Comment not for "right to work" states (Score 1) 171
Any state with a "right to work" law (i.e. right to fire for no reason) can't force this. Lots of states have this.
Comment Penzu (Score 1) 187
For an online journal for notes and such, I found Penzu to be useful
https://penzu.com/
Submission + - Nose Picking Could Increase Risk for Alzheimer's and Dementia (neurosciencenews.com)
Joe_NoOne writes: Griffith University researchers have demonstrated that a bacteria can travel through the olfactory nerve in the nose and into the brain in mice, where it creates markers that are a tell-tale sign of Alzheimer’s disease.The study, published in the journalScientific Reports, showed that Chlamydia pneumoniae used the nerve extending between thenasal cavityand thebrainas an invasion path to invade the central nervous system. The cells in the brain then responded by depositing amyloid beta protein which is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. The olfactory nerve in the nose is directly exposed to air and offers a short pathway to the brain, one which bypasses theblood-brain barrier. It’s a route that viruses and bacteria have sniffed out as an easy one into the brain.
Submission + - Pac-Man-shaped blobs become world's first self-replicating biological robots (livescience.com)
Joe_NoOne writes: Tiny groups of cells shaped like Pac-Man are the world's first self-replicating biological robots.
The tiny bots are made from the skin cells of frogs, but they don't reproduce by mitosis or meiosis or any of the other ways cells divide and replicate in normal circumstances. Instead, they build more of themselves from raw materials — free-floating frog skin cells — creating multiple generations of nearly identical organisms.
In action, the bots (dubbed "xenobots" by their inventors), even look like Pac-Man. They move in wild corkscrews and spirals, their open "mouths" scooping the free-floating skin cells into piles. The cells tend to adhere, or stick together, once put in contact with one another, so these piles gradually meld into new, spiraling xenobots.
Though this self-replication is a fairly delicate process, so far possible only in a carefully controlled lab dish, researchers hope it offers new promise for biologically based robots.
The tiny bots are made from the skin cells of frogs, but they don't reproduce by mitosis or meiosis or any of the other ways cells divide and replicate in normal circumstances. Instead, they build more of themselves from raw materials — free-floating frog skin cells — creating multiple generations of nearly identical organisms.
In action, the bots (dubbed "xenobots" by their inventors), even look like Pac-Man. They move in wild corkscrews and spirals, their open "mouths" scooping the free-floating skin cells into piles. The cells tend to adhere, or stick together, once put in contact with one another, so these piles gradually meld into new, spiraling xenobots.
Though this self-replication is a fairly delicate process, so far possible only in a carefully controlled lab dish, researchers hope it offers new promise for biologically based robots.
Comment Why? (Score 1) 206
Has any specific reason been cited by the administration for banning these apps other than Trump doesn't like China?
Submission + - Evolution turned this fish into a 'penis with a heart.' Here's how. (livescience.com)
Joe_NoOne writes: When it comes to dating in the abyssal depths of the ocean, appearance doesn't matter much. That's fortunate for anglerfish, which resemble nightmarish fanged potatoes with a little reading lamp on top. And those are just the females.
If you've never seen a male anglerfish before, you're not missing much. Measuring just a few centimeters long on average, male anglers are a mere fraction of their partners' size, and contribute a fraction of the work to their relationships. For many anglerfish species, the male's sole responsibility is to permanently latch onto an obliging mate, fuse his circulatory system with hers, then slowly allow his eyes, fins and most of his internal organs to degenerate until he becomes what biologist Stephen Jay Gould called "a penis with a heart." The male gets constant nourishment; the female gets sperm on demand. The anglerfish circle of life spins on.
It's beautiful, we know. But this unique mating ritual — which biologists call "sexual parasitism" — has long stumped researchers. How could the female angler's immune system even allow such a permanent, parasitic union to occur? Humans have a hard-enough time accepting organ transplants that don't precisely match their own tissues, so how does a female anglerfish's body accept a male's (or, in some cases, up to eight simultaneous males) so willingly? A genetic study published July 30 in the journal Science finally offers an answer: Anglerfish mating is only possible because the fish have somehow evolved away some of their most crucial immune defenses.
If you've never seen a male anglerfish before, you're not missing much. Measuring just a few centimeters long on average, male anglers are a mere fraction of their partners' size, and contribute a fraction of the work to their relationships. For many anglerfish species, the male's sole responsibility is to permanently latch onto an obliging mate, fuse his circulatory system with hers, then slowly allow his eyes, fins and most of his internal organs to degenerate until he becomes what biologist Stephen Jay Gould called "a penis with a heart." The male gets constant nourishment; the female gets sperm on demand. The anglerfish circle of life spins on.
It's beautiful, we know. But this unique mating ritual — which biologists call "sexual parasitism" — has long stumped researchers. How could the female angler's immune system even allow such a permanent, parasitic union to occur? Humans have a hard-enough time accepting organ transplants that don't precisely match their own tissues, so how does a female anglerfish's body accept a male's (or, in some cases, up to eight simultaneous males) so willingly? A genetic study published July 30 in the journal Science finally offers an answer: Anglerfish mating is only possible because the fish have somehow evolved away some of their most crucial immune defenses.
Comment Meh (Score 1) 213
So long as I can still flip people the bird, I don't see a problem...
Big Tech's Summer Internships Go Digital (axios.com) 4
The major tech companies are scrambling to craft digital options for this year's summer intern class, as businesses remain shuttered due to the coronavirus pandemic. These companies said they're moving their programs online: Google said it will pay its interns the full rate.
Twitter said its intern class may shrink this year.
Microsoft said it will have its biggest ever intern class -- more than 4,000.
Lyft, which will have the same number of interns as originally planned, limit them to just two start dates to provide students with more of a common experience.
Salesforce, which also plans a similar size intern class as intended. These companies are still hoping have at least some interns on-site for at least part of the summer: Apple said it plans to hire more than 1,000 people for a mix of online and in-person internships and pledged in a statement to "extend to our interns the same precautions and care that we're extending to all our other personnel as a part of the ongoing COVID-19 response."
Amazon said it expects its biggest-ever class of interns globally, though it said the vast majority of internships will be virtual.
Intel, which does plan to have its interns work remotely but hopes to move them on-site should the situation and health authority guidelines make that possible.
Uber, which has made plans for online on-boarding and will keep the program online if their offices remain closed, but will aim to have its interns work in the office if that is possible.
Doordash said, for now, it "plans to stay the course" with its summer internship program, but is exploring options for conducting the program remotely and will "continue to re-evaluate as the situation progresses."
Twitter said its intern class may shrink this year.
Microsoft said it will have its biggest ever intern class -- more than 4,000.
Lyft, which will have the same number of interns as originally planned, limit them to just two start dates to provide students with more of a common experience.
Salesforce, which also plans a similar size intern class as intended. These companies are still hoping have at least some interns on-site for at least part of the summer: Apple said it plans to hire more than 1,000 people for a mix of online and in-person internships and pledged in a statement to "extend to our interns the same precautions and care that we're extending to all our other personnel as a part of the ongoing COVID-19 response."
Amazon said it expects its biggest-ever class of interns globally, though it said the vast majority of internships will be virtual.
Intel, which does plan to have its interns work remotely but hopes to move them on-site should the situation and health authority guidelines make that possible.
Uber, which has made plans for online on-boarding and will keep the program online if their offices remain closed, but will aim to have its interns work in the office if that is possible.
Doordash said, for now, it "plans to stay the course" with its summer internship program, but is exploring options for conducting the program remotely and will "continue to re-evaluate as the situation progresses."
Submission + - UF researchers design low-cost DIY ventilator (dailycommercial.com)
Joe_NoOne writes: As a University of Florida mechanical engineering student decades ago, Samsun Lampotang helped respiratory therapist colleagues build a minimal-transport ventilator that became a commercial success.
So, when the coronavirus pandemic hit and he heard the desperate international plea for thousands more ventilators, the longtime UF professor of anesthesiology set out to build a prototype using plentiful, cheap components that could be copied from an online diagram and a software repository.
Lampotang dispatched David Lizdas, the lead engineer in his lab, to Home Depot to gather items such as air-tight PVC water pipes and lawn-sprinkler valves. Along with engineering and medical colleagues at UF and — through a burgeoning open-source network — places as far-flung as Canada, India, Ireland, Vietnam and Brazil, they raced to “MacGyver” these items and other pieces, including a microcontroller board and a ham radio DC power supply, into an open-source ventilator they expect to make publicly available in a matter of days.
“The way I looked at it is, if you’re going to run out of ventilators, then we’re not even trying to reproduce the sophisticated ventilators out there,” said Lampotang, the Joachim S. Gravenstein Professor of Anesthesiology in the UF College of Medicine, part of UF Health, and the director of UF’s Center for Safety, Simulation & Advanced Learning Technologies, or CSSALT.
“If we run out, you have to decide who gets one and who doesn’t. How do you decide that? The power of our approach is that every well-intentioned volunteer who has access to Home Depot, Ace or Lowe’s or their equivalent worldwide can build one.”
Lampotang, an inventor with 43 patents belonging to UF, will not try to patent the ventilator, he said. Rather, with UF’s approval, he will provide it “open source” for engineers and hobbyists worldwide as the number of critically ill coronavirus victims continues to climb. His team is working on adding safety features to meet regulatory guidelines and then they will run engineering tests to determine safety, accuracy and endurance of the machine, which can be built for as little as $125 to $250.
So, when the coronavirus pandemic hit and he heard the desperate international plea for thousands more ventilators, the longtime UF professor of anesthesiology set out to build a prototype using plentiful, cheap components that could be copied from an online diagram and a software repository.
Lampotang dispatched David Lizdas, the lead engineer in his lab, to Home Depot to gather items such as air-tight PVC water pipes and lawn-sprinkler valves. Along with engineering and medical colleagues at UF and — through a burgeoning open-source network — places as far-flung as Canada, India, Ireland, Vietnam and Brazil, they raced to “MacGyver” these items and other pieces, including a microcontroller board and a ham radio DC power supply, into an open-source ventilator they expect to make publicly available in a matter of days.
“The way I looked at it is, if you’re going to run out of ventilators, then we’re not even trying to reproduce the sophisticated ventilators out there,” said Lampotang, the Joachim S. Gravenstein Professor of Anesthesiology in the UF College of Medicine, part of UF Health, and the director of UF’s Center for Safety, Simulation & Advanced Learning Technologies, or CSSALT.
“If we run out, you have to decide who gets one and who doesn’t. How do you decide that? The power of our approach is that every well-intentioned volunteer who has access to Home Depot, Ace or Lowe’s or their equivalent worldwide can build one.”
Lampotang, an inventor with 43 patents belonging to UF, will not try to patent the ventilator, he said. Rather, with UF’s approval, he will provide it “open source” for engineers and hobbyists worldwide as the number of critically ill coronavirus victims continues to climb. His team is working on adding safety features to meet regulatory guidelines and then they will run engineering tests to determine safety, accuracy and endurance of the machine, which can be built for as little as $125 to $250.
Submission + - Injecting the flu vaccine into a tumor gets the immune system to attack it (arstechnica.com)
Joe_NoOne writes: From this perspective, the immune system's inability to eliminate tumor cells isn't only the product of their similarities to healthy cells. It's also the product of the signaling networks that help restrain the immune system to prevent it from attacking normal cells. A number of recently developed drugs help release this self-imposed limit, winning their developers Nobel Prizes in the process. These drugs convert a "cold" immune response, dominated by signaling that shuts things down, into a "hot" one that is able to attack a tumor.
Submission + - Microsoft bans CCleaner (mspoweruser.com)
Joe_NoOne writes: Microsoft has never been a fan of registry cleaners, and today we have learned that the company has taken steps to ensure that such software is not recommended to users who are having issues with their PCs. HTNovo reports that Microsoft has added CCleaner.com to their blacklist of domains on the official Microsoft Support forums.
Submission + - Four new DNA letters double life's alphabet (nature.com)
Joe_NoOne writes: The DNA of life on Earth naturally stores its information in just four key chemicals — guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine, commonly referred to as G, C, A and T, respectively. Now scientists have doubled this number of life’s building blocks, creating for the first time a synthetic, eight-letter genetic language that seems to store and transcribe information just like natural DNA.
Benner’s team, which includes researchers from various US companies and institutions, created the synthetic letters by tweaking the molecular structure of the regular bases. The letters of DNA pair up because they form hydrogen bonds: each contains hydrogen atoms, which are attracted to nitrogen or oxygen atoms in their partner. Benner explains that it’s a bit like Lego bricks that snap together when the holes and prongs line up. By adjusting these holes and prongs, the team has come up with several new pairs of bases, including a pair named S and B, and another called P and Z2. In the latest paper, they describe how they combine these four synthetic bases with the natural ones. The researchers call the resulting eight-letter language ‘hachimoji’ after the Japanese words for ‘eight’ and ‘letter’. The additional bases are each similar in shape to one of the natural four, but have variations in their bonding patterns.
The researchers then conducted a series of experiments that showed that their synthetic sequences shares properties with natural DNA that are essential for supporting life.
Benner’s team, which includes researchers from various US companies and institutions, created the synthetic letters by tweaking the molecular structure of the regular bases. The letters of DNA pair up because they form hydrogen bonds: each contains hydrogen atoms, which are attracted to nitrogen or oxygen atoms in their partner. Benner explains that it’s a bit like Lego bricks that snap together when the holes and prongs line up. By adjusting these holes and prongs, the team has come up with several new pairs of bases, including a pair named S and B, and another called P and Z2. In the latest paper, they describe how they combine these four synthetic bases with the natural ones. The researchers call the resulting eight-letter language ‘hachimoji’ after the Japanese words for ‘eight’ and ‘letter’. The additional bases are each similar in shape to one of the natural four, but have variations in their bonding patterns.
The researchers then conducted a series of experiments that showed that their synthetic sequences shares properties with natural DNA that are essential for supporting life.
Comment Heavy Metal (Score 1) 225
This makes me think of the beginning of the movie Heavy Metal.
Submission + - Man caught repainting road arrows to ease daily commute (upi.com)
Joe_NoOne writes: A man who was frustrated by his daily commutes in China was fined after being caught on camera repainting arrows on the road to ease traffic.
Police in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, said CCTV cameras at a busy intersection recorded Xiao Cai, 28, as he used white paint to redirect arrows on the busy road in an attempt to alter traffic patterns and speed up his daily commute on a bus.
"I saw that the straight lane was always packed with cars, while the lane that turns left has a lot of space," the Modern Express newspaper quoted Cai as telling police. "I thought changing the signs would make my commute smoother."
Police said the stunt was "very dangerous" and could have led to collisions. A crew was called out to the road to correct the arrows.
Cai was issued a $151 fine.
Police in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, said CCTV cameras at a busy intersection recorded Xiao Cai, 28, as he used white paint to redirect arrows on the busy road in an attempt to alter traffic patterns and speed up his daily commute on a bus.
"I saw that the straight lane was always packed with cars, while the lane that turns left has a lot of space," the Modern Express newspaper quoted Cai as telling police. "I thought changing the signs would make my commute smoother."
Police said the stunt was "very dangerous" and could have led to collisions. A crew was called out to the road to correct the arrows.
Cai was issued a $151 fine.
Submission + - Scrap dealer finds Apollo-era NASA computers in dead engineer's basement (arstechnica.com)
Joe_NoOne writes: A pair of Apollo-era NASA computers and hundreds of mysterious tape reels have been discovered in a deceased engineer’s basement in Pittsburgh. Most of the tapes are unmarked, but the majority of the rest appear to be instrumentation reels for Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, NASA’s fly-by missions to Jupiter and Saturn. At some point in the early 1970s, an IBM engineer working for NASA at the height of the Space Race took home the computers—and the mysterious tape reels. A scrap dealer, invited to clean out the deceased’s electronics-filled basement, discovered the computers. The devices were clearly labelled “NASA PROPERTY,” so the dealer called NASA to report the find.
"Please tell NASA these items were not stolen," the engineer's heir told the scrap dealer, according to the report. "They belonged to IBM Allegheny Center Pittsburgh, PA 15212. During the 1968-1972 timeframe, IBM was getting rid of the items so [redacted engineer] asked if he could have them and was told he could have them."
"Please tell NASA these items were not stolen," the engineer's heir told the scrap dealer, according to the report. "They belonged to IBM Allegheny Center Pittsburgh, PA 15212. During the 1968-1972 timeframe, IBM was getting rid of the items so [redacted engineer] asked if he could have them and was told he could have them."
