Month: October 2016

Enlarge / It's all fun and games until Ringo goes Neanderthal on you. (credit: Caveman)

Genital warts, or human papillomavirus (HPV), isn't just a disease of the modern world and its newfangled sexual mores. In fact, various strains of HPV plagued our ancestors long before Homo sapiens evolved. A new study in Molecular Biology and Evolution reveals that when the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans left Africa over 500,000 years ago, they were already carrying a variant of HPV. The early humans who remained in Africa had their own variants of HPV, too. As the two populations evolved, their cancer-causing wart viruses evolved with them–until that fateful moment when human and Neanderthal came together, as it were.

A group of researchers in France and Spain used a common statistical modeling method to trace the evolutionary origins of today's HPV. By looking at mutated regions in the virus, which occur regularly over time, the researchers discerned that HPV's origins go back almost half a million years. The question was, how did various strains of HPV (including the extremely carcinogenic HPV16) make their way around the world? Currently, we see almost no HPV16 in Sub-Saharan Africa, while it's incredibly common elsewhere.

The researchers had two working assumptions: either early humans brought HPV with them out of Africa, and new strains evolved in populations that split off from each other outside Africa; or early humans acquired the ancestral strain of HPV16 from Neanderthals and Denisovans they encountered. After modeling the likelihood of different scenarios, the researchers concluded that the latter fit the facts. They write:

Enlarge / Excerpt of an FBI interview report detailing a Judicial Watch deal with a defense contractor to search for hacked Clinton files.

More records from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's review of Hillary Clinton's e-mail practices have been released through the FBI's Freedom of Information Act site, including interviews with a number of individuals related to the security of the server. One of them was an employee of a defense contractor who claimed he was funded by Judicial Watch to investigate whether Clinton was hacked.

In the interview, the individual, whose name was redacted, claimed that he used the services of Dark Horse Data, a company owned by former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Reginald Hyde, to search for e-mails associated with Clinton's personal account. The company focuses on "specialized data acquisition for both US and International customers" and has provided database intelligence analysis to the US government.

Hyde denied that his company was involved in any such task, telling Ars Technica in a phone interview that he "was quite astounded to learn" of the assertion in the FBI documents and saying that it was like "being asked how your day on Mars was. My company was categorically not involved in this."

Enlarge / Photographer : Luke Sharrett / Bloomberg (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

As leading health experts gathered in Washington Monday to discuss the dramatic rise in obesity and type 2 diabetes over the last three decades, PepsiCo Inc. announced goals to slightly reduce added sugars in beverages—a significant driver of the health crises.

According to its new “sustainability agenda,” PepsiCo is giving itself until 2025 to cut back production of beverages that pack more than 100 calories from added sugars in a 12 ounce serving. (Added sugars are those added during food production and processing that are not naturally included in foods, such as the natural sugars found in milk and fruits.) Currently, about 60 percent of PepsiCo’s beverages contain more than 100 calories from added sugars; the company’s goal is to get that down to 33 percent in the next nine years. The efforts, the company said, will help "meet changing consumer needs."

High-calorie culprits include the company’s flagship beverage, Pepsi, which contains 150 calories and 41 grams of sugar (or about 10.25 teaspoons) in a 12 ounce can. PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew contains 170 calories and 46 grams of sugar in a 12 ounce serving. And Starbucks Frappuccino coffee drink, also made by the company, contains 290 calories and 46 grams of sugar in a 13.7 fluid ounce serving.

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A website used to fund the campaigns of Republican senators was infected with malware that for more than six months collected donors' personal information, including full names, addresses, and credit card data, a researcher said.

The storefront for the National Republican Senatorial Committee was one of about 5,900 e-commerce platforms recently found to be compromised by malicious skimming software, according to researcher and developer Willem de Groot. He said the NSRC site was infected from March 16 to October 5 by malware that sent donors' credit card data to attacker-controlled domains. One of the addresses—jquery-code[dot]su—is hosted by dataflow[dot]su, a service that provides so-called bulletproof hosting to money launderers, sellers of synthetic drugs and stolen credit card data, and other providers of illicit wares or services.

De Groot said it's not clear how many credit cards were compromised over the six months the site was infected. Based on data from TrafficEstimates, the NRSC site received about 350,000 visits per month. Assuming 1 percent of those visits involved the visitor using a credit card, that would translate to 3,500 transactions per month, or about 21,000 transactions over the time the site was compromised. Assuming a black market value of $4 to $21 per compromised card, the crooks behind the hack may have generated revenue of $600,000.

Enlarge (credit: Janne Moren)

When societies are involved in long-term, intractable conflicts, individuals tend to develop highly polarized views about how to resolve them, which can make it even harder to reach agreements. But it’s possible that making things seem worse could make them a bit better.

A recent study published in PNAS showed that when people who hold extreme opinions are exposed to even more extreme opinions, they tend to moderate their views. Unfortunately, exposing moderates to these same intervention messages makes them more extreme in their opinions, so this technique may be a double-edged sword.

The authors of the study examined attitudes of people living in a conflict-ridden region of Israel. The Israeli conflict has been going on for decades, and individuals’ opinions on it are closely tied to their political beliefs and level of religiosity. The authors attempted to use a model called “paradoxical thinking” to change people’s perspectives on this deeply entrenched conflict.

Enlarge / A Comcast service vehicle. (credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The Federal Trade Commission is worried that it may no longer be able to regulate companies such as Comcast, Google, and Verizon unless a recent court ruling is overturned.

The FTC on Thursday petitioned the 9^th US Circuit Court of Appeals for a rehearing in a case involving AT&T’s throttling of unlimited data plans. A 9th Circuit panel previously ruled that the FTC cannot punish AT&T, and the decision raises questions about the FTC’s ability to regulate any company that operates a common carrier business such as telephone or Internet service.

While the FTC's charter from Congress prohibits it from regulating common carriers, the agency has previously exercised authority to regulate these companies when they offer non-common carrier services. But the recent court ruling said that AT&T is immune from FTC oversight entirely, even when it’s not acting as a common carrier.