Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

During Pregnancy, the Placenta Hacks the Immune System to Protect the Fetus

Cells in the placenta have an unusual trick for activating gentle immune defenses and keeping them turned on when no infection is present. It involves crafting and deploying a fake virus.

https://www.wired.com/story/during-pregnancy-the-placenta-hacks-the-immune-system-to-protect-the-fetus/
#Biology #Pregnancy #Medicine #Health #Pregnancy #Science

A sinusoidal Mario

#NotReallySureHowToTagThisOne

Hello everyone!

COS has landed on Mastodon! 🚀 Join us in this space for updates and discussions. #OpenScience #OpenSource

#Introduction
I work on quantum technologies for networks & sensing. Mostly playing with quantum optics & quantum information.
I work at the University of Geneva in Switzerland & previously studied at the University of Queensland in Australia.

I was the inaugural chair of the Strategic Research Agenda Work Group for the European Quantum Flagship initiative & founding Editor-in-Chief for the IOP journal: Quantum Science and Technology.

#quantum #QuantumTechnology #QuantumInformation

This is completely on-brand.

The door plug from the #AlaskaAirlines #737max lands in physics teacher Bob Sauer's yard. He uses it to give a lesson on impulse and momentum to a reporter from the New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/08/us/portland-alaska-airlines-plane-door.html?unlocked_article_code=1.MU0.2ywZ.C5PQ6Pj7dxMj&smid=url-share

So had an interesting Sunday evening shopping for food. Found this on one of the POS machines in a local supermarket.

Stephen Hawking was born #OTD in 1942. He developed theorems with Penrose that determine when general relativity produces singularities, established classical laws of black hole mechanics, and hypothesized that quantum effects make black holes radiate.

Image: Santi Visalli/Getty

Duolingo has confirmed it's offboarded (such a nice euphemism for layoffs) about 10% of its contractors who work on translation partially due to AI being able to do their jobs.

I shared some screenshots of layoff mails earlier but people asked for proof. I hope this shows this wasn't just a random post on reddit.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/artificial-intelligence/duolingo-cuts-10-of-contractors-in-move-to-greater-use-of-ai

AI firms’ pledges to defend customers from IP issues have real limits

Indemnities offered by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are narrow.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/01/ai-firms-pledges-to-defend-customers-from-ip-issues-have-real-limits/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Merry Sky was listed in the 25 best new apps of 2023 at Fast Company! https://www.fastcompany.com/90999572/25-best-new-apps-of-2023

We really really need to evangelize active PII data purging as mandated risk-reduction.

https://infosec.exchange/@vcsjones/111717833173313022

ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) detected what is likely to be the first protoplanetary disk in another galaxy, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 160,000 light-years away

🔗 https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2318/

Libreoffice is better at reading old Word files than Word https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/111716610017454919 😀

The muon is a particle very much like an electron but about 207 times heavier. You can make an atom like hydrogen with a muon orbiting a proton! It's called 'muonic hydrogen'.

Muonic hydrogen is 207 times smaller than hydrogen. But the muon moves at the same average speed as the electron does in hydrogen: about 1/137 times the speed of light. This is pretty fast by human standards.

Unfortunately a muon doesn't live for long: its half-life is roughly a microsecond, and then it decays into an electron and some junk.

But relativity says that time passes more slowly for a fast-moving object. So a muon must live a bit longer when it's in muonic hydrogen. So I wondered: has anyone detected this effect?

Unfortunately the answer is "not yet, because the effect is too small". But we're getting close to being able to do it.

Interestingly, the lifetime increase due to relativity is 60 times smaller than the lifetime decrease due to the muon being captured by the proton it's orbiting! And *that* is an effect we can measure:

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/689478/does-a-muon-in-muonic-hydrogen-have-a-longer-half-life-due-to-time-dilation?noredirect=1#comment1787992_689478

Palestinians must be able to stay in Gaza – Blinken

Reuters Antony Blinken is on his latest Middle East tour US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Palestinians must not be pressured into leave Gaza, and must be allowed to return to their homes once conditions allow. Mr Blinken condemned statements by some Israeli ministers, who called for the resettlement of Palestinians elsewhere... Source: Palestinians must be able to stay in Gaza - Blinken

http://nedhamsonsecondlineviewofthenews.com/2024/01/07/palestinians-must-be-able-to-stay-in-gaza-blinken/

The company that made 90% of their revenue through advertising made a web browser and y'all were like "I'm sure it'll work out".

I mean there's nothing wrong with this message. But if you can't trust Google with your data today, you couldn't trust them yesterday either. If you wait until the abuse is obvious, it's already too late.
https://mastodon.social/@dangillmor/111717782381752829

#Disney's 'Steamboat Willie' YouTube #copyright claim is back, this time for audio - https://mashable.com/article/disney-steamboat-willie-brock-baker-youtube-demonetized-again "Disney has once again demonetized a third-party Steamboat Willie video, after previously remonetizing it and dropping its copyright claim against it. This time taking issue with the video's audio."

For anyone who is not prepared for our upcoming USB-C standardization, I had to pick up one of these USB-C cable testers last year to figure out why half of my cables don’t work with specific devices despite everything being USB-C.

https://www.tindie.com/products/petl/usb-c-cable-tester-c2c-caberqu/

Crooked Jean Luc Picard is a threat to Democracy! His weaponization of Starfleet against his Political Opponent is so outrageous that even his supporters are saying that it must end, now. Alpha Quadrant has never seen anything like this before, and hopefully never will!