TRB's Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Report 150: NextGen for Airports, A Primer broadly address potential airport impacts and include background information so that airport personnel can discern which NextGen programs will impact them and how. View the suite of materials related to ACRP Report 150: NextGen for Airports: Volume 1 : Understanding the Airport’s Role in Performance-Based Navigation: Resource Guide Volume 2 : Engaging Airport Stakeholders: Guidebook Volume 3 : Resources for Airpo...

TRB's Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) WebResource 5: Tools and Case Studies for NextGen for Airports is a companion to the five-volume ACRP Report 150: NextGen for Airports. It provides downloadable engagement materials from the NextGen Outreach Toolkit, discussed in Volume 2: Engaging Airport Stakeholders, and the Public Information Toolkit, discussed in Volume 3: Resources for Airports. A table that identifies the volume and page number of all case studies discussed in the five volumes is a...

Later this year, CBS All Access will expand and the changes might even include a different name. During an earnings call earlier...

EPA announces the availability of the All-Ages Lead Model (AALM), Version 2 software with updated supporting documentation (External Review Draft). The AALM Model is scheduled to undergo an independent peer review by EPA's Science Advisory Board in October 2019. For more information related to scheduling and peer reviewers for this new tool, please visit the SAB AALM Project website. [Federal Register Notice Sep 24, 2019]

EPA announced the availability of the Guidelines for Human Exposure Assessment (hereafter "Guidelines"). The Guidelines present the current policies and practices of exposure assessors across the Agency and supersede the 1992 Guidelines for Exposure Assessment Edition.

Elon Musk has been frustrated that Tesla’s Fremont factory has remained shut down due to Alameda County’s lockdown order, and that anger has apparently reached the boiling point. Musk has claimed that he’ll move Tesla’s headquarters to Nevada or Texa...

Někteří badatelé tvrdí, že dějiny Židů v Číně začínají již v 6. století před naším letopočtem za dynastie Čou, k tomu však nejsou žádné archeologické či jiné materiální důkazy. Všeobecně se tak počítají počátky židovské přítomnosti až od 8. století našeho letopočtu, za vlády dynastie Tang, kdy do Říše středu dorazily první skupinky obchodníků po Hedvábné stezce a usazovali se podél ní. Dnes od 18 hodin můžete na Facebooku Reflexu sledovat premiéru speciálního hudebního pořadu Židé v říši středu. Dějiny izraleského národa a Číny jsou zajímavě propojené.

Česko se zastavilo. Vláda kvůli pandemii koronaviru zavedla nouzový stav, který má šířené nemoci zamezit. Jaký je život v nouzovém režimu? Jak se chovají lidé, jak reaguje ekonomika? Hrozí, že vláda současné krize zneužije ke šmírování a omezení práva i po skončení pandemie? V online komentovaném přenosu vážně ale i s nadsázkou odpovidají redaktoři a spolupracovníci Reflexu.

The series was previously scheduled to roll out Thursday, April 2 on sibling Science Channel.

"Cisco Webex" email scam removal guide

What is the "Cisco Webex" scam email?

"Cisco Webex" is an email phishing scam. These letters claim to be official mail the Cisco Webex Team, stating that issues have been detected with recipients' Webex Mettings SSL certificates; therefore, their accounts must be verified. Cisco Webex is the name of a legitimate company, developing web conferencing and videoconferencing software. While the scam emails closely copy the graphic design and formatting of genuine Cisco Webex Team letters, they are illegitimate. If recipients attempt to log-in via link presented in the fake email to rectify the nonexistent problems, they are redirected to a phishing website that looks identical to the legitimate Webex Meetings log-in page. It is noteworthy that there has been an increase in scams/infections centering Cisco Webex services/products.

Just when it seemed like robots couldn't get any cooler, Cornell University researchers have created a soft robot muscle that can regulate its temperature through sweating.

If Bernie Sanders wants to say that Fidel Castro occasionally did something good, while acknowledging that he often did things that were very bad, I think that’s a reasonable position. (It might also be reasonable to say that Adolf Hitler occasionally did something good, though offhand I can’t think of a good example.) But surely […]

The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 7.2.30. This is a security release.All PHP 7.2 users are encouraged to upgrade to this version.For source downloads of PHP 7.2.30 please visit our downloads page, Windows source and binaries can be found on windows.php.net/download/. The list of changes is recorded in the ChangeLog.

Xdebug is an indispensable tool for every PHP developer. PHP’s favorite real-time debugger, it supports breakpoints, more detailed debug output, and deeper introspection of PHP code to determine just what it’s doing (and what it’s doing wrong). Sadly, it comes at a huge cost in performance, though, making it unsuitable for production. Not on Platform.sh, though. Xdebug is now available on all Grid environments, secure and without a performance loss.

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The coronavirus pandemic and its associated lockdown in most countries has forced major changes in the way people live, work and study. Online learning is now routine for many, and is largely unproblematic, not least because it has been used for many years. However, online testing is more tricky, since there is a concern by many teachers that students might use their isolated situation to cheat during exams. One person's problem is another person's opportunity, and there are a number of proctoring services that claim to stop or at least minimize cheating during online tests. One thing they have in common is that they tend to be intrusive, and show little respect for the privacy of the people they monitor.

As an article in The Verge explains, some employ humans to watch over students using Zoom video calls. That's reasonably close to a traditional setup, where a teacher or proctor watches students in an exam hall. But there are also webcam-based automated approaches, as explored by Vox:

For instance, Examity also uses AI to verify students' identities, analyze their keystrokes, and, of course, ensure they're not cheating. Proctorio uses artificial intelligence to conduct gaze detection, which tracks whether a student is looking away from their screens.

It's not just in the US that these extreme surveillance methods are being adopted. In France, the University of Rennes 1 is using a system called Managexam, which adds a few extra features: the ability to detect "inappropriate" Internet searches by the student, the use of a second screen, or the presence of another person in the room (original in French). The Vox articles notes that even when these systems are deployed, students still try to cheat using new tricks, and the anti-cheating services try to stop them doing so:

it's easy to find online tips and tricks for duping remote proctoring services. Some suggest hiding notes underneath the view of the camera or setting up a secret laptop. It's also easy for these remote proctoring services to find out about these cheating methods, so they're constantly coming up with countermeasures. On its website, Proctorio even has a job listing for a "professional cheater" to test its system. The contract position pays between $10,000 and $20,000 a year.

As the arms race between students and proctoring services escalates, it's surely time to ask whether the problem isn't people cheating, but the use of old-style, analog testing formats in a world that has been forced by the coronavirus pandemic to move to a completely digital approach. Rather than spending so much time, effort and money on trying to stop students from cheating, maybe we need to come up with new ways of measuring what they have learnt and understood -- ones that are not immune to cheating, but where cheating has no meaning. Obvious options include "open book" exams, where students can use whatever resources they like, or even abolishing formal exams completely, and opting for continuous assessment. Since the lockdown has forced educational establishments to re-invent teaching, isn't it time they re-invented exams too?

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

A few weeks ago, the US telecom industry began pushing a bullshit narrative through its usual allies. In short, the claim revolves around the argument that the only reason the US internet still works during a pandemic was because the Trump FCC ignored the public, ignored most objective experts, and gutted itself at the behest of telecom industry lobbyists. The argument first popped up over at AEI, then the Trump FCC, then the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and has since been seen in numerous op-eds nationwide. I'd wager that's not a coincidence, and I'd also wager we'll be seeing a lot more of them.

All of the pieces try to argue that the only reason the US internet works during a pandemic is because the FCC gutted its authority over telecom as part of its "restoring internet freedom" net neutrality repeal. This repeal, the story goes, drove significant investment in US broadband networks (not remotely true), resulting in telecom Utopia (also not true). The argument also posits that in Europe, where regulators have generally taken a more active role in policing things like industry consolidation and telecom monopolies, the internet all but fell apart (guess what: not true).

Usually, like in this op-ed, there's ample insistence that the US broadband sector is largely wonderful while the EU has gone to hell:

"Unlike here, European networks are more heavily regulated. This has led to less investment and worse performance for consumers for years. American consumers are being generally well served by the private sector."

Anybody who has spent five minutes talking to Comcast customer support -- or tried to get scandal-plagued ISP like Frontier Communications to upgrade rotten DSL lines -- knows this is bullshit. Still, we penned a lengthy post exploring just how full of shit this argument is, and how there's absolutely zero supporting evidence for the claims. The entire house of cards is built on fluff and nonsense, and it's just ethically grotesque to use a disaster to help justify regulatory capture and market failure.

While it's true that the US internet, in general, has held up relatively well during a pandemic, the same can't be said of the so called "last mile," or the link from your ISP's network to your home. Yes, the core internet and most primary transit routes, designed to handle massive capacity spikes during events like the Superbowl, has handled the load relatively well. The problem, as Sascha Meinrath correctly notes here, is sluggish speeds on consumer and business lines that, for many, haven't been upgraded in years:

"Right now, an international consortium of network scientists is collecting 750,000 U.S. broadband speed tests from internet service provider (ISP) customers each day, and we’ve been tracking a stunning loss of connectivity speeds to people’s homes. According to most ISPs, the core network is handling the extra load. But our data show that the last-mile network infrastructure appears to be falling down on the job."

Again, your 5 Mbps DSL line might be ok during normal times, but it's not going to serve you well during a pandemic when your entire family is streaming 4K videos, gaming, and Zooming. And your DSL line isn't upgraded because there's (1) very little competition forcing your ISP to do so, and (2) the US government is filled to the brim with sycophants who prioritize campaign contributions and ISP revenues over the health of the market and consumer welfare. And while there's a contingency of industry-linked folks who try very hard to pretend otherwise, this is a policy failure that's directly tied to mindless deregulation, a lack of competition, and, more importantly, corruption. In short, the complete opposite of the industry's latest talking point.

For years we've been noting how US telcos have refused to repair or upgrade aging DSL lines because it's not profitable enough, quickly enough for Wall Street's liking. Facing no competition and no regulatory oversight, there's zero incentive for a giant US broadband provider to try very hard. Similarly, because our lawmakers and regulators are largely of the captured, revolving door variety, they rubber stamp shitty mergers, turn a blind eye to very obvious industry problems, routinely throwing billions in taxpayer money at monopolies in exchange for fiber networks that are usually only partially deployed -- if they're deployed at all.

Meanwhile, US telcos that have all but given up on upgrading aging DSL lines have helped cement an even bigger Comcast monopoly across vast swaths of America. It's a problem that the telecom sector, Trump FCC, and various industry apologists will ignore to almost comical effect. Also ignored is the fact that this results in US broadband subscribers paying some of the highest prices for broadband in the developed world:

"Numerous studies, including those conducted by the FCC itself, show that broadband pricing is the second-largest barrier to broadband adoption (availability is the first). It’s obvious that if people are being charged a lot for a service, they’re less likely to purchase it. And independent researchers have already documented that poor areas often pay more than rich communities for connectivity. Redlining of minority and rural areas appears to be widespread, and we need accurate pricing data from the FCC to meaningfully address these disparities."

Try to find any instance where Ajit Pai, or anybody in this chorus of telecom monopoly apologists, actually admits that the US broadband market isn't competitive and, as a result, is hugely expensive for businesses and consumers alike. You simply won't find it. What you will find are a lot of excuses and straw men arguments like this latest one, designed to distract the press, public, and policymakers from very obvious market failure. Market failure that was a major problem in normal times, and exponentially more so during a pandemic where broadband is an essential lifeline.

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Just as in other types of victimization, victims of cybercrime can experience serious consequences, emotional or not. First of all, a repeat victim of a cyber-attack might face serious financial or emotional hardship. These victims are also more likely to require medical attention as a consequence of online fraud victimization. This means repeat victims have a … Continue reading Three Paper Thursday: Exploring the Impact of Online Crime Victimization →

'Seriously sometimes seems Google's moderators are only optimized to respond to social media outrage'

Three weeks after Google removed 49 Chrome extensions from its browser's software store for stealing crypto-wallet credentials, 11 more password-swiping add-ons have been spotted – and some are still available to download.…

Tune in online this month to find out how to protect your business from data extortionists

Webcast It's been "the year of ransomware" for about the past three years. And while you may be tired of hearing about the trend and just getting used to the reality, you may also like to remember: instances of attacks are climbing – quickly – and we’re now reaching a level where more than half of ransomware schemes result in a business paying out.…

John Cena!* Online resources only for free and end users due to the 'unprecedented period'

Video conferencing darling of the hour, Zoom, has tightened up support rules in order to "better serve" users.…

Revisit what it’s like to run a PDP-10 and be eaten by a grue

Source code for seminal adventure game Zork, dating back to 1977 and recovered from MIT tapes, was published this week on GitHub.…

A review by SomeRandomHEFan (46). One of Humongous Entertainment's weaker attempts at conventional edutainment

A review by SomeRandomHEFan (46). An excellent showcase of Humongous Entertainment's sense of humour. And I guess there's an acceptable edutainment game in there somewhere, too.

Геймеров отправят на Землю, которую снова захватили динозавры.

Смартфон появился на сайте Google Play Console, благодаря чему стали известны его некоторые характеристики и дизайн.

The Miami Beach danger zone for mosquitoes carrying Zika virus is expanding. This isn't just about microcephaly in developing fetuses. Since Zika attacks neural progenitor cells it might cause lasting damage in adults too. A case of acute sensory polyneuropathy in an adult caused symptoms that lasted for months. It is suspected that Zika causes inflammation of sensory nerves and possibly an auto-immune response. So Zika is bad. What should we do about it? Wipe out the mosquitoes that carry it. Totally drive them to extinction. These mosquitoes are invasive in the Western Hemisphere. If a mosquito causes major health problems for the human species we should just wipe it out. Wiping out a mosquito species could be done with...

We previously established that global deletion of the enhancer of trithorax and polycomb (ETP) gene, Asxl2, prevents weight gain. Because proinflammatory macrophages recruited to adipose tissue are central to the metabolic complications of obesity, we explored the role of ASXL2 in myeloid lineage cells. Unexpectedly, mice without Asxl2 only in myeloid cells (Asxl2ΔLysM) were completely resistant to diet-induced weight gain and metabolically normal despite increased food intake, comparable activity, and equivalent fecal fat. Asxl2ΔLysM mice resisted HFD-induced adipose tissue macrophage infiltration and inflammatory cytokine gene expression. Energy expenditure and brown adipose tissue metabolism in Asxl2ΔLysM mice were protected from the suppressive effects of HFD, a phenomenon associated with relatively increased catecholamines likely due to their suppressed degradation by macrophages. White adipose tissue of HFD-fed Asxl2ΔLysM mice also exhibited none of the pathological remodeling extant in their control counterparts. Suppression of macrophage Asxl2 expression, via nanoparticle-based siRNA delivery, prevented HFD-induced obesity. Thus, ASXL2 controlled the response of macrophages to dietary factors to regulate metabolic homeostasis, suggesting modulation of the cells’ inflammatory phenotype may impact obesity and its complications.

Hearing loss caused by the death of sensory hair cells of the inner ear is an unfortunate side effect for many patients treated with aminoglycoside antibiotics or platinum-containing chemotherapy agents. In animal models, induction of heat shock confers substantial otoprotection against aminoglycoside- and cisplatin-induced hair cell death. In this issue of the JCI, Breglio et al. demonstrate that inner ear tissue released exosomes carrying heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) in response to heat stress. HSP70 acted by a paracrine mechanism that engaged the Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) on hair cells to protect them from death. Exosomes and the HSP70/TLR4 pathway could thus provide treatment targets for the protection of hair cells from chemically induced death or from other insults, such as noise.

Hair cells, the mechanosensory receptors of the inner ear, are responsible for hearing and balance. Hair cell death and consequent hearing loss are common results of treatment with ototoxic drugs, including the widely used aminoglycoside antibiotics. Induction of heat shock proteins (HSPs) confers protection against aminoglycoside-induced hair cell death via paracrine signaling that requires extracellular heat shock 70-kDa protein (HSP70). We investigated the mechanisms underlying this non–cell-autonomous protective signaling in the inner ear. In response to heat stress, inner ear tissue releases exosomes that carry HSP70 in addition to canonical exosome markers and other proteins. Isolated exosomes from heat-shocked utricles were sufficient to improve survival of hair cells exposed to the aminoglycoside antibiotic neomycin, whereas inhibition or depletion of exosomes from the extracellular environment abolished the protective effect of heat shock. Hair cell–specific expression of the known HSP70 receptor TLR4 was required for the protective effect of exosomes, and exosomal HSP70 interacted with TLR4 on hair cells. Our results indicate that exosomes are a previously undescribed mechanism of intercellular communication in the inner ear that can mediate nonautonomous hair cell survival. Exosomes may hold potential as nanocarriers for delivery of therapeutics against hearing loss.