Monthly Archives: September 2024

AI helps find simple charging trick to boost li-ion battery lifespan

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A simple change in how new lithium-ion batteries are charged can boost their total lifespans by 50 per cent on average – and battery manufacturers everywhere can immediately put the discovery into action. Extended battery lifespans could prove especially crucial for improving electric vehicles and energy storage for electricity grids.

“The cool thing is that we didn’t change any chemistry of the battery,” says William Chueh at Stanford University in California. “We just changed that last step in manufacturing to form the battery a little differently.”

Factories usually charge new batteries for the first time using low electric currents over many hours. But Chueh and his colleagues found that charging a new battery using high currents can significantly increase the number of times it can be recharged.

They used AI machine learning to identify the most important factors impacting battery performance during the first charge, and charging current was one of the most crucial. The researchers confirmed this result by constructing and experimenting on 186 batteries, and those first charged using a high current had a 50 per cent longer lifespan on average. For example, using this method, an electric car battery could go from lasting just 1500 recharge cycles to more than 2200 cycles.

Their finding subverts conventional wisdom because charging at a high current instead of a low one inactivates more lithium ions in a new battery – and the supply of lithium ions flowing back and forth between negative and positive electrodes determines how much charge the battery can hold. But the initial loss of lithium ions creates extra space in the positive electrode that enables the battery to cycle more efficiently when charging and draining, says team member Xiao Cui, also at Stanford University.

During the initial charging process, the inactivated lithium ions also become part of a protective layer on the negative electrode that can slow down battery degradation.

Source: AI helps find simple charging trick to boost battery lifespan | New Scientist

WaveCore beams gigabit network bridge link through concrete wall

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Airvine Scientific has a product that could make life easier for IT staff. WaveCore is designed to beam a network signal through thick concrete walls, eliminating the need to drill holes or route your cabling via a circuitous course.

The Silicon Valley wireless company says its newly introduced kit is quick to deploy and can penetrate thick concrete walls and floors in commercial real estate structures.

Drilling a hole for a cabling might mean time-consuming and costly inspections to get permits, and having to to go around it might mean routing cables via the nearest elevator or riser shaft, it says.

WaveCore is basically a pair of devices that form a point-to-point Ethernet bridge using a wireless signal capable of penetrating up to 12 inches (30 cm) of concrete and brick at multi-gigabit data rates. An Ethernet bridge is simply a way of linking separate network segments, in this case through a thick wall that would otherwise pose an obstacle.

wc airvine

Concrete walls are an average thickness of 8 inches (20 cm) or more in commercial real estate buildings around the world, the firm says. These types of walls may form the building’s outer perimeter, serve as interior load bearing walls or create protection for spaces such as fire control or network server rooms.

Airvine claims that tests with select customers earlier this year delivered results such as a 3 Gbps connection through 8 inches of concrete in the middle of a 54-foot (16 meter) link, and a 4 Gbps connection through a 12 inch (30 cm) concrete wall in a garage that was in the middle of a 6-foot (1.8 meter) link.

In a blog post discussing WaveCore, VP of Marketing Dave Sumi explains how it had been developed off the back of an existing product, WaveTunnel, which operates as an indoor wireless backbone in factories, warehouses, conference centers and similar large sites.

This can penetrate most interior walls and bend around corners, but the company says the one obstacle that it just couldn’t avoid and get around is thick concrete walls.

[…]

Source: WaveCore beams gigabit network link through 1ft-thick wall

Second Circuit Says Libraries Disincentivize Authors To Write Books By Lending Them For Free

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What would you think if an author told you they would have written a book, but they wouldn’t bother because it would be available to be borrowed for free from a library? You’d probably think they were delusional. Yet that argument has now carried the day in putting a knife into the back of the extremely useful Open Library from the Internet Archive.

The Second Circuit has upheld the lower court ruling and found that the Internet Archive’s Open Library is not fair use and therefore infringes on the copyright of publishers (we had filed an amicus brief in support of the Archive asking them to remember the fundamental purpose of copyright law and the First Amendment, which the Court ignored).

Even though this outcome was always a strong possibility, the final ruling is just incredibly damaging, especially in that it suggests that all libraries are bad for authors and cause them to no longer want to write. I only wish I were joking. Towards the end of the ruling (as we’ll get to below) it says that while having freely lent out books may help the public in the “short-term” the “long-term” consequences would be that “there would be little motivation to produce new works.”

[…]

As you’ll recall, the Open Library is no different than a regular library. It obtains books legally (either through purchase or donation) and then lends out one-to-one copies of those books. It’s just that it lends out digital copies of them. To keep it identical to a regular library, it makes sure that only one digital copy can be lent out for every physical copy it holds. Courts have already determined that digitizing physical books is fair use, and the Open Library has been tremendously helpful to all sorts of people.

The only ones truly annoyed by this are the publishers, who have always hated libraries and have long seen the shift to digital as an open excuse to effectively harm libraries. With licensed ebooks, the publishers have jacked up the prices so that (unlike with regular books), the library can’t just buy a single copy from any supplier and lend it out. Rather, publishers have made it prohibitively expensive to get ebook licenses, which come with ridiculous restrictions on how frequently books can be lent and more.

[…]

The key part of the case is whether or not the Internet Archive’s scanning and lending of books is fair use. The Second Circuit says that it fails the fair use four factors test. On the question of transformative use, the Internet Archive argued that because it was using technology to make lending of books more convenient and efficient, it was clearly transformative. Unfortunately, the court disagrees:

We conclude that IA’s use of the Works is not transformative. IA creates digital copies of the Works and distributes those copies to its users in full, for free. Its digital copies do not provide criticism, commentary, or information about the originals. Nor do they “add[] something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the [originals] with new expression, meaning or message.” Campbell, 510 U.S. at 579. Instead, IA’s digital books serve the same exact purpose as the originals: making authors’ works available to read. IA’s Free Digital Library is meant to―and does―substitute for the original Works

The panel is not convinced by the massive change in making physical books digitally lendable:

True, there is some “change” involved in the conversion of print books to digital copies. See Infinity Broadcast Corp. v. Kirkwood, 150 F.3d 104, 108 n.2 (2d Cir. 1998) (“[A] change in format . . . is not technically a transformation.”). But the degree of change does not “go beyond that required to qualify as derivative.” Warhol II, 598 U.S. at 529. Unlike transformative works, derivative works “ordinarily are those that re-present the protected aspects of the original work, i.e., its expressive content, converted into an altered form.” Google Books, 804 F.3d at 225. To be transformative, a use must do “something more than repackage or republish the original copyrighted work.” Authors Guild, Inc. v. HathiTrust, 755 F.3d 87, 96 (2d Cir. 2014); see also TVEyes, 883 F.3d at 177 (“[A] use of copyrighted material that merely repackages or republishes the original is unlikely to be deemed a fair use.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Changing the medium of a work is a derivative use rather than a transformative one.

But, that’s not what a derivative work is? A derivative work is not scanning a book. Scanning a book is making a copy. A derivative work is something like making a movie out of a book. So, this analysis is just fundamentally wrong in saying that this is a derivative work, and thus the rest of the analysis is kinda wonky based on that error.

Tragically, the Court then undermines the important ruling in the Betamax/VCR case that found “time shifting” (recording stuff off your TV) to be fair use, even as it absolutely was repackaging the same content for the same purpose. The Court says that doesn’t matter because it “predated our use of the word ‘transformative’ as a term of art.” But that doesn’t wipe out the case as a binding precedent, even though the Court here acts as though it does.

Sony was decided long before modern technology made it possible for one to view virtually any content at any time. Put in context, the “time-shifting” permitted by the defendant’s tape recorders in Sony was a unique efficiency not widely available at the time, and certainly not offered by the plaintiff-television producer.

So because content is more widely available, this kind of shifting is no longer fair use? How does that make any sense at all?

Then the Court says (incorrectly — as we’ll explain shortly) that there’s really nothing new or different about what the Open Library does:

Here, by contrast, IA’s Free Digital Library offers few efficiencies beyond those already offered by Publishers’ own eBooks.

The problem, though, is that this isn’t quite true. Getting licensed ebooks out from libraries is a difficult and cumbersome practice and requires each library to have a vast ebook collection that none can possibly afford. As this lawsuit went down, more and more authors came out of the woodwork, explaining how research they had done for their books was only possible because of the Open Library and would have been impossible via a traditional library given the lending restrictions and availability restrictions.

[…]

From there, the Court explores whether or not the Internet Archive’s use here was commercial. The lower court said it was because, ridiculously, the Internet Archive had donation links on library pages. Thankfully, the panel here sees how problematic that would be for every non-profit:

We likewise reject the proposition that IA’s solicitation of donations renders its use of the Works commercial. IA does not solicit donations specifically in connection with its digital book lending services―nearly every page on IA’s website contains a link to “Donate” to IA. App’x 6091. Thus, as with its partnership with BWB, any link between the funds IA receives from donations and its use of the Works is too attenuated to render the use commercial. Swatch, 756 F.3d at 83. To hold otherwise would greatly restrain the ability of nonprofits to seek donations while making fair use of copyrighted works. See ASTM I, 896 F.3d at 449 (rejecting the argument that because free distribution of copyrighted industry standards enhanced a nonprofit organization’s fundraising appeal, the use was commercial).

It also disagrees that this use is commercial because there’s a referral link for people to go and buy a copy of the book, saying that’s “too attenuated”:

Any link between the funds IA receives from its partnership with BWB and its use of the Works is too attenuated for us to characterize the use as commercial on that basis

Even so, the lack of commerciality isn’t enough to protect the project on the first factor analysis, and it goes to the publishers.

[…]

Source: Second Circuit Says Libraries Disincentivize Authors To Write Books By Lending Them For Free | Techdirt

There is a lot more, but it’s safe to say that the courts in the US and copyright laws have run amok and are only feeding the rich to the detriment of the poor. Denying people libraries is a step beyond.

Internet Archive loses appeal – 4 greedy publishers shut down major library in insane luddite US law system

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The Internet Archive’s appeal could spell further trouble for the non-profit, as it is in the middle of a another copyright lawsuit with music publishers that could cost more than $400m if it loses.

The Internet Archive has been dealt a serious blow in court, as it lost an appeal case to share scanned books without the approval of publishers.

The loss could lead to serious repercussions for the non-profit, as hundreds of thousands of digital books have been removed from its library. The Internet Archive is also in the middle of another copyright lawsuit from multiple music labels for digitising vintage records.

What is the Internet Archive?

Based in San Francisco, the Internet Archive is one of the world’s most well-known libraries for scanned copies of millions of physical books that it lends to people all over the globe for free.

The non-profit organisation claims its mission is to provide “universal access to all knowledge” and has been archiving digital content for years such as books, movies, music, software and more.

The archive claims to have more than 20m freely downloadable books and texts, along with a collection of 2.3m modern e-books that can be borrowed – similar to a library. But while supporters say the Internet Archive is a valuable source of easily accessible information, its critics claim it breaches copyright laws.

What caused the major publisher lawsuit?

The Internet Archive let users access its vast digital library for years before the lawsuit began, but a decision during the Covid-19 pandemic prompted the legal response.

Previously, only a limited number of individuals were allowed to borrow a digital book from the non-profit’s Open Library service, a principle that the archive referred to as controlled digital lending.

But this rule was relaxed during the pandemic and led to the creation of the archive’s National Emergency Library, which meant an unlimited number of people could access the same e-books. After this decision, the major publishers launched their lawsuit and the archive went back to its controlled lending practices.

The four publishers – Hachette, Penguin Random House, Wiley, and HarperCollins – said the Internet Archive was conducting copyright infringement through its practices. But the lawsuit went after both library services and had a major impact – in June 2024, the Internet Archive said more than 500,000 books had been removed from its library as a result of the lawsuit.

The non-profit’s founder Brewster Kahle previously said libraries are “under attack at an unprecedented scale”, with a mix of book bans, defunding and “overzealous lawsuits like the one brought against our library”.

From a loss to an appeal

Unfortunately for the digital library, a judge sided in favour of the publishers on 24 March 2023, agreeing with their claims that the Internet Archive’s practices constitutes “wilful digital piracy on an industrial scale” that hurts both writers and publishers.

The archive appealed this decision later that year, but the appeals court determined that it is not “fair use” for a non-profit to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety and distribute those digital copies online. The appeals court also said there is not enough of a change from a printed copy to a digital one to constitute fair use.

“We conclude that IA’s use of the works is not transformative,” the appeals court said. “IA creates digital copies of the works and distributes those copies to its users in full, for free. Its digital copies do not provide criticism, commentary, or information about the originals.”

The appeals court did disagree with the previous court’s verdict that the Internet Archive’s use of these copyrighted materials is “commercial in nature” and said it is “undisputed that IA is a nonprofit entity and that it distributes its digital books for free”.

What does this mean for the Internet Archive?

The archive’s director of library services Chris Freeland said the non-profit is “disappointed” in the decision by the appeals court and that it is “reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend and preserve books”.

Freeland also shared a link to readers where they can sign an open letter asking publishers to restore access to the 500,000 books removed from the archive’s library.

The loss also presents a bad precedent for the archive’s Great 78 Project, which is focused on the discovery and preservation of 78rpm records. The Internet Archive has been working to digitise millions of these recordings to preserve them, adding that the disks they were recorded onto are made of brittle material and can be easily broken.

“We aim to bring to light the decisions by music collectors over the decades and a digital reference collection of underrepresented artists and genres,” the Internet Archive says on the project page.

“The digitisation will make this less commonly available music accessible to researchers in a format where it can be manipulated and studied without harming the physical artefacts.”

But multiple music labels are suing the Internet Archive for this project and claims it has “wilfully reproduced” thousands of protected sound recordings without copyright authorisation. The music labels are seeking damages of up to $150,000 for each protected sound recording infringed in the lawsuit, which could lead to payments of more than $412m if the court rules against the Internet Archive.

Source: What you need to know about the Internet Archive’s appeal loss

EU, UK, US and more sign world’s first International treaty on AI – but the US makes sure it’s pretty much useless

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The EU, UK, US, and Israel signed the world’s first treaty protection human rights in AI technology in a ceremony in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Thursday (5 September), but civil society groups say the text has been watered down.

The Framework Convention on artificial intelligence and human rights, democracy, and the rule of law was adopted in May by the Council of Europe, the bloc’s human rights body.

But after years of negotiations, and pressure from countries like the US who participated in the process, the private sector is largely excluded from the Treaty, leaving mostly the public sector and its contractors under its scope.

The request was “presented as a pre-condition for their signature of the Convention,” said Francesca Fanucci, Senior Legal Advisor at ECNL and representing the Conference of INGOs (CINGO), citing earlier reporting by Euractiv.

Andorra, Georgia, Iceland, Moldova, Norway, and San Marino also signed the treaty.

The treaty has been written so that it does not conflict with the AI Act, the EU’s landmark regulation on the technology, so its signature and ratification is not significant for EU member states, Fanucci said.

“It will not be significant for the other non-EU State Parties either, because its language was relentlessly watered down and turned into broad principles rather than prescriptive rights and obligations, with numerous loopholes and blanket exemptions,” she added.

“Given the vague language and the loopholes of the Convention, it is then also up to states to prove that they mean what they sign – by implementing it in a meaningful and ambitious way,” said Angela Müller, who heads AlgorithmWatch’s policy and advocacy group as executive director.

Ensuring that binding international mechanisms “don’t carve out national security interests” is the next important step, Siméon Campeos, founder and CEO of SaferAI, told Euractiv.

Carve-outs for national security interests were also discussed in the negotiations.

The signatories are also to discuss and agree on a non-binding methodology on how to conduct impact assessment of AI systems on human rights, the rule of law and democracy, which EU states will likely not participate in given they are implementing the AI Act, said Fanucci.

[….]

Source: EU, UK, US, Israel sign world’s first AI Treaty – Euractiv

YubiKeys are vulnerable to unpatchable cloning attacks thanks to newly discovered physical side channel

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The YubiKey 5, the most widely used hardware token for two-factor authentication based on the FIDO standard, contains a cryptographic flaw that makes the finger-size device vulnerable to cloning when an attacker gains temporary physical access to it, researchers said Tuesday.

The cryptographic flaw, known as a side channel, resides in a small microcontroller used in a large number of other authentication devices, including smartcards used in banking, electronic passports, and the accessing of secure areas. While the researchers have confirmed all YubiKey 5 series models can be cloned, they haven’t tested other devices using the microcontroller, such as the SLE78 made by Infineon and successor microcontrollers known as the Infineon Optiga Trust M and the Infineon Optiga TPM. The researchers suspect that any device using any of these three microcontrollers and the Infineon cryptographic library contains the same vulnerability.

Patching not possible

YubiKey-maker Yubico issued an advisory in coordination with a detailed disclosure report from NinjaLab, the security firm that reverse-engineered the YubiKey 5 series and devised the cloning attack. All YubiKeys running firmware prior to version 5.7—which was released in May and replaces the Infineon cryptolibrary with a custom one—are vulnerable. Updating key firmware on the YubiKey isn’t possible. That leaves all affected YubiKeys permanently vulnerable.

[…]

In this case, the side channel is the amount of time taken during a mathematical calculation known as a modular inversion. The Infineon cryptolibrary failed to implement a common side-channel defense known as constant time as it performs modular inversion operations involving the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm. Constant time ensures the time sensitive cryptographic operations execute is uniform rather than variable depending on the specific keys.

More precisely, the side channel is located in the Infineon implementation of the Extended Euclidean Algorithm, a method for, among other things, computing the modular inverse. By using an oscilloscope to measure the electromagnetic radiation while the token is authenticating itself, the researchers can detect tiny execution time differences that reveal a token’s ephemeral ECDSA key, also known as a nonce. Further analysis allows the researchers to extract the secret ECDSA key that underpins the entire security of the token.

[…]

The attacks require about $11,000 worth of equipment and a sophisticated understanding of electrical and cryptographic engineering. The difficulty of the attack means it would likely be carried out only by nation-states or other entities with comparable resources and then only in highly targeted scenarios.

[…]

A key question that remains unanswered at the moment is what other security devices rely on the three vulnerable Infineon secure modules and use the Infineon cryptolibrary? Infineon has yet to issue an advisory and didn’t respond to an email asking for one. At the moment, there is no known CVE for tracking the vulnerability.

Source: YubiKeys are vulnerable to cloning attacks thanks to newly discovered side channel | Ars Technica

Balloon-Based Sensor That Pinpoints Location Of Drone Operators Emerges In Ukraine

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Ukraine has developed a balloon-carried electronic surveillance system designed to detect enemy drone operators, which can then be targeted, offering a more comprehensive solution than tackling individual drones. While the current status of the system, known as Aero Azimuth, is unclear, its unveiling points to a resurgence in interest in elevated sensors mounted on aerostats.

[…]

While the Azimuth system already existed in ground-based form, this seems to the the first airborne application, which makes use of an aerostat from another Ukrainian company, Aerobavovna. Also included in the Aero Azmiuth system are a trailer with a winch for launching and recovering the balloon, a gas cylinder system to inflate the envelope, plus tools for repair and maintenance.

The basic Azimuth uses passive signals intelligence (SIGINT) equipment to detect and then locate the radio-frequency signals emitted by enemy (Russian) drone operators. These signals include communication channels, telemetry, and data exchange. The information gathered by Azimuth is then related to troops, who can directly target the drone operators in question.

[…]

By elevating the Azimuth system on an aerostat, that detection range can reportedly be extended to 37 miles, while the same targets can be triangulated at a distance of 15-19 miles, according to Kvertus spokespeople. These figures are when the balloon is operating at “average flight altitude,” with the optimum altitude meanwhile reported as being around 1,000-2,300 feet.

[…]

Source: Balloon-Based Sensor That Pinpoints Location Of Drone Operators Emerges In Ukraine

China’s Connected Car Crashes Are a Warning

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[…] What happens when connected cars become disconnected cars? […]

The phenomenon was chronicled in Rest of World, which spoke to multiple owners of EVs produced by financially troubled Chinese automakers. China kickstarted its EV industry with aggressive subsidies that lured dozens, if not hundreds of companies to produce cars. When those subsidies ceased, an automotive extinction event unfolded, with a reported 20-plus brands calling it quits

[…]

The largest Chinese automaker to fail yet has been WM Motor, which reportedly sold around 100,000 cars between 2019 and 2022. It filed for bankruptcy in October 2023, and in doing so ceased offering software support for customers’ cars. With company servers offline, widespread failures were reported, affecting cars’ stereos, charging status indicators, odometers, and app-controlled remote functions such as air conditioning and locking.

Though WM Motor is said to have brought servers back online so that these vehicles can fully function again, it doesn’t seem to have delivered any software updates since its bankruptcy filing almost a year ago. Its app also remains unavailable on smartphone app stores, locking potential buyers of used WM Motors vehicles out of some features. It seemingly hasn’t flown afoul of China’s consumer protection laws, which mandate 10 years of parts and service support—but apparently not software. As many as 160,000 Chinese car owners are estimated to be in a similar boat, as an increasing number of automakers encounter financial trouble.

[…]

Source: China’s Connected Car Collapse Is a Warning for the American /Market

And what happens when a manufacturer just calls your car End of Life?

Dutch DPA fines Clearview €30.5 million for violating the GDPR

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Clearview AI is back in hot — and expensive — water, with the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) fining the company €30.5 million ($33.6 million) for violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The release explains that Clearview created “an illegal database with billions of photos of faces,” including Dutch individuals, and has failed to properly inform people that it’s using their data. In early 2023, Clearview’s CEO claimed the company had 30 billion images.

Clearview must immediately stop all violations or face up to €5.1 million ($5.6 million) in non-compliance penalties. “Facial recognition is a highly intrusive technology, that you cannot simply unleash on anyone in the world,” Dutch DPA chairman Aleid Wolfsen stated. “If there is a photo of you on the Internet — and doesn’t that apply to all of us? — then you can end up in the database of Clearview and be tracked.” He adds that facial recognition can help with safety but that “competent authorities” who are “subject to strict conditions” should handle it rather than a commercial company.

The Dutch DPA further states that since Clearview is breaking the law, using it is also illegal. Wolfsen warns that Dutch companies using Clearview could also be subject to “hefty fines.” Clearview didn’t issue an objection to the Dutch DPA’s fine, so it is unable to launch an appeal.

This fine is far from the first time an entity has stood up against Clearview. In 2020, the LAPD banned its use, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued Clearview, with the settlement ending sales of the biometric database to any private companies. Italy and the UK have previously fined Clearview €20 million ($22 million) and £7.55 million ($10 million), respectively, and instructed the company to delete any data of its residents. Earlier this year, the EU also barred Clearview from untargeted face scraping on the internet.

Source: Clearview faces a €30.5 million for violating the GDPR

Scientists Detect Invisible Electric Field Around Earth For First Time

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An invisible, weak energy field wrapped around our planet Earth has finally been detected and measured.

It’s called the ambipolar field, an electric field first hypothesized more than 60 years ago

[…]

“Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field,” says astronomer Glyn Collinson of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

“Now that we’ve finally measured it, we can begin learning how it’s shaped our planet as well as others over time.”

Earth isn’t just a blob of dirt sitting inert in space. It’s surrounded by all sorts of fields. There’s the gravity field.

[…]

There’s also the magnetic field, which is generated by the rotating, conducting material in Earth’s interior, converting kinetic energy into the magnetic field that spins out into space.

[…]

In 1968, scientists described a phenomenon that we couldn’t have noticed until the space age. Spacecraft flying over Earth’s poles detected a supersonic wind of particles escaping from Earth’s atmosphere. The best explanation for this was a third, electric energy field.

“It’s called the ambipolar field and it’s an agent of chaos. It counters gravity, and it strips particles off into space,” Collinson explains in a video.

“But we’ve never been able to measure this before because we haven’t had the technology. So, we built the Endurance rocket ship to go looking for this great invisible force.”

[…]

Here’s how the ambipolar field was expected to work. Starting at an altitude of around 250 kilometers (155 miles), in a layer of the atmosphere called the ionosphere, extreme ultraviolet and solar radiation ionizes atmospheric atoms, breaking off negatively charged electrons and turning the atom into a positively charged ion.

The lighter electrons will try to fly off into space, while the heavier ions will try to sink towards the ground. But the plasma environment will try to maintain charge neutrality, which results in the emergence of an electric field between the electrons and the ions to tether them together.

This is called the ambipolar field because it works in both directions, with the ions supplying a downward pull and the electrons an upward one.

The result is that the atmosphere is puffed up; the increased altitude allows some ions to escape into space, which is what we see in the polar wind.

This ambipolar field would be incredibly weak, which is why Collinson and his team designed instrumentation to detect it. The Endurance mission, carrying this experiment, was launched in May 2022, reaching an altitude of 768.03 kilometers (477.23 miles) before falling back to Earth with its precious, hard-won data.

And it succeeded. It measured a change in electric potential of just 0.55 volts – but that was all that was needed.

“A half a volt is almost nothing – it’s only about as strong as a watch battery,” Collinson says. “But that’s just the right amount to explain the polar wind.”

That amount of charge is enough to tug on hydrogen ions with 10.6 times the strength of gravity, launching them into space at the supersonic speeds measured over Earth’s poles.

Oxygen ions, which are heavier than hydrogen ions, are also lofted higher, increasing the density of the ionosphere at high altitudes by 271 percent, compared to what its density would be without the ambipolar field.

[…]

The research has been published in Nature.

Source: Scientists Detect Invisible Electric Field Around Earth For First Time : ScienceAlert

Doughnut-shaped region found inside Earth’s core deepens understanding of planet’s magnetic field

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A doughnut-shaped region thousands of kilometers beneath our feet within Earth’s liquid core has been discovered by scientists from The Australian National University (ANU), providing new clues about the dynamics of our planet’s magnetic field.

The structure within Earth’s liquid core is found only at low latitudes and sits parallel to the equator. According to ANU seismologists, it has remained undetected until now.

The Earth has two core layers: the , a solid layer, and the outer core, a liquid layer. Surrounding the Earth’s core is the mantle. The newly discovered doughnut-shaped region is at the top of Earth’s outer core, where the liquid core meets the mantle.

Study co-author and ANU geophysicist, Professor Hrvoje Tkalčić, said the seismic waves detected are slower in the newly discovered region than in the rest of the liquid outer core.

[…]

“We don’t know the exact thickness of the doughnut, but we inferred that it reaches a few hundred kilometers beneath the core-mantle boundary.”

Rather than using traditional seismic wave observation techniques and observing signals generated by earthquakes within the first hour, the ANU scientists analyzed the similarities between waveforms many hours after the earthquake origin times, leading them to make the unique discovery.

“By understanding the geometry of the paths of the waves and how they traverse the outer core’s volume, we reconstructed their through the Earth, demonstrating that the newly discovered has low seismic speeds,” Professor Tkalčić said.

“The peculiar structure remained hidden until now as previous studies collected data with less volumetric coverage of the outer core by observing waves that were typically confined within one hour after the origin times of large earthquakes.

[…]

“Our findings are interesting because this low velocity within the liquid core implies that we have a high concentration of light chemical elements in these regions that would cause the seismic waves to slow down. These light elements, alongside temperature differences, help stir liquid in the ,” Professor Tkalčić said.

[…]

The research is published in Science Advances.

More information: Xiaolong Ma et al, Seismic low-velocity equatorial torus in the Earth’s outer core: Evidence from the late-coda correlation wavefield, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adn5562

Source: Doughnut-shaped region found inside Earth’s core deepens understanding of planet’s magnetic field

Your brain ages at different paces according to social and physical environments – especially fast with greater inequality

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Countries with greater inequalities — whether economic, pollution or disease-based — exhibited older brain ages, according to a study published in Nature Medicine, involving the University of Surrey.

The pace at which the brain ages can vary significantly among individuals, leading to a gap between the estimated biological age of the brain and the chronological age (the actual number of years a person has lived). This difference may be affected by several things, such as environmental factors like pollution and social factors like income or health inequalities, especially in older people and those with dementia. Until now, it was unclear how these combined factors could either accelerate or delay brain ageing across diverse geographical populations.

In the study, a team of international researchers developed ways to measure brain ageing using advanced brain clocks based on deep learning of brain networks. This study involved a diverse dataset of 5,306 participants from 15 countries, including Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) nations and non-LAC countries. By analysing data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), the researchers quantified brain age gaps in healthy individuals and those with neurodegenerative conditions such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI), Alzheimer’s disease, and frontotemporal lobe degeneration (FTLD).

Dr Daniel Abasolo, co-author of the study and Head of the Centre for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Surrey, said:

“Our research shows that in countries where inequality is higher, people’s brains tend to age faster, especially in areas of the brain most affected by ageing. We found that factors like socioeconomic inequality, air pollution, and the impact of diseases play a big role in this faster ageing process, particularly in poorer countries.”

Participants with a diagnosis of dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s disease, exhibited the most critical brain age gaps. The research also highlighted sex differences in brain ageing, with women in LAC countries showing greater brain age gaps, particularly in those with Alzheimer’s disease

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Story Source:

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Journal Reference:

  1. Sebastian Moguilner, Sandra Baez, Hernan Hernandez, Joaquín Migeot, Agustina Legaz, Raul Gonzalez-Gomez, Francesca R. Farina, Pavel Prado, Jhosmary Cuadros, Enzo Tagliazucchi, Florencia Altschuler, Marcelo Adrián Maito, María E. Godoy, Josephine Cruzat, Pedro A. Valdes-Sosa, Francisco Lopera, John Fredy Ochoa-Gómez, Alfredis Gonzalez Hernandez, Jasmin Bonilla-Santos, Rodrigo A. Gonzalez-Montealegre, Renato Anghinah, Luís E. d’Almeida Manfrinati, Sol Fittipaldi, Vicente Medel, Daniela Olivares, Görsev G. Yener, Javier Escudero, Claudio Babiloni, Robert Whelan, Bahar Güntekin, Harun Yırıkoğulları, Hernando Santamaria-Garcia, Alberto Fernández Lucas, David Huepe, Gaetano Di Caterina, Marcio Soto-Añari, Agustina Birba, Agustin Sainz-Ballesteros, Carlos Coronel-Oliveros, Amanuel Yigezu, Eduar Herrera, Daniel Abasolo, Kerry Kilborn, Nicolás Rubido, Ruaridh A. Clark, Ruben Herzog, Deniz Yerlikaya, Kun Hu, Mario A. Parra, Pablo Reyes, Adolfo M. García, Diana L. Matallana, José Alberto Avila-Funes, Andrea Slachevsky, María I. Behrens, Nilton Custodio, Juan F. Cardona, Pablo Barttfeld, Ignacio L. Brusco, Martín A. Bruno, Ana L. Sosa Ortiz, Stefanie D. Pina-Escudero, Leonel T. Takada, Elisa Resende, Katherine L. Possin, Maira Okada de Oliveira, Alejandro Lopez-Valdes, Brain Lawlor, Ian H. Robertson, Kenneth S. Kosik, Claudia Duran-Aniotz, Victor Valcour, Jennifer S. Yokoyama, Bruce Miller, Agustin Ibanez. Brain clocks capture diversity and disparities in aging and dementia across geographically diverse populations. Nature Medicine, 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41591-024-03209-x

Source: Your brain ages at different paces according to social and physical environments

Proposal to spy on all chat messages back on European political agenda

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Europe is going to talk again about the possibility of checking all chat messages of citizens for child abuse. On September 4, a (secret) consultation will take place, says Patrick Breyer , former MEP for the Pirate Party.

A few years ago, the European Commission came up with the plan to monitor all chat messages of citizens. The European Parliament did not like the proposal of the European Commission and came up with its own proposal, which excludes monitoring of end-to-end encrypted services.

At the end of June, EU President Belgium came up with its own version of the proposal. Namely that only the uploading of photos, video and references to them would be checked. This proposal did not get enough votes.

Germany and Poland are the biggest opponents within the EU anyway. The Netherlands, Estonia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Austria would abstain from voting, according to Breyer.

A coalition of almost fifty civil society organisations, including the Dutch Offlimits, Bits of Freedom, Vrijschrift.org and ECNL, called on the European Commission in July to withdraw the chat control proposal and focus on measures that really protect children.

Source: Proposal to control chat messages back on European political agenda – Emerce

Guys, stop trying to be Big Brother in the EU – it changes how people behave and not for the better.