"Early Sunday morning, a car stopped and appears to have fired a gun at the Russian Hill home of OpenAI's CEO," reportsThe San Francisco Standard, citing reports from the local police department:

The San Francisco Police Department announced the arrest of two suspects, Amanda Tom, 25, and Muhamad Tarik Hussein, 23, who were booked for negligent discharge... [The person in the passenger seat] put their hand out the window and appeared to fire a round on the Lombard side of the property, according to a police report on the incident, which cited surveillance footage and the compound's security personnel, who reported hearing a gunshot. The car then fled, and a camera captured its license plate, which later led police to take possession of the vehicle, according to the report... A search of the residence by officers turned up three firearms, according to police.
The incident follows Friday's arrest of a man who allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman's house. The San Francisco Standard also notes that in November, "threats from a 27-year-old anti-AI activist prompted the lockdown of OpenAI's San Francisco offices." Sam Kirchner, whose whereabouts have been unknown since Nov. 21, was in the midst of a mental health crisis when he threatened to go to the company's offices to "murder people," according to callers who notified police that day.

New submitter haroldbasset writes: Canada's Immigration Department rejected an applicant because the duties of her current job did not match the Canadian work experience she had claimed, but the Department's AI assistant had invented that work experience. She has been working in Canada as a health scientist -- she has a Ph.D. in the immunology of aging -- but the AI genius instead described her as "wiring and assembling control circuits, building control and robot panels, programming and troubleshooting." "It's believed to be the first time that the department explicitly referred to the use of generative AI to support application processing in immigration refusals," reports the Toronto Star. "The disclaimer also noted that all generated content was verified by an officer and that generative AI was not used to make or recommend a decision."

The applicant's lawyer was shocked "how any human being could make this decision." "Somehow, it hallucinated my client's job description," he said. "I would love to see what the officer saw. Something seriously went wrong here."

The applicant's refusal came just as Canada's Immigration Department released its first AI strategy, which frames artificial intelligence as a way to improve efficiency, service delivery, and program integrity. The department says it has long used digital tools like analytics and automation to flag fraud risks and triage applications, and is now also experimenting with generative AI for tasks such as research, summarizing, and analysis. In this case, however, the department insisted the decision was made by a human officer and that generative AI was not involved in the final decision.

"A single infusion of a stem cell-based treatment may have cured 10 out of 12 people with the most severe form of Type 1 diabetes," reports the New York Times.

"One year later, these 10 patients no longer need insulin. The other two patients need much lower doses." The experimental treatment, called zimislecel and made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals of Boston, involves stem cells that scientists prodded to turn into pancreatic islet cells, which regulate blood glucose levels. The new islet cells were infused and reached the pancreas, where they took up residence. The study was presented Friday evening at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association and published online by The New England Journal of Medicine...

Patients in the study began to need less insulin within a few months of being infused with new islet cells, and most stopped needing the hormone altogether at about six months [said Dr. Trevor Reichman, director of the pancreas and islet transplant program at University Health Network, a hospital in Toronto, and first author of the study]. He added that patients' episodes of hypoglycemia went away within the first 90 days of treatment.

If the study continues to show positive results, the company expects to submit an application to the FDA next year. "For the short term, this looks promising" for severely affected patients like those in the study," said Dr. Irl B. Hirsch, a diabetes expert at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study. But patients in the trial had to stay on drugs to prevent the immune system from destroying the new cells. Suppressing the immune system, he said, increases the risk of infections and, over the long term, can increase the risk of cancer... Patients may have to take the immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of their lives, the Vertex spokesperson said.

In an effort to boost tourism and innovation, Japan will launch a new visa program for digital nomads, allowing remote workers to work in the country for up to six months while enjoying sightseeing trips. Tech Times reports: Starting from the end of March, Japan will introduce a unique visa status aimed at IT engineers and remote workers employed by overseas companies. The program is designed to cater to the evolving work landscape, recognizing the surge in digital nomads-individuals who can seamlessly work from anywhere in the world. Nikkei Asia (paywalled) tells us that to be eligible for this digital nomad visa, applicants must boast an annual income of at least 10 million yen ($68,000).

Citizens from 50 countries and regions, including the U.S., Australia, and Singapore, which have existing visa waiver agreements with Japan, can apply. Private health insurance is a prerequisite, ensuring the well-being of the visa holders during their stay. Self-employed individuals engaged in overseas business can also benefit from this innovative program. Moreover, they have the option to bring their family members along, provided they are covered by private health insurance.

While the program offers the freedom to explore Japan, it has unique conditions. Digital nomads under this visa will not receive a residence card or certificate, limiting access to specific government benefits. The visa is non-renewable, requiring reapplication after a six-month interval, and applicants must spend that time outside the country. Japan joins the ranks of over 50 countries issuing digital nomad visas. Notably, South Korea allows up to two years, while Taiwan offers a three-year stay, with the possibility of permanent residency. The diverse offerings cater to digital nomads' varied needs and preferences, seeking a balance between work and exploration.

doc1623 shares a report from Ars Technica: Scientists at the University of Arizona decided to investigate whether closing the toilet lid before flushing reduces cross-contamination of bathroom surfaces by airborne bacterial and viral particles via "toilet plumes." The bad news is that putting a lid on it doesn't result in any substantial reduction in contamination, according to their recent paper published in the American Journal of Infection Control. The good news: Adding a disinfectant to the toilet bowl before flushing and using disinfectant dispensers in the tank significantly reduce cross-contamination. [...]

The scientists conducted their experiment with E. coli (as a host bacteria) and coliphage MS2; the latter is not a human or animal pathogen but serves as a useful model. The public toilet used in the experiment was located in a stall in the restroom of an office building. That toilet was tankless, relying on water-line pressure for flushing, with no lid and a U-shaped seat with a gap in the front. The home toilet was a standard siphonic toilet with a tank and lid in a private residence; there was no gap on the center of the seat. Toilet bowls were seeded with MS2 and flushed. After one minute, samples were taken from various restroom surfaces: the top and bottom of toilet seats, the bowl rim, three locations on the floor, and the right and left walls. The team also conducted a similar experiment involving cleaning the bowls with toilet brushes, both with and without Lysol toilet bowl cleaner. All those samples were then tested for MS2 contamination.

The results: both the tops and bottoms of the lidless public toilet seats had more contamination compared to household seats, but otherwise, there was no statistical significance in the degree of contamination between lidless public toilets and household toilets with lids. And the surface contamination did indeed persist even after repeated flushes. The toilet seat was the worst offender with the greatest degree of contamination, which the authors suggest "reflects the airflow that occurs during toilet flushing, i.e., largely around the top and bottom of the toilet seat." That same airflow is likely a factor in spreading the contamination to restroom floors and walls. Perhaps the least surprising finding is that rigorous cleaning with a toilet bowl brush and Lysol reduced the contamination by 99.99 percent compared to cleaning with just a brush. Therefore, "The most effective strategy for reducing restroom cross-contamination associated with toilet flushing include the addition of a disinfectant to the toilet bowl before flushing and the use of disinfectant/detergent dispensers in the toilet tank," the authors concluded. They also recommend regularly disinfecting all restroom surfaces after flushing or cleaning with a toilet brush in health care facilities -- which often have a lot of immunocompromised people -- and if someone in your house has an active infection like norovirus. The findings have been published in the journal American Journal of Infection Control.

Slashdot reader doc1623 writes: "This headline brought me joy today, so I thought I would share (I could honestly care less about reading the article but joy is joy, I take it where I can find it.)"

Veronique Greenwood writes via The New York Times: Your skin is home to a thousand kinds of bacteria, and the ways they contribute to healthy skin are still largely mysterious. This mystery may be getting even more complex: In a paper published Thursday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, researchers studying the many varieties of Cutibacterium acnes bacteria on 16 human volunteers found that each pore was a world unto itself. Every pore contained just a single type of C. acnes. C. acnes is naturally occurring, and the most abundant bacteria on skin. Its link to acne, the skin disease, is not clear, said Tami Lieberman, a professor at M.I.T. and an author of the new paper. If biologists want to unpack the relationship between your face's inhabitants and its health, it will be an important step to understand whether varying strains of C. acnes have their own talents or niches, and how the strains are distributed across your skin.

Each person's skin had a unique combination of strains, but what surprised the researchers most was that each pore housed a single variety of C. acnes. The pores were different from their neighbors, too -- there was no clear pattern uniting the pores of the left cheek or forehead across the volunteers, for instance. What's more, judging from the sequencing data, the bacteria within each pore were essentially identical. "There's a huge amount of diversity over one square centimeter of your face," said Arolyn Conwill, a postdoctoral researcher who is the study's lead author. "But within a single one of your pores, there's a total lack of diversity."

What the scientists think is happening is that each pore contains descendants of a single individual. Pores are deep, narrow crannies with oil-secreting glands at the bottom, Dr. Lieberman said. If a C. acnes cell manages to get down there, it may proliferate until it fills the pore with copies of itself. This would also explain why strains that don't grow very quickly manage to avoid being outcompeted by speedier strains on the same person. They're not competing with each other; they're living side by side in their own walled gardens. Intriguingly, these gardens are not very old, the scientists think. They estimate that the founding cells in the pores they studied took up residence only about one year before. What happened to the bacteria that previously lived there? The researchers don't know -- perhaps they were destroyed by the immune system, fell prey to viruses or were unceremoniously yanked out by a nose strip, clearing the way for new founders.

Digital Covid-19 certificates aimed at facilitating free movement in the European Union came into force across the bloc on Thursday, a long-awaited milestone for countries hoping to boost their ailing tourism industries. From a report: Free movement is a key pillar of European integration, and E.U. officials said last month that the certificates would "again enable citizens to enjoy this most tangible and cherished of E.U. rights." Through a Q.R. code issued by their country of residence, certificate holders will be able to show that they have been either fully vaccinated, tested negative or have immunity after a recent recovery. That will exempt them from most travel or quarantine restrictions.

Many European governments have already eased such rules, and each member nation can still revive protective measures if a country's health situation deteriorates. Germany, for instance, has imposed restrictions on travelers coming from Portugal, which has faced a surge of new cases driven by the spread of the Delta variant. While countries have agreed that national health authorities will issue the certificates -- most E.U. countries have already been doing so -- they are divided over who should check them, where and when.

We have learned that Brad Cox, computer scientist known mostly for creating the Objective-C programming language with his business partner Tom Love, died on January 2, 2021 at his residence. He was 76. From a Legacy.com post: Brad was born on May 2, 1944 in Fort Benning, Georgia, to the late Nancy Hinson Cox and Dewey McBride Cox of Lake City, South Carolina. Brad grew up on the family's dairy farm in South Carolina but found himself most interested in science. After graduating from Lake City High School, he received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Organic Chemistry and Mathematics from Furman University, and his Ph.D. from the Department of Mathematical Biology at the University of Chicago, and worked on an early form of neural networks. He soon found himself more interested in computers and got a job at International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) and later joined Schlumbeger -- Doll Research Labs, and ultimately formed his own Connecticut startup, Productivity Products International (PPI) later named Stepstone.

Among his first known software projects, he wrote a PDP-8 program for simulating clusters of neurons. He worked at the National Institutes of Health and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute before moving into the software profession. Dr. Cox was an entrepreneur, having founded the Stepstone Company together with Tom Love for releasing the first Objective-C implementation. Stepstone hoped to sell "ICPaks" and Dr. Cox focused on building his ICPak libraries and hired a team to continue work on Objective-C, including Steve Naroff. The late Steve Jobs', NeXT, licensed the Objective-C language for it's new operating system, NEXTSTEP. NeXT eventually acquired Objective- C from Stepstone. Objective-C continued to be the primary programming language for writing software for Apple's OS X and iOS.

Former Department of Health data manager Rebekah Jones has filed a lawsuit (PDF) against the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, saying the Dec. 7 morning raid on her house was a "sham" to retaliate against her for not altering COVID-19 data. Tallahassee.com reports: Jones was fired in May for failing to change COVID-19 data, and soon launched her own online data dashboard. Gov. Ron DeSantis said her firing was because she disobeyed superiors; she said it was because she wouldn't alter data to cast Florida in a more favorable light to justify the governor's plans to reopen the state's economy. In the lawsuit filed Sunday night against FDLE Commissioner Rick Swearingen, the department and several agents in Leon County Circuit Civil Court, Jones claims her constitutional rights were violated, including against unlawful search and seizure. She is seeking in excess of $100,000, according to the lawsuit's cover sheet.

She also claims she was unnecessarily roughed up. "We are trying to achieve some kind of redress," said Rick Johnson, the lead attorney in both the civil suit and a separate whistleblower case. "This is still America. This is the kind of thing that happens in tinhorn dictatorships in third world countries." Swearingen has defended the actions of the agents he said were "vilified" by the media. He blamed Jones for any risk of danger to herself or her family. He reiterated those comments in a statement released later Monday. "As I have said before, I am proud of the professionalism shown by our FDLE agents as they served a legal search warrant on the residence of Rebekah Jones. Our criminal investigation continues, and while I have not seen this lawsuit, I believe the facts will come out in court," Swearingen said.

FriendlySolipsist writes: Independent journalist Rebekah Jones, a scientist fired by the Florida state government because, she said, of her refusal to manipulate official COVID-19 data releases to coincide with political considerations and who now operates website floridacovidaction.com, had her home raided by the FL state police who seized computers and cellphones, the Miami Herald reported. The FDLE affidavit in support of the raid was published by the Miami Herald and asserts that an unauthorized internal message was sent to the "ReadyOps" system within the state Department of Health from an IPv6 address associated with the Comcast account at Jones residence. "The Florida Department of Law Enforcement on Monday raided the home of a former Department of Health data analyst who has been running an alternative web site to the state's COVID dashboard, alleging that she may have broken into a state email system and sent an unauthorized message to employees," reports the Miami Herald. "But Rebekah Jones, who was was fired from her job in May as the geographic information system manager for DOH's Division of Disease Control and Health Protection and who has since filed a whistleblower complaint against the state, denied having any role in the alleged intrusion into the state web site and instead said she believes Monday's action was intended to silence her."

Slashdot reader mtrachtenberg shares a thread on Twitter of Jones describing what happened.

In a letter to the MIT community, President L. Rafael Reif says the university is moving all classes online for the rest of the semester to slow the spread of COVID-19. Here's an excerpt: The overall plan is this:

1. All classes are cancelled for the week of Monday, March 16 through Friday, March 20. Because the following week is spring break, this will allow faculty and instructors two weeks to organize a full transition to online instruction.
2. Online instruction, which some units are already experimenting with this week, will begin for all classes on Monday, March 30, and continue for the remainder of the semester.
3. Undergraduates should not return to campus after spring break. Undergraduates who live in an MIT residence or fraternity, sorority or independent living group (FSILG) must begin packing and departing this Saturday, March 14. We are requiring undergraduates to depart from campus residences no later than noon on Tuesday, March 17. Please see below for details on graduate students.
4.Classes will continue this week as we continue to prepare for this transition.

We are taking this dramatic action to protect the health and safety of everyone at MIT -- staff, students, post-docs and faculty -- and because MIT has an important role in slowing the spread of this disease. As at any residential college, our residence halls and FSILGs put students in close quarters. What's more, the intense and free-flowing collaboration MIT is known for comes with close contact and shared spaces, equipment and supplies. These characteristics, which we cherish in normal times, increase the risk of COVID-19 spreading on our campus. Our plan follows directly from state health guidance that universities take steps to reduce the density of the population on campus and increase social distancing. By doing so, we are doing our part to reduce the spread of the disease overall, while directly reducing risk for our own community -- for departing students, of course, but equally for those of us who continue to work on campus.

"A 911 call Thursday led to a precautionary evacuation of an entire street in a Northwest Side neighborhood in Columbus over concerns about a possible small nuclear reactor and alpha waves reported by a resident who said he sustained burns in his garage on the device," acocrding to the Columbus Dispatch.

Slashdot reader k6mfw shared their report: In the end, authorities found no hazard. The man will undergo a mental-health examination and may face charges of inducing a panic. The man, who is in his late 20s or early 30s and who resides on the 6300 block of Chippenhook Court, called 911 about 6:15 p.m. and reported he had been sustained burns from a device he was working on in his garage.

Battalion Chief Steve Martin, the Columbus Fire Division's media spokesman, said the man's description of the device suggested he was working on a small nuclear reactor and included references to a particle accelerator and alpha waves. The latter reference led to concerns about potential radiation, he said. Hazmat, bomb squad and other emergency responders -- operating out of an abundance of caution -- evacuated the approximately 40 residences on the cul-de-sac street in the Cranston Commons development while they assessed the situation, Martin said...

He said medics determined the man did not appear to be injured, at least not seriously. Radiation level checks were conducted on the man and then at the residence and nothing was found, Martin said. A nuclear specialist brought to the scene found in the garage what was identified as a homemade capacitor, Martin said. A capacitor is a device that consists of two or more separate conducting plates and is used to store an electric charge, not unlike a battery. After it was determined there was no threat, residents were allowed to return to their homes at 9:20 p.m. Depending on the evaluation and further investigation, it is possible the man will be criminally charged with inducing a panic, Martin said.

Only one injury was reported: a firefighter in a hazmat suit was injured when he unepectedly came off a curb and twisted his ankle, Martin said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: An amateur radio rig exposed to the internet and discovered by a security researcher was collecting real-time medical data and health information broadcast by hospitals and ambulances across U.K. towns and cities. The rig, operated out of a house in North London, was picking up radio waves from over the air and translating them into readable text. The hobbyist's computer display was filling up with messages about real-time medical emergencies from across the region. For some reason, the hobbyist had set up an internet-connected webcam pointed at the display. But because there was no password on the webcam, anyone who knew where to look could also see what was on the rig's computer display.

Daley Borda, a security researcher and bug bounty hunter, stumbled upon the exposed webcam. The live stream was grainy, and the quality of the images so poor that it was just possible to make out the text on the display. "You can see details of calls coming in -- their name, address, and injury," he told TechCrunch. TechCrunch verified his findings. Messages spilling across the screen appeared to direct nearby ambulances where to go following calls to the 999 emergency services. One message said a 98-year-old man had fallen at his home address. A few moments later, another message said a 49-year-old male was complaining of chest pains at a nearby residence. One after the other, messages were flooding in, describing accidents, incidents and medical emergencies, often including their home addresses. "The hobbyist was picking up and decoding pager communications from a nearby regional National Health Service trust," adds TechCrunch. These devices remain a fixture in UK hospitals and "allow anyone to send messages to one or many pagers at once by calling a dedicated phone number, often manned by an operator, which are then broadcast as radio waves over the pager network."

While the NHS still uses about 130,000 pagers, according to the UK government, it's not clear how many trusts are exposing medical information -- if at all.

David Aguila, a 19-year-old bioengineering student at the Universitat Internacional de Catulunya in Spain, has built himself a robotic prosthetic arm using Lego pieces. David was born with Poland syndrome that affects his right peck and right arm. From a report: Once his favorite toys, the plastic bricks became the building material for Mr Aguilar's first, still very rudimentary, artificial arm at the age of nine, and each new version had more movement than the one before. He uses the artificial arm only occasionally and is self-sufficient without it, with all the versions on display in his room in the university residence on the outskirts of Barcelona. In November 2017 Mr Aguilar, who uses Lego pieces provided by a friend, proudly displayed a fully functional red and yellow robotic arm, built when he was 18, bending it in the elbow joint and flexing the grabber.

The latest models are marked MK followed by the number -- a tribute to comic book superhero Iron Man and his MK armor suits. The MK II was a predominantly blue model built from a Lego plane set, including a motor, while MK III was created from a set for a piece of mining equipment. After graduating from university, he wants to create affordable prosthetic solutions for people who need them.

From a report: Book a night at LAX's Residence Inn and you may be fortunate enough to meet an employee named Wally. His gig is relatively pedestrian -- bring you room service, navigate around the hotel's clientele in the lobby and halls -- but Wally's life is far more difficult than it seems. If you put a tray out in front of your door, for instance, he can't get to you. If a cart is blocking the hall, he can't push it out of the way. But fortunately for Wally, whenever he gets into a spot of trouble, he can call out for help. See, Wally is a robot -- specifically, a Relay robot from a company called Savioke. And when the machine finds itself in a particularly tricky situation, it relies on human agents in a call center way across the country in Pennsylvania to bail it out. [...]

The first companies to unleash robots into service sectors have been quietly opening call centers stocked with humans who monitor the machines and help them get out of jams. "It's something that's just starting to emerge, and it's not just robots," says David Poole, CEO and co-founder of Symphony Ventures, which consults companies on automation. "I think there is going to be a huge industry, probably mostly offshore, in the monitoring of devices in general, whether they're health devices that individuals wear or monitoring pacemakers or whatever it might be."

A new report suggests that an insecticide sprayed from airplanes to kill mosquitos carrying the Zika virus may in fact be killing bees, since the "fine mist" is "beaded with neurotoxin." Earlier this week, one beekeeper posted a video showing thousands of dead bees heaped around hives. Meanwhile, South Carolina hobbyist Andrew Mache wrote in another Facebook post that he had lost "thousands upon thousands of bees" and that the spraying had devastated his business. The Guardian reports: "The program head, Dr Mike Weyman, said that though South Carolina has strict rules about protecting pollinators, country officials were using the neurotoxin, Naled, under a clause exempting them in a 'clear and public health crisis.' South Carolina's protocol for Zika infections is to alert local officials of a carrier's residence, which they 'consider a ground zero,' Weman said. Local authorities then target the local mosquitos in a 200-yard radius, in this case with spray. Experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and independent universities say Naled is far safer than other chemicals. It breaks down rapidly and, in the very low doses at which it is prescribed, should not pose a risk to humans. 'In Louisiana, we use these products quite frequently to reduce mosquitos, but we don't see many non-target effects, because the doses are really small,' said Dr Kirsten Healy, a public health entomologist at Louisiana State University. 'A lot of people don't realize that we always have the environment in mind. We try to have products that have the lowest possible impact.'" The report adds that bees and other pollinators "contribute an estimated $29 billion to farm income" around the U.S.

SoonToBeWorking asks: "I recently did a telephone interview for what I thought would be an absolutely wonderful job. It is primarily embedded Linux, with a stable employer that was less than 10 miles from my residence. The interview went extremely well, until the end. The position was listed as full-time but they want me to come on as contractor because the approval is easier to get. Then, I am told they would move me to full-time. I'm recently married, and looking for stable income because I have more than myself to look out for now (kids are not present or on the way for several years yet). I've never contracted before, so I am in unfamiliar territory. I hear a lot of good things -- 3-day work weeks and crazy amounts of money, but is the lack of stability worth it? I know I need my own health & life insurance, but what else? How do I convert my base salary to a contractor rate? Without a 401k or a 403b, how do I take care of retirement?"

This is part 3 of the interview with Dr. Richard Wallace. You might want to start with part 1.