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Submission + - New snake antivenom developed from snake owner's blood (abc.net.au) 1

Submitted by piojo
piojo writes: Tim Friede, Wisconsin man, has been injecting himself with snake venom for 18 years to gain protection from his pet snakes. The antibodies he developed have formed two components of a three-part antivenom, which gives partial or total protection against 18 of 19 species of venomous snakes that were tested. Notably, the antivenom is ineffective against vipers.

The team's results have been published today in the journal Cell... The new antivenom described in the study is very different to traditional antivenoms, according to Peter Kwong, a biochemist at Columbia University and one of the study's authors.

Submission + - 50+ House Democrats demand answers after whistleblower report on DOGE (npr.org) 2

Submitted by echo123
echo123 writes: Over fifty Democratic lawmakers have signed a letter demanding answers from senior U.S. government officials about a recent potential exposure of sensitive data about American workers.

The letter is addressed to the acting General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, William Cowen. The independent agency is in charge of investigating and adjudicating complaints about unfair labor practices and protecting U.S. workers' rights to form unions.

The lawmakers, who are part of the Congressional Labor Caucus, wrote the letter in light of news first reported by NPR, that a whistleblower inside the IT Department of the NLRB says DOGE may have removed sensitive labor data and exposed NLRB systems to being compromised.

"These revelations from the whistleblower report are highly concerning for a number of reasons," the lawmakers wrote in the letter to Cowen. "If true, these revelations describe a reckless approach to the handling of sensitive personal information of workers, which could leave these workers exposed to retaliation for engaging in legally protected union activity."

The letter refers to an official whistleblower disclosure made by Daniel Berulis, a cloud administrator in the IT department of the NLRB, who also spoke to NPR in multiple interviews.

In his disclosure, Berulis shared that he initially became concerned in March when members of President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency initiative arrived at the agency and demanded high-level access to the systems without their activities being logged. Those fears escalated after he tracked a large chunk of data leaving the agency at the same time as many security controls and auditing tools were turned off, the disclosure continues.

Ultimately, Berulis became concerned that DOGE, which is effectively led by Trump adviser and billionaire CEO Elon Musk, could have accessed sensitive internal information about ongoing investigations into U.S. companies, witness affidavits and even corporate secrets. The alleged insecure practices and removal of data could also create vulnerabilities for criminal hackers or foreign adversaries to exploit, Berulis explained in his official disclosure.

Submission + - China Halts Rare Earth Exports to U.S. (thegatewaypundit.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: China has halted exports of seven critical rare earth elements to the United States, a move that threatens to disrupt supply chains across key American industries, including automotive, semiconductor, and aerospace sectors. China’s Ministry of Commerce recently added seven rare earth elements—including dysprosium, terbium, and lutetium—to its restricted export list. These elements are essential for manufacturing high-performance magnets used in electric vehicles, advanced weaponry, and consumer electronics.

Additionally: US chipmakers outsourcing manufacturing will escape China's tariffs

U.S. chipmakers that outsource manufacturing will be exempt from China's retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports, according to a notice by the main Chinese semiconductor association on Friday.
Given the highly specialized and multi-country nature of chip supply chains, there was uncertainty within the industry about how tariffs would be applied to chip imports.
"For all integrated circuits, whether packaged or unpackaged, the declared country of origin for import customs purchases is the location of the wafer fabrication plant," the state-backed China Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA), which represents the country's largest chip companies, said in an "urgent notice" on its WeChat account.
For U.S. chip designers such as Qualcomm and AMD that outsource manufacturing to Taiwanese chipmaking giant TSMC 2330.TW, Chinese customs authorities will classify these chips' place of origin as Taiwan, according to EETop, an information platform and forum for Chinese chipmakers.
This means China-based companies importing such chips will not be forced to pay China's retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports, EETop said on its WeChat account.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Ftechno...

Submission + - Japanese train station shelter replaced overnight with 3D printed structure (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by cusco
cusco writes: Hatsushima station serves the town of Arida of about 25,000, and around 530 passengers a day board there. Because the population is shrinking when it came time to replace the aging wooden shelter the new structure could be smaller, presenting West Japan Railway with the opportunity to try something new. The company commissioned a new 3D printed shelter from Serendix, who printed the structure in four parts over seven days. The parts were shipped by rail to Hatsushima and a crew assembled them in around six hours, finishing before the first train of the morning at 5:45.

The structure itself is made of mortar, layered like dull-green frosting by a 3D-printing nozzle, reinforced by steel and framed at its edges by concrete. The result is a building that has "earthquake resistance similar to that of reinforced concrete houses," according to West Japan Railway (JR West), and costing about half of what the shelter would cost to build with traditional reinforced concrete. It also has a mandarin orange and scabbardfish [local products] embossed into its sides.

Submission + - Ian Fleming predictions from 1955. (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: The third James Bond novel was published this day in 1955. The thriller Moonraker is from a long-ago era with a villain that makes no sense today — A rocket-building technocrat who is actually a secret Nazi working for the Russians.

Comment Re:Better idea (Score 4, Informative) 296

by nugatory78 (#65281223) Attached to: China Imposes 34% Reciprocal Tariffs on Imports of US Goods
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fprotrans.com%2Fblog-why-...

"...you can buy a one pound package from South Carolina and have it shipped to New York City for approximately $6 whereas the same product shipping from Beijing to New York only costs about $3.66. Sending that same package from NYC to Beijing costs around $50."

"...the UPU charges developing nations considerably less than other fully developed ones – sometimes 40-70 percent less – to ship their postage. Nations like Bosnia, Botswana, or Cuba receive significant subsidies from the United States and others to ship their products and make them affordable. The trouble comes from larger, more developed nations, like China, taking advantage of the situation."

Submission + - French Scientist Reportedly Denied U.S. Entry Due to Trump Criticism (newrepublic.com) 1

Submitted by ArchieBunker
ArchieBunker writes: A French scientist on his way to a conference in the United States was allegedly denied entry by Customs and Border Patrol over messages found on his phone that criticized President Trump’s science cuts.

The French newspaper Le Monde reports that on March 9, a space researcher was randomly selected upon arrival in Houston for a search, and CBP found messages criticizing the Trump administration’s treatment of scientists, which, according to the agency, “conveyed hatred of Trump & could be qualified as terrorism.”

The researcher’s phone and computer were allegedly confiscated, and he was sent back to Europe the next day. The news prompted the attention of the French government, which expressed alarm.

“I was told with concern that a French researcher, on a mission for the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), who was going to a conference near Houston, was banned from entering the US before being expelled,” said France’s Minister of Higher Education and Research Philippe Baptiste, in a statement Wednesday. “This would have been taken by the US authorities because the researcher’s phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friendly relations in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy.”

According to one source cited by Agence France-Presse, CBP said that the French researcher expressed “hate and conspiracy messages,” prompting an FBI investigation, only for the charges to be dropped later. Another source said the scientist was banned due to messages “that can be described as terrorism.”

The incident marks a disturbing change in how visitors to the United States are treated. Legitimate criticism of the Trump administration occurs everywhere, and it’s no secret that Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort has resulted in millions of dollars in cuts to scientific research. The idea that criticism of this would rise to the level of terrorism and result in someone being barred from the U.S. is absurd.

Submission + - Surprisingly, some Dyson spheres and ringworlds can be stable (phys.org) 1

Submitted by Required Snark
Required Snark writes: In the realm of science fiction, Dyson spheres and ringworlds have been staples for decades. But it is well known that the simplest designs are unstable against gravitational forces and would thus be torn apart. Now a scientist from Scotland UK, Dr. Colin McInnes, has shown that certain configurations of these objects near a two-mass system can be stable against such fractures.

For the restricted ring, McInnes found that there are seven equilibrium points in the orbital plane of the dual masses, on which, if the ring's center were placed, it would stay and not experience stresses, akin to the three stable Lagrange points where a small mass can reside permanently for the two-body problem.

McInnes restricted this research to a planar ring (in the plane of the circularly orbiting masses) but says it can be shown that a vertical ring, normal to the plane, can also generate equilibria. For example, one such point is a vertical ring with its center at the midpoint between the two masses.

Submission + - Neanderthals may have eaten maggots as part of their diet (science.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Neanderthals were hypercarnivores at the top of the food chain, eating as much meat as hyenas and cave lions. Or at least many researchers have assumed. But meat wasn’t the only thing on their menu, according to a presentation last week at the annual meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists: Our close cousins may have consumed lots of maggots.

In 1991, researchers first revealed that the fossilized bones of Neanderthals had high ratios of nitrogen 15 compared with nitrogen 14—usually the signature of a high-meat diet. The values suggested Neanderthals were bigger meat eaters than even hypercarnivorous hyenas and lions. Butchered animal bones at archaeological sites reinforced the view that our close relatives relied heavily on meat from big game hunting.

But biological anthropologist Melanie Beasley of Purdue University began to question this assumption when she read a report in PaleoAnthropology a few years ago by archaeologist John Speth of the University of Michigan. Speth’s article noted that missionaries and Arctic explorers’ accounts of people who fell sick with “rabbit starvation”—an illness that afflicts those who eat mainly lean, high-protein game meat and too little fat.

Beasley conducted an experiment at the Body Farm, which was established to study human decomposition. There, she tested nitrogen levels in the rotting tissue of 34 donated human corpses left outdoors, as well as in the maggots that fed on it. The work suggested that the high levels of nitrogen found in Neanderthal bones could correlate with a diet high in maggots. The finding makes sense: maggots are practically unavoidable when processing game outside. They are also easy to scoop from the soil beneath a carcass, she notes. And they’re a salty tasting food full of fat and protein enjoyed by many modern foraging groups

Submission + - This is the sharpest image yet of our universe as a baby (science.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: A strange-looking telescope that scanned the skies from a perch in northern Chile for 15 years has released its final data set: detailed maps of the infant universe showing the roiling clouds of hydrogen and helium gas that would one day coalesce into the stars and galaxies we see today.

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope is not the first to survey the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the light released 380,000 years after the Big Bang when the early universe’s soup of particles formed atoms and space became transparent. But the data—posted as preprints online today—give researchers a new level of detail on the density of the gas clouds and how they were moving.

Using the data, researchers tested how well the standard cosmological theory, known as lambda cold dark matter, described the universe at that time 13.8 billion years ago; it’s a remarkably good fit, they conclude.

Submission + - Rayhunter: A New Tool from EFF to Detect Cellular Spying (androidauthority.com)

Submitted by Equuleus42
Equuleus42 writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is sharing a new tool for fighting back against Stingray devices.

Rayhunter uses an open-source software package designed to look for evidence of IMSI catchers in action, running on an old Orbic Speed RC400L mobile hotspot. The great thing about that choice is that you can pick one up for practically nothing — we’re seeing them listed for barely over $10 on Amazon, and you can find them even cheaper on eBay.

There’s an installation script for Macs and Linux to automate getting set up, but once the Orbic is flashed with the Rayhunter software, it should be ready go, collecting data about sketchy-looking “cell towers” it picks up.

Right now, much of the use of IMSI catchers is still shrouded in mystery, with the groups who regularly employ them extremely hesitant to disclose their methods. As a result, a big focus of this EFF project is just getting more info on how and where these are actually used, giving protestors a better sense of the steps they’ll need to take if they want to protect their privacy.

Submission + - TikTok Refugees using RedNote to be walled off to prevent US influence on China (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by tlhIngan
tlhIngan writes: In what is perhaps the greatest irony ever, the operators of RedNote (known as Xiaohongshu) have decided to "wall off" US TikTok refugees fleeing to its service as the TikTok ban looms. The reason? The CCP wants to prevent American influence from spreading to Chinese citizens. The ban is expected to be in place next week, while many believe that the influx of Americans to be temporary and just a reaction to the TikTok ban to move to another Chinese app. Many Chinese users are not happy with the influx as having "ruined" their ability to connect with "Chinese culture, Chinese values and Chinese news".

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