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Submission + - 3D printed chip detects food borne bacteria (laserfocusworld.com)

Submitted by TomGreenhaw
TomGreenhaw writes: Conventional detection methods used to identify pathogens in food, such as DNA sequencing and cell cultures, are effective, but contamination can happen. A 3D-printed microfluidic chip is poised to significantly improve detection accuracy and efficiency.
It detects e.coli, salmonella, listeria, and strep. a.

Submission + - Germany hits 62.7% renewables in 2024 electricity mix (pv-magazine.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Germany generated 72.2 TWh of solar power in 2024, accounting for 14% of its total electricity output, according to Fraunhofer ISE. Wind power remained Germany's largest source of electricity in 2024, generating 136.4 TWh.

PV generation set a production record of 72.2 TWh in 2024, despite less favorable weather, due to the rapid expansion of solar capacity. Fraunhofer ISE's “Energy Charts” report shows that 12.4 TWh of this total was used for solar self-consumption, marking an 18% year-on-year increase and raising the share of PV in electricity generation to 14%. July was the record month, with solar systems producing 10.7 TWh.

Hydropower also saw a slight increase, contributing 21.7 TWh in 2024. Total renewable energy generation reached 275.2 TWh, up 4.4% from 2023. Biomass plants, with an installed capacity of 9.1 GW, generated 36 TWh of electricity.

Generation from coal-fired power plants declined sharply in Germany in 2024, with lignite production dropping 8.4% and hard coal falling 27.6%, according to Energy Charts. Lignite-fired plants produced 71.1 TWh, roughly matching the total output from photovoltaic systems, while hard coal plants generated 24.2 TWh. Natural gas production increased 9.5% year-on-year to 48.4 TWh, with an additional 25.6 TWh used for industrial self-supply.

Germany's CO2 emissions continued their downward trend, falling to 152 million tons in 2024, a 58% reduction from 1990 levels and more than half of 2014 levels. Grid load reached 462 TWh, slightly exceeding 2023 figures, reflecting higher overall electricity consumption. This data excludes PV self-consumption, pumped-hydro usage, and conventional power plant self-consumption.

Submission + - AI has hallucinated a complete academic journal (medium.com)

Submitted by arctother
arctother writes: Fake, AI-generated references have made it into published academic articles, leading AI bots to generate further citations of the same, non-existent journals. Meet "Disaster Studies Quarterly," a completely hallucinated academic journal, with a growing list of citations; Google and Perplexity.AI both take the bait, promising an endless feedback loop of misinformation based on previous hallucinations.

Submission + - Converting our trains from diesel to electric (nature.com) 1

Submitted by clovis
clovis writes: From Arstechnica, Can we use big batteries to power our trains? https://arstechnica.com/scienc... Right now, most freight in the US is moved by diesel-powered locomotives. In a typical year, these locomotives produce about 35 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, and the rest of the pollutants they make are estimated to cause 1,000 premature deaths and $6.5 billion in health damages. In the US, the typical freight car travels an average of 241 kilometers per day when in operation. So the researchers created a battery big enough to move that distance as part of a large freight train (four locomotives, 100 freight cars, and about 7,000 tonnes of payload). They found that lithium ferrous phosphate would let each of the four locomotives be serviced by a single freight car configured as a giant battery. The battery would only occupy 40 percent of the volume of a typical boxcar and would be seven tonnes below the weight limit imposed by existing bridges.

The full study is here, https://www.nature.com/article...
Our analysis is based on a representative Class I train operating in California, with four 3.3-MW locomotives pulling 100 boxcars and 6,806 revenue-tonnes (or tonnes of payload). A standard 14.6-m boxcar has a rated payload capacity of 114t, although some heavy-duty cars can carry up to 337t . We use lithium ferrous phosphate (LFP) batteries because they have a longer cycle life and lower temperatures than do lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) batteries and are more economical given the distances travelled by freight trains (2.4millionkm over 20years). Furthermore, LFP batteries require negligible service maintenance, have a recharge rate up to 4C, are cheaper than lithium titanate oxide (LTO), are not sensitive to unpredictable price fluctuations in cobalt or nickel and can operate over a wide range of temperatures.

The study also compares the battery solution to overhead catenary electrification.
"Electrification via catenary is widespread in Europe and Asia. However, the context is not directly transferable because US freight trains tend to pull ten times more payload than European freight trains, dramatically increasing the average electricity infrastructure requirements."
and
"Furthermore, the frequent use of double-stack containers in the United States makes catenary requirements problematic; infrastructure would need to be 7m higher than the tracks to accommodate such train."

Here's some general info about diesel-electric locomotives. http://edisontechcenter.org/Di...
And some detail on the AC-DC-AC drive. http://www.republiclocomotive....

Submission + - Former CDC director believes SARS-CoV-2 originated in lab 1

Submitted by Beeftopia
Beeftopia writes: Former CDC Director Robert Redfield told CNN on Friday that he believes the coronavirus "escaped" from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that it was spreading as early as September or October of 2019 — though he stressed that it was his "opinion."

"It's not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect the laboratory worker. ... That's not implying any intentionality. It's my opinion, right? But I am a virologist. I have spent my life in virology," he continued.

Lab accidents in the U.S. are not especially rare, as USA Today's Alison Young noted in a recent opinion piece arguing why the Wuhan lab theory cannot be ruled out. The CDC itself experienced a possible contamination in a lab where it was making COVID-19 test kits early in the pandemic.

Redfield is a career virologist. He received his medical degree from Georgetown University before conducting his residency at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center as a US Army officer. Both of his parents were scientists at the National Institutes of Health. Before starting his position as the director of the CDC, Redfield was a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and was once one of the US Army's leading AIDS researchers.

He does have a controversial incident regarding an AIDS vaccine on which his lab was working. He is accused of overstating its efficacy to gain funding.

Submission + - Illinois lawmaker says GTA cause of rise in carjackings, calls for ban

Submitted by Koreantoast
Koreantoast writes: With the number of carjackings more than doubling in the city of Chicago during 2020, one lawmaker knows who to blame: the video game "Grand Theft Auto." According to Chicago ABC 7, Democratic State Representative Marcus Williams believes the video game is causing the rise in carjackings, stating that "Grand Theft Auto' and other violent video games are getting in the minds of our young people and perpetuating the normalcy of carjacking. Carjacking is not normal and carjacking must stop." He plans on introducing a bill to ban sales of the game in the state of Illinois.

Some are skeptical of Rep. Williams claims however. Columnist Joe Jurado of the Root points out that the franchise is hardly new and widely distributed, with the latest iteration, GTA V, released eight years ago and having sold 130 million copies. He adds that attempting to ban the game would be incredibly difficult writing, "Let me entertain this stupid-ass notion for a second. Say they’re successful and get the game off store shelves in Illinois. What are you going to do about digital sales? You’re telling me that the state of Illinois is willing to expend the time, money, and technical know-how to block the game off of PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, Epic Games, and the Rockstar storefront? I’ve worked for the state government, and I know damn well those Windows XP-using asses ain’t built for this life."

Submission + - Mars Perserverance Rover's Parachute Contained Secret Message

Submitted by rufey
rufey writes: The 70 foot parachute used to help NASAS's 2020 Mars Perserverance rover land last week had unusual patterns in its nylon fabric. It turns out it was hiding a slogan. Decoded the slogan is “Dare Mighty Things” — a line from President Theodore Roosevelt — which is a mantra at JPL and adorns many of the center’s walls



Systems engineer Ian Clark used a binary code to spell out “Dare Mighty Things” in the orange and white strips of the 70-foot (21-meter) parachute. He also included the GPS coordinates for the mission’s headquarters at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Clark, a crossword hobbyist, came up with the idea two years ago. Engineers wanted an unusual pattern in the nylon fabric to know how the parachute was oriented during descent. Turning it into a secret message was “super fun,” he said Tuesday. Only about six people knew about the encoded message before Thursday’s landing, according to Clark. They waited until the parachute images came back before putting out a teaser during a televised news conference Monday.

Submission + - Trump Campaign Angry That Cell Carriers Blocked Company Texts To Voters (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: President Trump's re-election campaign has accused Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile of "suppression of political speech" over the carriers' blocking of spam texts sent by the campaign. The fight was described Wednesday in an in-depth article by Business Insider and other reports. "The Trump campaign has been battling this month with the biggest US cellphone carriers over an effort to blast millions of cell users with texts meant to coax them to vote or donate," Business Insider wrote. "President Donald Trump's adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, didn't appreciate it when AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile blocked mass campaign texts to voters. He called the companies to complain, setting off the legal wrangling."

When contacted by Ars, a Trump campaign spokesperson said that "any effort by the carriers to restrict the campaign from contacting its supporters is suppression of political speech. Plain and simple." The Trump campaign statement also said it "stands by the compliance of its texting programs" with the US Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and Federal Communications Commission guidelines. Business Insider wrote that "the showdown got serious at the start of July when Trump's team sent a blast of texts to people who hadn't signed up for them," and "a third-party firm hired to screen such messages for the major cellphone companies blocked the texts." The article said that campaign lawyers and the carriers "are still fighting over what kinds of messages the campaign is allowed to send and what the companies have the power to stop." Politico wrote about the dispute on Monday. "People familiar with the chain of events said Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T flagged potential regulatory problems with the peer-to-peer messaging operation, which differs from robo-texting in that texts are sent individually, as opposed to a mass blast," Politico wrote. "But within Trump's orbit, the episode has further fueled suspicions that big tech companies are looking to influence the election."

Submission + - Huawei CFO Asks for Extradition Case to Be Stayed, Says U.S. Misled Canada (globalnews.ca)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Lawyers for Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, have applied to a Canadian court seeking stays in the proceedings for her extradition to the United States, documents released on Thursday showed. The applications are based in part on what Meng’s lawyers allege was a destruction of the integrity of the judicial process by United States President Donald Trump and other senior members of the administration by their intention to use Meng “as a bargaining chip in a trade dispute.” As trading with Iran was legal in Canada, the extradition case hinges on whether Meng misled HSBC about Huawei’s relationship with a company operating in Iran, putting HSBC at risk of fines and penalties for breaking U.S. sanctions on Tehran. However, Meng’s lawyers allege that the United States misled Canada about the evidence in the case against her, by “selectively summariz(ing) information and omit(ting) highly relevant information” about the knowledge that Huawei accurately shared with HSBC about its operations in Iran. The omissions are “far below the expected standard of diligence, candor and accuracy,” the lawyers wrote. Meng's lawyers also cite comments by US President Donald Trump and Canadian PM Trudeau on the case as proof of political interventions. “Trudeau described how he asked the US to include the applicant in any trade deal it signed with China: ‘We’ve said that the United States should not sign a final and complete agreement with China that does not settle the question of Meng Wanzhou and the two Canadians’.” “Where the requesting state engages in conduct that offends our Canadian sense of fair play and decency, the court must intervene to safeguard the integrity of the judicial process. This is such a case,” Meng’s lawyers say in their new submissions.

Submission + - Urban foxes may be self-domesticating in our midst (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: In a famous Siberian experiment carried out the 1950s, scientists turned foxes into tame, doglike canines by breeding only the least aggressive ones generation after generation. The creatures developed stubby snouts, floppy ears, and even began to bark.

Now, it appears that some rural red foxes in the United Kingdom are doing this on their own. When the animals moved from the forest to city habitats, they began to evolve doglike traits, new research reveals, potentially setting themselves on the path to domestication.

Most significantly, the urban foxes, like those in the Russian experiment, had noticeably shorter and wider muzzles, and smaller brains, than their rural fellows. And males and females had very similar skull shapes. All of these changes are typical of what Charles Darwin labeled domestication syndrome.

Submission + - SPAM: China Could Be Turning on Its 'Artificial Sun' Fusion Reactor Really Soon

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: In March, Chinese researchers predicted that the nation's HL-2M tokamak — a device designed to replicate nuclear fusion, the same reaction that powers the Sun — would be built before the end of 2019.

No word yet on whether that's still the case, but in November, Duan Xuru, one of the scientists working on the "artificial sun," did provide an update, saying that construction was going smoothly and that the device should be operational in 2020 — a milestone that experts now tell Newsweek could finally make nuclear fusion a viable energy option on Earth.

If scientists can figure out how to harness the power produced by nuclear fusion, it could provide a near-limitless source of clean energy.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - If this type of dark matter existed, people would be dying of unexplained wounds (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up most of the mass of the universe, has proved notoriously hard to detect. But scientists have now proposed a surprising new sensor: human flesh.The idea boils down to this: If a certain type of dark matter particle existed, it would occasionally kill people, passing through them like a bullet. Because no one has died from unexplained gunshotlike wounds, this type of dark matter does not exist, according to a new study.

Submission + - More than 23 million people use the password....123456 (ncsc.gov.uk) 1

Submitted by Bearhouse
Bearhouse writes: It's probably no surprise to the /. readership; people use bad passwords. A recent study of publicly-available "hacked" accounts — by the UK National Cyber Security Centre — reveals "123456" was top, followed by the much more secure "123456789" and hard-to-guess "qwerty". If you're a soccer (football) fan, then try "Liverpool" or "Chelsea" — they'll work in more than half a million cases. Finally, for musicians, Metallica gets beaten down by 50cent, 140k to 190k respectively.

Submission + - The Orange Goo Used In Everything From Armor To Football Helmets (cnn.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: CNN has a story about a slimy, gooey orange gel developed by British company D3O as far back as 1999 that is very soft and fluid-like normally, but that hardens immediately when it receives an impact: It's a gel that acts as both a liquid and a solid. When handled slowly the goo is soft and flexible but the moment it receives an impact, it hardens. It's all thanks to the gel's shock-absorbing properties. "If I wrap it around my fingers, it's very soft," Felicity Boyce, a material developer at D3O, told CNN, "but if you hit it with great force, it behaves more like a solid that's absorbing the shock and none of that impact goes through my hand." American football has become a huge market for the British company, where the gel is incorporated in padding and helmets to absorb the impact of any hits a player receives. D3O claims it can reduce blunt impact by 53 per cent compared to materials like foam. The material can also be put inside running shoes to improve performance and reduce the risk of foot injury. Usain Bolt ran with D3O gel insoles in his shoes at the 2016 Rio Olympics. The material is being tested in body armor. "While we don't have a material that can stop a bullet, we do have a material that can reduce the amount of trauma that your body would experience if you got shot." There are also soft smartphone casings using the gel that harden when the phone is dropped and hits a hard surface.

Submission + - Scientists Save Child's Life By Growing Him New Skin (scientificamerican.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The German doctors realized they had to do something drastic or their seven-year-old patient would die. The boy had escaped war-ravaged Syria with his parents, and a rare genetic disease had left him with raw, blistering sores over 80 percent of his body. His doctors in a children’s burn unit tried everything they could to treat his illness, called junctional epidermolysis bullosa—even grafting some skin from his father to see if it would heal the child’s wounds. But his body rejected this. Finally, they e-mailed Michele De Luca, a researcher in Italy, to ask for help.

The doctors took a small sample of skin from one of the few places on the boy’s body where it was not flaming red or flaking off, and sent it to De Luca. His team at the center used a virus to insert into the skin cells a correct copy of a gene called LAMB3; the boy’s own defective copy had caused his epidermolysis bullosa. De Luca and his colleagues grew the skin cells over scaffolds in their lab to form large sheets, the way doctors often do for burn patients. In two surgeries in October and November 2015, the Italian and German teams covered the boy’s limbs, sides and back with these sheets of fresh skin. After being too sick even to get out of bed before his surgeries, “he was standing up already by Christmas,” De Luca says. In January 2016 the boy, whose name is not being released to protect his privacy, received a few more skin patches—and in February he was released from the University Hospitals of the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany.

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