penciling_in writes: Pat Kane, Senior VP at Verisign, reports that on October 20th, ICANN and Verisign renewed the agreement under which Verisign will continue to act as Root Zone Maintainer for the Domain Name System (DNS) for another 8-year term. "The Root Zone sits atop the hierarchical architecture of the DNS and is essential to virtually all internet navigation, acting as the dynamic, cryptographically secure, global directory of all top-level domains that exist in the DNS. The Root Zone Maintainer is a unique role that ensures the cryptographic signing and publication of the Root Zone no less than once a day, without which, navigation on the internet would be impossible," the story adds.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It's been just a week since US telecom regulators announced a formal inquiry into broadband data caps, and the docket is filling up with comments from users who say they shouldn't have to pay overage charges for using their Internet service. The docket has about 190 comments so far, nearly all from individual broadband customers.

Federal Communications Commission dockets are usually populated with filings from telecom companies, advocacy groups, and other organizations, but some attract comments from individual users of telecom services. The data cap docket probably won't break any records given that the FCC has fielded many millions of comments on net neutrality, but it currently tops the agency's list of most active proceedings based on the number of filings in the past 30 days. "Data caps, especially by providers in markets with no competition, are nothing more than an arbitrary money grab by greedy corporations. They limit and stifle innovation, cause undue stress, and are unnecessary," wrote Lucas Landreth.

"Data caps are as outmoded as long distance telephone fees," wrote Joseph Wilkicki. "At every turn, telecommunications companies seek to extract more revenue from customers for a service that has rapidly become essential to modern life." Pointing to taxpayer subsidies provided to ISPs, Wilkicki wrote that large telecoms "have sought every opportunity to take those funds and not provide the expected broadband rollout that we paid for."

In response to Trump-appointed FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington's coffee refill analogy, internet users "Jonathan Mnemonic" and James Carter wrote, "Coffee is not, in fact, internet service." They added: "Cafes are not able to abuse monopolistic practices based on infrastructural strangleholds. To briefly set aside the niceties: the analogy is absurd, and it is borderline offensive to the discerning layperson."

Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, Richard Blumenthal and Representative Katie Porter are demanding the Justice Department prosecute tax preparation companies for allegedly sharing sensitive taxpayer data with Meta and Google through tracking pixels. The lawmakers' call follows a Treasury Inspector General audit confirming their earlier investigation into TaxSlayer, H&R Block, and Tax Act. The audit found multiple companies failed to properly obtain consent before sharing tax return information via advertising tools. Violations could result in one-year prison terms and $1,000 fines per incident, potentially reaching billions in penalties given the scale of affected users.

In a letter shared with The Verge, the lawmakers said: "Accountability for these tax preparation companies -- who disclosed millions of taxpayers' tax return data, meaning they could potentially face billions of dollars in criminal liability -- is essential for protecting the rule of law and the privacy of taxpayers," the letter reads. "We urge you to follow the facts and the conclusions of TIGTA and the IRS and to take appropriate action against any companies or individuals that have violated the law."

An anonymous reader shares a report: In June, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) gave employees a presentation and tech demo called "AI-mazing Tech-venture" in which Google's Gemini AI was presented as a tool archives employees could use to "enhance productivity." During a demo, the AI was queried with questions about the John F. Kennedy assassination, according to a copy of the presentation obtained by 404 Media using a public records request.

In December, NARA plans to launch a public-facing AI-powered chatbot called "Archie AI," 404 Media has learned. "The National Archives has big plans for AI," a NARA spokesperson told 404 Media. "It's going to be essential to how we conduct our work, how we scale our services for Americans who want to be able to access our records from anywhere, anytime, and how we ensure that we are ready to care for the records being created today and in the future."

Employee chat logs given during the presentation show that National Archives employees are concerned about the idea that AI tools will be used in archiving, a practice that is inherently concerned with accurately recording history. One worker who attended the presentation told 404 Media "I suspect they're going to introduce it to the workplace. I'm just a person who works there and hates AI bullshit." The presentation was given about a month after the National Archives banned employees from using ChatGPT because it said it posted an "unacceptable risk to NARA data security," and cautioned employees that they should "not rely on LLMs for factual information."

A new study reveals that the human sense of smell is far more sensitive than previously thought, capable of distinguishing odors and their sequences within just 60 milliseconds. CNN reports: In a single sniff, the human sense of smell can distinguish odors within a fraction of a second, working at a level of sensitivity that is "on par" with how our brains perceive color, "refuting the widely held belief that olfaction is our slow sense," a new study finds. Humans also can discern between various sequences of odors -- distinguishing a sequence of "A" before "B" from sequence "B" before "A" -- when the interval between odorant A and odorant B is merely 60 milliseconds, according to the study, published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior. [...]

The new findings challenge previous research in which the timing it took to discriminate between odor sequences was around 1,200 milliseconds, Dr. Dmitry Rinberg, a professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Physiology at NYU Langone Health in New York, wrote in an editorial accompanying the study in Nature Human Behavior. "The timing of individual notes in music is essential for conveying meaning and beauty in a melody, and the human ear is very sensitive to this. However, temporal sensitivity is not limited to hearing: our sense of smell can also perceive small temporal changes in odor presentations," he wrote. "Similar to how timing affects the perception of notes in a melody, the timing of individual components in a complex odor mixture that reaches the nose may be crucial for our perception of the olfactory world."

The ability to tell apart odors within a single sniff might be an important way in which animals detect both what a smell is and where it might be in space, said Dr. Sandeep Robert Datta, a professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the new study. "The demonstration that humans can tell apart smells as they change within a sniff is a powerful demonstration that timing is important for smell across species, and therefore is a general principle underlying olfactory function. In addition, this study sheds important light on the mysterious mechanisms that support human odor perception," Datta wrote in an email. "The study of human olfaction has historically lagged that of vision and hearing, because as humans we think of ourselves as visual creatures that largely use speech to communicate," he said, adding that the new study helps "fill a critical gap in our understanding of how we as humans smell."

Scientists have called for people to go "urban mining" after a study revealed that old cables, phone chargers and other unused electrical goods thrown away or stored in cupboards or drawers could stave off a looming shortage of copper. From a report: The research found that in the UK there are approximately 823m unused or broken tech items hiding in "drawers of doom" containing as much as 38,449 tonnes of copper -- including 627m cables -- enough to provide 30% of the copper needed for the UK's planned transition to a decarbonised electricity grid by 2030.

Copper is essential in the drive to decarbonise the economy -- being a crucial element of solar and wind developments as well as electric cars. The study found that unused electrical goods could contain as much as $349m worth of copper. Scott Butler, from Recycle Your Electricals, which produced the study, called on the public to start recycling their unwanted electrical goods. "We need to start 'urban mining' and help protect the planet and nature from the harmful impacts of mining for raw materials and instead value and use what we have already." Butler added that people often do not realise that cables and electricals contain valuable materials. "If binned or stashed, we lose everything inside them." The group is now urging everyone to check its "recycling locator" for their nearest facility.

The small town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, which supplies high-purity quartz essential for semiconductor production, is reeling from the damage caused by Tropical Storm Helene. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: Spruce Pine is one of the only places in the world to mine high-purity quartz. The mineral is an essential ingredient of chips in countless products, including medical devices, solar panels, cellphones and the chips powering the latest tech craze: artificial intelligence. It's difficult to underscore the significance of Spruce Pine -- a town of about 2,000 people, known for its charming downtown and blossoming arts scene -- to the global economy. Economics editor Ed Conway put it best in his 2023 book "Material World," writing: "It is rare, unheard of almost, for a single site to control the global supply of a crucial material. Yet if you want to get high-purity quartz -- the kind you need to make those crucibles without which you can't make silicon wafers -- it has to come from Spruce Pine."

The Quartz Corp and Sibelco both export high-purity quartz from Spruce Pine. While there are other places to find the material, such as Russia and Brazil, this mountain town has the highest quantity of the highest purity, says Conway. A few weeks of shutdown is not the end of the world, Conway tells Axios. However, longer than that could put the industry into "another crisis." The semiconductor industry would need to find alternatives. [...] The mines in Spruce Pine are still accounting for their workers and families, the international companies stated. The level of destruction at the sites is unknown. However, even if the facilities are intact, the railroads that move the quartz will likely need drastic repairs. The Quartz Corp and Sibelco temporarily halted operations on Sept. 26 and haven't said when they might reopen. "This is second order of priority," The Quartz Corp said in a statement. "Our top priority remains the health and safety of our employees and their families."

The Tor Project: Today the Tor Project, a global non-profit developing tools for online privacy and anonymity, and Tails, a portable operating system that uses Tor to protect users from digital surveillance, have joined forces and merged operations. Incorporating Tails into the Tor Project's structure allows for easier collaboration, better sustainability, reduced overhead, and expanded training and outreach programs to counter a larger number of digital threats. In short, coming together will strengthen both organizations' ability to protect people worldwide from surveillance and censorship.

Countering the threat of global mass surveillance and censorship to a free Internet, Tor and Tails provide essential tools to help people around the world stay safe online. By joining forces, these two privacy advocates will pool their resources to focus on what matters most: ensuring that activists, journalists, other at-risk and everyday users will have access to improved digital security tools.

In late 2023, Tails approached the Tor Project with the idea of merging operations. Tails had outgrown its existing structure. Rather than expanding Tails's operational capacity on their own and putting more stress on Tails workers, merging with the Tor Project, with its larger and established operational framework, offered a solution. By joining forces, the Tails team can now focus on their core mission of maintaining and improving Tails OS, exploring more and complementary use cases while benefiting from the larger organizational structure of The Tor Project.

This solution is a natural outcome of the Tor Project and Tails' shared history of collaboration and solidarity. 15 years ago, Tails' first release was announced on a Tor mailing list, Tor and Tails developers have been collaborating closely since 2015, and more recently Tails has been a sub-grantee of Tor. For Tails, it felt obvious that if they were to approach a bigger organization with the possibility of merging, it would be the Tor Project.

ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols reports: After 20 years, Real-Time Linux (PREEMPT_RT) is finally -- finally -- in the mainline kernel. Linus Torvalds blessed the code while he was at Open Source Summit Europe. [...] The real-time Linux code is now baked into all Linux distros as of the forthcoming Linux 6.12 kernel. This means Linux will soon start appearing in more mission-critical devices and industrial hardware. But it took its sweet time getting here. An RTOS is a specialized operating system designed to handle time-critical tasks with precision and reliability. Unlike general-purpose operating systems like Windows or macOS, an RTOS is built to respond to events and process data within strict time constraints, often measured in milliseconds or microseconds. As Steven Rostedt, a prominent real-time Linux developer and Google engineer, put it, "Real-time is the fastest worst-case scenario." He means that the essential characteristic of an RTOS is its deterministic behavior. An RTOS guarantees that critical tasks will be completed within specified deadlines. [...]

So, why is Real-Time Linux only now completely blessed in the kernel? "We actually would not push something up unless we thought it was ready," Rostedt explained. "Almost everything was usually rewritten at least three times before it went into mainline because we had such a high bar for what would go in." In addition, the path to the mainline wasn't just about technical challenges. Politics and perception also played a role. "In the beginning, we couldn't even mention real-time," Rostedt recalled. "Everyone said, 'Oh, we don't care about real-time.'" Another problem was money. For many years funding for real-time Linux was erratic. In 2015, the Linux Foundation established the Real-Time Linux (RTL) collaborative project to coordinate efforts around mainlining PREEMPT_RT.

The final hurdle for full integration was reworking the kernel's print_k function, a critical debugging tool dating back to 1991. Torvalds was particularly protective of print_k --He wrote the original code and still uses it for debugging. However, print_k also puts a hard delay in a Linux program whenever it's called. That kind of slowdown is unacceptable in real-time systems. Rostedt explained: "Print_k has a thousand hacks to handle a thousand different situations. Whenever we modified print_k to do something, it would break one of these cases. The thing about print_k that's great about debugging is you can know exactly where you were when a process crashed. When I would be hammering the system really, really hard, and the latency was mostly around maybe 30 microseconds, and then suddenly it would jump to five milliseconds." That delay was the print_k message. After much work, many heated discussions, and several rejected proposals, a compromise was reached earlier this year. Torvalds is happy, the real-time Linux developers are happy, print_K users are happy, and, at long last, real-time Linux is real.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Data Center Dynamics: BlackRock plans to launch a new $30 billion artificial intelligence (AI) investment fund focused on data centers and energy projects. Microsoft and Abu Dhabi-backed investment company MGX are general partners of the fund. GPU giant Nvidia will also advise. Run through BlackRock's Global Infrastructure Partners fund, which it acquired for $12.5 billion earlier this year, the 'Global AI Investment Partnership,' plans to raise up to $30 billion in equity investments. Another $70 billion could come via leveraged debt financing. "Mobilizing private capital to build AI infrastructure like data centers and power will unlock a multi-trillion-dollar long-term investment opportunity," said Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock. "Data centers are the bedrock of the digital economy, and these investments will help power economic growth, create jobs, and drive AI technology innovation."

Brad Smith, Microsoft's president, added: "The capital spending needed for AI infrastructure and the new energy to power it goes beyond what any single company or government can finance. This financial partnership will not only help advance technology, but enhance national competitiveness, security, and economic prosperity."

Bayo Ogunlesi, CEO of Global Infrastructure Partners, said: "There is a clear need to mobilize significant amounts of private capital to fund investments in essential infrastructure. One manifestation of this is the capital required to support the development of AI. We are highly confident that the combined capabilities of our partnership will help accelerate the pace of investments in AI-related infrastructure."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Scharon Harding: TCL has come under scrutiny this month after testing that claimed to examine three TCL TVs marketed as quantum dot TVs reportedly showed no trace of quantum dots. [...] Earlier this month, South Korean IT news publication ETNews published a report on testing that seemingly showed three TCL quantum dot TVs, marketed as QD TVs, as not having quantum dots present. Hansol Chemical, a Seoul-headquartered chemicals company, commissioned the testing. SGS, a Geneva-headquartered testing and certification company, and Intertek, a London-headquartered testing and certification company, performed the tests. The models examined were TCL's C755, said to be a quantum dot Mini LED TV, the C655, a purported quantum dot LED (QLED) TV, and the C655 Pro, another QLED. None of those models are sold in the US, but TCL sells various Mini LED and LED TVs in the US that claim to use quantum dots. According to a Google translation, ETNews reported: "According to industry sources on the 5th, the results of tests commissioned by Hansol Chemical to global testing and certification agencies SGS and Intertek showed that indium... and cadmium... were not detected in three TCL QD TV models. Indium and cadmium are essential materials that cannot be omitted in QD implementation." The testing was supposed to detect cadmium if present at a minimum concentration of 0.5 mg per 1 kg, while indium was tested at a minimum detection standard of 2 mg/kg or 5 mg/kg, depending on the testing lab. [...]

In response to the results from SGS and Intertek, a TCL representative told ETNews and The Korea Times that TCL is "manufacturing TV sets with QD films supplied by three companies" and that "the amount of quantum dots... in the film may vary depending on the supplier, but it is certain that cadmium is included." TCL also published testing results on May 10 commissioned by Guangdong Region Advanced Materials, one of TCL's quantum dot film suppliers. Interestingly, SGS, one of the companies that found that TCL's TVs lacked quantum dots, performed the tests. This time, SGS detected the presence of cadmium in the TV films at a concentration of 4 mg/kg (an image of the results can be seen via ETNews here). TCL also said that it "confirmed the fluorescent characteristics of QD," per Google's translation, and provided a spectrogram purportedly depicting the presence of quantum dots in its TVs' quantum dot films. [...]

TCL obviously has reason to try to push results that show the presence of cadmium. However, some analysts and publications have pointed out that Hansol could have reason to push results claiming the opposite. As mentioned above, Hansol is in the chemical manufacturing and distribution business. It notably does not sell to TCL but does have a customer in TCL rival Samsung. Taking a step back further, Hansol is headquartered in Seoul and is considered a chaebol. TV giants Samsung and LG are also chaebols, and the South Korean government has reported interest in Samsung and LG continuing to be the world's biggest TV companies—titles that are increasingly challenged by Chinese brands. It has previously been reported that the South Korean government urged Samsung and LG to meet with each other to help ensure their leadership. The talks resulted in a partnership between the two companies reportedly centered on counteracting high prices that Samsung was facing for TV components sold by Chinese companies. With this background in mind, Hansol could be viewed as a biased party when it sought testing for TCL quantum dot TVs. "I'm really puzzled by Hansol's results," said Eric Virey, principal displays analyst at Yole Intelligence. "I have a very hard time believing that TCL would go through the troubles of making ... 'fake' QD films without QDs: this would cost almost as much as making a real QD films but without the performance benefits."

Ars Technica concludes: "As previously stated, it's possible that TCL is indeed using quantum dots but is using them in a small amount alongside phosphor. If true, the performance may not be as high as it would be with other designs, but it would also mean that TCL's quantum dot TVs aren't bogus. As it stands, the situation could benefit from more, preferably third-party, testing..."

fjo3 shares a report from NASA: Engineers working on NASA's Voyager 1 probe have successfully mitigated an issue with the spacecraft's thrusters, which keep the distant explorer pointed at Earth so that it can receive commands, send engineering data, and provide the unique science data it is gathering. After 47 years, a fuel tube inside the thrusters has become clogged with silicon dioxide, a byproduct that appears with age from a rubber diaphragm in the spacecraft's fuel tank. The clogging reduces how efficiently the thrusters can generate force. After weeks of careful planning, the team switched the spacecraft to a different set of thrusters. [...]

Switching to different thrusters would have been a relatively simple operation for the mission in 1980 or even 2002. But the spacecraft's age has introduced new challenges, primarily related to power supply and temperature. The mission has turned off all non-essential onboard systems, including some heaters, on both spacecraft to conserve their gradually shrinking electrical power supply, which is generated by decaying plutonium. While those steps have worked to reduce power, they have also led to the spacecraft growing colder, an effect compounded by the loss of other non-essential systems that produced heat. Consequently, the attitude propulsion thruster branches have grown cold, and turning them on in that state could damage them, making the thrusters unusable.

The team determined that the best option would be to warm the thrusters before the switch by turning on what had been deemed non-essential heaters. However, as with so many challenges the Voyager team has faced, this presented a puzzle: The spacecraft's power supply is so low that turning on non-essential heaters would require the mission to turn off something else to provide the heaters adequate electricity, and everything that's currently operating is considered essential. Studying the issue, they ruled out turning off one of the still-operating science instruments for a limited time because there's a risk that the instrument would not come back online. After additional study and planning, the engineering team determined they could safely turn off one of the spacecraft's main heaters for up to an hour, freeing up enough power to turn on the thruster heaters. It worked. On Aug. 27, they confirmed that the needed thruster branch was back in action, helping point Voyager 1 toward Earth.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully 3D printed the first metal part aboard the International Space Station. This achievement marks a significant advancement in in-orbit manufacturing that could enable the production of essential spare parts and tools for future long-duration space missions. "The first metal shape was produced in August, and three more are planned as part of the experiment," notes The Register. "All four will eventually be returned to Earth for analysis -- two to ESA's technical center, ESTEC, in the Netherlands, one to the agency's astronaut training center in Cologne, and the last sample to the Technical University of Denmark." From the report: During a panel discussion following the UK premiere of Fortitude, a film about the emerging commercial space industry, Advenit Makaya, Advanced Manufacturing Engineer at ESA, remarked on the potential for recycling space debris in the process rather than having to rely on raw materials launched to the ISS. Rob Postema, ESA Project Manager for Metal 3D, told The Register that the agency was indeed looking at "circular" solutions in its drive for greater sustainability. However, don't hold your breath for putting bits of space garbage into one end and getting shiny metal parts out of the other: "A timeline is difficult to indicate, some early results are achieved with ground activities, ready to evaluate solutions in space."

The printer is overseen from the ground and operated for around four hours per day. The ground team has to check each layer via images and a scan of the surface area; printing a sample can take 10-25 days. However, Postema said: "Through automated control of the printing process as well as continuous operations, this can be substantially reduced." Knick-knacks from orbits are all well and good, but could something more substantial be produced? Yes, although not with this demonstrator, which can print to the outer dimensions of a soft drink can. Postema noted that while the demonstrator could manage smaller parts, either as a single unit or as part of larger structures, "there are definitely opportunities to create 3D shapes and parts with this technology larger than what we have done with this Technology Demonstrator."

An anonymous reader shares a report: It's been a rough week for OSOM Products. The company has been embroiled in legal controversy stemming from a lawsuit filed by a former executive. Now, Android Authority has learned that the company is effectively shutting down later this week. OSOM Products was formed in 2020 following the disbanding of Essential, a smartphone startup led by Andy Rubin, the founder of Android.

Essential collapsed following the poor sales of its first smartphone, the Essential Phone, as well as a loss of confidence in Rubin due to allegations of sexual misconduct at his previous stint at Google. Although Essential as a company was on its way out after Rubin's departure, many of its most talented hardware designers and software engineers remained at the company, looking for another opportunity to build something new. In 2020, the former head of R&D at Essential, Jason Keats, along with several other former executives and employees came together to form OSOM, which stands for "Out of Sight, Out of Mind." The name reflected their desire to create privacy-focused products such as the OSOM Privacy Cable, a USB-C cable with a switch to disable data signaling, and the OSOM OV1, an Android smartphone with lots of privacy and security-focused features.

A former executive of smartphone startup OSOM Products has filed a lawsuit alleging the company's founder misused funds for personal expenses, including two Lamborghinis and a lavish lifestyle. Mary Ross, OSOM's ex-Chief Privacy Officer, is seeking access to company records in a Delaware court filing.

OSOM, founded in 2020 by former Essential employees, launched two products: the Solana-backed Saga smartphone and a privacy cable. Android founder Andy Rubin founded Essential, which sought to compete with Apple and Android-makers on a smartphone, but later shutdown after not find many takers for its phone. The lawsuit claims OSOM founder Jason Keats used company money for racing hobbies, first-class travel, and mortgage payments.

Pakistani businesses say internet disruptions this month have harmed their businesses [non-paywalled link] and unsettled investors at a time when the country is counting on the information technology sector to help break a cycle of economic crises and bailouts. From a report: The warnings from executives, investors and a leading IT organisation come as internet watchdogs have reported a marked slowdown in connection speeds and service interruptions to applications such as WhatsApp, the Meta-owned messaging platform that is widely used in the country. Nadeem Elahi, managing director for TRG, a venture capital firm that operates Pakistan's biggest outsourcing services provider, said internet connectivity was "by far the worst it has been in the last 12 months."

"If we want to be a global business processing operation destination, then 100 per cent reliable connectivity is essential for customers," he said, estimating that the quality of connection had degraded by 30 to 40 per cent. Technology is one of Pakistan's few standout sectors, and Islamabad is relying on software developers and IT freelancers to help lift the country out of a chronic foreign exchange rut that has sent it to the IMF for support two dozen times. IT exports rose 24 per cent to $3.2bn, an all-time high, in the 12 months to the end of June, according to the State Bank of Pakistan.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American, written by science journalist Simon Makin: The persistence of memory is crucial to our sense of identity, and without it, there would be no learning, for us or any other animal. It's little wonder, then, that some researchers have called how the brain stores memories the most fundamental question in neuroscience. A milestone in the effort to answer this question came in the early 1970s, with the discovery of a phenomenon called long-term potentiation, or LTP. Scientists found that electrically stimulating a synapse that connects two neurons causes a long-lasting increase in how well that connection transmits signals. Scientists say simply that the "synaptic strength" has increased. This is widely believed to be the process underlying memory. Networks of neural connections of varying strengths are thought to be what memories are made of.

In the search for molecules that enable LTP, two main contenders emerged. One, called PKMzeta (protein kinase Mzeta), made a big splash when a 2006 study showed that blocking it erased memories for places in rats. If obstructing a molecule erases memories, researchers reasoned, that event must be essential to the process the brain uses to maintain memories. A flurry of research into the so-called memory molecule followed, and numerous experiments appeared to show that it was necessary and sufficient for maintaining numerous types of memory. The theory had a couple of holes, though. First, PKMzeta is short-lived. "Those proteins only last in synapses for a couple of hours, and in neurons, probably a couple of days," says Todd Sacktor, a neurologist at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, who was co-senior author of the 2006 study. "Yet our memories can last 90 years, so how do you explain this difference?" Second, PKMzeta is created in cells as needed, but then it has to find the right synapses. Each neuron has around 10,000 synapses, only a few percent of which are strengthened, says neuroscientist Andre Fenton, the other co-senior author of the 2006 study, who is now at New York University. The strengthening of some synapses and not others is how this mechanism stores information, but how PKMzeta molecules accomplish this was unknown.

A new study published in Science Advances by Sacktor, Fenton and their colleagues plugs these holes. The research suggests that PKMzeta works alongside another molecule, called KIBRA (kidney and brain expressed adaptor protein), which attaches to synapses activated during learning, effectively "tagging" them. KIBRA couples with PKMzeta, which then keeps the tagged synapses strengthened. Experiments show that blocking the interaction between these two molecules abolishes LTP in neurons and disrupts spatial memories in mice. Both molecules are short-lived, but their interaction persists. "It's not PKMzeta that's required for maintaining a memory, it's the continual interaction between PKMzeta and this targeting molecule, called KIBRA," Sacktor says. "If you block KIBRA from PKMzeta, you'll erase a memory that's a month old." The specific molecules will have been replaced many times during that month, he adds. But, once established, the interaction maintains memories over the long term as individual molecules are continually replenished. [...] "What seems clear is that there is no single 'memory molecule,'" concludes Scientific American. "Regardless of any competing candidate, PKMzeta needs a second molecule to maintain long-term memories, and there is another that can substitute in a pinch."

"There are also some types of memory, such as the association of a location with fear, that do not depend on PKMzeta," the report adds. "Nobody knows what molecules are involved in those cases, and PKMzeta is clearly not the whole story."

Apple announced that CFO Luca Maestri will step down at the start of next year, transitioning to head of its corporate services team to lead "information systems and technology, information security, and real estate and development." Kevan Parekh will take over as CFO. The Verge reports: Maestri joined Apple in 2013 after serving as the CFO of Xerox. He became the CFO just one year later, replacing Peter Oppenheimer. CNBC notes that when he took over, Apple's annual revenue was $183 billion, and last year, it reached $383 billion. Apple also announced an expansion to its share repurchase program to $90 billion, which Maestri would oversee.

This spring, Apple announced it would increase the amount from $90 billion to $110 billion, breaking its own record of $100 billion. It also reported an increase in revenue from its services business of 14 percent, even as sales of iPhones and iPads were down from the previous year. In Apple's announcement, it said, "...Maestri enabled essential investments and practiced robust financial discipline, which together helped the company more than double its revenue, with services revenue growing more than five times."

Kevan Parekh, Apple's vice president of financial planning and analysis, will take Maestri's place managing the finances of the now $3 trillion company. Parekh has been at Apple for 11 years and previously worked in senior leadership positions at Thomson Reuters and General Motors. Last week, Apple announced that it's splitting its App Store group into two teams, with App Store vice president Matt Fischer leaving the role in October.

Raspberry Pi, the British computer manufacturer, unveiled a new 2GB variant of its flagship Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer on Monday, priced at $50. Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton said the company aims to "bring high-performance general-purpose computing to the widest possible audience" with the new offering. The 2GB Raspberry Pi 5 utilizes a cost-optimized D0 stepping of the BCM2712 application processor, which removes non-essential functionality to reduce manufacturing costs.

Upton stated the chip is "functionally identical" to users compared to higher-memory variants. While the reduced RAM may limit multitasking capabilities, Raspberry Pi's optimized OS allows for efficient resource usage. The company expects the 2GB model to suffice for many users' needs, while power users may opt for 4GB or 8GB versions priced at $60 and $80 respectively. The Raspberry Pi 5, launched in October 2023, features a quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 CPU running at 2.4GHz, dual 4K display output, and support for PCIe SSDs. Upton noted the latest model is "about 150 times as powerful" as the original Raspberry Pi from 2012.

In 1999 Los Angeles Times reporter Michael Hiltzik co-authored a Pulitzer Prize-winning story. Now a business columnist for the Times, this week he covers new pushback on the COVID lab leak claim: Here's an indisputable fact about the theory that COVID originated in a laboratory: Most Americans believe it to be true. That's important for several reasons. One is that evidence to support the theory is nonexistent.

Another is that the claim itself has fomented a surge of attacks on science and scientists that threatens to drive promising researchers out of the crucial field of pandemic epidemiology. That concern was aired in a commentary by 41 biologists, immunologists, virologists and physicians published Aug. 1 in the Journal of Virology. The journal probably isn't in the libraries of ordinary readers, but the article's prose is commendably clear and its conclusions eye-opening. "The lab leak narrative fuels mistrust in science and public health infrastructures," the authors observe. "Scientists and public health professionals stand between us and pandemic pathogens; these individuals are essential for anticipating, discovering, and mitigating future pandemic threats. Yet, scientists and public health professionals have been harmed and their institutions have been damaged by the skewed public and political opinions stirred by continued promotion of the lab leak hypothesis in the absence of evidence...."

[O]ne can't advance the lab leak theory without positing a vast conspiracy encompassing scientists in China and the U.S., and Chinese and U.S. government officials. How else could all the evidence of a laboratory event that resulted in more than 7 million deaths worldwide be kept entirely suppressed for nearly five years... "Validating the lab leak hypothesis requires intelligence evidence that the WIV possessed or carried out work on a SARS-CoV-2 precursor virus prior to the pandemic," the Virology paper asserts. "Neither the scientific community nor multiple western intelligence agencies have found such evidence." Despite that, "the lab leak hypothesis receives persistent attention in the media, often without acknowledgment of the more solid evidence supporting zoonotic emergence," the paper says...

I've written before about the smears, physical harassment and baseless accusations of fraud and other wrongdoing that lab leak propagandists have visited upon scientists whose work has challenged their claims; similar attacks have targeted experts who have worked to debunk other anti-science narratives, including those about global warming and vaccines... What's notable about the Virology paper is that it represents a comprehensive and long-overdue pushback by the scientific community against such behavior. More to the point, it focuses on the consequences for public health and the scientific mission from the rise of anti-science propaganda... "Scientists have withdrawn from social media platforms, rejected opportunities to speak in public, and taken increased safety measures to protect themselves and their families," the authors report. "Some have even diverted their work to less controversial and less timely topics. We now see a long-term risk of having fewer experts engaged in work that may help thwart future pandemics...."

Thanks in part to social media, anti-science has become more virulent and widespread, the Virology authors write.