Month: August 2016

(credit: Dr.Farouk)

Brace yourselves, dear readers: according to a shocking study in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, health insurance may be good for your health.

Researchers at Harvard surveyed the health of nearly 9,000 low-income people in Texas, Arkansas, and Kentucky from 2013 to 2015. During this time, Arkansas and Kentucky expanded Medicaid healthcare under the Affordable Care Act while Texas did not. In the course of the study, survey respondents in Arkansas and Kentucky not only reported improvements in their access and quality of care, but were five percent more likely to report being in excellent health compared to their counterparts in Texas.

While the findings are perhaps not surprising, they offer some of the first hard data that the ACA is actually improving the health of the 20 million Americans that gained insurance under the elaborate health law. However, the authors caution that it’s just a correlation. The data doesn’t directly prove ACA’s role in any health improvements captured. In the words of the Harvard researchers, the study design “precludes any clear causal interpretation."

Major depressive disorder is a significant health problem, but its biological underpinnings aren't well understood. That's in part because there’s variability in both the disease's symptoms and its heritability. A recent study published in Nature Genetics identified five independent gene variants from four genome regions that are associated with depression, raising hopes that we can get a better handle on the disorder.

The study used a meta analysis of data collected by consumer genetics company 23andMe as well as previously published studies of depression. These studies can identify regions of the chromosome—and sometimes individual genes—that are frequently inherited along with the disorder. A correlation can imply causation.

The most significantly associated gene was OFLM4, which encodes for olfactomedin-4, a protein that promotes tumor growth and cell adhesion. This gene has not been previously associated with any psychiatric disorders, but it is known to be expressed in some brain regions, including the amygdala and the temporal lobe.

(credit: NASA)

SpaceX appears to have taken a significant step forward with the development of a key component of its Mars mission architecture. According to multiple reports, during the Small Satellite Conference Tuesday in Logan, Utah, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said the company has shipped a Raptor engine to its test site in MacGregor, Texas. A spokesman confirmed to Ars that the engine has indeed been moved to Texas for developmental tests.

The Raptor is SpaceX's next generation of rocket engine. It may be as much as three times more powerful than the Merlin engines that power its Falcon 9 rocket and will also be used in the Falcon Heavy rocket that may fly in late 2016 or early 2017. The Raptor will power SpaceX's next generation of rocket after the Falcon Heavy, the so-called Mars Colonial Transporter.

Although official details regarding the Raptor engine remain scarce, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has suggested the engine will have a thrust of about 500,000 pounds, roughly the same power as a space shuttle's main engines. Whereas the shuttle was powered by three main engines and two booster rockets, however, it is believed the large rocket SpaceX uses to colonize Mars would likely be powered by a cluster of nine Raptor engines.

For months now, the digital rights management solution known as Denuvo has proven utterly impervious to cracks and workarounds—so impervious that a major piracy group warned games may become completely "crack-proof" within two years (that same group later took a public break from even attempting any more single-player hacks). In recent days, however, the first cracks have started to develop in Denuvo's digital armor (pun intended).

Denuvo works by creating a unique key for a game based on the specific hardware configuration of the legitimate purchaser's machine. If those game files are shared with another player using another computer, Denuvo's protection will detect the hardware differences and make sure the game doesn't work as intended.

Over the weekend, a hacker going by the handle Voksi crafted a workaround for this protection by building off the demo for id Software's recent Doom remake. Using a custom loader program, Voksi managed to swap the Steam AppID for a pirated copy of the full Doom game with that of a legitimately downloaded free demo. With that change, Steam and Denuvo apparently viewed the full game as if it was the legitimate demo and allowed it to load without issue. The same essential workaround was adapted for other Denuvo-protected games, including Rise of the Tomb Raider.