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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.slashgear.com/2102659/mandatory-digital-vehicle-lien-title-illinois/

Since the dawn of the digital era, it's been the dream of many to have a totally paperless society. When the Jetsons first aired in 1962, the idea of a world that used screen-based technology instead of traditional paper media was a far-fetched, pie-in-the-sky notion. Here we are, over 60 years later, and although everyone now carries around pocket gizmos with more processing power than the computers aboard early Apollo spaceships that took men to the moon, we're still not a totally paperless society.

However, several states are making efforts to help make that reality, at least in part, through Electronic Lien and Titling (ELT) programs. There are currently about 30 states actively using electronic vehicle title (e-title) programs to maintain their motor vehicle records. These digital versions carry the same details (i.e., the owner's personal information, the Vehicle Identification Number, make, model, and year) and are considered just as valid as old paper documents. What's more, since they're in digital form rather than an actual paper document, they can't be lost or stolen.

The latest state to join the digital revolution is Illinois. Alexi Giannoulias, the Illinois Secretary of State, announced in early February 2026 that "moving to mandatory Electronic Lien and Titling is the next step in bringing Illinois' vehicle services fully into the digital age." He went on to say that this secure, paperless method will cut down on the red tape normally involved and, as a result, speed up the entire process (including transferring a car's title) from what used to take weeks or months — to mere hours.

The Illinois General Assembly first approved the ELT program all the way back in 2000, but outdated technology prevented a full implementation. When Giannoulias took office in 2023, he set out to update that technology and, in 2024, finally got the program up and running. Now, all Driver's Services Facilities in Illinois – as well as every financial institution that processes five or more liens annually – will be required to switch over to this new digital system by July 1, 2026.

The new online ELT program will allow liens and title records to be transmitted directly to the Secretary of State, where they're kept electronically by approved service providers. It should eliminate the time and cost of mailing and storing paper documents and allow lien and title records to be viewed in real time. Additionally, owners will be spared the hassle of physically trudging down to their nearest DMV to deal with these issues in person (after undoubtedly standing in long lines). Furthermore, it should increase accuracy and keep rejection rates below 0.1%.

Once a loan is fully paid off, financial institutions can then instantly release the vehicle title (of which there are several types you should know about). No more waiting around for it to arrive at its final destination via snail mail, where it can easily go missing, which in turn helps protect against criminal activity such as "title washing" and fraudulent lien releases. Criminals are notorious for intercepting these documents in the mail and then removing (or washing off) information like liens or the fact that it was stolen from a vehicle's title to create a false "clean title."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Concrete "battery" developed at MIT now packs 10 times the power:

Concrete already builds our world, and now it's one step closer to powering it, too. Made by combining cement, water, ultra-fine carbon black (with nanoscale particles), and electrolytes, electron-conducting carbon concrete (ec3, pronounced "e-c-cubed") creates a conductive "nanonetwork" inside concrete that could enable everyday structures like walls, sidewalks, and bridges to store and release electrical energy. In other words, the concrete around us could one day double as giant "batteries."

As MIT researchers report in a new PNAS paper, optimized electrolytes and manufacturing processes have increased the energy storage capacity of the latest ec3 supercapacitors by an order of magnitude. In 2023, storing enough energy to meet the daily needs of the average home would have required about 45 cubic meters of ec3, roughly the amount of concrete used in a typical basement. Now, with the improved electrolyte, that same task can be achieved with about 5 cubic meters, the volume of a typical basement wall.

"A key to the sustainability of concrete is the development of 'multifunctional concrete,' which integrates functionalities like this energy storage, self-healing, and carbon sequestration. Concrete is already the world's most-used construction material, so why not take advantage of that scale to create other benefits?" asks Admir Masic, lead author of the new study, MIT Electron-Conducting Carbon-Cement-Based Materials Hub (EC³ Hub) co-director, and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering (CEE) at MIT.

The improved energy density was made possible by a deeper understanding of how the nanocarbon black network inside ec3 functions and interacts with electrolytes. Using focused ion beams for the sequential removal of thin layers of the ec3 material, followed by high-resolution imaging of each slice with a scanning electron microscope (a technique called FIB-SEM tomography), the team across the EC³ Hub and MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub was able to reconstruct the conductive nanonetwork at the highest resolution yet. This approach allowed the team to discover that the network is essentially a fractal-like "web" that surrounds ec3 pores, which is what allows the electrolyte to infiltrate and for current to flow through the system.

"Understanding how these materials 'assemble' themselves at the nanoscale is key to achieving these new functionalities," adds Masic.

Equipped with their new understanding of the nanonetwork, the team experimented with different electrolytes and their concentrations to see how they impacted energy storage density. As Damian Stefaniuk, first author and EC³ Hub research scientist, highlights, "we found that there is a wide range of electrolytes that could be viable candidates for ec3. This even includes seawater, which could make this a good material for use in coastal and marine applications, perhaps as support structures for offshore wind farms."

At the same time, the team streamlined the way they added electrolytes to the mix. Rather than curing ec3 electrodes and then soaking them in electrolyte, they added the electrolyte directly into the mixing water. Since electrolyte penetration was no longer a limitation, the team could cast thicker electrodes that stored more energy.

The team achieved the greatest performance when they switched to organic electrolytes, especially those that combined quaternary ammonium salts — found in everyday products like disinfectants — with acetonitrile, a clear, conductive liquid often used in industry. A cubic meter of this version of ec3 — about the size of a refrigerator — can store over 2 kilowatt-hours of energy. That's about enough to power an actual refrigerator for a day.

While batteries maintain a higher energy density, ec3 can in principle be incorporated directly into a wide range of architectural elements — from slabs and walls to domes and vaults — and last as long as the structure itself.

canopic jug writes:

Privacy is prerequisite for free thought, dissent, experimentation, and innovation, which are in turn prerequisites for democracy. At NBTV, Naomi Brockwell has posted four reasons why limits on privacy are absolutely not a price worth paying for mainstream adoption.

Today I participated in a Privacy Salon in Denver where we debated a proposition that cuts to the core of the modern privacy movement:

"Limits on privacy are a price worth paying for mainstream adoption of cryptographic privacy."

I was on the "no" side alongside Matt Green, with Evin McMullen and Wei Dai arguing "yes."

It was a lively, thoughtful exchange that forced us to confront a deeper question: is weakening privacy simply the cost of scale?

Below is my opening statement from the debate.

The false argument about having nothing to hide does not hold water. As Ed Snowden observed years ago, "arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."

Previously:
(2026) Ring Cancels Flock Deal After Dystopian Super Bowl Ad Prompts Mass Outrage
(2026) Discord Will Require a Face Scan or ID for Full Access Next Month
(2026) "ICE Out of Our Faces Act" Would Ban ICE and CBP Use of Facial Recognition
(2025) Big Tech Wants Direct Access to Our Brains
(2025) Discord Customer Service Data Breached; Government-ID Images, and User Details Stolen
(2025) A Surveillance Vendor Was Caught Exploiting a New SS7 Attack to Track People's Phone Locations
... and many more

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Penn Medicine researchers find that earplugs work better in protecting sleep from traffic noise, challenging the widespread use of ambient sound machines and apps marketed as sleep aids:

Pink noise—a continuous sound spread across a wide range of frequencies often used to promote sleep—may reduce restorative REM sleep and interfere with sleep recovery. In contrast, earplugs were found to be significantly more effective in protecting sleep against traffic noise, according to a new study published in the journal Sleep from the Perelman School of Medicine.

The findings challenge the widespread use of ambient sound machines and apps marketed as sleep aids.

"REM sleep is important for memory consolidation, emotional regulation and brain development, so our findings suggest that playing pink noise and other types of broadband noise during sleep could be harmful—especially for children whose brains are still developing and who spend much more time in REM sleep than adults," says study lead author Mathias Basner, professor of sleep and chronobiology in psychiatry.

In a sleep laboratory during eight-hour sleep opportunities over seven consecutive nights, the participants' exposure to aircraft noise—compared to none—was associated with about 23 fewer minutes per night spent in N3, the deepest sleep stage. Earplugs prevented this drop in deep sleep to a large extent. Pink noise alone at 50 decibels (often compared to the sound of a "moderate rainfall") was associated with a nearly 19-minute decrease in REM sleep.

If pink noise was combined with aircraft noise, both deep sleep and REM sleep were significantly shorter compared to noise-free control nights, and time spent awake was now also 15 minutes longer, which had not been observed in aircraft noise-only or pink noise-only nights.

Participants also reported that their sleep felt lighter, they woke up more frequently, and their overall sleep quality was worse when exposed to aircraft noise or pink noise, compared to nights without noise—unless they used earplugs.

Journal Reference: Mathias Basner, Michael G Smith, Makayla Cordoza, et al., Efficacy of pink noise and earplugs for mitigating the effects of intermittent environmental noise exposure on sleep, Sleep, 2026;, zsag001, https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsag001

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

A while back, Freenet Africa had a nice background piece about software luminary and founder of the software freedom movement, Richard Stallman (aka RMS). The article covers his background starting with the GNU project and following through to the current, ongoing fight for digital freedom.

A Rebel with a Cause

Imagine a world where every time you want to share a cool app with a friend, you have to ask permission (and maybe pay extra). Or where fixing a simple bug in your game is impossible because the code is locked away like a secret recipe. Sounds like a tech dystopia, right? This is exactly the kind of world Richard Stallman set out to prevent. Stallman – often known just by his initials RMS – is not as instantly famous as tech giants like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but his impact on our digital lives is monumental. He's the mastermind behind the GNU Project, the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and the author of licenses that guarantee software freedom. In short, he's the original software freedom fighter, a kind of digital rights Gandalf (yes, with the beard to match). And for a guy who champions "free" software, he's quick to tell you: we're talking free as in freedom, not just free as in price.

In this essay, we'll dive into Richard Stallman's contributions to the digital world in an engaging (and occasionally humorous) way. By the end, you'll understand how his work laid the foundation for Linux and the whole open-source ecosystem, why he insists on calling it "GNU/Linux," and what the internet might look like if Stallman hadn't started his crusade for software freedom. Grab a snack (maybe some free-as-in-freedom nachos?) and let's explore the world of Stallman and the movement he started.

Who is Richard Stallman? (And Why Should You Care?) [...]

As others have pointed out, the freedom is the start of a journey, not the destination.

Previously:
(2022) The Code: Story of GNU and Linux (2001) Complete Documentary
(2021) Richard Stallman Rejoins Free Software Foundation Board of Directors
(2018) RMS on a Radical Proposal to Keep Your Personal Data Safe

Original Submission

NASA releases "Starliner Propulsion System Anomalies during the Crewed Flight Test"

VLM writes:

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-releases-report-on-starliner-crewed-flight-test-investigation/

To quote Cheryl Warner, NASA News Chief, "At a news conference on Thursday, NASA released a report of findings from the Program Investigation Team examining the Boeing CST-100 Starliner Crewed Flight Test as part of the agency's Commercial Crew Program."

The direct link to the redacted report is:

https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/nasa-report-with-redactions-021926.pdf?emrc=76e561

Redacted? "For the full report, which includes redactions in coordination with our commercial partner to protect proprietary and privacy-sensitive material is available online."

Its 311 pages and they're not providing a summary so it is likely to be extremely juicy and spicy, as NASA historically doesn't water down press releases for many other reasons. So I know what I'll be reading with breakfast tea later this morning.

So the facts are above. My separate opinions below.

I'd give it a different take than the report as I've read it so far; they designed a semi-disposable cost-reduced capsule but space projects ALWAYS take longer so if backflowing oxidizer will inevitably very slowly eat the o-rings in the helium manifold, well, its going to sit around a long time before launching so its going to eat thru, thats the nature of space program delays. Or propellant residue plus CO2 will rot out thruster nozzles given enough time, and space programs being space programs they will indeed be given time to sit around and slowly rot. They still are not sure about the RCS thrusters jamming but it seems likely to be a lack of ground testing during R+D; teflon is like a viscous liquid over a long time while under stress, key being over a long time.

The "Hardware Longevity and Sparing Concerns" section hints to me that the program is about to be cancelled if it doesn't cancel itself first. Reads like they're not permitted under the terms of the investigation to recommend program shutdown but they wanted to recommend it anyway.

The report follows that with numerous identified management failures at NASA and Boeing. This is the new Boeing, which is no longer competent, so "NASA's hands-off contract approach limited insight" precisely when Boeing needed adult supervision as they've downsized, outsourced, refused to recruit, or otherwise eliminated their competent adults for various reasons over the years. But who knows, what do y'all think?

An Anonymous Coward writes:

It opens inside Bing in your default browser:

Last year, we reported on a speed test feature coming to Windows, built right into the taskbar, where you could gauge your internet connection without venturing out to a browser. In reality, it was more like a shortcut that would still open Bing and take you to a miniaturized version of Ookla's Speedtest. Today, that feature is finally here in the Insider program, as part of Build 26100.7918 and 26200.7918.

In these updates pushed to the Release Preview channel, you'll now see an option to "Perform speed test" when you right-click on the network icon or open the Wi-Fi/cellular quick settings. Upon clicking, your default browser will open up Bing, where you'll see a simplified Ookla interface with a meter in the middle, and three stats below: Latency, Download, and Upload.

That means this is technically not a "native" feature, rather just a website link in your taskbar. Still, for the uninitiated, it can be a convenient way to check their internet speed. Let's say you're in a game and suddenly start experiencing packet loss; instead of Alt-tabbing into a browser for a speed test, you can just right-click on your Ethernet icon and go there directly.

This feature will save you a click or two; however, some users may be disappointed by yet another web wrapper implemented inside Windows. Windows has enjoyed a poor run of stability recently, with even Microsoft recognizing its slack, so a built-in taskbar speedtest is probably not high on most users' list of priorities.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://buttondown.com/creativegood/archive/its-time-to-get-rid-of-networked-cameras/

Amazon did us all a service recently by airing a Super Bowl commercial showing how Ring doorbell cameras spy on everyone walking past. (I discussed this on Techtonic this week with Chris Gilliard, aka hypervisible: episode page / podcast. Recommended listening.)

In the instant that that image aired, millions of Americans finally understood what I – and other tech critics – have been trying to warn about for years: networked cameras are spying on you. The blue circles show the reach of Ring cameras, and – crucially – indicate that they're all part of one network, controlled by Amazon, which can share or sell data to any number of third parties.

Previously: Ring Cancels Flock Deal After Dystopian Super Bowl Ad Prompts Mass Outrage

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Researchers have described a novel mechanochemical process that can store gases safely in powders, using very little energy, in a repeatable process:

Australian scientists say they've made a "eureka moment" breakthrough in gas separation and storage that could radically reduce energy use in the petrochemical industry, while making hydrogen much easier and safer to store and transport in a powder.

Nanotechnology researchers, based at Deakin University's Institute for Frontier Materials, claim to have found a super-efficient way to mechanochemically trap and hold gases in powders, with potentially enormous and wide-ranging industrial implications.

Mechanochemistry is a relatively recently coined term, referring to chemical reactions that are triggered by mechanical forces as opposed to heat, light, or electric potential differences. In this case, the mechanical force is supplied by ball milling – a low-energy grinding process in which a cylinder containing steel balls is rotated such that the balls roll up the side, then drop back down again, crushing and rolling over the material inside.

The team has demonstrated that grinding certain amounts of certain powders with precise pressure levels of certain gases can trigger a mechanochemical reaction that absorbs the gas into the powder and stores it there, giving you what's essentially a solid-state storage medium that can hold the gases safely at room temperature until they're needed. The gases can be released as required, by heating the powder up to a certain point.

The process is repeatable, and Professor Ian Chen, co-author on the new study published in the journal Materials Today, tells us via phone that the boron nitride powder used in the first experiments only loses "about a couple of percent" of its absorption capability each storage and release cycle. "Boron nitride is very stable," he tells us, "and graphene too. We're looking at a restoration treatment that can clean the powders and restore their absorption levels, but we need to prove that it'll work."

The results are absolutely remarkable from a numbers standpoint. This process, for example, could separate hydrocarbon gases out from crude oil using less than 10% of the energy that's needed today. "Currently, the petrol industry uses a cryogenic process," says Chen. "Several gases come up together, so to purify and separate them, they cool everything down to a liquid state at very low temperature, and then heat it all together. Different gases evaporate at different temperatures, and that's how they separate them out."

upstart writes:

Cosmic mystery of the impossibly high-energy neutrino solved by "dark charge" model of black holes :

In 2023, a subatomic particle called a neutrino crashed into Earth with an impossibly huge amount of energy. In fact, no known sources anywhere in the universe can produce that much energy, 100,000 times more than the highest-energy particle ever produced by the Large Hadron Collider, Earth's most powerful particle accelerator. However, a team of physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently hypothesized that something like this could happen when a special kind of black hole, called a quasi-extremal primordial black hole, explodes.

Black holes exist, and we have a good understanding of their life cycle: an old, large star runs out of fuel, implodes in a massively powerful supernova, and leaves behind an area of spacetime with such intense gravity that nothing, not even light, can escape. These black holes are incredibly heavy and are essentially stable.

But, as physicist Stephen Hawking pointed out in 1970, another kind of black hole – a primordial black hole – could be created not by the collapse of a star, but from the universe's primordial conditions shortly after the Big Bang. Primordial black holes exist only in theory so far. And, like standard black holes, they're so massively dense that almost nothing can escape them ... which is what makes them black. However, despite their density, primordial black holes could be much lighter than the black holes we have so far observed. Furthermore, Hawking showed that primordial black holes could slowly emit particles via what is now known as Hawking radiation if they got hot enough.

Andrea Thamm, co-author of the new research and assistant professor of physics at UMass Amherst, said:

The lighter a black hole is, the hotter it should be and the more particles it will emit. As primordial black holes evaporate, they become ever lighter, and so hotter, emitting even more radiation in a runaway process until explosion. It's that Hawking radiation that our telescopes can detect.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://gizmodo.com/theres-a-new-term-for-workers-freaking-out-over-being-replaced-by-ai-2000723019

There isn't a ton of evidence to suggest that the introduction of AI has led to significant job losses, yet. But it has led to a significant amount of talk about job losses, and that appears to be taking a real toll on people. According to research published in the journal Cureus and spotted by Futurism, workers are increasingly suffering from distress caused by the constant fear of being replaced, and it's gotten so bad that it needs its own term.

The researchers propose calling this new, modern anxiety "AI replacement dysfunction" or AIRD. The authors define it as a "new, proposed clinical construct describing the psychological and existential distress that could be experienced by individuals facing the threat or reality of job displacement due to artificial intelligence (AI)." The condition carries with it several common symptoms including anxiety, insomnia, depression, and identity confusion "that may reflect deeper fears about relevance, purpose, and future employability." It can also lead to sufferers dealing with additional challenges like psychiatric disorders and substance abuse.

The anxiety over AI is definitely real. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 71% of respondents said they were concerned that AI will put "too many people out of work permanently." Pew Research found that more than half of Americans are worried about how AI in the workplace will impact their jobs, and most lower- and middle-class people believe AI will worsen their job prospects in the future. Another study found that people working in jobs particularly susceptible to automation are more likely to report feeling more stress and other negative emotions.

And while surprisingly few job cuts have actually been attributed to AI directly (despite the fact that many companies have used AI as cover for broader layoffs), there certainly does seem to be damage being done to the workforce, as it relates to entry-level roles, in particular. Early-career workers are definitely having a much harder time finding jobs, which can at least in part be attributed to companies being more willing to turn over that labor to AI. But the reality is that the economy sucks regardless of the introduction of technological innovation, and the companies responsible for building AI benefit from the narrative that their models are capable of doing human-level work. So hearing about AI taking over your job is basically unavoidable, whether the threat is real or not.

While AIRD isn't an accepted clinical diagnosis yet, the researchers have created a framework to help identify it, including a screening questionnaire designed to help clinicians spot potential symptoms. Treatments for the condition will be up to the clinician, but the researchers highlight Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and other cognitive restructuring techniques to "help patients build psychological resilience and restore a coherent sense of self."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Ten days ago, the social chat app Discord announced that it would launch “teen-by-default” settings for its global audience. As part of this update, all new and existing users worldwide will have a teen-appropriate experience, with updated communication settings, restricted access to age-gated spaces, and content filtering that preserves privacy and meaningful connections, the platform said.

This, of course, means that to use Discord the way you are used to, you’ll have to let it scan your face, and the internet wasn’t happy. Many communities quickly announced their move to other platforms. Others, like the security researcher Celeste, who goes by the handle vmfunc, were convinced there would be a workaround.

Together with two other researchers, they set out to look into Persona, the San Francisco-based startup that’s used by Discord for biometric identity verification – and found a Persona frontend exposed to the open internet on a US government authorized server.

More at The Rage

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Software engineer Kevin McDonald has investigated the topology of the Internet itself before. He enjoys the open data archaeology of this nature. In this recent edition, he has used BGP routing to visualize the Internet again.

For the past few years, I've been trying to make the physical reality of the Internet visible with my Internet Infrastructure Map. This map shows the network of undersea fiber-optic cables along with peering bandwidth, grouped by city. I update the map annually, but I don't want to just pull the latest data and call it a day. In this post I discuss how the map evolved this year and what I did to make it happen, but you can skip to the good part by viewing it here: map.kmcd.dev.

For the 2026 edition, I wanted to better answer the question: where does the Internet actually live? By layering on BGP routing tables alongside physical infrastructure data, I'm now closer to answering that question.

The result is a concept I call “Logical Dominance.” Each city's dominance is calculated by summing total address space of IPv4 subnets that are “homed” in that city. How can I tell where IP addresses are homed? This required analyzing global routing tables to trace IP ownership back to specific geographies. Read on to find out how I accomplished this!

Mapping BGP prefixes to specific locations turned out to be a challenge. Use of BGP in this case means that he had to focus on IPv4 this time.

Previously:
(2018) Mapping the Whole IPv4 Internet with Hilbert Curves
(2016) Revisiting the Carna Botnet
(2014) Undersea Cables Wiring the Earth

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/18/palo_alto_q2_26/

If enterprises are implementing AI, they're not showing it to Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, who on Tuesday said business adoption of the tech lags consumer take-up by at least a couple of years – except for coding assistants.

"Consumers are far outstripping enterprise for the moment, but we expect enterprise will surely and slowly get on that bandwagon," he said on the company's Q2 earnings call.

Arora likened business uptake of AI to the cloud computing shift, which he said took two or three years before enterprises started migrating applications.

"Right now ... tell me how many enterprise AI apps are you using which are driving tremendous amounts of throughput," he asked, and answered himself "I can't think of anything but coding apps."

Coding apps aren't great for Palo Alto's business because they don't generate a lot of network traffic to which it can apply its security smarts. Arora thinks his security vendor peers know this.

"We're all laying the groundwork right now. It is ... sort of an arms race to try and see who can get the AI security sort of platform up and running as quickly as we can."

But the limited enterprise AI adoption Arora has seen does pose some immediate challenges to Palo Alto.

"There is now enterprise adoption that we're beginning to see where customers are running perhaps millions of tokens in one or two particular applications they're working with some of the LLM providers on, and that's where we see the traffic," he said. That traffic is on the LAN and the CEO doesn't think existing networks struggle to handle it.

"I think the challenge right now is consolidating that traffic," he said. "How do you get all the AI traffic to be in one place? So you can understand it, provide visibility, look at the ability to control it and be able to act on it."

The CEO said that as this sort of AI-related traffic grows "it needs a different set of controls and tools."

Palo Alto is already getting its hands on those tools, as on Tuesday put to bed rumours it would acquire agentic AI endpoint security startup Koi by announcing it's done the deal.

Arora pointed to Palo Alto's recent acquisitions of Chronosphere and CyberArk as further evidence of the company's moves to ensure it builds a portfolio of products to secure the AI enterprises will eventually implement.

The CEO expressed confidence Palo Alto has the products it needs today, saying customers know they can't prepare for AI if they are running a tangle of security tools and are therefore consolidating to the kind of platforms the company offers.

Demand for those products helped Palo Alto to $2.6 billion Q2 revenue for the quarter, which represented 15 percent year-over-year growth.

Execs pointed to the success of the company's subscription offerings, noting 23 percent growth in remaining performance obligations, which now stand at $16 billion. And they predicted Q3 revenue would grow at least 28 percent to land between $2.941 billion and $2.945 billion.

All of those nice numbers didn't impress investors, who knocked six percent off the company's share price – perhaps because they weren't thrilled by predictions that profits will ease.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://gizmodo.com/bacteria-frozen-inside-5000-year-old-ice-cave-is-crazy-resistant-to-antibiotics-2000723002

For decades, antibiotics have been humanity's frontline defense against bacterial infections, yet these essential medications have also led to the rise of drug-resistant "superbugs." Now, researchers have discovered an ancient strain of bacteria that managed to develop this superpower thousands of years before humans ever invented antibiotics.

A study published Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology describes Psychrobacter SC65A.3, a bacterial strain discovered frozen inside 5,000-year-old layers of cave ice in Romania. Testing revealed that SC65A.3 is resistant to 10 modern antibiotics and carries more than 100 genes linked to resistance despite never being exposed to these drugs.

"Studying microbes such as Psychrobacter SC65A.3 retrieved from millennia-old cave ice deposits reveals how antibiotic resistance evolved naturally in the environment, long before modern antibiotics were ever used," co-author Cristina Purcarea, a senior scientist at the Institute of Biology Bucharest of the Romanian Academy, said in a release.

Antibiotic resistance is an urgent threat to global public health. In the U.S. alone, more than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur each year, and more than 35,000 people die as a result, according to the CDC's 2019 Antibiotic Resistance Threats Report.

This threat has grown in tandem with the rise of antibiotic use. Antibiotic resistance is a classic example of natural selection: when microbes are exposed to a drug, most die, but a few survive thanks to protective genetic traits. Those survivors then pass their resistance genes onto the next generation, which passes them on to the next, giving rise to superbugs.

While exposure to antibiotics amplifies the prevalence of resistance genes, it does not imbue microbes with these protective traits. Those arise naturally through random genetic mutations and the constant pressure to out-perform other microorganisms in the environment, many of which produce their own antimicrobial compounds.

The ancient Psychrobacter SC65A.3 strain is a perfect example of how these natural processes lead to antibiotic resistance. Purcarea and her colleagues found it inside an 82-foot (25-meter) ice core they extracted from Scarisoara Ice Cave in northwestern Romania. The core represents 13,000 years of climatic history, including the 5,000-year-old ice layers that contained SC65A.3.

In the lab, the researchers isolated various bacterial strains from the core and sequenced their genomes to determine which genes allowed the strain to survive such low temperatures and which promote antimicrobial resistance. When they tested SC65A.3 against 28 widely used antibiotics, they found it was resistant to more than a third of them.

"The 10 antibiotics we found resistance to are widely used in oral and injectable therapies used to treat a range of serious bacterial infections in clinical practice," including tuberculosis, colitis, and urinary tract infections, Purcarea explained.

The findings underscore a frequently overlooked public health threat associated with climate change, according to the study's authors.

"If melting ice releases these microbes, these genes could spread to modern bacteria, adding to the global challenge of antibiotic resistance," Purcarea said. As the global temperature rises, the risk of releasing ancient superbugs into the environment grows. Studying these bacterial strains, however, can also lead to the discovery of unique enzymes and antimicrobial compounds that inspire new drugs and other biotechnological innovations, Purcarea noted.

The SC65A.3 genome contains 11 genes that may be able to kill or stop the growth of other bacteria, fungi, and viruses, for example. It also contains nearly 600 genes with unknown functions, suggesting that many more novel biological mechanisms could be hiding in this superbug's DNA.

"These ancient bacteria are essential for science and medicine," Purcarea said, "but careful handling and safety measures in the lab are essential to mitigate the risk of uncontrolled spread."

Reference:

Frontiers in Microbiology

Original Submission