Submission + - Beavers are undermining dykes in the Netherlands (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'Reintroduced for environmental reasons, the beaver has made an amazing comeback in the Netherlands. Extinct in the early 19th century, it was reintroduced in 1988, and now there are an estimated 7,000 beavers roaming around.now in danger of causing serious flooding.

'But there’s a significant downside to the booming Dutch beaver population. Beavers are increasingly digging burrows and tunnels under roads, railways and – even more worryingly – in dykes. For a country where a quarter of the land sits below sea level, this is not a minor problem – especially as beavers are not exactly holding back when digging.

“We’ve found tunnels stretching up to 17 metres into a dyke. Wide enough for a grown man to fit in. That’s alarming,” says Jelmer Krom of the Rivierenland water board. Rivierenland is a region in the middle of the Netherlands, crisscrossed by big rivers, where dykes are crucial for keeping high water at bay. If a major dyke gives way, it would cause a serious flood affecting thousands of people.'

Submission + - Smelling This One Specific Scent Can Boost The Brain's Gray Matter (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: According to a new study, wearing the right kind of perfume or cologne can enlarge your brain's gray matter.

Researchers from Kyoto University and the University of Tsukuba in Japan asked 28 women to wear a specific rose scent oil on their clothing for a month, with another 22 volunteers enlisted as controls who put on plain water instead.

Magnetic resonance imaging ( MRI) scans showed boosts in the gray matter volume of the rose scent participants.

Submission + - A stunning first look at the viruses inside us (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: You are mostly but not entirely human. If we crunch the numbers, 8% of your genome actually comes from viruses that got stranded there. This viral detritus is a souvenir from our evolutionary past, a reminder that viruses have been with us from the very beginning.

Submission + - Our Thumbs Could Explain Why Human Brains Became so Powerful (zmescience.com) 1

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The researchers expected that longer thumbs would connect to the cerebellum, the brain’s coordination center. Instead, they found the strongest link was with the neocortex — the sprawling brain region that processes sensory information, plans actions, and fuels consciousness.

Dexterity didn’t just give our ancestors better grip; it demanded more advanced thinking. Dr Baker explained: “We imagine an evolutionary scenario in which a primate or human has become more intelligent, and with that comes the ability to think about action planning, think about what you are doing with your hands.”

Even when the scientists removed humans from the dataset, the pattern held across lemurs, monkeys, and apes. Long thumbs predicted large brains.

Submission + - Trump and RFK Jr. to Ban COVID-19 Vaccine 'Within Months' 1

Submitted by ukoda
ukoda writes: The Daily Beast has this worrying article:

The Trump administration will move to pull the COVID vaccine off the U.S. market “within months,” one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s closest associates has told the Daily Beast.

Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who has repeatedly claimed in the face of scientific consensus that the vaccines are more dangerous than the virus, told the Daily Beast that Kennedy’s stance is shared by “influential” members of President Donald Trump’s family. Like Kennedy himself, no Trumps hold any scientific qualifications.

Malhotra is a leading adviser to the controversial lobby group Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Action, which is seen as an external arm of Kennedy’s agenda as Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary.

He told the Beast that many of those closest to RFK Jr. have told him they “cannot understand” why the vaccine continues to be prescribed, and that a decision to remove the vaccine from the U.S. market pending further research will come “within months,” even if it is likely to cause “fear of chaos” and bring with it major legal ramifications.

Just glad I live in a country where the Covid vaccine is free and encouraged.

Submission + - US fighter pilots try taking directions from AI for the first time (semafor.com) 1

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: US fighter pilots took directions from an AI system for the first time in a test that could drastically change combat tactics. Fighter pilots in action typically communicate with ground support who monitor radar and tell pilots where to fly. During the Air Force and Navy’s test this month, pilots instead consulted with Raft AI’s “air battle manager” technology to confirm their flight path was on track and to receive faster reports of nearby enemy aircraft.

Submission + - Developer Unlocks Echelon Exercise Bikes But Can't Legally Release Software (404media.co)

Submitted by samleecole
samleecole writes: An app developer has jailbroken Echelon exercise bikes to restore functionality that the company put behind a paywall last month, but copyright laws prevent him from being allowed to legally release it.

Last month, Peloton competitor Echelon pushed a firmware update to its exercise equipment that forces its machines to connect to the company’s servers in order to work properly. Echelon was popular in part because it was possible to connect Echelon bikes, treadmills, and rowing machines to free or cheap third-party apps and collect information like pedaling power, distance traveled, and other basic functionality that one might want from a piece of exercise equipment. With the new firmware update, the machines work only with constant internet access and getting anything beyond extremely basic functionality requires an Echelon subscription, which can cost hundreds of dollars a year.

Submission + - Google AIO in Violation of it's Own Spam Policies? (x.com)

Submitted by TheWho79
TheWho79 writes: A viral post on Twitter/X by Nate Hake points out that Google AI overviews violates most of Google content guidelines.

-No first-hand experience -Uses extensive automation -No expertise -Primarily summarizes what others have written

Screen shots from the Google guidelines, paint a damning picture of Google AIO as spam. In fact, many commentors said that Google AIO actually violate most — if not all — Googles own guidelines.

Submission + - Bimodularity reveals direction of influence in complex systems (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: For decades, researchers have developed powerful tools to uncover communities in networks: clusters of tightly interconnected nodes. But these tools work best for undirected networks, where connections are mutual.

When it comes to directed networks—where influence, information, or traffic flows from one point to another—the concept of a "community" becomes much harder to define. Existing methods often ignore direction or use it inconsistently. A new work out of EPFL and University of Geneva redefines what a community means in a directed graph—capturing both who belongs together and how information flows between them.

Enter bimodularity. By using a clever mathematical maneuver, researchers at Dimitri Van De Ville's Laboratory of Medical Image Processing and Analysis have broken the code. In one elegant, algorithmic sweep, they have added the ever-elusive directionality to network analysis. In other words, they could now detect not only which cities empty out in summer, but where these communities tend to go to find a beach and parasol.

"With bimodularity, we can finally distinguish senders from receivers in a network. That means finer-grained detail in how communities interact—who's sending, and who's receiving," says Van de Ville. And when we can detect who is sending and receiving, we can discover where someone is going—or who is following and who is being followed.

Submission + - Worms can't solve PVC problem: Analysis finds no sign of biochemical degradation (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: In a study led by Ph.D. student Zahra Mohammadizadeh Tahroudi, researchers from UWA's School of Molecular Sciences tested whether mealworms and superworms (insect larvae of Tenebrio molitor and Zophobas morio) could metabolize polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a highly chlorinated plastic widely used in pipes, flooring and consumer goods.

While the larvae readily consumed PVC, especially when it was softened with the common plasticizer dioctyl phthalate, detailed chemical analysis revealed no signs of biochemical degradation. Instead, the PVC proved actively toxic, with larvae showing reduced growth and survival.

Submission + - Reading For Fun Is Plummeting in The US, And Experts Are Concerned (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: When's the last time you settled down with a good book, just because you enjoyed it? A new survey shows reading as a pastime is becoming dramatically less popular in the US, which correlates with an increased consumption of other digital media, like social media and streaming services.

The survey was carried out by researchers from the University of Florida and the University of London, and charts a 40 percent decrease in daily reading for pleasure across the years 2003-2023, based on responses from 236,270 US adults.

"This is not just a small dip – it's a sustained, steady decline of about 3 percent per year," says Jill Sonke, director for the Center for the Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida. "It's significant, and it's deeply concerning."

The number of US people reading for pleasure every day peaked in 2004 at 28 percent, the researchers found, but by 2023 this was down to 16 percent. There was a silver lining though: those people who are still reading are reading for slightly longer on average.

Submission + - SpaceX succesfully launches Starship Test Flight 10 (spacex.com) 1

Submitted by Zitchas
Zitchas writes: After stopping the launch on Sunday due to a problem with ground systems, and then not being allowed to start on Monday due to storms; Starship flight 10 successfully launched and landed as planned in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday. The flight included a whole range of test items, including different tile configurations and new internal systems. There were some concerning moments, but the ship made it through. A fair amount of fire, but it successfully landed right next to the buoy cam.

Submission + - Scientists just created spacetime crystals made of knotted light (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Researchers have developed a blueprint for weaving hopfions—complex, knot-like light structures—into repeating spacetime crystals. By exploiting two-color beams, they can generate ordered chains and lattices with tunable topology, potentially revolutionizing data storage, communications, and photonic processing.

Submission + - New Sni5Gect Attack Crashes Phones + Downgrades 5G to 4G w/o rogue base station (thehackernews.com)

Submitted by beadon
beadon writes: A team of academics has devised a novel attack that can be used to downgrade a 5G connection to a lower generation without relying on a rogue base station (gNB).

The attack, per the ASSET (Automated Systems SEcuriTy) Research Group at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), relies on a new open-source software toolkit named Sni5Gect (short for "Sniffing 5G Inject") that's designed to sniff unencrypted messages sent between the base station and the user equipment (UE, i.e., a phone) and inject messages to the target UE over-the-air.

The framework can be used to carry out attacks such as crashing the UE modem, downgrading to earlier generations of networks, fingerprinting, or authentication bypass, according to Shijie Luo, Matheus Garbelini, Sudipta Chattopadhyay, and Jianying Zhou.

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