A new study warns that toxic Martian dust contains fine particles and harmful substances like silica and metals that pose serious health risks to astronauts, making missions to Mars more dangerous than previously thought. The Guardian reports: During Apollo missions to the moon, astronauts suffered from exposure to lunar dust. It clung to spacesuits and seeped into the lunar landers, causing coughing, runny eyes and irritated throats. Studies showed that chronic health effects would result from prolonged exposure. Martian dust isn’t as sharp and abrasive as lunar dust, but it does have the same tendency to stick to everything, and the fine particles (about 4% the width of a human hair) can penetrate deep into lungs and enter the bloodstream. Toxic substances in the dust include silica, gypsum and various metals.

“A mission to Mars does not have the luxury of rapid return to Earth for treatment,” the researchers write in the journal GeoHealth. And the 40-minute communication delay will limit the usefulness of remote medical support from Earth. Instead, the researchers stress that limiting exposure to dust is essential, requiring air filters, self-cleaning space suits and electrostatic repulsion devices, for example.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A concert on Monday night at New York’s Radio City Music Hall was a special occasion for Frank Miller: his parents’ wedding anniversary. He didn’t end up seeing the show — and before he could even get past security, he was informed that he was in fact banned for life from the venue and all other properties owned by Madison Square Garden (MSG). After scanning his ticket and promptly being pulled aside by security, Miller was told by staff that he was barred from the MSG properties for an incident at the Garden in 2021. But Miller says he hasn’t been to the venue in nearly two decades.

“They hand me a piece of paper letting me know that I’ve been added to a ban list,” Miller says. “There’s a trespass notice if I ever show up on any MSG property ever again,” which includes venues like Radio City, the Beacon Theatre, the Sphere, and the Chicago Theatre. He was baffled at first. Then it dawned on him: this was probably about a T-shirt he designed years ago. MSG Entertainment won’t say what happened with Miller or how he was picked out of the crowd, but he suspects he was identified via controversial facial recognition systems that the company deploys at its venues.

In 2017, 1990s New York Knicks star Charles Oakley was forcibly removed from his seat near Knicks owner and Madison Square Garden CEO James Dolan. The high-profile incident later spiraled into an ongoing legal battle. For Miller, Oakley was an “integral” part of the ’90s Knicks, he says. With his background in graphic design, he made a shirt in the style of the old team logo that read, “Ban Dolan” — a reference to the infamous scuffle. A few years later, in 2021, a friend of Miller’s wore a Ban Dolan shirt to a Knicks game and was kicked out and banned from future events. That incident spawned ESPN segments and news articles and validated what many fans saw as a pettiness on Dolan and MSG’s part for going after individual fans who criticized team ownership. “Frank Miller Jr. made threats against an MSG executive on social media and produced and sold merchandise that was offensive in nature,” Mikyl Cordova, executive vice president of communications and marketing for the company, said in an emailed statement. “His behavior was disrespectful and disruptive and in violation of our code of conduct.”

Miller responded to the ban, saying: “I just found it comical, until I was told that my mom was crying [in the lobby]. I was like, ‘Oh man, I ruined their anniversary with my shit talk on the internet. Memes are powerful, and so is the surveillance state. It’s something that we all have to be aware of — the panopticon. We’re [being] surveilled at all times, and it’s always framed as a safety thing, when rarely is that the case. It’s more of a deterrent and a fear tactic to try to keep people in line.”

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New research suggests that Prototaxites, once believed to be a giant fungus, may actually represent an entirely extinct and previously unknown branch of complex life, distinct from fungi, plants, animals, and protists. Live Science reports: The researchers studied the fossilized remains of one Prototaxites species named Prototaxites taiti, found preserved in the Rhynie chert, a sedimentary deposit of exceptionally well-preserved fossils of early land plants and animals in Scotland. This species was much smaller than many other species of Prototaxites, only growing up to a few inches tall, but it is still the largest Prototaxites specimen found in this region. Upon examining the internal structure of the fossilized Prototaxites, the researchers found that its interior was made up of a series of tubes, similar to those within a fungus. But these tubes branched off and reconnected in ways very unlike those seen in modern fungi. “We report that Prototaxites taiti was the largest organism in the Rhynie ecosystem and its anatomy was fundamentally distinct from all known extant or extinct fungi,” the researchers wrote in the paper. “We therefore conclude that Prototaxites was not a fungus, and instead propose it is best assigned to a now entirely extinct terrestrial lineage.”

True fungi from the same period have also been preserved in the Rhynie chert, enabling the researchers to chemically compare them to Prototaxites. In addition to their unique structural characteristics, the team found that the Prototaxites fossils left completely different chemical signatures to the fungi fossils, indicating that the Prototaxites did not contain chitin, a major building block of fungal cell walls and a hallmark of the fungal kingdom. The Prototaxites fossils instead appeared to contain chemicals similar to lignin, which is found in the wood and bark of plants. “We conclude that the morphology and molecular fingerprint of P. taiti is clearly distinct from that of the fungi and other organism preserved alongside it in the Rhynie chert, and we suggest that it is best considered a member of a previously undescribed, entirely extinct group of eukaryotes,” the researchers wrote. The research has been published on the preprint server bioRxiv.

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Placing a loved one in a nursing home is by itself a difficult decision. But things get harder to digest if we find that the nursing home isn’t taking good care of our beloved elders. Despite charging us steep fees, nursing homes often neglect their aged occupants leaving them emotionally and physically scarred. Suppose any of your precious relatives or friends are experiencing or have experienced similar troubles in their nursing care center. In that case, you need to seek the guidance of a personal injury lawyer as soon as possible. If you are still hesitant about how a skilled attorney can help turn a hospital negligence case in your favor, keep reading to learn more about a lawyer’s role. 

Conduct Thorough Investigation

It can be difficult for a layman to understand the intricacies of nursing home neglect. This is where a skilled lawyer can come to your rescue by examining all financial, medical, and hiring records. They will also interview the eyewitnesses in detail to find out the real incident. A legal team will keep no stone unturned in gathering every bit of evidence that can substantiate your case. 

Prevent Further Abuse

Whenever attorneys investigate a nursing home abuse case, their primary motive is to stop the malpractice from happening any further. They might suggest moving your beloved elderly to a different care home and taking legal action against the ones at fault. Taking action against a malicious nursing home can help break the cycle of constant harassment and neglect they have been levying on our elder relatives and also the ones from other families.

Tackle Negotiations

Nursing homes appoint a group of skilled attorneys who look after cases of abuse and neglect. It can be difficult for common people to tackle such a group of experts unless they get the backing of an expert attorney. Coupled with years of experience, these legal experts can take care of all the negotiations on your behalf so that you can focus on issues demanding greater attention. 

File A Lawsuit

It isn’t uncommon for nursing home negligence cases to get settled out of court. However, if the nursing home isn’t offering a fair offer to you or your family, then you must prepare to go to trial which can be an extremely tedious process. A lawyer can help you with it to guarantee you greater peace of mind. You are entitled to certain damage costs if you have been spending a fortune on medical bills since your loved one was admitted to a nursing home. A lawyer can help you seek your rightful compensation for all past and current medical bills that arose due to the caregiver’s negligence. 

Conclusion

Are you suspecting elder abuse? It is time to contact an expert attorney who can guide you in the right direction. They can make a significant difference in your case and provide you or your loved ones with the compensation you rightfully deserve. 

Written by Spencer Calvert

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) says banks no longer need prior approval before engaging in crypto-related activities, such as holding digital currency assets or partnering with companies in the industry. Axios reports: After publishing a general caution against banks participating in the industry just two years ago, the FDIC is the latest Trump administration regulator to change its tune entirely amid the president’s warm embrace of crypto. “With today’s action, the FDIC is turning the page on the flawed approach of the past three years,” FDIC acting chairman Travis Hill said in a statement.

The OCC was the first of those regulators to revise their guidance, telling banks it supervises earlier this month that they no longer need permission to engage in certain common cryptocurrency-related activities. The Fed as of Friday had not issued any update, though chair Jerome Powell told lawmakers during a congressional hearing last month that the central bank would take a fresh look at the guidance. The new policy clarifies that “FDIC-supervised institutions may engage in permissible activities, including … digital assets, provided that they adequately manage the associated risks.”

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Elon Musk today said he has merged X and xAI in a deal that values the social network formerly known as Twitter at $33 billion. Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in 2022.

xAI acquired X “in an all-stock transaction. The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt),” Musk wrote on X today.

X and xAI were already collaborating, as xAI’s Grok is trained on X posts. Grok is made available to X users, with paying subscribers getting higher usage limits and more features.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Imagine working with special cameras that capture light your eyes can’t even see — ultraviolet rays that cause sunburn, infrared heat signatures that reveal hidden writing, or specific wavelengths that plants use for photosynthesis. Or perhaps using a special camera designed to distinguish the subtle visible differences that make paint colors appear just right under specific lighting. Scientists and engineers do this every day, and they’re drowning in the resulting data. A new compression format called Spectral JPEG XL might finally solve this growing problem in scientific visualization and computer graphics. Researchers Alban Fichet and Christoph Peters of Intel Corporation detailed the format in a recent paper published in the Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques (JCGT). It tackles a serious bottleneck for industries working with these specialized images. These spectral files can contain 30, 100, or more data points per pixel, causing file sizes to balloon into multi-gigabyte territory — making them unwieldy to store and analyze.

[…] The current standard format for storing this kind of data, OpenEXR, wasn’t designed with these massive spectral requirements in mind. Even with built-in lossless compression methods like ZIP, the files remain unwieldy for practical work as these methods struggle with the large number of spectral channels. Spectral JPEG XL utilizes a technique used with human-visible images, a math trick called a discrete cosine transform (DCT), to make these massive files smaller. Instead of storing the exact light intensity at every single wavelength (which creates huge files), it transforms this information into a different form. […]

According to the researchers, the massive file sizes of spectral images have reportedly been a real barrier to adoption in industries that would benefit from their accuracy. Smaller files mean faster transfer times, reduced storage costs, and the ability to work with these images more interactively without specialized hardware. The results reported by the researchers seem impressive — with their technique, spectral image files shrink by 10 to 60 times compared to standard OpenEXR lossless compression, bringing them down to sizes comparable to regular high-quality photos. They also preserve key OpenEXR features like metadata and high dynamic range support. The report notes that broader adoption “hinges on the continued development and refinement of the software tools that handle JPEG XL encoding and decoding.”

Some scientific applications may also see JPEG XL’s lossy approach as a drawback. “Some researchers working with spectral data might readily accept the trade-off for the practical benefits of smaller files and faster processing,” reports Ars. “Others handling particularly sensitive measurements might need to seek alternative methods of storage.”

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Microsoft released a new Windows Insider build of Windows 11 to its experimental Dev Channel today, with a fairly extensive batch of new features and tweaks. But the most important one for enthusiasts and PC administrators is buried halfway down the list: This build removes a command prompt script called bypassnro, which up until now has been a relatively easy and reliable way to circumvent the otherwise mandatory Microsoft Account sign-in requirement on new Windows 11 PCs and fresh installs of Windows 11 on existing PCs.

Microsoft’s Windows Insider Program lead Amanda Langowski and Principal Product Manager Brandon LeBlanc were clear that this change is considered a feature and not a bug.

“We’re removing the bypassnro.cmd script from the build to enhance security and user experience of Windows 11,” Langowski and LeBlanc write in the post. “This change ensures that all users exit setup with internet connectivity and a Microsoft Account.”

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Longtime Slashdot reader frank_adrian314159 writes: According to an article in Wired, Elon Musk has appointed a team of technologists from DOGE to “rewrite the code that runs the SSA in months.” This codebase has over 60 million lines of COBOL and handles record keeping for all American workers and payments for all Social Security recipients. Given that the code has to track the byzantine regulations dealing with Social Security, it’s no wonder that the codebase is this large. What is in question though is whether a small team can rewrite this code “in months.” After all, what could possibly go wrong? “The project is being organized by Elon Musk lieutenant Steve Davis … and aims to migrate all SSA systems off COBOL … and onto a more modern replacement like Java within a scheduled tight timeframe of a few months,” notes Wired.

“Under any circumstances, a migration of this size and scale would be a massive undertaking, experts tell WIRED, but the expedited deadline runs the risk of obstructing payments to the more than 65 million people in the US currently receiving Social Security benefits.”

In 2017, SSA announced a plan to modernize its core systems with a timeline of around five years. However, the work was “pivoted away” because of the pandemic.

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One of the most frustrating things about using a large language model is dealing with its tendency to confabulate information, hallucinating answers that are not supported by its training data. From a human perspective, it can be hard to understand why these models don’t simply say “I don’t know” instead of making up some plausible-sounding nonsense.

Now, new research from Anthropic is exposing at least some of the inner neural network “circuitry” that helps an LLM decide when to take a stab at a (perhaps hallucinated) response versus when to refuse an answer in the first place. While human understanding of this internal LLM “decision” process is still rough, this kind of research could lead to better overall solutions for the AI confabulation problem.

When a “known entity” isn’t

In a groundbreaking paper last May, Anthropic used a system of sparse auto-encoders to help illuminate the groups of artificial neurons that are activated when the Claude LLM encounters internal concepts ranging from “Golden Gate Bridge” to “programming errors” (Anthropic calls these groupings “features,” as we will in the remainder of this piece). Anthropic’s newly published research this week expands on that previous work by tracing how these features can affect other neuron groups that represent computational decision “circuits” Claude follows in crafting its response.

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