing these experiments, but no one really had the tools," she says.

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upstart writes:

The US government looks poised to force tech companies to do more about security:

The US government, worried about the continuing growth of cybercrime, ransomware, and countries including Russia, Iran, and North Korea hacking into government and private networks, is in the middle of drastically changing its cybersecurity strategy. No longer will it rely largely on prodding businesses and tech companies to voluntarily take basic security measures such as patching vulnerable systems to keep them updated.

Instead, it now wants to establish baseline security requirements for businesses and tech companies and to fine those that don't comply.

It's not just companies that use the systems who might eventually need to abide by the regulations. Companies that make and sell them, such as Microsoft, Apple, and others could be held accountable as well. Early indications are that the feds already have Microsoft in their crosshairs they've warned the company that, at the moment, it doesn't appear to be up to the task.

[...] In theory, if those standards aren't met, fines would eventually be imposed. Glenn S. Gerstell, former general counsel of the National Security Agency, explained it this way to the Times: "In the cyberworld, we're finally saying that Ford is responsible for Pintos that burst into flames, because they didn't spend money on safety." That's a reference to the Ford Pinto frequently bursting into flames when rear-ended in the 1970s. That led to a spate of lawsuits and a ramp-up in federal auto safety regulations.

But cybersecurity requirements backed by fines aren't here yet. Dig into the new document and you'll find that because the new strategy is only a policy document, it doesn't have the bite of law behind it. For it to go fully into effect, two things need to happen. President Biden has to issue an executive order to enforce some of the requirements. And Congress needs to pass laws for the rest.

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upstart writes:

If you can detect any, it's too much:

On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it had started the process that will see drinking water regulations place severe limits on the levels of several members of the PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances) chemical family. PFAS are widely used but have been associated with a wide range of health issues; their chemical stability has also earned them the term "forever chemicals." The agency is currently soliciting public feedback on rules that will mean that any detectable levels of two chemicals will be too much.

PFAS are a large group of chemicals that have uses in a wide range of products, including non-stick cooking pans, fire control foams, and waterproof clothing. They're primarily useful because of their water-repellant, hydrophobic nature. That nature also tends to keep them from taking part in chemical processes that might otherwise degrade them, so contamination problems tend to stick around long after any PFAS use. And that's bad, given that they seem to have a lot of negative effects on healththe EPA lists cancer risks, immune dysfunction, hormone signaling alterations, liver damage, and reproductive issues.

[...] The most striking thing about the proposal is that two of the chemicals, Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) will be set at the limits of our current ability to detect them: four parts per trillion. In other words, if there's any sign of the chemicals present, it would be above the legal limit. (Both of these are acidic hydrocarbons where all of the hydrogen has been replaced by fluorine.)

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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/03/you-can-now-run-a-gpt-3-level-ai-model-on-your-laptop-phone-and-raspberry-pi/

Things are moving at lightning speed in AI Land. On Friday, a software developer named Georgi Gerganov created a tool called "llama.cpp" that can run Meta's new GPT-3-class AI large language model, LLaMA, locally on a Mac laptop. Soon thereafter, people worked out how to run LLaMA on Windows as well. Then someone showed it running on a Pixel 6 phone, and next came a Raspberry Pi (albeit running very slowly).

If this keeps up, we may be looking at a pocket-sized ChatGPT competitor before we know it.
[...]
For example, here's a list of notable LLaMA-related events based on a timeline Willison laid out in a Hacker News comment:

• February 24, 2023: Meta AI announces LLaMA.
• March 2, 2023: Someone leaks the LLaMA models via BitTorrent.
• March 10, 2023: Georgi Gerganov creates llama.cpp, which can run on an M1 Mac.
• March 11, 2023: Artem Andreenko runs LLaMA 7B (slowly) on a Raspberry Pi 4, 4GB RAM, 10 sec/token.
• March 12, 2023: LLaMA 7B running on NPX, a node.js execution tool.
• March 13, 2023: Someone gets llama.cpp running on a Pixel 6 phone, also very slowly.
• March 13, 2023, 2023: Stanford releases Alpaca 7B, OpenAI's "text-davinci-003" but runs on much less powerful hardware.

hubie writes:

Violence and warfare were widespread in many Neolithic communities across Northwest Europe:

Of the skeletal remains of more than 2300 early farmers from 180 sites dating from around 8000 4000 years ago to, more than one in ten displayed weapon injuries, bioarchaeologists found.

Contrary to the view that the Neolithic era was marked by peaceful cooperation, the team of international researchers say that in some regions the period from 6000BC to 2000BC may be a high point in conflict and violence with the destruction of entire communities.

The findings also suggest the rise of growing crops and herding animals as a way of life, replacing hunting and gathering, may have laid the foundations for formalised warfare.

[...] More than ten per cent showed damage potentially caused by frequent blows to the head by blunt instruments or stone axes. Several examples of penetrative injuries, thought to be from arrows, were also found.

Some of the injuries were linked to mass burials, which could suggest the destruction of entire communities, the researchers say.

Journal Reference:
Linda Fibiger, Torbjrn Ahlstrm, Christian Meyer, and Martin Smith, Conflict, violence, and warfare among early farmers in Northwestern Europe [open], PNAS, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2209481119

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upstart writes:

This includes hydrogen fuel stations:

[...] The Department of Transportation is now accepting applications for its $2.5 billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program, which will hand out funds to cities, counties, regional governments and tribes to help deploy EV chargers, hydrogen fuel stations and other reduced-emissions systems near their residents.

Half of the program's funding will go to chargers and stations in "publicly accessible" places like parking facilities, parks and schools. The rest will install this equipment in "alternative fuel corridors" along highways to help with long-distance travel. The initial round of funding will make $700 million available, with the rest coming over the program's five-year span. Officials have to apply no later than May 30th.

The initiative is part of [a] broader campaign to build 500,000 charging stations by 2030, or about five times as many as there were in early 2022. The money, assigned as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, is meant to ensure charging access within 50 miles of someone's location in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. While the effort is intended to spur overall EV adoption, there's an added focus on underserved communities like some urban and rural areas.

A strong charging infrastructure is widely considered vital to successfully transitioning away from combustion engine cars. Existing stations can sometimes be crowded or unreliable, and don't always support the fast charging available with recent EVs.

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upstart writes:

The Biden administration wants $27.2 billion for NASA's 2024 budget, with the space agency prioritizing Moon and Mars missions:

NASA is staying focused on the Artemis lunar program, its Moon to Mars objectives, and maintaining a presence in low Earth orbit as part of the agency's proposed budget for 2024. The space agency also has a new item on its annual wishlist: a space tug to deorbit the International Space Station (ISS) at the end of its life.

[...] NASA's proposed budget includes $180 million for developing a deorbit capability for the ISS by the end of 2030. Should the budget be approved, the space agendcy would call upon the private sector to come up with a space tug concept to lower the orbit of the ISS so that it can reenter and burn up through Earth's atmosphere. NASA had previously suggested using Russia's Progress cargo spacecraft to deorbit the ISS, and apparently that option is still on the table as well.

[...] Still, NASA's Artemis program sits at the top of the space agency's to-do list, snagging $8.1 billion from the budget (an increase from last year's $7.5 billion). The plan still stands for NASA to land humans on the Moon as early as 2025, and start on the construction of the Lunar Gateway, an outpost orbiting the Moon that will house astronauts and scientific research.

The budget request will allocate $2.5 billion towards the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which was used for the liftoff of the Artemis 1 mission in November 2022, "to focus on successful completion of Artemis 2, and make necessary preparations for Artemis 3 and 4, which includes the enhanced upper stage configuration and other upgrades," Schaus said during the call.

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upstart writes:

And not even a tentative date for a system go-live either:

By the end of this month, the UK Home Office will have spent just under 2 billion ($2.4 billion) on a new critical communications network for the country's police, fire and ambulance services with nothing to show for it, according to a report by the National Audit Office (NAO).

Even worse, the multi-year project has fallen further behind schedule and the Home Office cannot say when the replacement system will be operational, according to the spending watchdog.

The Emergency Services Network (ESN) program first kicked off in 2015 the idea being that it would fully replace the existing near-indestructible Airwave units and system, which uses the Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) network; would "cost less"; and would provide users with access to modern mobile data. ESN was supposed to move critical emergency services off of the tried and tested TETRA (which, among other things, you can access ubiquitously across the London Underground) and onto LTE radio comms with some obvious modifications and associated features like the push-to-talk ESN Direct.

[...] The UK's Competition and Markets Authority started a probe into the matter in 2021, with the PAC already noting in 2019 that Motorola's involvement in both the new and old contract had led "to perverse incentives" and put "the department in a weak negotiating position." Motorola has denied conflict of interest and said last year that "Airwave, over its life, is a much better deal for the UK taxpayer than the Home Office originally agreed."

[...] In January, eight years after the first proposals for a new system to replace the outdated Airwave platform were unveiled, the Home Office and Motorola Solutions agreed to end their work on the ESN contract in December 2023.

The Home Office, meanwhile, does not currently know when ESN will be ready or how much it will ultimately cost.

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upstart writes:

The AI hype bubble is the new crypto hype bubble (09 Mar 2023) Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow:

Back in 2017 Long Island Ice Tea known for its undistinguished, barely drinkable sugar-water changed its name to "Long Blockchain Corp." Its shares surged to a peak of 400% over their pre-announcement price. The company announced no specific integrations with any kind of blockchain, nor has it made any such integrations since.

[...] The most remarkable thing about this incredibly stupid story is that LBCC wasn't the peak of the blockchain bubble rather, it was the start of blockchain's final pump-and-dump. By the standards of 2022's blockchain grifters, LBCC was small potatoes, a mere $138m sugar-water grift.

[...] They were amateurs. Their attempt to "make fetch happen" only succeeded for a brief instant. By contrast, the superpredators of the crypto bubble were able to make fetch happen over an improbably long timescale, deploying the most powerful reality distortion fields since Pets.com.

[...] Like any Ponzi scheme, crypto was a way to separate normies from their savings through the pretense that they were "investing" in a vast enterprise but the only real money ("fiat" in cryptospeak) in the system was the hardscrabble retirement savings of working people, which the bubble's energetic inflaters swapped for illiquid, worthless shitcoins.

We've stopped believing in the illusory billions. Sam Bankman-Fried is under house arrest. But the people who gave him money and the nimbler Ponzi artists who evaded arrest are looking for new scams to separate the marks from their money.

Take Morganstanley, who spent 2021 and 2022 hyping cryptocurrency as a massive growth opportunity:

Today, Morganstanley wants you to know that AI is a $6 trillion opportunity.

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upstart writes:

Californian court has ruled that "gig" economy giants including Uber and Lyft can continue treating their workers as independent contractors:

The California appeals court found that a labour measure, known as Proposition 22, was largely constitutional.

Labour groups and some workers had opposed the measure, saying it robbed them of rights like sick leave.

The firms say the proposition protects other benefits such as flexibility.

The latest ruling overturns a decision made by a lower court in California in 2021, which found that Proposition 22 affected lawmakers' powers to set standards at the workplace.

The state of California and a group representing Uber, Lyft and other firms appealed against the decision.

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upstart writes:

A tough time for big tech workers continues:

Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday in a written statement that the tech giant would lay off 10,000 more workers, adding to the 11,000 people it laid off back in November. Additionally, around 5,000 open roles that hadn't been filled yet will be closed. In other words, it's a hiring freeze on top of a large number of layoffs.

Zuckerberg acknowledged the cuts in a blog post updating Meta's "Year of Efficiency."

This will be tough and there's no way around that. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success. They've dedicated themselves to our mission and I'm personally grateful for all their efforts. We will support people in the same ways we have before and treat everyone with the gratitude they deserve.

Amid the layoffs, Meta has also announced that it is stepping away from NFTs to focus on other projects.

According to TechCrunch, Meta's employee head-count came in at around 76,000 after November's layoffs. In the aftermath of this week's job cuts, that would bring the count down to around 66,000.

This is, unfortunately, just part of a wider trend in the world of big tech. Other tech firms of varying sizes like Lyft, Groupon, Vimeo, and Microsoft have all laid off workers in the last year due to broader economic difficulties.

Previously: Meta Employees Brace for Layoffs Ahead of Zuckerberg's Paternity Leave

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upstart writes:

After unusually low amounts of rain and snow this winter, the continent faces a severe water shortage:

The drought in parts of France is so bad right now that some authorities have banned new home-building projectsfor the next four years. Despite a severe housing shortage in France, new homes just aren't worth the drain on water resources that construction, and eventual new residents, would cause, say nine communes in the south of the country.

It's just one of many signs that Europe is running dry. "What we are looking at is something like a multiyear drought," says Rohini Kumar of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany. Unusually low rainfall and snowfall was recorded this winter not just in France but also in the UK, Ireland, Switzerland, and parts of Italy and Germany. The current predicament follows European droughts in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2022.

Last summer, drought exacerbated by record temperatures around the continent was in the headlines. The subsequent dry winter has meant that many aquifersplaces underground that retain waterand surface reservoirs have not had a chance to recover. Now, summer beckons once again, and experts who spoke to WIRED are worried that a severe water shortage could threaten lives, industry, and biodiversity in a big way.

The European Drought Observatory tracks indicators of drought across the continent, including from satellite measurements, and suggests that vast regions are far drier than they should be. "Honestly, all over Central Europe, this issue, it's a widespread problem," says Carmelo Cammalleri at the Polytechnic University of Milan.

He estimates that reservoirs in France and northern Italy are about 40 to 50 percent lower than they should be. The longest river in Italy, the Po, is 60 percent below its normal levels. Not only that, there is roughly half the usual snow on the Alps than would be expected for this time of year. That's a huge problem, because much of Central Europe relies on meltwater from these famous mountains every spring. "The Alps are known as the water towers of Europe for a reason," says Cammalleri.

Re...

upstart writes:

After being laid off, many people are starting their own businesses as cloud pros for hire:

The recent tech industry layoffs are driving a wave of what some are calling "solopreneurs" doing gig work or independent contracting. Think DoorDash or Uber Eats, but instead of delivering Thai food, people are delivering key cloud advisory services or even completed cloud-based systems ready for deployment.

This is driven by the anticipation that a slowing economy is likely to drive down tech sales. But also, a cloud skills shortage is occurring simultaneously. We're not preparing enough cloud professionals to keep up with demand, but, at the same time, tech companies are laying them off. Go figure.

This has been evolving for years as workers understand the value of the gig economy and may be looking for more independence and less employment reliance on the larger technology players. Many technology professionals are exploring more entrepreneurial options instead of opting for standard full-time jobs and cushy benefits with companies that can't guarantee a job for lifeand never could.

Indeed, 63% of tech workers report they have started their own company post-layoff, according to a recent survey of 1,000 professionals laid off in recent years. Most of these new ventures (83%) exist in the technology industry, especially cloud computing.

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upstart writes:

The STEM feed comes as TikTok faces increasing scrutiny:

TikTok has a large science community, and the social network wants everyone to know it on Pi Day (March 14). The company is launching a dedicated STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) feed that shows only these more educational videos. You may learn to code or discuss experiments without having to wade through TikTok's usual entertainment-focused content.

Not surprisingly, TikTok is taking steps to block misinformation in this new section. Curator Common Sense Networks will study content to make sure it's relevant to the STEM feed, while the fact-checkers at Poynter will gauge the accuracy. Any videos that don't pass both inspections won't reach the new feed.

Users in the US will start seeing the STEM feed in the "coming weeks," TikTok says. The social media giant has already been experimenting with a "Topic Feed" in some regions to court fans of gaming, sports and other common subjects. The science-oriented feed is considered an expansion of this initiative.

[...] Whether or not this helps with TikTok's survival in the US is another matter. Some politicians want to ban TikTok outright over fears it's a national security threat. Officials are concerned China may collect data about key Americans or spread propaganda.

See also: TikTok is Adding a Dedicated Feed for STEM Content

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guest reader writes:

First demonstration of universal control of encoded spin qubits:

HRL Laboratories, LLC, has published the first demonstration of universal control of encoded spin qubits. This newly emerging approach to quantum computation uses a novel silicon-based qubit device architecture, fabricated in HRL's Malibu cleanroom, to trap single electrons in quantum dots. Spins of three such single electrons host energy-degenerate qubit states, which are controlled by nearest-neighbor contact interactions that partially swap spin states with those of their neighbors.

[...] The encoded silicon/silicon germanium quantum dot qubits use three electron spins and a control scheme whereby voltages applied to metal gates partially swap the directions of those electron-spins without ever aligning them in any particular direction. The demonstration involved applying thousands of these precisely calibrated voltage pulses in strict relation to one another over the course of a few millionths of a second.

The quantum coherence offered by the isotopically enriched silicon used, the all-electrical and low-crosstalk-control of partial swap operations, and the configurable insensitivity of the encoding to certain error sources combine to offer a strong pathway toward scalable fault tolerance and computational advantage, major steps toward a commercial quantum computer.

[...] "It is hard to define what the best qubit technology is, but I think the silicon exchange-only qubit is at least the best-balanced," said Thaddeus Ladd, HRL group leader and co-author.

Journal Reference: Aaron J. Weinstein et al, Universal logic with encoded spin qubits in silicon, Nature (2023). https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05777-3

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upstart writes:

It'll allow researchers to develop a 'a mechanistic understanding of how the brain works':

Researchers understand the structure of brains and have mapped them out in some detail, but they still don't know exactly how they process data for that, a detailed "circuit map" of the brain is needed.

Now, scientists have created just such a map for the most advanced creature yet: a fruit fly larva. Called a connectome, it diagrams the insect's 3016 neurons and 548,000 synapses, Neuroscience News has reported. The map will help researchers study better understand how the brains of both insects and animals control behavior, learning, body functions and more. The work may even inspired improved AI networks.

"Up until this point, we've not seen the structure of any brain except of the roundworm C. elegans, the tadpole of a low chordate, and the larva of a marine annelid, all of which have several hundred neurons," said professor Marta Zlatic from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. "This means neuroscience has been mostly operating without circuit maps. Without knowing the structure of a brain, we're guessing on the way computations are implemented. But now, we can start gaining a mechanistic understanding of how the brain works."

[...] As a next step, the team will investigate the structures used for behavioural functions like learning and decision making, and examine connectome activity while the insect does specific activities. And while a fruit fly larva is a simple insect, the researchers expect to see similar patterns in other animals. "In the same way that genes are conserved across the animal kingdom, I think that the basic circuit motifs that implement these fundamental behaviours will also be conserved," said Zlatic.

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guest reader writes:

Hackaday has a story about a simple non-scientific calculator that packs an Alwinner A50 tablet SoC and the Android operating system:

As shipped they lack the Android launcher, so they aren't designed to run much more than the calculator app. Of course that won't stop somebody who knows their way around Google's mobile operating system for very long - at the end of the review, there's some shots of the gadget running Minecraft and playing streaming video.

But it does beg the question as to why such a product was put into production when the same task could have been performed using very cheap microcontroller. Further, having done so they make it a non-scientific machine, not even bestowing it with anything that could possibly justify the hardware.

Embedded has more generic related post about overengineering in embedded systems:

Embedded systems have traditionally been resource-constrained devices that have a specific purpose. They are not general computing devices but often some type of controller, sensor node, etc. As a result, embedded systems developers often are forced to balance bill-of-material (BOM) costs with software features and needs, resulting in a system that does a specific purpose efficiently and economically.

Over the last few years, I've noticed many systems being built that seem to ignore this balance. For example, I've seen intelligent thermostats that could be built using an Arm Cortex-M4 with a clock speed of fewer than 100 MHz and several hundred kilobytes of memory. Instead, these systems are designed using multicore Arm Cortex-M7 (or even Cortex-A!) parts running at 600 MHz+ with several megabytes of memory! This leads me to ask, are embedded systems developers today overengineering their systems?

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upstart writes:

FISA Oversight Board Member Says Americans Need More Privacy Protections As Congress Debates Section 702 Reauthorization:

One of the NSA's most powerful spying tools is up for renewal at the end of the year. The problem with this power isn't necessarily the NSA. I mean, the NSA has its problems, but the issue here is the domestic surveillance performed by the FBI via this executive power something it shouldn't be doing but has almost always done.

The FBI is currently catching a lot of heat for its "backdoor" access to US persons' data and communications, something it has shown little interest in controlling or tracking. Abuse is a regular occurrence and this abuse finally received some high profile attention after Congressional Republicans got bent out of shape because some of their own people ended up under the FBI's backdoor Section 702 microscope.

[...] Section 702 allows the NSA to perform "upstream" collections of data and communications. It's foreign-facing but it also collects any communications between foreign targets and US persons. That's where the FBI steps in. It's only supposed to be able to access minimized data and communications, but these restrictions are often ignored by the agency.

[...] Specifically, the program needs constraints on the FBI's access and use of the data collected by the NSA. For years, the FBI has abused its access to perform backdoor searches of Americans' data. And for years, it has been unable to explain why it can't stop violating minimization procedures and what, if anything, this unexpected, "incidental" treasure trove contributes to its law enforcement work.

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The pioneering project cuts cement from the recipe and replaces it with industrial waste and carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere:

Block-Lite is a small concrete manufacturer in an industrial corridor of Flagstaff, Arizona. The third-generation family business makes bricks and other masonry materials for retaining walls, driveways, and landscaping projects. The company was already a local leader in sustainability in 2020, it became the first manufacturer in Flagstaff to power its operations with on-site solar panels. But now it's doing something much more ambitious.

On Tuesday, Block-Lite announced a pioneering collaboration with climate tech startups Aircapture and CarbonBuilt to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stash it in concrete blocks. The companies estimate the project will reduce the carbon footprint of Block-Lite's products by 70 percent, creating a model they hope could reshape the industry.

[...] CarbonBuilt has developed a solution that addresses the issue in two distinct ways. First, the company found a proprietary way to replace cement with a mix of inexpensive, locally-sourced industrial waste materials. CEO Rahul Shendure told Grist they include common byproducts of coal plants, steelmaking, and chemical production that would, for the most part, otherwise be destined for landfills. The company's second feat is the way its equipment hardens that slurry into concrete blocks by curing it with carbon dioxide. That's where Aircapture comes in. The company will build one of its machines which extract carbon dioxide from the ambient air directly on Block-Lite's site.

[...] Block-Lite did not respond to Grist's inquiry, but in a press release, the company suggested that the new concrete products would be no costlier than its current offerings. "All too often sustainable building materials require a trade off between cost and performance, but what is unique about this project is that there's no 'green premium.'" Block-Lite said. "We're going to be able to produce on-spec, ultra-low carbon blocks at price parity with traditional blocks which should speed adoption and impact."

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To check that atomic weapons work, scientists run simulations of explosions using high-energy lasersand Russia is building the strongest one of all:

In town of Sarov, roughly 350 kilometers east of Moscow, scientists are busy working on a project to help keep Russia's nuclear weapons operational long into the future. Inside a huge facility, 10 storeys high and covering the area of two football fields, they are building what's officially known as UFL-2Mor, as the Russian media has dubbed it, the "Tsar Laser." If completed, it will be the highest-energy laser in the world.

High-energy lasers can concentrate energy on groups of atoms, increasing temperature and pressure to start nuclear reactions. Scientists can use them to simulate what happens when a nuclear warhead detonates. By creating explosions in small samples of materialeither research samples or tiny amounts from existing nuclear weaponsscientists can then calculate how a full-blown bomb is likely to perform. With an old warhead, they can check that it still works as intended. Laser experiments allow testing without letting a nuke off. "It's a substantial investment by the Russians in their nuclear weapons," says Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear non-proliferation researcher at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California.

Until now, Russia has been unique among the best-established nuclear powers in not having a high-energy laser. The United States has its National Ignition Facility (NIF), currently the world's most energetic laser system. Its 192 separate beams combine to deliver 1.8 megajoules of energy. Looked at in one way, a megajoule is not an enormous amountit's equivalent to 240 food calories, similar to a light meal. But concentrating this energy onto a tiny area can create very high temperatures and pressures. France meanwhile has its Laser Mgajoule, with 80 beams currently delivering 350 kilojoules, though it aims to have 176 beams delivering 1.3 megajoules by 2026. The UK's Orion laser produces 5 kilojoules of energy; China's SG-III laser, 180 kilojoules.

If completed the Tsar Laser will surpass them all. Like the NIF, it's due to have 192 beams, but with a higher combined output of 2.8 megajoules. Currently, though, only its first stage has launched. At a Russian Academy of Sciences meeting in December 2022, an official revealed that the laser boasts 64 beams in its current state. Their total output is 128 kilojoules, 6 pe...

upstart writes:

Resulting in the birth of several mice that were produced without mothers:

Same-sex reproduction has historically required donor cells, as is the case with egg implantation and some instances of in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Thanks to genetic engineering, however, this might not always be the case. Scientists in Japan have successfully created eggs using male cells, resulting in the birth of several mice that were produced without mothers.

Renowned Kyushu University stem cell researcher Katshuhiko Hayashi presented his team's achievement this week at the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing in London. Hayashi had led his colleagues through "reprogramming" a male mouse's skin cells into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, or former non-reproductive cells that can be engineered into various cell forms. Because male cells contain the XY chromosome combination, Hayashi had to remove the Y chromosome and replace it with an X chromosome from another cell. (Hayashi's team attempted to devise a way to duplicate the first cell's X chromosome but was unsuccessful, resulting in the need to pull from a donor.)

Hayashi implanted the makeshift eggs inside a mouse ovary organoid, a ball of tissues that function similarly to a natural ovary. After fertilizing the eggs with sperm, his team implanted the resulting 600 embryos into surrogate mice. Seven of these embryos became mouse pups, which grew into adults with normal lifespans and successful mating routines.

Should Hayashi and his colleagues successfully produce eggs in the lab, it could pave the way for novel infertility treatments and for same-sex procreation that incorporates both partners' genes.

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And scientists have only seen four percent of the data so far:

A project to map the earliest structures of the universe has found 15,000 more galaxies in its first snapshot than captured in an entire deep field survey conducted 20 years ago.

The James Webb Space Telescope, the new preeminent observatory in the sky, saw about 25,000 galaxies in that single image, dramatically surpassing the nearly 10,000 shown in the Hubble Space Telescope's Ultra Deep Field Survey. Scientists say that little piece of the space pie represents just four percent of the data they'll discover from the new Webb survey by the time it's completed next year.

"When it is finished, this deep field will be astoundingly large and overwhelmingly beautiful," said Caitlin Casey, a University of Texas at Austin astronomer co-leading the investigation, in a statement.

[...] A deep field image is much like drilling deep into Earth to take a core sample: It's a narrow but distant view of the cosmos, revealing layers of history by cutting across billions of light-years. In Hubble's deep field, the oldest visible galaxies dated back to the first 800 million years after the Big Bang. That's an incredibly early period relative to the universe's estimated age of 13.8 billion-with-a-B years.

[...] Four different types of galaxies observed through the COSMOS-Web deep field survey.The COSMOS-Web survey will map 0.6 square degrees of the skyabout the area of three full moons.

The first images from COSMOS-Web, the largest program in Webb's first year, show a rich variety of structures, teeming with spiral galaxies, gravitational lensing, and galaxy mergers. Furthermore, hundreds of galaxies that were previously identified by Hubble are getting reclassified with different characteristics after being shown in more detail with Webb.

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