Month: August 2018

Enlarge / The appropriate reaction to a pile of psychology textbooks, likely full of unreplicable results. (credit: flickr user: CollegeDegrees360)

For scientists, getting research published in the journal Nature is a huge deal. It carries weight, prestige, and the promise of career advancement—as do the pages of its competitor, Science. Both have a reputation for publishing innovative, exciting, and high-quality work with a broad appeal. That reputation means that papers from these journals make up a substantial portion of day-to-day science news.

But the prestige of these journals doesn’t exempt them from problems that have been plaguing science for decades. In fact, because they publish such exciting and innovative work, there's a risk that they're even more likely to publish thrilling but unreliable papers. They may also be contributing to a scientific record that shows only the "yes" answers to big questions but neglects to mention the important-but-boring "no" results.

Colin Camerer, a behavioral economist at the California Institute of Technology, recently led a team of researchers in trying to repeat 21 social science studies from Science and Nature, successfully replicating 13 of them. The results, published yesterday (in Nature, naturally), may also hint at how our focus on positive results is biasing the literature. They also paint a complicated picture of the replication crisis in social science and illustrate how infinitely tricky the project of replication is.

Enlarge / A worker places a chicken in a bin during a cull in Hong Kong on December 31, 2014, after the deadly H7N9 virus was discovered in poultry imported from China. (credit: Getty | Isaac Lawrence)

US health experts are alarmed and outraged that the Chinese government appears to be withholding samples of the deadly, rapidly evolving bird flu virus, H7N9, from US research labs, according to a report by The New York Times.

The samples are critical for studying the virus and developing life-saving treatments and vaccines in preparation for potential outbreaks or pandemics. Usually, countries share viral samples “in a timely manner” without any fanfare under an agreement established by the World Health Organization to address such potential flu threats. That usually means a matter of months.

But according to the Times, China has failed to share the samples for more than a year, despite persistent requests from government officials and researchers, including those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Moreover, scientists and experts worry that, as the US and China continue to butt heads on trade agreements, the issue of sharing biological samples and other medical-related materials could worsen.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today's list is headlined by yet another sweeping eBay sale in which several items are 15 percent off with the coupon code "PREGAME15".

eBay has run a number of sales like this over the summer, and the Dealmaster has highlighted how they typically work in the past. Today's sale doesn't deviate much from the usual formula: the coupon code is effective until 1:00am ET, can only be used once, only applies to items $25 or greater, and can only take a maximum of $100 off. The usual caveats with shopping on eBay still apply, too: try to only buy from highly-rated or known sellers and keep an eye out for particularly aggressive markups from sellers trying to negate the discount.

That said, the Dealmaster keeps highlighting these sales because they often result in pretty solid discounts. Particular highlights today include Apple's AirPods for a new low of $129, the Nintendo Switch for $264, and Bose's QuietComfort 35 II headphones for $254.

Enlarge / That web cam could be giving up what's on your screen, if the person on the other end is listening the right way—with the help of some machine learning and your monitor's coil whine. (credit: Ken Fisher / Getty Images)

Ever wonder what the people on the other end of a Hangouts session are really looking at on their screens? With a little help from machine learning, you might be able to take a peek over their shoulders, based on research published at the CRYPTO 2018 conference in Santa Barbara last week. All you'll need to do is process the audio picked up by their microphones.

Daniel Genkin of the University of Michigan, Mihir Pattani of the University of Pennsylvania, Roei Schuster of Cornell Tech and Tel Aviv University, and Eran Tromer of Tel Aviv University and Columbia University investigated a potential new avenue of remote surveillance that they have dubbed "Synesthesia": a side-channel attack that can reveal the contents of a remote screen, providing access to potentially sensitive information based solely on "content-dependent acoustic leakage from LCD screens."

The research, supported by the Check Point Institute for Information Security at Tel Aviv University (of which Schuster and Tromer are members) and funded in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, examined what amounts to an acoustic form of Van Eck phreaking. While Van Eck phreaking uses radio signal emissions that leak from display connectors, the Synesthesia research leverages "coil whine," the audio emissions from transformers and other electronic components powering a device's LCD display.

Enlarge / Paul Ceglia, indicted on charges of mail fraud and wire fraud, exits federal court in New York, on Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2012. Ceglia, 39, pleaded not guilty to criminal charges that he faked evidence in his contract lawsuit against Facebook Inc. and its chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg. (credit: Peter Foley/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

In a new court filing submitted last week, federal prosecutors said that a criminal defendant accused of attempting to extort Facebook itself has now been arrested in Ecuador.

That man, Paul Ceglia, has been a fugitive since 2015. At that time, he cut off his ankle monitor and fled with his wife, kids, and dog. The American government is now trying to extradite Ceglia.

"The judge’s resolution indicates that the extradition process continues and that he is still detained," Ceglia’s Ecuadorian lawyer Roberto Calderon told Reuters by telephone on Tuesday. "I think the process will last 45 days."

Enlarge / An AMD Ryzen, built on GlobalFoundries' 14nm process. (credit: Fritzchens Fritz)

In a big change of alignments, AMD has announced that its next generation of CPUs and GPUs will be manufactured by TSMC, not GlobalFoundries.

GlobalFoundries was spun off from AMD in 2009. The once-integrated chip company split into two parts: GlobalFoundries took all the manufacturing facilities, leaving AMD as a fabless chip company. This gave AMD a big infusion of cash at a time it needed it, and it allowed GlobalFoundries to build chips for a wide range of customers. This close relationship has positioned GloFo as AMD's preferred manufacturer, though TSMC and Samsung have offered alternative facilities. AMD's current Ryzen, Threadripper, and Epyc chips are all built by GloFo on its 14nm and 12nm processes. AMD uses TSMC for GPUs and the custom chips for Sony's and Microsoft's consoles.

But GlobalFoundries has ceased its development of its next-generation 7nm process. Instead, the company will continue to develop its 14nm and 12nm processes and will focus on tuning them for radios, memory, and low power, making them a better fit for new high-growth markets such as highly integrated systems-on-chips and new 5G cellular components. That direction, however, comes at the expense of traditional high-performance processors.

Enlarge / This'll be a fun one to play on the Switch. (credit: Subset Games)

Nintendo used a YouTube-exclusive presentation on Tuesday to announce a few more popular indie games coming to its Switch system. If you're looking for a summary, you could call it a few big checkmarks on the ever-increasing Switch-port wish list.

Strategy game (and FTL follow-up) Into the Breach concluded the presentation as a "one more thing" reveal. Its creators confirmed that the awesome Ars Approved game will be on Nintendo's eShop later today for $15. Ahead of that, other Ars favorites like Wasteland 2, Bastion, Transistor, Hyper Light Drifter, and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP all received Switch launch windows between this September and October.

Six-player combat, here we come.

After the raging success of the momentum-based (and Ars Approved) platformer Celeste, its creators at Matt Makes Games finally confirmed something they had hinted at for a while: an expanded port of the incredible four-player battle game Towerfall. This Switch edition adds even more features, including support for six-player combat and new four-player co-op challenges (along with playable Celeste characters, if you're into that sort of thing). This expanded version will launch on the Switch on September 27.