PlayStation will no longer be removing over 1,300 Discovery TV shows from its platform next month. From a report: Sony had previously announced that users will not be able to watch Discovery content on PlayStation from December 31, even if they had already purchased it. However, the firm now says that due to an ‘updated licensing agreement’ with Warner Bros — which owns the Discovery brand — consumers will now be able to access their previously purchased shows ‘for at least the next 30 months.’

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – PlayStation Will Not Delete Discovery TV Shows After All

In 2005, the reclassification of pseudoephedrine to behind-the-counter status led to widespread use of oral phenylephrine in OTC decongestants, despite evidence of its ineffectiveness. Randy Hatton, a clinical professor in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Florida, and his colleague worked to bring this issue to the FDA’s attention, revealing loopholes in the regulatory process for older OTC drugs. Hatton writes in an opinion piece for Scientific American: Before the FDA required that drugs had to be proven effective, it determined whether OTC drugs were effective through expert panels that reviewed existing data. These OTC monographs establish what older OTC ingredients can be marketed without FDA approval. The oral decongestant monograph panel reviewed a few published studies and multiple unpublished studies for phenylephrine. Of the unpublished studies, only four studies showed oral phenylephrine was effective, while seven showed it was no better than placebo. We requested copies of all evidence used by the nasal decongestant review panel via a Freedom of Information Act request and performed a systematic review and meta-analysis ourselves. […]

The FDA has multiple regulatory processes for different types of medicinal compounds. People are perhaps most familiar with the New Drug Application process, which leads to clinical trials for prescription drug approvals. However, many OTC or nonprescription drugs are regulated differently. In fact, a law passed in 1951, the Durham-Humphrey Amendment to the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, created the categories of prescription and nonprescription drugs. In 1962, the act was amended again so that drugs had to be shown to be effective, hence the requirement for well-done clinical trials. But what about the drugs that were approved before 1962? This is the loophole that some OTC drugs fall through. For prescription drugs, FDA tried to address pre-1962 approvals through a review of over 3,000 prescription drugs. Most of those drugs have now been reviewed and addressed, but there are still unapproved prescription drugs on the market today, such as an extended-release form of oral nitroglycerin. For nonprescription drugs, FDA established the OTC monograph process 10 years after the 1962 amendment to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which required products not proven effective to be reconsidered. FDA formed advisory panels grouping hundreds of ingredients into 26 categories based on the products’ uses. After gathering all available information, both published and unpublished, from manufacturers, the advisory panels issued final reports to FDA about whether these ingredients were GRASE (generally recognized as safe and effective), not GRASE, or inconclusive. GRASE ingredients can be used in nonprescription drugs without FDA approval if the use matches the monograph. “The oral phenylephrine example shows that FDA needs more funding to look at these old drugs,” concludes Hatton. “We need public funds to support independent researchers who want to examine these products objectively. The government should be able to spend millions to save consumers billions on ineffective products. Companies that market these products have no incentive to prove they don’t work. Nonprescription drugs must be effective — not just safe.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – How Two Pharmacists Figured Out That Decongestants Don’t Work

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Los Angeles Times: It was the late 1980s when Gary Mund felt his pinky tremble. At first it seemed like a random occurrence, but pretty quickly he realized something was seriously wrong. Within two years, Mund — a crew worker with the Eastern Municipal Water District in Riverside County — was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The illness would eventually consume much of his life, clouding his speech, zapping most of his motor skills and taking away his ability to work and drive. “It sucks,” said Mund, 69. He speaks tersely, because every word is a hard-won battle. “I was told the herbicide wouldn’t hurt you.”

The herbicide is paraquat, an extremely powerful weed killer that Mund sprayed on vegetation as part of his job from about 1980 to 1985. Mund contends the product is responsible for his disease, but the manufacturer denies there is a causal link between the chemical and Parkinson’s. Paraquat is manufactured by Syngenta, a Swiss-based company owned by the Chinese government. The chemical is banned in at least 58 countries — including China and Switzerland — due to its toxicity, yet it continues to be a popular herbicide in California and other parts of the United States. But research suggests the chemical may cross the blood-brain barrier in a manner that triggers Parkinson’s disease, a progressive, neurodegenerative disorder that affects movement. Now, Mund is among thousands of workers suing Syngenta seeking damages and hoping to see the chemical banned.

Since 2017, more than 3,600 lawsuits have been filed in state and federal courts seeking damages from exposure to paraquat products, according to Syngenta’s 2022 financial report (PDF). […] Paraquat is 28 times more toxic than another controversial herbicide, Roundup, according to a report from the Pesticide Action Network. (Roundup has been banned in several parts of California, including a 2019 moratorium by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors forbidding its use by county departments.) Paraquat also has other known health effects. It is listed as “highly toxic” on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s website, which says that “one small sip can be fatal and there is no antidote.” The EPA is currently reviewing paraquat’s approval status. However, both the EPA and Syngenta cited a 2020 U.S. government Agricultural Health Study that found there is no clear link between paraquat exposure and Parkinson’s disease. A 2021 review of reviews similarly found that there is no causal relationship.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – California Workers Say Herbicide Is Giving Them Parkinson’s

Remy Tumin reports via the New York Times: It was supposed to be what a fan described as a “loving homage” to his hero, the author J.R.R. Tolkien, and to “The Lord of the Rings,” which he called “one of the most defining experiences of his life.” A judge in California had another view. The fan, Demetrious Polychron of Santa Monica, Calif., violated copyright protections this year when he wrote and published a sequel to the epic “Rings” series, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson of the Central District of California ruled last week. In a summary judgment, Judge Wilson found “direct evidence of copying” and barred Polychron from further distributing the book or any others in a planned series. He also ordered Polychron to destroy all electronic and physical copies of the published work, “The Fellowship of the King,” by Sunday. As of Wednesday, Amazon and Barnes & Noble were no longer listing the book for sale online. Steven Maier, a lawyer for the Tolkien estate, said the injunction was “an important success” for protecting Tolkien’s work. “This case involved a serious infringement of The Lord of the Rings copyright, undertaken on a commercial basis,” he said. “The estate hopes that the award of a permanent injunction and attorneys’ fees will be sufficient to dissuade others who may have similar intentions.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Tolkien Estate Wins Court Order To Destroy Fan’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Sequel

The next version of Android could give you an estimate of your battery’s remaining capacity, which naturally degrades over time. “Android 14 laid the initial groundwork for the OS to track battery health information, but Android 15 could actually bring that information in front of users,” reports Android Authority. It could also tell you whether your device’s battery has been replaced. From the report: The manufacture date and cycle count aren’t the only battery-related statistics that Android 14 exposes to apps through new APIs, though. Other battery health details like the date of first use, charging policy, charging status, and state of health are also available. The state of health is particularly interesting because it’s an estimate of the battery’s current full charge capacity, expressed as a percentage relative to the battery’s rated capacity. For example, if your Pixel 8 battery’s state of health is measured at 90%, that means its remaining full charge capacity is estimated to be about 4118mAh (compared to the rated 4575mAh).

The Settings app currently doesn’t show the battery state of health, but that’s set to change in the future, as the latest version of the Settings Services app (an extension to the Settings app on Pixel and other devices) found within Android 14 QPR2 Beta 2 has a new “battery health” page that is set to show the state of health. […] Strings within the APK suggest this page will show you the “estimated percentage of charge the battery can currently hold compared to when it was new” (i.e. the state of health) before and after “recalibration” of the battery. We don’t have the exact details on what “recalibration” entails, but given that one string suggests the “process may take a few weeks,” we’re guessing that it’s simply the system collecting data over a longer period to provide a more accurate estimate of the battery capacity. Meanwhile, the “initial battery health values” are “based on lab results” and hence “may vary from your actual battery state.”

[…] We also learned that the Settings app itself will surface “tips” to the user when either the battery capacity is degraded or can’t be detected, so the user doesn’t have to manually check the “battery health” page. Lastly, we learned that Google is working on exposing more battery-related information to the OS, such as the part status and the serial number. […] At the very least, we do know that Android will support reading the battery’s part status and serial number, provided the battery exposes that information to the OS, and the vendor implements the new version of the Android health HAL. The health HAL is the software responsible for bridging the gap between the OS APIs that read battery/charging information (i.e. everything we talked about before) with the software that controls the battery/charging chips. Version 2.0 of the health HAL needs to be implemented to support all the new Android 14 battery health APIs like state of health, which is why so few devices support that right now.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Android May Soon Tell You When It’s Time To Replace Your Phone’s Battery

Velcroman1 writes: Intel’s new generation of “Meteor Lake” mobile CPUs herald a new age of “AI PCs,” computers that can handle inference workloads such as generating images or transcribing audio without an Internet connection. Officially named “Intel Core Ultra” processors, the chips are the first to feature an NPU (neural processing unit) that’s purpose-built to handle AI tasks. But there are few ways to actually test this feature at present: software will need to be rewritten to specifically direct operations at the NPU.
Intel has steered testers toward its Open Visual Inference and Neural Network Optimization (OpenVINO) AI toolkit. With those benchmarks, Tom’s Hardware tested the new Intel chips against AMD — and surprisingly, AMD chips often came out on top, even on these hand-selected benchmarks. Clearly, optimization will take some time!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Ryzen vs. Meteor Lake: AMD’s AI Often Wins, Even On Intel’s Hand-Picked Tests

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday proposed sweeping changes to bolster the key federal rule that has protected children’s privacy online, in one of the most significant attempts by the U.S. government to strengthen consumer privacy in more than a decade. The changes are intended to fortify the rules underlying the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, a law that restricts the online tracking of youngsters by services like social media apps, video game platforms, toy retailers and digital advertising networks. Regulators said the moves would “shift the burden” of online safety from parents to apps and other digital services while curbing how platforms may use and monetize children’s data.

The proposed changes would require certain online services to turn off targeted advertising by default for children under 13. They would prohibit the online services from using personal details like a child’s cellphone number to induce youngsters to stay on their platforms longer. That means online services would no longer be able to use personal data to bombard young children with push notifications. The proposed updates would also strengthen security requirements for online services that collect children’s data as well as limit the length of time online services could keep that information. And they would limit the collection of student data by learning apps and other educational-tech providers, by allowing schools to consent to the collection of children’s personal details only for educational purposes, not commercial purposes. […]

The F.T.C. began reviewing the children’s privacy rule in 2019, receiving more than 175,000 comments from tech and advertising industry trade groups, video content developers, consumer advocacy groups and members of Congress. The resulting proposal (PDF) runs more than 150 pages. Proposed changes include narrowing an exception that allows online services to collect persistent identification codes for children for certain internal operations, like product improvement, consumer personalization or fraud prevention, without parental consent. The proposed changes would prohibit online operators from employing such user-tracking codes to maximize the amount of time children spend on their platforms. That means online services would not be able to use techniques like sending mobile phone notifications “to prompt the child to engage with the site or service, without verifiable parental consent,” according to the proposal. How online services would comply with the changes is not yet known. Members of the public have 60 days to comment on the proposals, after which the commission will vote.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – US Regulators Propose New Online Privacy Safeguards For Children

Susan Zhuang, a Democrat who will soon represent the 43rd Council District in Brooklyn, New York, admitted to using AI when answering questions from a local news publication, according to a report by the New York Post. From a report: In a text message sent to the Post, Zhuang wrote that she uses “AI as a tool to help foster deeper understanding” because English is not her first language. The responses in question were included in an article from City & State, which asked local council member-elects to fill out a questionnaire about their personal interests and policies.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – New York City Council Member-Elect Used AI To Answer Questions

Sirius XM Radio was sued by New York state for making it difficult for customers to cancel subscriptions to the broadcaster’s online radio services, in violation of state and federal consumer protection laws. From a report: A probe by the AG’s office found that Sirius trains employees to keep customers seeking to cancel on the phone or in a chat for a “frustrating” six-part conversation that includes asking them a series of questions and pitching as many as five “retention offers,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said Wednesday in a statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Sirius XM Is Sued by NY Over ‘Frustrating’ Cancellation Process

Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft’s AI-powered chatbot, can now compose songs thanks to an integration with GenAI music app Suno. From a report: Users can enter prompts into Copilot like “Create a pop song about adventures with your family” and have Suno, via a plug-in, bring their musical ideas to life. From a single sentence, Suno can generate complete songs — including lyrics, instrumentals and singing voices.

Copilot users can access the Suno integration by launching Microsoft Edge, visiting Copilot.Microsoft.com, logging in with their Microsoft account and enabling the Suno plug-in or clicking on the Suno logo that says “Make music with Suno.” […] AI algorithms “learn” from existing music to produce similar effects, a fact with which not all artists — or GenAI users — are comfortable, especially in cases where artists don’t consent to having an AI algorithm train on their music and didn’t receive compensation for it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Microsoft Copilot Gets a Music Creation Feature via Suno Integration

Most companies are not ready to deploy generative AI at scale because they lack strong data infrastructure or the controls needed to make sure the technology is used safely, according to the chief executive of the consultancy Accenture. From a report: The most hyped technology of 2023 is in an experimental phase at most companies and macroeconomic uncertainty is holding back IT spending generally, Julie Sweet told the Financial Times in an interview ahead of the company publishing quarterly results on Tuesday. Accenture reported another big jump in revenues from generative AI projects in the three months to November 30, with $450mn in bookings compared with $300mn over the previous six months. But they remain small relative to group sales of $64bn annually.

Corporate executives are keen to deploy the technology to understand data across their organisation better or to automate more customer service, Sweet said. “The thing that is going to hold it back, though, isâ…âmost companies do not have mature data capabilities and if you can’t use your data, you can’t use AI. That said, in three to five years we expect this to be a big part of our business.” Accenture and other consulting groups have boasted of multibillion-dollar investments in generative AI, including hiring and training staff, in the hope of a windfall from deploying the technology to clients across the world.

Sweet said executives were being âoeprudentâ in rolling out the technology, amid concerns over how to protect proprietary information and customer data and questions about the accuracy of outputs from generative AI models. “We are still at the stage where most CEOs, asked if there is someone in their organisation who can tell them where AI is being used, what the risks are and how they’re being mitigated, the answer is still ‘no.'”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Accenture Chief Says Most Companies Not Ready for AI Rollout

The future of water may be changing in California. The state Water Resources Control Board has signed off on regulations to turn more recycled wastewater from our homes into drinking water. From a report: The regulations were approved unanimously by the board on Tuesday and now give the go-ahead for local water agencies to plan to turn wastewater into water we can drink through a process called Direct Potable Reuse. Darrin Polhemus, the division of drinking water director with the State Water Resources Control Board, said this approval was a very big step for California. “It really will be the highest quality water delivered in the state when it’s done,” Polhemus said.

California’s new rules would let, but not require, local water agencies to take wastewater from toilets or showers, treat it, and then put it right back into the drinking water system. “Direct potable reuse is just a really critical strategy for our state to have as we move to this new hydrology that we have, and as everyone has already said, increasing our resilience and reducing our reliance on imported water,” said Laurel Firestone, board member for the State Water Resources Control Board.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – New Regulations Will Turn California Wastewater To Drinking Water

A worrying number of UK authorities are still unaware of the impending switch-off of 2G and 3G mobile networks, according to Local Government Association (LGA) figures. From a report: While 38 percent of respondents were fully aware, 27 percent were only partially aware, and 7 percent had no idea at all that the axe would be falling by 2033 at the latest. The numbers worsened when the researchers spoke to respondents in senior management. Almost half (48 percent) were “partially aware” the UK’s 2G and 3G mobile networks were due to be switched off and 14 percent were not at all aware.

The actual switch-off will happen over the next few years. UK mobile operators have told government they do not intend to offer 2G and 3G mobile networks past 2033 at the latest, and there is a high likelihood that some networks will be shut down earlier. The UK government said it welcomes plans to end services ahead of time. Vodafone, for example, intends to pull the plug on 3G once and for all from January 2024. Although most consumers, with their 4G and 5G devices, will likely be unaware of the end when it comes, the same cannot be said of local authorities. According to the survey, almost two-thirds of respondents (63 percent) reported that their authority was still using devices or services reliant on 2G and 3G networks.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – UK Officials Caught Napping Ahead of 2G and 3G Doomsday

samleecole writes: The LAION-5B machine learning dataset used by Google, Stable Diffusion, and other major AI products has been removed by the organization that created it after a Stanford study found that it contained 3,226 suspected instances of child sexual abuse material, 1,008 of which were externally validated.

LAION told 404 Media on Tuesday that out of “an abundance of caution,” it was taking down its datasets temporarily “to ensure they are safe before republishing them.” According to a new study by the Stanford Internet Observatory shared with 404 Media ahead of publication, the researchers found the suspected instances of CSAM through a combination of perceptual and cryptographic hash-based detection and analysis of the images themselves.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Largest Dataset Powering AI Images Removed After Discovery of Child Sexual Abuse Material

The European Union on Wednesday added three adult content companies – Pornhub, Stripchat and XVideos – to its list of firms subject to stringent regulations under new online content rules. From a report: The new rules, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), require companies to conduct risk management, undergo external and independent auditing, and share data with authorities and researchers. In April, the EU designated five Alphabet subsidiaries, two Meta Platforms units, two Microsoft businesses, X and Alibaba’s AliExpress among 19 companies under the rules. Such designated companies will have to do more to tackle disinformation, give more protection and choice to users and ensure stronger protection for children or risk fines of as much as 6% of their global turnover. “Pornhub, Stripchat and XVideos meet the user thresholds to fall under stricter #DSA obligations,” the bloc’s industry chief Thierry Breton said. “Creating a safer online environment for our children is an enforcement priority under the DSA.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – EU Targets Pornhub, XVideos, Stripchat Under New Content Rules

Bird Global, the company that pioneered on-street electric scooter rentals, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection [Editor’s note: the link is paywalled; alternative source] in Florida, five years after becoming the fastest start-up ever to reach a so-called “unicorn” valuation above $1bn. From a report: In September, the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading in Bird, which went public via a blank-cheque company in 2021, after its market capitalisation fell below a $15mn threshold. “We are making progress towards profitability and aim to accelerate that progress by right-sizing our capital structure through this restructuring,” Bird interim chief executive Michael Washinushi said on Wednesday.

Bird said it would operate as normal during the restructuring process and that its lenders had entered into a “stalking horse” sale agreement. The company aims to complete a sale process within 120 days. Its European and Canadian businesses are not part of the bankruptcy filing. Founded by former Uber and Lyft executive Travis VanderZanden in Los Angeles in 2017, Bird spawned dozens of copycat companies around the world. But e-scooter rentals have struggled to reach consistent profitability, amid regulatory strictures, safety concerns, and high capital and operating costs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Electric Scooter Rental Pioneer Bird Files for Bankruptcy

A U.S. computer scientist on Wednesday lost his bid to register patents over inventions created by his artificial intelligence system in a landmark case in Britain about whether AI can own patent rights. From a report: Stephen Thaler wanted to be granted two patents in the UK for inventions he says were devised by his “creativity machine” called DABUS. His attempt to register the patents was refused by Britain’s Intellectual Property Office on the grounds that the inventor must be a human or a company, rather than a machine. Thaler appealed to the UK’s Supreme Court, which on Wednesday unanimously rejected his appeal as under UK patent law “an inventor must be a natural person.”

“This appeal is not concerned with the broader question whether technical advances generated by machines acting autonomously and powered by AI should be patentable,” Judge David Kitchin said in the court’s written ruling. “Nor is it concerned with the question whether the meaning of the term ‘inventor’ ought to be expanded … to include machines powered by AI which generate new and non-obvious products and processes which may be thought to offer benefits over products and processes which are already known.” Thaler’s lawyers said in a statement that “the judgment establishes that UK patent law is currently wholly unsuitable for protecting inventions generated autonomously by AI machines.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – AI Cannot Be Patent ‘Inventor,’ UK Supreme Court Rules in Landmark Case

jd writes: Ars Technica is reporting a newly-discovered man-in-the-middle attack against SSH. This only works if you are using “ChaCha20-Poly1305” or “CBC with Encrypt-then-MAC”, so it isn’t a universal flaw. The CVE numbers for this vulnerability are CVE-2023-48795, CVE-2023-46445, and CVE-2023-46446. From TFA: At its core, Terrapin works by altering or corrupting information transmitted in the SSH data stream during the handshake — the earliest stage of a connection, when the two parties negotiate the encryption parameters they will use to establish a secure connection. The attack targets the BPP, short for Binary Packet Protocol, which is designed to ensure that adversaries with an active position can’t add or drop messages exchanged during the handshake. Terrapin relies on prefix truncation, a class of attack that removes specific messages at the very beginning of a data stream.

The Terrapin attack is a novel cryptographic attack targeting the integrity of the SSH protocol, the first-ever practical attack of its kind, and one of the very few attacks against SSH at all. The attack exploits weaknesses in the specification of SSH paired with widespread algorithms, namely ChaCha20-Poly1305 and CBC-EtM, to remove an arbitrary number of protected messages at the beginning of the secure channel, thus breaking integrity. In practice, the attack can be used to impede the negotiation of certain security-relevant protocol extensions. Moreover, Terrapin enables more advanced exploitation techniques when combined with particular implementation flaws, leading to a total loss of confidentiality and integrity in the worst case.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Attack Discovered Against SSH

prisoninmate shares a report from 9to5Linux: Announced in early August and initially planned for the end of the month, the Fedora Asahi Remix distribution is finally here for those who want to install the Fedora Linux operating system on their Apple Silicon Macs. Previously a remix of Arch Linux ARM, the Fedora Asahi Remix distribution is the result of a multi-year collaboration between the Asahi Linux project and the Fedora Project, enabling you to have a proper daily driver on your Apple Silicon Mac thanks to Fedora Linux’s excellent 64-bit ARM support.

The distro is based on the latest Fedora Linux 39 release and ships with the KDE Plasma 5.27 LTS desktop environment by default, using Wayland. This promises a smooth Linux desktop experience on Apple hardware similar to macOS. Fedora Asahi Remix also comes with XWayland for those who want to run X11 apps. In addition, it features non-conformant OpenGL 3.3 support including GPU-accelerated geometry shaders and transform feedback, PipeWire by default with WirePlumber, as well as the Calamares graphical installer. You can download and install Fedora Asahi Remix here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Fedora Asahi Remix Officially Released For Apple Silicon Macs

When hurricane Larry made landfall in the Atlantic in 2021, it was depositing over 100,000 microplastics per square meter of land per day. The findings have been published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment. Wired reports: As hurricane Larry curved north in the Atlantic in 2021, sparing the eastern seaboard of the United States, a special instrument was waiting for it on the coast of Newfoundland. Because hurricanes feed on warm ocean water, scientists wondered whether such a storm could pick up microplastics from the sea surface and deposit them when it made landfall. Larry was literally a perfect storm: Because it hadn’t touched land before reaching the island, anything it dropped would have been scavenged from the water or air, as opposed to, say, a highly populated city, where you’d expect to find lots of microplastics. […]

The instrument in a clearing on Newfoundland was quite simple: a glass cylinder, holding a little bit of ultrapure water, securely attached to the ground with wooden stakes. Every six hours before, during, and after the hurricane, the researchers would come and empty out the water, which would have collected any particles falling — both with and without rain — on Newfoundland. “It’s just a place that experiences a lot of extreme weather events,” says Earth scientist Anna Ryan of Dalhousie University, lead author of the paper. “Also, it’s fairly remote, and it’s got a pretty low population density. So you don’t have a bunch of nearby sources of microplastics.”

The team found that even before and after Larry, tens of thousands of microplastics fell per square meter of land per day. But when the hurricane hit, that figure spiked up to 113,000. “We found a lot of microplastics deposited during the peak of the hurricane,” says Ryan, “but also, overall deposition was relatively high compared to previous studies.” These studies were done during normal conditions, but in more remote locations, she says. The researchers also used a technique known as back trajectory modeling — basically simulating where the air that arrived at the instrument had been previously. That confirmed that Larry had picked up the microplastics at sea, lofted them into the air, and dumped them on Newfoundland. […] The Newfoundland study notes that Larry happened to pass over the garbage patch of the North Atlantic Gyre, where currents accumulate floating plastic.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Hurricane Larry Dropped Over 100,000 Microplastics Per Square Meter Per Day, Study Finds