syndication – Page 24

New research shows gas stove emissions contribute to 19,000 deaths annually

gass stoves, health, natural gas, syndication / Mike M. / May 19, 2024

Ruth Ann Norton used to look forward to seeing the blue flame that danced on the burners of her gas stove. At one time, she says, she would have sworn that preparing meals with the appliance actually made her a better cook.

But then she started learning about the toxic gasses, including carbon monoxide, formaldehyde and other harmful pollutants that are emitted by stoves into the air, even when they’re turned off.

“I’m a person who grew up cooking, and love that blue flame,” said Norton, who leads the environmental advocacy group known as the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative. “But people fear what they don’t know. And what people need to understand really strongly is the subtle and profound impact that this is having—on neurological health, on respiratory health, on reproductive health.”

In recent years, gas stoves have been an unlikely front in the nation’s culture wars, occupying space at the center of a debate over public health, consumer protection, and the commercial interests of manufacturers. Now, Norton is among the environmental advocates who wonder if a pair of recent developments around the public’s understanding of the harms of gas stoves might be the start of a broader shift to expand the use of electrical ranges.

On Monday, lawmakers in the California Assembly advanced a bill that would require any gas stoves sold in the state to bear a warning label indicating that stoves and ovens in use “can release nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and benzene inside homes at rates that lead to concentrations exceeding the standards of the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment and the United States Environmental Protection Agency for outdoor air quality.”

The label would also note that breathing those pollutants “can exacerbate preexisting respiratory illnesses and increase the risk of developing leukemia and asthma, especially in children. To help reduce the risk of breathing harmful gases, allow ventilation in the area and turn on a vent hood when gas-powered stoves and ranges are in use.”

The measure, which moved the state Senate, could be considered for passage later this year.

“Just running a stove for a few minutes with poor ventilation can lead to indoor concentrations of nitrogen dioxide that exceed the EPA’s air standard for outdoors,” Gail Pellerin, the California assembly member who introduced the bill, said in an interview Wednesday. “You’re sitting there in the house drinking a glass of wine, making dinner, and you’re just inhaling a toxic level of these gases. So, we need a label to make sure people are informed.”

Pellerin’s proposal moved forward in the legislature just days after a group of Stanford researchers announced the findings of a peer-reviewed study that builds on earlier examinations of the public health toll of exposure to nitrogen dioxide pollution from gas and propane stoves.

New research shows gas stove emissions contribute to 19,000 deaths annually Read More »

What happened to OpenAI’s long-term AI risk team?

AI, chatgpt, openai, syndication / Shannon Garcia / May 18, 2024

disbanded —

Former team members have either resigned or been absorbed into other research groups.

Will Knight, wired.com – May 18, 2024 3: 54 pm UTC

Benj Edwards

In July last year, OpenAI announced the formation of a new research team that would prepare for the advent of supersmart artificial intelligence capable of outwitting and overpowering its creators. Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist and one of the company’s co-founders, was named as the co-lead of this new team. OpenAI said the team would receive 20 percent of its computing power.

Now OpenAI’s “superalignment team” is no more, the company confirms. That comes after the departures of several researchers involved, Tuesday’s news that Sutskever was leaving the company, and the resignation of the team’s other co-lead. The group’s work will be absorbed into OpenAI’s other research efforts.

Sutskever’s departure made headlines because although he’d helped CEO Sam Altman start OpenAI in 2015 and set the direction of the research that led to ChatGPT, he was also one of the four board members who fired Altman in November. Altman was restored as CEO five chaotic days later after a mass revolt by OpenAI staff and the brokering of a deal in which Sutskever and two other company directors left the board.

Hours after Sutskever’s departure was announced on Tuesday, Jan Leike, the former DeepMind researcher who was the superalignment team’s other co-lead, posted on X that he had resigned.

Neither Sutskever nor Leike responded to requests for comment. Sutskever did not offer an explanation for his decision to leave but offered support for OpenAI’s current path in a post on X. “The company’s trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous, and I’m confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial” under its current leadership, he wrote.

Leike posted a thread on X on Friday explaining that his decision came from a disagreement over the company’s priorities and how much resources his team was being allocated.

“I have been disagreeing with OpenAI leadership about the company’s core priorities for quite some time, until we finally reached a breaking point,” Leike wrote. “Over the past few months my team has been sailing against the wind. Sometimes we were struggling for compute and it was getting harder and harder to get this crucial research done.”

The dissolution of OpenAI’s superalignment team adds to recent evidence of a shakeout inside the company in the wake of last November’s governance crisis. Two researchers on the team, Leopold Aschenbrenner and Pavel Izmailov, were dismissed for leaking company secrets, The Information reported last month. Another member of the team, William Saunders, left OpenAI in February, according to an Internet forum post in his name.

Two more OpenAI researchers working on AI policy and governance also appear to have left the company recently. Cullen O’Keefe left his role as research lead on policy frontiers in April, according to LinkedIn. Daniel Kokotajlo, an OpenAI researcher who has coauthored several papers on the dangers of more capable AI models, “quit OpenAI due to losing confidence that it would behave responsibly around the time of AGI,” according to a posting on an Internet forum in his name. None of the researchers who have apparently left responded to requests for comment.

OpenAI declined to comment on the departures of Sutskever or other members of the superalignment team, or the future of its work on long-term AI risks. Research on the risks associated with more powerful models will now be led by John Schulman, who co-leads the team responsible for fine-tuning AI models after training.

The superalignment team was not the only team pondering the question of how to keep AI under control, although it was publicly positioned as the main one working on the most far-off version of that problem. The blog post announcing the superalignment team last summer stated: “Currently, we don’t have a solution for steering or controlling a potentially superintelligent AI, and preventing it from going rogue.”

OpenAI’s charter binds it to safely developing so-called artificial general intelligence, or technology that rivals or exceeds humans, safely and for the benefit of humanity. Sutskever and other leaders there have often spoken about the need to proceed cautiously. But OpenAI has also been early to develop and publicly release experimental AI projects to the public.

OpenAI was once unusual among prominent AI labs for the eagerness with which research leaders like Sutskever talked of creating superhuman AI and of the potential for such technology to turn on humanity. That kind of doomy AI talk became much more widespread last year after ChatGPT turned OpenAI into the most prominent and closely watched technology company on the planet. As researchers and policymakers wrestled with the implications of ChatGPT and the prospect of vastly more capable AI, it became less controversial to worry about AI harming humans or humanity as a whole.

The existential angst has since cooled—and AI has yet to make another massive leap—but the need for AI regulation remains a hot topic. And this week OpenAI showcased a new version of ChatGPT that could once again change people’s relationship with the technology in powerful and perhaps problematic new ways.

The departures of Sutskever and Leike come shortly after OpenAI’s latest big reveal—a new “multimodal” AI model called GPT-4o that allows ChatGPT to see the world and converse in a more natural and humanlike way. A livestreamed demonstration showed the new version of ChatGPT mimicking human emotions and even attempting to flirt with users. OpenAI has said it will make the new interface available to paid users within a couple of weeks.

There is no indication that the recent departures have anything to do with OpenAI’s efforts to develop more humanlike AI or to ship products. But the latest advances do raise ethical questions around privacy, emotional manipulation, and cybersecurity risks. OpenAI maintains another research group called the Preparedness team that focuses on these issues.

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

What happened to OpenAI’s long-term AI risk team? Read More »

Sony Music opts out of AI training for its entire catalog

AI, AI training, llm, music, Sony, syndication / Mike M. / May 17, 2024

Taking a hard line —

Music group contacts more than 700 companies to prohibit use of content

Daniel Thomas, Financial Times – May 17, 2024 1: 16 pm UTC

picture of Beyonce who is a Sony artist — Enlarge / The Sony Music letter expressly prohibits artificial intelligence developers from using its music — which includes artists such as Beyoncé.

Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Parkwood via Getty Images

Sony Music is sending warning letters to more than 700 artificial intelligence developers and music streaming services globally in the latest salvo in the music industry’s battle against tech groups ripping off artists.

The Sony Music letter, which has been seen by the Financial Times, expressly prohibits AI developers from using its music—which includes artists such as Harry Styles, Adele and Beyoncé—and opts out of any text and data mining of any of its content for any purposes such as training, developing or commercializing any AI system.

Sony Music is sending the letter to companies developing AI systems including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Suno, and Udio, according to those close to the group.

The world’s second-largest music group is also sending separate letters to streaming platforms, including Spotify and Apple, asking them to adopt “best practice” measures to protect artists and songwriters and their music from scraping, mining and training by AI developers without consent or compensation. It has asked them to update their terms of service, making it clear that mining and training on its content is not permitted.

Sony Music declined to comment further.

The letter, which is being sent to tech companies around the world this week, marks an escalation of the music group’s attempts to stop the melodies, lyrics and images from copyrighted songs and artists being used by tech companies to produce new versions or to train systems to create their own music.

The letter says that Sony Music and its artists “recognize the significant potential and advancement of artificial intelligence” but adds that “unauthorized use . . . in the training, development or commercialization of AI systems deprives [Sony] of control over and appropriate compensation.”

It says: “This letter serves to put you on notice directly, and reiterate, that [Sony’s labels] expressly prohibit any use of [their] content.”

Executives at the New York-based group are concerned that their music has already been ripped off, and want to set out a clearly defined legal position that would be the first step to taking action against any developer of AI systems it considers to have exploited its music. They argue that Sony Music would be open to doing deals with AI developers to license the music, but want to reach a fair price for doing so.

The letter says: “Due to the nature of your operations and published information about your AI systems, we have reason to believe that you and/or your affiliates may already have made unauthorized uses [of Sony content] in relation to the training, development or commercialization of AI systems.”

Sony Music has asked developers to provide details of all content used by next week.

The letter also reflects concerns over the fragmented approach to AI regulation around the world. Global regulations over AI vary widely, with some regions moving forward with new rules and legal frameworks to cover the training and use of such systems but others leaving it to creative industries companies to work out relationships with developers.

In many countries around the world, particularly in the EU, copyright owners are advised to state publicly that content is not available for data mining and training for AI.

The letter says the prohibition includes using any bot, spider, scraper or automated program, tool, algorithm, code, process or methodology, as well as any “automated analytical techniques aimed at analyzing text and data in digital form to generate information, including patterns, trends, and correlations.”

Sony Music opts out of AI training for its entire catalog Read More »

Concerns over addicted kids spur probe into Meta and its use of dark patterns

DSA, EU, facebook, Instagram, Meta, Policy, syndication / Mike M. / May 16, 2024

Protecting the vulnerable —

EU is concerned Meta isn’t doing enough to protect children using its apps.

Javier Espinoza, Financial Times – May 16, 2024 1: 25 pm UTC

An iPhone screen displays the app icons for WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and Facebook in a folder titled — Getty Images | Chesnot

Brussels has opened an in-depth probe into Meta over concerns it is failing to do enough to protect children from becoming addicted to social media platforms such as Instagram.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, announced on Thursday it would look into whether the Silicon Valley giant’s apps were reinforcing “rabbit hole” effects, where users get drawn ever deeper into online feeds and topics.

EU investigators will also look into whether Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is complying with legal obligations to provide appropriate age-verification tools to prevent children from accessing inappropriate content.

The probe is the second into the company under the EU’s Digital Services Act. The landmark legislation is designed to police content online, with sweeping new rules on the protection of minors.

It also has mechanisms to force Internet platforms to reveal how they are tackling misinformation and propaganda.

The DSA, which was approved last year, imposes new obligations on very large online platforms with more than 45 million users in the EU. If Meta is found to have broken the law, Brussels can impose fines of up to 6 percent of a company’s global annual turnover.

Repeat offenders can even face bans in the single market as an extreme measure to enforce the rules.

Thierry Breton, commissioner for internal market, said the EU was “not convinced” that Meta “has done enough to comply with the DSA obligations to mitigate the risks of negative effects to the physical and mental health of young Europeans on its platforms Facebook and Instagram.”

“We are sparing no effort to protect our children,” Breton added.

Meta said: “We want young people to have safe, age-appropriate experiences online and have spent a decade developing more than 50 tools and policies designed to protect them. This is a challenge the whole industry is facing, and we look forward to sharing details of our work with the European Commission.”

In the investigation, the commission said it would focus on whether Meta’s platforms were putting in place “appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety, and security for minors.” It added that it was placing special emphasis on default privacy settings for children.

Last month, the EU opened the first probe into Meta under the DSA over worries the social media giant is not properly curbing disinformation from Russia and other countries.

Brussels is especially concerned whether the social media company’s platforms are properly moderating content from Russian sources that may try to destabilize upcoming elections across Europe.

Meta defended its moderating practices and said it had appropriate systems in place to stop the spread of disinformation on its platforms.

Concerns over addicted kids spur probe into Meta and its use of dark patterns Read More »

Smashing into an asteroid shows researchers how to better protect Earth

asteroids, jpl, NASA, Space, syndication / DJ Henderson / May 15, 2024

Connecting with a fastball —

Slowing down an asteroid by just one-tenth of a second makes all the difference.

Theo Nicitopoulos, Undark Magazine – May 15, 2024 2: 54 pm UTC

Enlarge / Riding atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, spacecraft sets off to collide with an asteroid in the world’s first full-scale planetary defense test mission in November 2021.

On a fall evening in 2022, scientists at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory were busy with the final stages of a planetary defense mission. As Andy Rivkin, one of the team leaders, was getting ready to appear in NASA’s live broadcast of the experiment, a colleague posted a photo of a pair of asteroids: the half-mile-wide Didymos and, orbiting around it, a smaller one called Dimorphos, taken about 7 million miles from Earth.

“We were able to see Didymos and this little dot in the right spot where we expected Dimorphos to be,” Rivkin recalled.

After the interview, Rivkin joined a crowd of scientists and guests to watch the mission’s finale on several big screens: As part of an asteroid deflection mission called DART, a spacecraft was closing in on Dimorphos and photographing its rocky surface in increasing detail.

Then, at 7: 14 pm, a roughly 1,300-pound spacecraft slammed head-on into the asteroid.

Within a few minutes, members of the mission team in Kenya and South Africa posted images from their telescopes, showing a bright plume of debris.

In the days that followed, researchers continued to observe the dust cloud and discovered it had morphed into a variety of shapes, including clumps, spirals, and two comet-like tails. They also calculated that the impact slowed Dimorphos’ orbit by about a tenth of an inch per second, proof-of-concept that a spacecraft—also called a kinetic impactor—could target and deflect an asteroid far from Earth.

The final five-and-a-half minutes of images from the DART spacecraft as it approached and then intentionally collided with asteroid Dimorphos. The video is 10 times faster than reality, except for the last six images.

NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/YouTube

Ron Ballouz, a planetary scientist at the lab, commented that what is often seen in the movies is a “sort of last-ditch-effort, what we like to call a final-stage of planetary defense.” But if hazardous objects can be detected years in advance, other techniques like a kinetic impactor can be used, he added.

If a deflection were necessary, scientists would need to change the speed of a hazardous object, such as an asteroid or comet, enough that it doesn’t end up at the same place and time as Earth as they orbit the Sun. Rivkin said this translates into at least a seven-minute change in the arrival time: If a Dimorphos-sized object were predicted to collide with Earth 67 years from now, for instance, the slow-down that DART imparted would be just enough to add up to the seven minutes, he added.

With less lead time, researchers could use a combination of multiple deflections, larger spacecrafts, or boosts in speed, depending on the hazardous object. “DART was designed to validate a technique, and specific situations would inevitably require adapting things,” said Rivkin.

Researchers use data from DART and smaller-scale experiments to predict the amount of deflection using computer simulations.

Scientists are also focusing on the type of asteroid that Dimorphos appears to be: a “rubble pile,” as they call it, because objects of this kind are thought to be made of clumps of many rocks.

In fact, scientists think that most asteroids the size of Dimorphos and larger are rubble piles. As scientists continue to learn more about rubble piles, they will be able to make better predictions about deflecting asteroids or comets. And in 2026, a new mission will arrive at Didymos and Dimorphos to collect more data to fine-tune the computer models.

In the meantime, researchers are trying to learn as much as possible in the unwelcome case an asteroid or comet is discovered to be a threat to Earth and a more rapid response is necessary.

Scientists first suspected that many asteroids are rubble piles about 50 years ago. Their models showed that when larger asteroids smashed into one another, the collisions could throw off fragments that would then reassemble to form new objects.

It wasn’t until 2005, though, that scientists saw their first rubble pile: asteroid Itokawa, when a spacecraft visited it and photographed it. Then, in 2018, they saw another called Ryugu, and later that year, one more, asteroid Bennu. DART’s camera also showed Didymos and Dimorphos are likely of the same variety.

“It’s one thing to talk about rubble piles, but another to see what looks like a bunch of rocks dumped off a truck up close,” said William Bottke, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Smashing into an asteroid shows researchers how to better protect Earth Read More »

The hunt for rare bitcoin is nearing an end

Bitcoin, Biz & IT, Cryptocurrency, sats, syndication / Mike M. / May 14, 2024

Rarity from thin air —

Rare bitcoin fragments are worth many times their face value.

Joel Khalili, wired.com – May 14, 2024 2: 03 pm UTC

Digitally generated image of a bitcoin symbol on a glowing circuit board. — Getty Images | Andriy Onufriyenko

Billy Restey is a digital artist who runs a studio in Seattle. But after hours, he hunts for rare chunks of bitcoin. He does it for the thrill. “It’s like collecting Magic: The Gathering or Pokémon cards,” says Restey. “It’s that excitement of, like, what if I catch something rare?”

In the same way a dollar is made up of 100 cents, one bitcoin is composed of 100 million satoshis—or sats, for short. But not all sats are made equal. Those produced in the year bitcoin was created are considered vintage, like a fine wine. Other coveted sats were part of transactions made by bitcoin’s inventor. Some correspond with a particular transaction milestone. These and various other properties make some sats more scarce than others—and therefore more valuable. The very rarest can sell for tens of millions of times their face value; in April, a single sat, normally worth $0.0006, sold for $2.1 million.

Restey is part of a small, tight-knit band of hunters trying to root out these rare sats, which are scattered across the bitcoin network. They do this by depositing batches of bitcoin with a crypto exchange, then withdrawing the same amount—a little like depositing cash with a bank teller and immediately taking it out again from the ATM outside. The coins they receive in return are not the same they deposited, giving them a fresh stash through which to sift. They rinse and repeat.

In April 2023, when Restey started out, he was one of the only people hunting for rare sats—and the process was entirely manual. But now, he uses third-party software to automatically filter through and separate out any precious sats, which he can usually sell for around $80. “I’ve sifted through around 230,000 bitcoin at this point,” he says.

Restey has unearthed thousands of uncommon sats to date, selling only enough to cover the transaction fees and turn a small profit—and collecting the rest himself. But the window of opportunity is closing. The number of rare sats yet to be discovered is steadily shrinking and, as large organizations cotton on, individual hunters risk getting squeezed out. “For a lot of people, it doesn’t make [economic] sense anymore,” says Restey. “But I’m still sat hunting.”

Rarity out of thin air

Bitcoin has been around for 15 years, but rare sats have existed for barely more than 15 months. In January 2023, computer scientist Casey Rodarmor released the Ordinals protocol, which sits as a veneer over the top of the bitcoin network. His aim was to bring a bitcoin equivalent to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to the network, whereby ownership of a piece of digital media is represented by a sat. He called them “inscriptions.”

There had previously been no way to tell one sat from another. To remedy the problem, Rodarmor coded a method into the Ordinals protocol for differentiating between sats for the first time, by ordering them by number from oldest to newest. Thus, as a side effect of an apparatus designed for something else entirely, rare sats were born.

By allowing sats to be sequenced and tracked, Rodarmor had changed a system in which every bitcoin was freely interchangeable into one in which not all units of bitcoin are equal. He had created rarity out of thin air. “It’s an optional, sort of pretend lens through which to view bitcoin,” says Rodarmor. “It creates value out of nothing.”

When the Ordinals system was first released, it divided bitcoiners. Inscriptions were a near-instant hit, but some felt they were a bastardization of bitcoin’s true purpose—as a system for peer-to-peer payments—or had a “reflexive allergic reaction,” says Rodarmor, to anything that so much as resembled an NFT. The enthusiasm for inscriptions resulted in network congestion as people began to experiment with the new functionality, thus driving transaction fees to a two-year high and adding fuel to an already-fiery debate. One bitcoin developer called for inscriptions to be banned. Those that trade in rare sats have come under attack, too, says Danny Diekroeger, another sat hunter. “Bitcoin maximalists hate this stuff—and they hate me,” he says.

The fuss around the Ordinals system has by now mostly died down, says Rodarmor, but a “loud minority” on X is still “infuriated” by the invention. “I wish hardcore bitcoiners understood that people are going to do things with bitcoin that they think are stupid—and that’s okay,” says Rodarmor. “Just, like, get over it.”

The hunt for rare sats, itself an eccentric mutation of the bitcoin system, falls into that bracket. “It’s highly wacky,” says Rodarmor.

The hunt for rare bitcoin is nearing an end Read More »

Report: Microsoft to face antitrust case over Teams

antitrust, EU, microsoft, Policy, syndication, Teams / DJ Henderson / May 13, 2024

VS. —

Unbundling Teams from Office has apparently failed to impress EU regulators.

Javier Espinoza, Financial Times – May 13, 2024 2: 03 pm UTC

Brussels is set to issue new antitrust charges against Microsoft over concerns that the software giant is undermining rivals to its videoconferencing app Teams.

According to three people with knowledge of the move, the European Commission is pressing ahead with a formal charge sheet against the world’s most valuable listed tech company over concerns it is restricting competition in the sector.

Microsoft last month offered concessions as it sought to avoid regulatory action, including extending a plan to unbundle Teams from other software such as Office, not just in Europe but across the world.

However, people familiar with their thinking said EU officials were still concerned that the company did not go far enough to facilitate fairness in the market.

Rivals are concerned that Microsoft will make Teams run more compatibly than rival apps with its own software. Another concern is the lack of data portability, which makes it difficult for existing Teams users to switch to alternatives.

The commission’s move would represent an escalation of a case that dates back to 2020 after Slack, now owned by Salesforce, submitted a formal complaint over Microsoft’s Teams.

It also would end a decade-long truce between EU regulators and the US tech company, after a series of competition probes that ended in 2013. The EU then issued a 561 million euro fine against Microsoft for failure to comply with a decision over the bundling of the Internet Explorer browser with its Windows operating system.

Charges could come in the next few weeks, said the people familiar with the commission’s thinking. Rivals of Microsoft and the commission are meeting this week to discuss the case, in an indication that the charges are being prepared, the people said.

However, they warned that Microsoft could still offer last-minute concessions that would derail the EU’s case, or the commission might decide to delay or scrap the charges against the company.

Microsoft risks fines of up to 10 percent of its global annual turnover if found to have breached the EU competition law.

The company declined to comment but referred to an earlier statement that said it would “continue to engage with the commission, listen to concerns in the marketplace, and remain open to exploring pragmatic solutions that benefit both customers and developers in Europe.”

The commission declined to comment.

The move against Microsoft comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of its activities. The EU is also investigating whether the tech group’s $13 billion alliance with ChatGPT maker OpenAI breaks competition law.

Microsoft is also part of a handful of tech companies, including Google and Meta, caught as “gatekeepers” under the new Digital Markets Act, meaning it has special responsibilities when trading in Europe.

The tech company has also faced complaints from European cloud computing providers that are concerned that Microsoft is abusing its dominant position in the sector to force users to buy its products and squashing competition from smaller start-ups in Europe.

Report: Microsoft to face antitrust case over Teams Read More »

Is dark matter’s main rival theory dead?

Dark Matter, Science, syndication / Mike M. / May 11, 2024

Enlarge / Galaxy rotation has long perplexed scientists.

One of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics today is that the forces in galaxies do not seem to add up. Galaxies rotate much faster than predicted by applying Newton’s law of gravity to their visible matter, despite those laws working well everywhere in the Solar System.

To prevent galaxies from flying apart, some additional gravity is needed. This is why the idea of an invisible substance called dark matter was first proposed. But nobody has ever seen the stuff. And there are no particles in the hugely successful Standard Model of particle physics that could be the dark matter—it must be something quite exotic.

This has led to the rival idea that the galactic discrepancies are caused instead by a breakdown of Newton’s laws. The most successful such idea is known as Milgromian dynamics or Mond, proposed by Israeli physicist Mordehai Milgrom in 1982. But our recent research shows this theory is in trouble.

The main postulate of Mond is that gravity starts behaving differently from what Newton expected when it becomes very weak, as at the edges of galaxies. Mond is quite successful at predicting galaxy rotation without any dark matter, and it has a few other successes. But many of these can also be explained with dark matter, preserving Newton’s laws.

So how do we put Mond to a definitive test? We have been pursuing this for many years. The key is that Mond only changes the behavior of gravity at low accelerations, not at a specific distance from an object. You’ll feel lower acceleration on the outskirts of any celestial object—a planet, star, or galaxy—than when you are close to it. But it is the amount of acceleration, rather than the distance, that predicts where gravity should be stronger.

This means that, although Mond effects would typically kick in several thousand light years away from a galaxy, if we look at an individual star, the effects would become highly significant at a tenth of a light year. That is only a few thousand times larger than an astronomical unit (AU)—the distance between the Earth and the Sun. But weaker Mond effects should also be detectable at even smaller scales, such as in the outer Solar System.

This brings us to the Cassini mission, which orbited Saturn between 2004 and its final fiery crash into the planet in 2017. Saturn orbits the Sun at 10 AU. Due to a quirk of Mond, the gravity from the rest of our galaxy should cause Saturn’s orbit to deviate from the Newtonian expectation in a subtle way.

Enlarge / Cassini orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017.

This can be tested by timing radio pulses between Earth and Cassini. Since Cassini was orbiting Saturn, this helped to measure the Earth-Saturn distance and allowed us to precisely track Saturn’s orbit. But Cassini did not find any anomaly of the kind expected in Mond. Newton still works well for Saturn.

Is dark matter’s main rival theory dead? Read More »

Automakers hedge their bets with plug-in hybrids as EV sales slow

BEV, Cars, Hybrid, PHEV, syndication / DJ Henderson / May 10, 2024

electrons and hydrocarbons —

Originally regarded as stopgap solutions, hybrids are in it for the long haul.

Mari Novik, Arjun Neil Alim, Kana Inagaki, and Peter Campbell, FT – May 10, 2024 3: 57 pm UTC

Global carmakers are stepping up their investment in hybrid technologies as consumers’ growing wariness over fully electric vehicles forces the industry to rapidly shift gear, according to top executives.

A combination of still high interest rates and concern over inadequate charging infrastructure has chilled buyers’ enthusiasm for fully electric cars, prompting a rebound in sales of hybrid vehicles that most of the industry had long regarded as nothing more than a stop-gap.

Tapping the resurgent demand for hybrids was a priority, executives from General Motors, Nissan, Hyundai, Volkswagen and Ford told the Financial Times’ Future of the Car Summit this week.

“We have to invest heavily in the future of plug-in hybrids,” said Mark Reuss, the president of General Motors. “We have to be agile. We have a global tool chest of technical things that we can deploy fairly rapidly.”

The view was echoed by José Muñoz, global president of Hyundai, which is now considering manufacturing hybrids at its new $7.6 billion plant in Georgia given more drivers are balking over buying fully electric vehicles.

“If you asked me six months ago, definitely a year ago, I would have told you… fully electric,” said Muñoz. “A lot of things have happened between then and now. Electric is still the future. But now we are seeing a longer transition.”

Electric car sales growth slowed in the US and Europe last year, prompting carmakers to offer discounts. Industry executives have already acknowledged that the market has lost some momentum as future sales growth increasingly depends on demand from mainstream buyers rather than early adopters.

At the same time, there are concerns over whether governments might backtrack on previous plans to force a rapid transition away from petrol-based cars.

Ford’s European boss, Martin Sander, said that the pace of the transition in Europe was “down to the consumer,” and that the US group was prepared to continue selling hybrid models into the next decade.

“We want to make sure that we are setting up our business model so that we are flexible enough” to address shifts in demand, Sander told the summit. “Our whole business and life cycle planning is much more dynamic now.”

US rival General Motors, which had largely eliminated plug-in hybrids from its range, said in January that it would reintroduce the technology.

Consumers’ increasing hesitation comes just as carmakers face a growing threat from Chinese manufacturers rolling out cheaper electric vehicles both in their domestic market and, increasingly, in Europe.

To remain competitive in China, Peugeot needs to stay “agile” to avoid getting sucked into the country’s price war, said its chief executive, Linda Jackson. “We’re holding on, but the Chinese market is the biggest automotive market in the world so it’s very difficult for a global manufacturer not to be present,” Jackson said.

According to Schmidt Automotive Research, Chinese brands like BYD as well as brands such as Polestar that manufacture in China accounted for almost 10 percent of the fully electric cars registered in western Europe in March. That is up from just over 4 percent two years ago.

“We see an increase of competition coming from China brands and other technology worlds,” Nissan chief executive Makoto Uchida told the summit.

The threat from Chinese companies has only heightened carmakers’ focus on hybrids, which typically have double-digit margins compared with often loss-making fully electric vehicles.

For many carmakers, the slower switch is allowing them to continue to squeeze profits from traditional engines while also providing more financial firepower to develop electric vehicle technology.

The majority of the industry still believes that developing profitable fully electric cars is the most important long-term goal.

Earlier this week, Toyota, the biggest champion of hybrids in recent years, said that it planned to lift spending on new technologies by more than 40 percent after hybrid sales drove the group’s profits to a record last year.

Automakers hedge their bets with plug-in hybrids as EV sales slow Read More »

The wasps that tamed viruses

Biology, entomology, Parasitic wasps, Science, syndication, virology, viruses / DJ Henderson / May 10, 2024

Parasitoid wasp — Enlarge / *Xorides praecatorius* is a parasitoid wasp.

If you puncture the ovary of a wasp called Microplitis demolitor, viruses squirt out in vast quantities, shimmering like iridescent blue toothpaste. “It’s very beautiful, and just amazing that there’s so much virus made in there,” says Gaelen Burke, an entomologist at the University of Georgia.

M. demolitor is a parasite that lays its eggs in caterpillars, and the particles in its ovaries are “domesticated” viruses that have been tuned to persist harmlessly in wasps and serve their purposes. The virus particles are injected into the caterpillar through the wasp’s stinger, along with the wasp’s own eggs. The viruses then dump their contents into the caterpillar’s cells, delivering genes that are unlike those in a normal virus. Those genes suppress the caterpillar’s immune system and control its development, turning it into a harmless nursery for the wasp’s young.

The insect world is full of species of parasitic wasps that spend their infancy eating other insects alive. And for reasons that scientists don’t fully understand, they have repeatedly adopted and tamed wild, disease-causing viruses and turned them into biological weapons. Half a dozen examples already are described, and new research hints at many more.

By studying viruses at different stages of domestication, researchers today are untangling how the process unfolds.

Partners in diversification

The quintessential example of a wasp-domesticated virus involves a group called the bracoviruses, which are thought to be descended from a virus that infected a wasp, or its caterpillar host, about 100 million years ago. That ancient virus spliced its DNA into the genome of the wasp. From then on, it was part of the wasp, passed on to each new generation.

Over time, the wasps diversified into new species, and their viruses diversified with them. Bracoviruses are now found in some 50,000 wasp species, including M. demolitor. Other domesticated viruses are descended from different wild viruses that entered wasp genomes at various times.

Researchers debate whether domesticated viruses should be called viruses at all. “Some people say that it’s definitely still a virus; others say it’s integrated, and so it’s a part of the wasp,” says Marcel Dicke, an ecologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands who described how domesticated viruses indirectly affect plants and other organisms in a 2020 paper in the Annual Review of Entomology.

As the wasp-virus composite evolves, the virus genome becomes scattered through the wasp’s DNA. Some genes decay, but a core set is preserved—those essential for making the original virus’s infectious particles. “The parts are all in these different locations in the wasp genome. But they still can talk to each other. And they still make products that cooperate with each other to make virus particles,” says Michael Strand, an entomologist at the University of Georgia. But instead of containing a complete viral genome, as a wild virus would, domesticated virus particles serve as delivery vehicles for the wasp’s weapons.

Enlarge / Here are the steps in the life of a parasitic wasp that harbors a bracovirus.

Those weapons vary widely. Some are proteins, while others are genes on short segments of DNA. Most bear little resemblance to anything found in wasps or viruses, so it’s unclear where they originated. And they are constantly changing, locked in evolutionary arms races with the defenses of the caterpillars or other hosts.

In many cases, researchers have yet to discover even what the genes and proteins do inside the wasps’ hosts or prove that they function as weapons. But they have untangled some details.

For example, M. demolitor wasps use bracoviruses to deliver a gene called glc1.8 into the immune cells of moth caterpillars. The glc1.8 gene causes the infected immune cells to produce mucus that prevents them from sticking to the wasp’s eggs. Other genes in M. demolitor’s bracoviruses force immune cells to kill themselves, while still others prevent caterpillars from smothering parasites in sheaths of melanin.

The wasps that tamed viruses Read More »

A crushing backlash to Apple’s new iPad ad

advertising, Apple, ipad, syndication, Tech / Shannon Garcia / May 9, 2024

1984 called and would like to have a word —

Hydraulic press destroying “symbols of creativity” has folks hopping mad.

Daniel Thomas, Financial Times – May 9, 2024 1: 15 pm UTC

Enlarge / A screenshot of the Apple iPad ad.

Apple via YouTube

An advert by Apple for its new iPad tablet showing musical instruments, artistic tools, and games being crushed by a giant hydraulic press has been attacked for cultural insensitivity in an online backlash.

The one-minute video was launched by Apple chief executive Tim Cook to support its new range of iPads, the first time that the US tech giant has overhauled the range for two years as it seeks to reverse faltering sales.

The campaign—soundtracked by Sonny and Cher’s 1971 hit All I Ever Need Is You—is designed to show how much Apple has been able to squeeze into the thinner tablet. The ad was produced in-house by Apple’s creative team, according to trade press reports.

The campaign has been hit by a wave of outrage, with responses on social media reacting to Cook’s X post accusing Apple of crushing “beautiful creative tools” and the “symbols of human creativity and cultural achievements.”

Advertising industry executives argued the ad represented a mis-step for the Silicon Valley giant, which under late co-founder Steve Jobs was lauded for its ability to capture consumer attention through past campaigns.

Christopher Slevin, creative director for marketing agency Inkling Culture, compared the iPad ad unfavorably to a famous Apple campaign directed by Ridley Scott called “1984” for the original Macintosh computer, which positioned Apple as liberating a dystopian, monochrome world.

“Apple’s new iPad spot is essentially them turning into the thing they said they were out to destroy in the 1984 ad,” said Slevin.

Actor Hugh Grant accused Apple of “the destruction of the human experience courtesy of Silicon Valley” on X.

However, Richard Exon, founder of marketing agency Joint, said: “A more important question is: does the ad do its job? It’s memorable, distinctive, and I now know the new iPad has even more in it yet is thinner than ever.”

Consumer insights platform Zappi conducted consumer research on the ad that suggested that the idea of the hydraulic press crushing art was divisive.

It said that the ad underperformed benchmarks in typically sought-after emotions such as happiness and laughter and overperformed in traditionally negative emotions like shock and confusion, with older people more likely to have a negative response than younger consumers.

Nataly Kelly, chief marketing officer at Zappi, said: “Is the Apple iPad ad a work of genius or the sign of the dystopian times? It really depends on how old you are. The shock value is the power of this advert, which is controversial by design, so the fact that people are talking about it at all is a win.”

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A crushing backlash to Apple’s new iPad ad Read More »

No one has seen the data behind Tyson’s “climate friendly beef” claim

beef, cattle, climate change, greenhouse gas, Science, syndication / DJ Henderson / May 8, 2024

About five miles south of Broken Bow, in the heart of central Nebraska, thousands of cattle stand in feedlots at Adams Land & Cattle Co., a supplier of beef to the meat giant Tyson Foods.

From the air, the feedlots look dusty brown and packed with cows—not a vision of happy animals grazing on open pastureland, enriching the soil with carbon. But when the animals are slaughtered, processed, and sent onward to consumers, labels on the final product can claim that they were raised in a “climate friendly” way.

In late 2022, Tyson—one of the country’s “big four” meat packers—applied to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), seeking a “climate friendly” label for its Brazen Beef brand. The production of Brazen Beef, the label claims, achieves a “10 percent greenhouse gas reduction.” Soon after, the USDA approved the label.

Immediately, environmental groups questioned the claim and petitioned the agency to stop using it, citing livestock’s significant greenhouse gas emissions and the growing pile of research that documents them. These groups and journalism outlets, including Inside Climate News, have asked the agency for the data it used to support its rubber-stamping of Tyson’s label but have essentially gotten nowhere.

“There are lots of misleading claims on food, but it’s hard to imagine a claim that’s more misleading than ‘climate friendly’ beef,” said Scott Faber, a senior vice president at the Environmental Working Group (EWG). “It’s like putting a cancer-free label on a cigarette. There’s no worse food choice for the climate than beef.”

The USDA has since confirmed it is currently considering and has approved similar labels for more livestock companies, but would not say which ones.

On Wednesday, the EWG, a longtime watchdog of the USDA, published a new analysis, outlining its efforts over the last year to push the agency for more transparency, including asking it to provide the specific rationale for allowing Brazen Beef to carry the “climate friendly” label. Last year, the group filed a Freedom of Information Act request, seeking the data that Tyson supplied to the agency in support of its application, but received only a heavily redacted response. EWG also petitioned the agency to not allow climate friendly or low carbon claims on beef.

To earn the “climate friendly” label, Tyson requires ranchers to meet the criteria of its internal “Climate-Smart Beef” program, but EWG notes that the company fails to provide information about the practices that farmers are required to adopt or about which farmers participate in the program. The only farm it has publicly identified is the Adams company in Nebraska.

A USDA spokesperson told Inside Climate News it can only rely on a third-party verification company to substantiate a label claim and could not provide the data Tyson submitted for its review.

“Because Congress did not provide USDA with on-farm oversight authority that would enable it to verify these types of labeling claims, companies must use third-party certifying organizations to substantiate these claims,” the spokesperson wrote in an email, directing Inside Climate News to the third-party verifier or Tyson for more information.

The third-party verification company, Where Food Comes From, did not respond to emailed questions from Inside Climate News, and Tyson did not respond to emails seeking comment.

The USDA said it is reviewing EWG’s petitions and announced in June 2023 that it’s working on strengthening the “substantiation of animal-raising claims, which includes the type of claim affixed to the Brazen Beef product.”

The agency said other livestock companies were seeking similar labels and that the agency has approved them, but would not identify those companies, saying Inside Climate News would have to seek the information through a Freedom of Information Act request.

“They’re being incredibly obstinate about sharing anything right now,” said Matthew Hayek, a researcher with New York University who studies the environmental and climate impacts of the food system. “Speaking as a scientist, it’s not transparent and it’s a scandal in its own right that the government can’t provide this information.”

This lack of transparency from the agency worries environmental and legal advocacy groups, especially now that billions of dollars in taxpayer funds are available for agricultural practices deemed to have benefits for the climate. The Biden administration’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, appropriated nearly $20 billion for these practices; another $3.1 billion is available through a Biden-era program called the Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities.

“This is an important test case for USDA,” Faber said. “If they can’t say no to a clearly misleading climate claim like ‘climate friendly’ beef, why should they be trusted to say no to other misleading climate claims? There’s a lot of money at stake.”

No one has seen the data behind Tyson’s “climate friendly beef” claim Read More »