About 200 shops set to begin operations tomorrow; all vehicles to be sanitised

There are several hypotheses about how amphibian chytrid has spread around the world, but the trade in amphibians for food, bait, pets and laboratory animals has been identified as the most likely mode of spread

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Reptiles that live near and feed upon amphibians in the tropics may be spreading the deadly amphibian disease Chytridiomycosis (caused by the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dedrobatidis), holding and transporting reservoirs of the fungus on their skin.

The post Reptiles may be spreading deadly amphibian disease in the tropics appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Microbes that live in rice paddies, northern peat bogs and other previously unexpected environments are among the bacteria that can generate highly toxic methylmercury, researchers […]

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Zombies have been part of popular culture for decades. The living dead rising and taking over the world is a terrifying concept, worthy of Hollywood […]

The post It’s science: zombies already walk among us appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The bush dog is one of the most enigmatic of the world’s canid species, seldom seen throughout its range in Central and South America. New […]

The post Elusive bush dog widespread in Panama appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Cobia, a promising fish for aquaculture, lives throughout the world’s oceans except in the Central and Eastern Pacific. In August 2015, a large number of […]

The post Invasive Cobia Spreads in Panama appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Sponsored by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and created by filmmaker Frank Chi, this short film features letters that young Japanese Americans in World […]

The post Muslim American Kids Read Letters by WWII Japanese Americans appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A newly discovered Hawaiian tree recently had the distinction of being added to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Critically […]

The post Newly named, Hawaiian tree species already critically endangered appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A Nintendo Entertainment System.; Credit: Mark Ramsay/Flickr Creative Commons

There have been plenty of video game movies over the years, but there have been far fewer actually good ones. "Ready Player One," based on the 2011 video game-inspired novel, has the chance to be a great one thanks to the announcement that Steven Spielberg has signed on to direct.

That book was inspired by classic video games, and was written using classic video game cheats to play parts of classic games and write them into his book, author Ernest Cline said in a recent talk. That got us thinking about the classic video game cheats and secrets that stuck with us from our younger days playing classic video games — here's our top 11.

1. The Konami Code

Up up down down left right left right B A start! This code became such a part of video game culture that it got its own name. It was popularized in various games made by Konami, particularly Contra, leading to it also being known as the "Contra Code" for its ability to give you 30 lives in the game. Before the Internet, it was spread through gaming magazines and word of mouth — it was so influential that there are still developers who put it in their games. (There's even an entire Wikipedia page of games, both from Konami and others, that use the Konami Code. It's even been used on some websites.)

What is the Konami Code

2. Street Figher II Turbo's turbo

The game that I actually used a code for the most as a kid, the Super Nintendo code down, R, up, L, Y, B on the second controller didn't give you any advantages — it just kicked the speed up. By default, you had a few selections for how fast the game would be, but you could multiple that several-fold with this code, letting you and your friends battle at what at the time felt unbelievably fast.

3. Super Mario Bros.'s Minus World

This one doesn't involve a code, but players managed to discover what was deemed a glitch in the game that put you into a messed up version of another level, dubbed by fans the Minus World due to just "-1" instead of a full level number appearing at the top of the screen. There was no way to escape the glitched level, no matter how hard you might try, sending you to play it over and over again until your time ran out or you were killed by enemies. Still, modern players have found that you can go on thanks to various computer emulators and the like; see some of the worlds beyond below:

Minus World video

4. Metroid and Justin Bailey

Fans early on discovered that the password JUSTIN BAILEY allowed you to start with all of the available weapons along with plenty of life and ammo. Fans didn't know whether Justin Bailey was a reference to an actual person, just a code coincidence or something else, but that didn't stop them from eagerly playing through with this code. It also removed lead character Samus Aran from her armor, allowing players to discover that the game's star was an early female lead character, even if her armor didn't clue players in before the end of the game without the code.

Justin Bailey video

5. Doom's God mode

By typing the letters iddqd in PC game Doom, players could enable God mode, making them essentially invincible and letting them power through the early first-person shooter. The code had been available in developer id's earlier game Wolfenstein, but hadn't been quite as easily accessible. So, if you ever need a power boost when you're fighting on Mars, Doom has the answer. (Unfortunately, we don't believe this provides any extra protection for NASA's Mars rovers.)

6. Mortal Kombat's Reptile

The developers of Mortal Kombat made a battle against Reptile unbelievably hard for Mortal Kombat fans, including putting some randomness into whether doing what you were supposed to do to unlock the character would even work. Still, players happily pumped in extra quarters for the chance to face off against Reptile, a character with a look that mirrored that of characters Sub-Zero and Scorpion, just with a different color. Players had to achieve a Double Flawless victory on the Pit level, finish the match using their fatality move, and there also had to be a silhouette flying past the moon in the background — which only happened every sixth game.

Mortal Kombat: Reptile

7. The Legend of Zelda's Second Quest

The Legend of Zelda was a pretty challenging early adventure game, one of the first releases for the Nintendo home video game console. When you beat the game, you were given the option to go on a "Second Quest," which was a tweaked version of the game you just played except waaaaay harder. However, if you thought you were the coolest kid on the block and were so awesome you didn't need a warmup, you could name your character "ZELDA" (in one of the more obvious cheats in video game history) and skip ahead to that Second Quest from the start. You would then likely cry from how hard it was and start another new game with a different name.

8. NBA Jam's celebrity secret characters

A variety of celebrities from sports, music, and even politics were available by putting in various initials combined with buttons on the controller. These included then-President Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Warren Moon and more. That tradition has been continued in more recent NBA Jam games, with President Obama and others available for your video gaming pleasure.

9. GoldenEye's extra modes

There were a wide variety of cheat codes for GoldenEye, widely considered one of the all-time great first-person shooters. Sure, you could use codes to unlock different levels, but the reason these codes are remembered is because it gave you all sorts of new ways to play against your friends. The game also had an actual cheat menu that would appear if you accomplished one of a variety of goals, and from that menu you could cheat extra hard by using your controller to unlock things like a paintball mode, turbo mode, modes with both giant heads and teeny-tiny James Bonds and more.

10. Sonic The Hedgehog 2's Debug Mode

The Sonic debug mode is the perfect example of why so many games included cheats back in the day: They were often for the developers to be able to more easily play the games while looking for bugs and doing other testing. Sonic 2 let you get to an actual debug mode by playing various sounds from the level select screen (1, 9, 9, 2, 1, 1, 2, 4, for your reference), then pressing start and holding the A button. Developers later put them in for fun and intended them for the players to discover, but some of the early cheat codes were just meant for developers — but players proved more intrepid than they may have anticipated.

Sonic debug mode

11. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out: Go straight to Mike Tyson

There was actually a password mode in this game — before games had the option to save, plenty of games gave you codes that let you get back to where you were before. This is one of the examples from that darker time, where whether you played through opponents like Glass Joe and Bald Bull or not, you could try your changes against Lightning Mike (at least until the video game's license ran out and he was replaced in future editions with the way less exciting "Mr. Dream"). You better have had a pen and paper ready when your friend started yelling at you 007 373 5963 for you to use on your own copy of the game — no sharing. The game is hard enough that even Mike Tyson had some trouble fighting himself:

Mike Tyson vs. Mike Tyson

Let us know in the comments the classic video games — and the classic cheat codes and secrets — that inspired you.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Widespread reforms are needed to ensure that all children are equipped with the skills and instruction they need to learn to read, according to a new report from a committee of the National Research Council.

Recent strides in biotechnology offer the promise of new and innovative applications -- from edible vaccines to protein-based electronics components.

As of today all PDF versions of books published by the National Academies Press will be downloadable to anyone free of charge. This includes a current catalog of more than 4,000 books plus future reports produced by the Press.

There is no substitute for dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the negative consequences of climate change, a National Research Council committee concluded in a two-volume evaluation of proposed climate-intervention techniques.

The emerging science of gene drives has the potential to address environmental and public health challenges, but gene-drive modified organisms are not ready to be released into the environment and require more research in laboratories and highly controlled field trials, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

WASHINGTON — In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to establish a Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats.

The recently formed National Academies Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats, assembled at the request of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, has been providing rapid expert consultations on several topics, such as social distancing and severe illness in young adults.

A new rapid expert consultation from a standing committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine responds to questions from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) regarding survival of the COVID-19 virus in relation to temperature and humidity and potential for seasonal reduction and resurgence of cases.

A new rapid expert consultation from a standing committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

A new rapid expert consultation from a standing committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine responds to questions from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) regarding the effectiveness of homemade fabric masks to protect others from the viral spread of COVID-19 from potentially contagious asymptomatic or presymptomatic individuals.

"Deepfakes" are digitally altered images that make incidents appear real when they are not. Such altered files could have broad implications for politics.; Credit: /Marcus Marritt for NPR

Sophisticated fake media hasn't emerged as a factor in the disinformation wars in the ways once feared — and two specialists say it may have missed its moment.

Deceptive video and audio recordings, often nicknamed "deepfakes," have been the subject of sustained attention by legislators and technologists, but so far have not been employed to decisive effect, said two panelists at a video conference convened on Wednesday by NATO.

One speaker borrowed Sherlock Holmes' reasoning about the significance of something that didn't happen.

"We've already passed the stage at which they would have been most effective," said Keir Giles, a Russia specialist with the Conflict Studies Research Centre in the United Kingdom. "They're the dog that never barked."

The perils of deepfakes in political interference have been discussed too often and many people have become too familiar with them, Giles said during the online discussion, hosted by NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence.

Following all the reports and revelations about election interference in the West since 2016, citizens know too much to be hoodwinked in the way a fake video might once have fooled large numbers of people, he argued: "They no longer have the power to shock."

Tim Hwang, director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative, agreed that deepfakes haven't proven as dangerous as once feared, although for different reasons.

Hwang argued that users of "active measures" (efforts to sow misinformation and influence public opinion) can be much more effective with cheaper, simpler and just as devious types of fakes — mis-captioning a photo or turning it into a meme, for example.

Influence specialists working for Russia and other governments also imitate Americans on Facebook, for another example, worming their way into real Americans' political activities to amplify disagreements or, in some cases, try to persuade people not to vote.

Other researchers have suggested this work continues on social networks and has become more difficult to detect.

Defense is stronger than attack

Hwang also observed that the more deepfakes are made, the better machine learning becomes at detecting them.

A very sophisticated, real-looking fake video might still be effective in a political context, he acknowledged — and at a cost to create of around $10,000, it would be easily within the means of a government's active measures specialists.

But the risks of attempting a major disruption with such a video may outweigh an adversary's desire to use one. People may be too media literate, as Giles argued, and the technology to detect a fake may mean it can be deflated too swiftly to have an effect, as Hwang said.

"I tend to be skeptical these will have a large-scale impact over time," he said.

One technology boss told NPR in an interview last year that years' worth of work on corporate fraud protection systems has given an edge to detecting fake media.

"This is not a static field. Obviously, on our end we've performed all sorts of great advances over this year in advancing our technology, but these synthetic voices are advancing at a rapid pace," said Brett Beranek, head of security business for the technology firm Nuance. "So we need to keep up."

Beranek described how systems developed to detect telephone fraudsters could be applied to verify the speech in a fake clip of video or audio.

Corporate clients that rely on telephone voice systems must be wary about people attempting to pose as others with artificial or disguised voices. Beranek's company sells a product that helps to detect them and that countermeasure also works well in detecting fake audio or video.

Machines using neural networks can detect known types of synthetic voices. Nuance also says it can analyze a recording of a real known voice — say, that of a politician — and then contrast its characteristics against a suspicious recording.

Although the world of cybersecurity is often described as one in which attackers generally have an edge over defenders, Beranek said he thought the inverse was true in terms of this kind of fraud detection.

"For the technology today, the defense side is significantly ahead of the attack side," he said.

Shaping the battlefield

Hwang and Giles acknowledged in the NATO video conference that deepfakes likely will proliferate and become lower in cost to create, perhaps becoming simple enough to make with a smartphone app.

One prospective response is the creation of more of what Hwang called "radioactive data" — material earmarked in advance so that it might make a fake easier to detect.

If images of a political figure were so tagged beforehand, they could be spotted quickly if they were incorporated by computers into a deceptive video.

Also, the sheer popularity of new fakes, if that is what happens, might make them less valuable as a disinformation weapon. More people could become more familiar with them, as well as being detectable by automated systems — plus they may also have no popular medium on which to spread.

Big social media platforms already have declared affirmatively that they'll take down deceptive fakes, Hwang observed. That might make it more difficult for a scenario in which a politically charged fake video went viral just before Election Day.

"Although it might get easier and easier to create deepfakes, a lot of the places where they might spread most effectively, your Facebooks and Twitters of the world, are getting a lot more aggressive about taking them down," Hwang said.

That won't stop them, but it might mean they'll be relegated to sites with too few users to have a major effect, he said.

"They'll percolate in these more shady areas."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A little girl licking a spoon after stirring the cake mixture in 1935. ; Credit: Fox Photos/Getty Images

“How in the world am I going to come up with something to make dinner tonight?”

If you’ve found yourself asking this question repeatedly during the pandemic, you’re not alone. Grocery shopping complicated by COVID-19 and shortages of certain staples has meant that many who might not usually consider themselves home chefs have had no choice but to throw an apron on and do some culinary experimentation with whatever they already have in their kitchen and pantry. 

Last month on AirTalk, we tackled this issue by calling up pro chef Noelle Carter and food writer Russ Parson, both of whom are former members of the L.A. Times’ Food team, to answer your questions about how to cook with what you already have, recycle  certain foods, and even make staples that you might not be able to find in abundance right now. If you tuned in last time, you learned how to make your own pasta, how to regrow vegetables like green onions and romaine lettuce, and even what you can use as a substitute for all-purpose flour if you can’t find any at the store.

Today on AirTalk, we’re bringing Noelle and Russ back to help you out in the kitchen! If you’ve got questions about things like making or substituting ingredients, or need some ideas for what to make out of random ingredients in your fridge, join our live conversation by calling 866-893-5722.

Guests:

Noelle Carter, chef, food writer and culinary consultant for Noelle Carter Food, a website sharing recipes, cooking techniques and helpful kitchen tips for the home cook; she is the former director of the Los Angeles Times Test Kitchen; she tweets @noellecarter

Russ Parsons, former food editor and columnist for The Los Angeles Times for more than 20 years; he is the author of two cookbooks: “How To Pick A Peach” and “How To Read A French Fry”; he tweets @Russ_Parsons1

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

People using a coworking space.; Credit: Cross Campus

In a sign of increased desire of professionals to work remotely, the successful Santa Monica shared workspace Cross Campus is opening a second location in Pasadena later this month, and the company hopes to open eight others in Southern California and beyond in the next two years. 

Dubbed by one user as  the “nerve center” of the Silicon Beach tech scene, Cross Campus opened its membership-based workspace facility in Santa Monica in 2012.   

But co-founder Ronen Olshansky said the shared workspace phenomenon isn't limited to coders. 

"Fewer and fewer people are making the traditional drive into the corporate office," Olshansky said. "They're working remotely as professionals, going off on their own as freelancers, or they're starting their own companies as entrepreneurs."  

A forecast from Forrester Research says that 43 percent of workers will telecommute by 2016, compared to estimates of about a quarter of the workforce telecommuting last year. 

Olshansky said that, for many people, working from home or in a coffee shop isn't productive. 

That's led shared workspaces to pop up in Los Angeles, Culver City and Santa Monica. Among them: Maker City L.A., WeWork, NextSpace, Coloft and Hub LA.  

Los Angeles-based tech investor David Waxman said these kind of shared spaces are crucial for the early stages of tech ventures.

"When you’re just starting out, and capital is very scarce, having not to commit to an entire office but having part of an office is very important," Waxman said.  “There comes a collective energy when a bunch of entrepreneurs get together in the same space, even if they’re not working on the same project."

And he said Pasadena is a good choice for a shared workspace.

"It is the home of Caltech, the Arts Center, and IdeaLab — probably the world’s first tech incubator — started there," he said.

But he said the need isn't limited to Pasadena.

"In Silver Lake, in South Pasadena, in Glendale, you see a lot of little pockets of  people getting together, and as soon as there’s a critical mass, we’ll see co-working spaces like Cross Campus come into being," said Waxman, who named his investment firm TenOneTen after the two freeways that connect Santa Monica and the Westside to Pasadena. 

Alex Maleki of IdeaLab in Pasadena is happy a well-known company is opening up in his city. 

"Anything that helps attract talent and capital to the region," Maleki said, "is absolutely fantastic."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The scam machine shows no signs of slowing down, as fraudsters dispense bogus health advice, peddle fake testing kits and issue malware-laced purchase orders

The post Coronavirus con artists continue to spread infections of their own appeared first on WeLiveSecurity

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: Is the record unambiguous…it was a coup attempt? Mind-readers confirm, Schiff is panicked Tim Graham’s visual writing style Ahmaud Arbery shooting The Plandemic video If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful […]

The post Episode 960 Scott Adams: Fake News, Bad Math, Bad Mind-Reading, Bad Behavior in the News appeared first on Scott Adams' Blog.

Hypoxia (low levels of oxygen) is widespread in the coastal waters of the Baltic Sea, according to recently published research. The trend of increasing hypoxia since the 1950 is alarming, although improvements can be seen in some areas as a result of measures to reduce inputs of organic material.

A fungus could offer an alternative to chemical pesticides for the control of biting midges that spread livestock diseases, including Bluetongue and African horse sickness, according to new research.

A new study suggests that abandoned farmland is widespread in Europe and that not all land that has been abandoned is unsuitable for farming. Understanding how abandoned farmland is distributed may be important for making land management decisions – for instance, recultivation versus reversion to forest.

A recent survey of businesses in France, Germany and the UK has revealed that they recycle and refurbish much of their waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). However, some of this information is not being reported under the EU’s WEEE Directive because the waste is being disposed of informally or by contractors, rather than by manufacturers who are responsible for the whole life cycle of the products.

A recent study has projected changes in the spread of malaria caused by climate change and climate variability in Africa by including the effect of variations in land use on local climate. It concludes that the risk of malaria epidemics is likely to shift from the north to the south of the Sahel, and to highland areas previously free of the disease.

Crop pests and pathogens are moving into new habitats, towards the North and South Poles, as global warming progresses, new research suggests. Observation records from around the world show that many crop pests, including insect and bacterial pests, are moving towards the poles at an average rate of 2.7 km per year.