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Submission + - Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine just got a lot easier to transport and distri (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by FrankOVD
FrankOVD writes: The COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech now has less stringent and extreme transportation requirements than it debuted with. Originally, the mRNA-based vaccine had to be maintained at ultra-low temperatures throughout the transportation chain in order to remain viable – between -76F and -112F. New stability data collected by Pfizer and BioNTech, which has been submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for review, allow it to be stored at temps between 5F and -13F – ranges available in standard medical freezers found in most clinics and care facilities.
The vaccine should remain stable for up to two weeks at that temperature, which vastly improves the flexibility of its options for transportation, and last-mile storage in preparation for administration to patients. To date, the vaccine has relied largely on existing “cold-chain” infrastructure to be in place in order for it to be able to reach the areas where it’s being used to inoculate patients. That limitation hasn’t been in place for Moderna’s vaccine, which is stable at even higher, standard refrigerator temperatures for up to a month.

Submission + - Maryland To Become First State To Tax Online Ads Sold By Facebook And Google. (npr.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: With a pair of votes, Maryland can now claim to be a pioneer: it's the first place in the country that will impose a tax on the sale of online ads.

The House of Delegates and Senate both voted this week to override Gov. Larry Hogan's veto of a bill passed last year to levy a tax on online ads. The tax will apply to the revenue companies like Facebook and Google make from selling digital ads, and will range from 2.5% to 10% per ad, depending on the value of the company selling the ad. (The tax would only apply to companies making more than $100 million a year.)

Proponents say the new tax is simply a reflection of where the economy has gone, and an attempt to have Maryland's tax code catch up to it. The tax is expected to draw in an estimated $250 million a year to help fund an ambitious decade-long overhaul of public education in the state that's expected to cost $4 billion a year in new spending by 2030. (Hogan also vetoed that bill, and the Democrat-led General Assembly also overrode him this week.)

Still, there remains the possibility of lawsuits to stop the tax from taking effect; Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh warned last year that "there is some risk" that a court could strike down some provisions of the bill over constitutional concerns.

Submission + - Xiaomi Sues U.S. Seeking to Reverse Investment Ban (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Xiaomi Corp. sued the U.S. Defense and Treasury departments, challenging a blacklisting that blocks American investors from buying the Chinese smartphone giant’s securities.

The lawsuit came after the Defense Department determined earlier this month that China’s biggest smartphone maker was affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army. Beijing-based Xiaomi called the blacklisting “unconstitutional” and seeks a court ruling to reverse the designation, which was made in the waning days of the Trump administration.

“Xiaomi faces imminent, severe, and irreparable harm if the Designation remains in place and the restrictions take effect,” the company said in the filing in the U.S. district court of Columbia. The lawsuit also named Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as defendants.

Submission + - Drug Reverses Age-Related Mental Decline Within Days (ucsf.edu) 3

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Just a few doses of an experimental drug can reverse age-related declines in memory and mental flexibility in mice, according to a new study by UC San Francisco scientists. The drug, called ISRIB, has already been shown in laboratory studies to restore memory function months after traumatic brain injury (TBI), reverse cognitive impairments in Down Syndrome, prevent noise-related hearing loss, fight certain types of prostate cancer, and even enhance cognition in healthy animals.

In the new study, published Dec. 1, 2020, in the open-access journal eLife, researchers showed rapid restoration of youthful cognitive abilities in aged mice, accompanied by a rejuvenation of brain and immune cells that could help explain improvements in brain function.

“ISRIB’s extremely rapid effects show for the first time that a significant component of age-related cognitive losses may be caused by a kind of reversible physiological “blockage” rather than more permanent degradation,” said Susanna Rosi, PhD, Lewis and Ruth Cozen Chair II and professor in the departments of Neurological Surgery and of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science.

Submission + - Scientists Uncover Billions Of Gallons Of Hidden Fresh Water Off Hawaii (inverse.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Using a new technique that relies on tracing electrical resistance, a team of geohydrologists has discovered a never-before-seen way the islands’ volcanic soil collects and hides away freshwater beneath the ocean’s salty surface.

Accessing this freshwater could give Hawaii and other volcanic islands a more sustainable and future-proof solution to collecting water during times of need.

Submission + - US Navy Shoots Down Intercontinental Ballistic Missile for the First Time (popularmechanics.com) 2

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The US Navy destroyer USS John Finn intercepted a mock intercontinental ballistic missile early Tuesday, the Missile Defense Agency announced.

In the first-of-its-kind test, the Navy warship fired an SM-3 Block IIA, a weapon originally designed to eliminate midrange missiles, at the mock ICBM.

The agency's director, Vice Adm. Jon Hill, said in a statement that "we have demonstrated that an Aegis [ballistic missile defense]-equipped vessel equipped with the SM-3 Block IIA missile can defeat an ICBM-class target."

US missile defense systems would theoretically be able to stop a North Korean missile, but it is unclear how they would fare against more-advanced ICBM threats, such as those posed by China and Russia.

Submission + - FAA chief '100% confident' of 737 MAX safety as flights to resume (yahoo.com) 1

Submitted by Hmmmmmm
Hmmmmmm writes: U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief Steve Dickson is "100% confident" in the safety of the Boeing 737 MAX but says the airplane maker has more to do as it works to improve its safety culture.

Dickson on Wednesday signed an order to allow the best-selling plane to resume flights after it was grounded worldwide in March 2019 following two crashes that killed 346 people and led to Boeing's biggest crisis in decades.

The order will end the longest grounding in commercial aviation history and paves the way for Boeing to resume U.S. deliveries and commercial flights by the end of the year.

"We've done everything humanly possible to make sure" these types of crashes do not happen again," FAA Administrator Dickson told Reuters in a 30-minute telephone interview, adding the design changes "have eliminated what caused these particular accidents."

The FAA is requiring new training to deal with a key safety system called MCAS that is faulted for the two fatal crashes as well as significant new safeguards and other software changes.

Dickson suggested Boeing has more to do to improve safety.

"They have taken some actions, but it's going to take more then putting new processes in place and moving boxes around the organization chart. Cultural changes take a long time to take effect and we've got to be skeptical," he said.

Boeing said it is "committed to learning from our mistakes to build a safer future so accidents like this never happen again."

Submission + - Hurricanes Might Not Be Losing Steam As Fast As They Used To (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: [A] new study by Lin Li and Pinaki Chakraborty at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University focuses on a less-than-obvious question: what happens to hurricanes after landfall in a warming world? Once a storm moves over land, it loses the water vapor from warm ocean waters that fuel it, so it rapidly weakens. The total damage done depends in part on how quickly it weakens. The researchers examined a data set of all North Atlantic landfalling hurricanes between 1967 and 2018. The primary metric they were interested in was the rate the hurricane lost strength over the first 24 hours after landfall. Strength “decays” on an exponential curve, so they boiled this down to a mathematical parameter for decay time.

This parameter varies a fair bit from storm to storm depending on weather conditions and terrain, so the researchers compared averages for each half of the 50-year period. They found a pretty strong trend. In the earlier 25-year period, the average storm lost about 75 percent of its strength over the first day. In the latter half, the average storm lost only half of its strength. The researchers also analyzed sea surface temperatures in this area, which have obviously increased over the last 50 years. That means there’s a rough correlation between warmer ocean temperatures and hurricanes retaining strength after landfall. But is there a physical reason to believe the former caused the latter?

To test this, the researchers used a computer-model simulation of an idealized hurricane—that is, a hurricane in a homogenous virtual setting rather than above a specific location on the Earth. They simulated a series of hurricanes over increasingly warm water, with intensity capped at Category 4, and had each one make landfall at exactly the same strength. Landfall was simulated by suddenly cutting off the supply of water vapor at the bottom of the storm. Sure enough, the storms that had grown over a warmer ocean took longer to weaken. That means this isn’t a matter of, say, the back half of a storm still feeding on warm water while the front half crosses onto land. Instead, it appears that increased water vapor entrained within the storm itself helped sustain it. Another set of simulations confirmed this by also removing the water vapor at landfall—in this case, the storms all weakened identically.

Submission + - Occidental Is First US Oil Major To Target Net Zero Emissions (bnnbloomberg.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Occidental Petroleum Corp. became the first major U.S. oil producer to aim for net zero emissions from everything it extracts and sells, accelerating an industry trend that’s become commonplace in Europe. The Houston-based company announced a target to reach net zero emissions from its own operations by 2040 and an ambition to do the same from customers’ use of its products by 2050, Chief Executive Officer Vicki Hollub said during a conference call with analysts on Tuesday. The plan relies heavily on capturing carbon dioxide and burying it, a technology that’s so far been prohibitively expensive.

Occidental’s announcement is significant because the company has one of the biggest footprints in the Permian Basin, the sprawling oil field beneath Texas and New Mexico that produces more crude than any other region on the continent. [...] Occidental is aiming to reduce all three categories of emissions. Scope 1 involves pollution emanating directly from company operations, while Scope 2 includes indirect emissions from utilities selling power to the company, and similar sources. Scope 3 — the category most U.S. oil drillers have so far excluded — involves pollution farthest removed from a company’s control, such as consumers burning refined fuels like gasoline. It would be the first major U.S. oil company to target Scope 3 emissions, according to BloombergNEF.

Submission + - SPAM: Researchers 3-D print biomedical parts with supersonic speed

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Forget glue, screws, heat or other traditional bonding methods. A Cornell University-led collaboration has developed a 3-D printing technique that creates cellular metallic materials by smashing together powder particles at supersonic speed.

This form of technology, known as "cold spray," results in mechanically robust, porous structures that are 40% stronger than similar materials made with conventional manufacturing processes. The structures' small size and porosity make them particularly well-suited for building biomedical components, like replacement joints.

The team's paper, "Solid-State Additive Manufacturing of Porous Ti-6Al-4V by Supersonic Impact," published Nov. 9 in Applied Materials Today.

"We only focused on titanium alloys and biomedical applications, but the applicability of this process could be beyond that," Moridi said. "Essentially, any metallic material that can endure plastic deformation could benefit from this process. And it opens up a lot of opportunities for larger-scale industrial applications, like construction, transportation and energy."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: How to get root on Ubuntu 20.04 by pretending nobody's /home exploit 2

Submitted by Hmmmmmm
Hmmmmmm writes: A vulnerability in GNOME Display Manager (gdm) could allow a standard user to create accounts with increased privileges, giving a local attacker a path to run code with administrator permissions (root).

Although certain conditions are necessary, the bug is easy to exploit. The process involves running a few simple commands in the terminal and modifying general system settings that do not require increased rights.

[spam URL stripped]...
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Scientists 3D print microscopic Star Trek spaceship that moves on its own (cnn.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: A team of physicists at a university in the Netherlands have 3D-printed a microscopic version of the USS Voyager, an Intrepid-class starship from Star Trek.

The miniature Voyager, which measures 15 micrometers (0.015 millimeters) long, is part of a project researchers at Leiden University conducted to understand how shape affects the motion and interactions of microswimmers.

Microswimmers are small particles that can move through liquid on their own by interacting with their environment through chemical reactions. The platinum coating on the microswimmers reacts to a hydrogen peroxide solution they are placed in, and that propels them through the liquid.

"By studying synthetic microswimmers, we would like to understand biological microswimmers," Samia Ouhajji, one of the study's authors, told CNN. "This understanding could aid in developing new drug delivery vehicles; for example, microrobots that swim autonomously and deliver drugs at the desired location in the human body."

Submission + - Apple Suspends Supplier For Using Illegal Student Labor In China (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple has reprimanded one of its largest manufacturers after a Financial Times investigation found that thousands of student interns had worked overtime to assemble iPhones, in breach of Chinese law. After being contacted by the FT, Apple said it had stopped giving “new business” to Pegatron, its second-largest iPhone assembler after Foxconn. However, workers there said the factory was still manufacturing new products ahead of the holidays.

Pegatron, which has headquarters in Taiwan but has operations in China, is one of Apple’s largest manufacturers, producing iPhones, Macs, iPads and other components for several years. It has also faced recurring allegations about working conditions from campaign groups such as China Labor Watch. Until last month, thousands of student interns had assembled iPhones at Pegatron’s Kunshan plant and illegally worked overtime and night shifts, according to former interns and workers at the plant. Chinese government regulations prevent students from interning in factories if the work is unrelated to their studies. The alleged coercive use of students during the factory’s peak production periods mirrors the abuses previously found by the FT at Foxconn. Schools and local governments often collaborate to ensure labor supply for big companies in China. The latest disclosures follow the death last month of a worker in his mid-thirties after falling unconscious in a Pegatron dormitory.

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