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Submission + - A Giant Centrifuge Flings A Projectile Into the upper atmosphere 2

Submitted by rmdingler
rmdingler writes: A Space launch startup has, for the first time, demonstrated a kinetic-based system that’s intended one day to put small spacecraft into orbit.

The system uses a vacuum chamber within which a rotating arm brings a projectile up to very high speed without any drag penalty, before hurling it into the atmosphere “in less than a millisecond,” according to the company, as a port opens for a fraction of a second to release the projectile. A counterbalance spins in the opposite direction to prevent the system from becoming unbalanced. The vacuum seal stays in place until the projectile breaks through a membrane at the top of the launch tube.

Submission + - SPAM: Merck Sells Federally Financed Covid Pill to US for 40x What It Costs to Make 2

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Merck’s new ‘not Ivermectin’ Covid-19 treatment, molnupiravir, costs $17.74 to produce – yet the company is charging the US government $712 for the treatment – a 40x markup, according to The Intercept , citing a report issued last week by the Harvard School of Public Health and King’s College Hospital in London.

The pill, originally developed using US government funds as a possible treatment for Venezuelan equine encephalitis, cut the risk of hospitalization and death in half in a randomized trial of 775 adults with mild/moderate Covid who were considered at high risk for disease due to comorbidities such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. The trial was stopped early so the company could apply for an emergency use authorization (EUA). The drug did not benefit patients who were already hospitalized with severe disease.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Carrier backdoor pathway activates auto install of app with 152 permissions

Submitted by jago25_98
jago25_98 writes: The pathway to the (Google approved?) attack is thus:

1) Manufacturer pre-installs bloatware, creating a pathway for approved apps to install without user permission at any stage of phone ownership.

2) Carriers may install bloatware but this can even be activated by a single simcard (eSIM?) insert.

2) An advert requests unattended app install. This is typically from DSP Digital Turbine who recently bought Fyber). A link to the patent:
https://www.freepatentsonline....
And the backdoor:
https://www.digitalturbine.com...
Advert for the backdoor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

To confirm that you have the backdoor or not:
https://play.google.com/store/...

App is installed. For example, Weather Home, an app with:

20 trackers
and
152 permissions.

That's one hundred and fifty two permissions.

https://play.google.com/store/...

User /r/omniUni comments:

"However, for it to work, the software package must be specifically uploaded to DT's system. To my knowledge, it can't just install any old package. Of course, we're trusting an advertisment company to not have vulnerabilities in their software, so that isn't really all that reassuring.

Digital Turbine just makes the software and services and sells it. It works because some carrier or OEM is willing to add it at the firmware level of the device in exchange for profit." /r/ktMom743 comments on confirmation requests on fresh android installs:

"There is a section of the Google phone setup "wizard" where the user is presented with a request to install other apps (it's been awhile, I don't remember the wording). If you carefully read each screen during the setup process, you'll probably not get the carrier apps. People who blow through confirming everything on the confirmation screens, will likely end up with the carrier apps.

I also have Pixel 3XL and tend to do periodic clean installs when upgrading. I have to slow down to not blow past that confirmation screen." /u/ThisIsAUsername160 comments that this is particularly common on Samsung but actually it's also LG and many other vendors, especially US carriers:

"They use something called a CSC — it stands for country specific code or carrier specific code. When you put your SIM in, it detects what software / configuration should be installed (carrier bloatware ad well as necessary stuff like APN info and band configuration / combos)."

The issue now has a bug here:
https://issuetracker.google.co...

Comment Re:Redacted version below.. (Score 1) 36

When the process says NASA may only award one, then they get to only award one. Doesn't matter how much insinuation or hopes anyone has. Blue Origin has more than enough lawyers to understand that all the talk in the world is meaningless compared to what is written on the competition documents. Hence why their previous challenge was thrown out, their next one will get thrown out, and all they will accomplish is delay the inevitable.

I am *very* glad that Musk is rich enough to keep things going and SpaceX isn't actually 100% dependant on NASA contracts to keep the lights on.

Comment Re:Redacted version below.. (Score 3, Informative) 36

Not quite. NASA has been saying during the entire process that "They hope to be able to give the award to two companies, but that depends on having the budget to do so, and they reserve the right to award it to just one, or even not award it at all, depending on the budget available and the quality of the applicants."

And in any case, there was more than two proposals, so even if NASA was legally obligated to select & fund two of them, there was still no guarantee that Blue Origin would have got one. At this point, this whole thing just seems like Blue Origin desperately trying to starve a competitor of funding, and has nothing to do with whether or not Blue Origin should have actually been selected.

Either that, or it is a prestige thing, and they can't bear the idea that someone else might have a better proposal than they do.

Submission + - Chipmakers to carmakers: Time to get out of the semiconductor Stone Age (fortune.com) 1

Submitted by BoredStiff
BoredStiff writes: Chipmakers turned their production back toward the automaker because many of the micro chips used in everything from electronic brake systems to airbag control units tend to rely on obsolete technology often over a decade old, and when the pandemic hit, these processors where in short supply. Chipmakers are telling car companies to wake up and modernize their micro's, however, most systems in cars are safety-critical and need to perform in practically every situation regardless of temperature, humidity, vibrations, and even minor road debris, because of that, the tried and true is better than new and improved.

Submission + - SPAM: China's High temp reactor - pebble bed modular (HTR-PM) achieves criticality

Submitted by Hmmmmmm
Hmmmmmm writes: On the morning of September 12, 2021, reactor number 1 of the eagerly awaited HTR-PM project was taken critical for the first time. Initial criticality for any new reactor is a big deal for the people involved in the project; this one is a big deal for the future of nuclear energy. It might also become a big deal for humanity’s ability to effectively reduce CO2 emissions enough to slow climate change.

HTR-PM is a demonstration reactor that uses two identical gas-cooled high temperature modular reactors to produce the heat for a modern, subcritical, 200 MWe steam turbine. The steam system operates at the same temperature and pressure as many recently constructed coal heated steam plants that China has been mass producing for more than a decade as it rapidly industrialized and became one of the world’s leaders in manufacturing, metals production and chemicals.

Though the announcement does not specifically include coal furnace replacement, producing steam at the same temperature and pressure as used by modern coal plants qualifies as “high-temperature process heat.”

HTR-PM criticality is the most recent step in a long process of commercializing high temperature gas cooled reactors. Though they have a long history, proponents (like me) believe they are an advanced type of commercial atomic fission power technology. (See the high temperature gas reactor history description below.)

China has been purposefully working on high temperature gas reactor technology development for the past 30 years. They have absorbed lessons from HTR experience in Japan, the United States, the UK, and South Africa while also building their own domestic intellectual property and manufacturing capability. According to the China Huangeng Group Co. LTD (CHGC) press release, the project’s direction includes a strong emphasis on building indigenous capacity to build HTR without outside assistance.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Astronomers spot new impact on Jupiter (groups.io)

Submitted by RockDoctor
RockDoctor writes: A recent flurry of posts to astronomy news sites points to an amateur astronomer spotting a new impact on Jupiter.

Every such case documented improves our estimates of how many bodies are flying around in the (inner) Solar system, and improves our estimates of how likely we are to get another hit in a year, a decade, or a century.

Sky and Telescope have been pulling in more information at Amateur Spots Possible New Impact Flash at Jupiter — Sky & Telescope.

An image on SpaceWeather.com. (Some of these images have been "flipped" to an "on sky" orientation, and others haven't — because astronomical telescopes generally produce an inverted image, since it requires fewer reflections.)

Estimates of the impactor size are unclear, but minimum sizes seem to be in the several kg range, and could (depending on how long the flash lasted — 1 video frame, 2, 10, 100?) go up into the tonnes. Which is important for estimating the number of potentially hazardous objects in the inner Solar system. S&T's correspondents put the size at "up to" (important words!) the 30m range (100ft in Tudor measure) which would be around 10000 tonnes — a Chelyabinsk 2013 size body.

Submission + - New volcanic island off Japan (japantimes.co.jp)

Submitted by thephydes
thephydes writes: Japanese Coast Guard said on Monday that a new ivolcanic sland has appeared about 1200km south of Tokyo

"The new island is C-shaped with a diameter of approximately 1 kilometer. It was discovered after the volcano some 50 km south of Iwo Jima, part of the Ogasawara Islands in the Pacific Ocean, started erupting on Friday."

Submission + - SPAM: Windbreaks, surprisingly, could help wind farms boost power output

Submitted by labloke11
labloke11 writes: Windbreaks may sound like a counterintuitive idea for boosting the performance of a wind turbine. But physicists report that low walls that block wind could actually help wind farms produce more power.

Scientists already knew that the output of a single wind turbine could be improved with a windbreak. While windbreaks slow wind speed close to the ground, above the height of the windbreak, wind speeds actually increase as air rushes over the top. But for large wind farms, there’s a drawback. A windbreak’s wake slows the flow of air as it travels farther through the rows of turbines. That could suggest that windbreaks would be a wash for wind farms with many turbines.

But by striking a balance between these competing effects, windbreaks placed in front of each turbine can increase power output, new computer simulations suggest. It comes down to the windbreaks’ dimensions. Squat, wide barriers are the way to go, according to a simulated wind farm with six rows of turbines. To optimize performance, windbreaks should be a tenth the height of the turbine and at least five times the width of the blades, physicists report July 30 in Physical Review Fluids. Such an arrangement could increase the total power by about 10 percent, the researchers found. That’s the equivalent of adding an additional turbine, on average, for every 10 in a wind farm.

In the simulations, the wind always came from the same direction, suggesting the technique might be useful in locations where wind tends to blow one way, such as coastal regions. Future studies could investigate how this technique might apply in places where wind direction varies.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Google co-founder Sergey Brin is reportedly building his own secret airship 1

Submitted by watsspace
watsspace writes: Google co-founder Sergey Brin is secretly building his own giant airship inside a NASA hangar, Bloomberg reports today. The craft — which apparently looks like a classic zeppelin — is housed at NASA’s Ames research facility, the publication’s sources say, but it’s not clear whether the airship a prototype for a business venture, or just a passion project for the billionaire.

According to Bloomberg’s sources, Brin’s dirigible is not yet complete, but engineers have already built a metal frame that takes up much of the hangar. Google’s Planetary Ventures division gained access to the Ames facility in 2015, and started using its vast hangars as labs and test areas for new technologies, but the sources note that the airship isn’t a proper Alphabet project.

Brin has been fascinated by airships for a long time, the sources claim, but was inspired to build his own after seeing pictures of the USS Macon — an airship built in the 1930s by the US Navy, and also once housed at the Ames facility. Once the location was secured, and the concept imagined, he assigned Alan Weston — who previously headed NASA’s Ames programs — to lead the project.

THE CRAFT’S METAL SKELETON IS REPORTEDLY COMPLETE
In an age of flying taxis, internet-beaming drones, and self-driving cars, airships might sound a little outdated, but Weston has spoken before about the potential of the vehicles to carry freight at reduced cost. In a 2013 radio interview, he described a helium-filled airship that used a system of “breathing” that would allow it to carry 500 tons of cargo, while remaining “more fuel-efficient than a truck.” Weston — who reportedly performed one of the world’s first bungee jumps — also noted that airships could drop goods off where they were needed, rather than dumping them at ports or airports, necessitating further travel by road or rail.

Weston didn’t respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment, while Brin himself said he “[didn’t] have anything to say about this topic right now.” That statement could be the Google co-founder being cagey and obfuscating his company’s plans to get into the airship business, or it could simply be the sentiment of a man who just really likes blimps. After all, what good is it being a billionaire if you can’t secretly build your own giant airship in a repurposed NASA hangar?
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Elon Musk's Neuralink shows monkey with brain-chip playing videogame by thinking

Submitted by watsspace
watsspace writes: April 9 (Reuters) — Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's brain-chip startup released footage on Friday appearing to show a monkey playing a simple videogame after getting implants of the new technology.

The 3-minute video by Neuralink shows Pager, a male macaque with chips embedded on each side of its brain, playing 'Mind Pong'. Although he was trained to move a joystick, it is now unplugged. He controls the paddle simply by thinking about moving his hand up or down.

"First @Neuralink product will enable someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using thumbs," Musk tweeted on Thursday.

"Later versions will be able to shunt signals from Neuralinks in brain to Neuralinks in body motor/sensory neuron clusters, thus enabling, for example, paraplegics to walk again. The device is implanted flush with skull & charges wirelessly, so you look & feel totally normal."
Neuralink works by recording and decoding electrical signals from the brain using more than 2,000 electrodes implanted in regions of the monkey's motor cortex that coordinate hand and arm movements, the video's voiceover said.

"Using these data, we calibrate the decoder by mathematically modeling the relationship between patterns of neural activity and the different joystick movements they produce."

Co-founded by Musk in 2016, San Francisco-based Neuralink aims to implant wireless brain computer chips to help cure neurological conditions like Alzheimer's, dementia and spinal cord injuries and fuse humankind with artificial intelligence.

In August 2020, Musk unveiled a pig with a Neuralink chip implant, describing it as "a Fitbit in your skull."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Major U.K. science funder to require grantees to make papers free (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: The policy by the funder, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will expand on existing rules covering all research papers produced from its £8 billion in annual funding.

About three-quarters of papers recently published from U.K. universities are open access, and UKRI’s current policy gives scholars two routes to comply: Pay journals for “gold” open access, which makes a paper free to read on the publisher’s website, or choose the “green” route, which allows them to deposit a near-final version of the paper on a public repository, after a waiting period of up to 1 year.

From April 2022, that yearlong delay will no longer be permitted: Researchers choosing green open access must deposit the paper immediately when it is published.

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