Month: March 2024

Enlarge / The Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, on Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. (credit: Getty | Andi Rice)

Alabama lawmakers on Wednesday hastily passed a bill to provide some civil and criminal immunity to patients and health care providers using in vitro fertilization. The bill, signed into law by Governor Kay Ivey within the hour of its passing, comes into play in the event that embryos—which were recently ruled to be "children" by the state's Supreme Court—are damaged or destroyed, a standard and common occurrence in fertility treatment.

The new protections are intended to restore IVF treatment in Alabama after the state Supreme Court's ruling last month led at least three major IVF providers and one embryo shipping company to suddenly halt aspects of their work in fear of liability for wrongful death lawsuits. People going through the arduous and costly process of IVF were then abruptly denied the very time-sensitive treatments needed to try to grow their families. The ruling drew outcry from around the state and across the nation.

IVF is a type of assisted reproductive technology that involves fertilizing painstakingly harvested eggs with sperm in a lab setting, allowing the fertilized eggs to develop into embryos, and then either transferring a limited number of them into a uterus at a key time in hopes of implantation or freezing them for later use. Not all fertilized eggs develop into viable embryos, and any embryos that are unviable or unneeded are routinely discarded.

Enlarge (credit: Tanja Ivanova)

In the US, for orange juice to be labeled as such, it must be 90 percent sweet orange, or Citrus sinensis. Thus, citrus producers in the US have long planted 90 percent Citrus sinensis. But this cultivar is extremely susceptible to the bacteria that causes citrus greening disease, which has devastated the near-monocultural Florida crop. There is as yet no way to control the disease; the most effective way to deal with it would be to find citrus cultivars that are resistant to it and breed them with sweet orange to grant them disease resistance.

Sweet oranges are a hybrid of mandarin and pomelo and are not especially genetically diverse. Any disease-resistant citrus we know of, however, does not taste like sweet orange, so breeding with it will produce fruit and juice with off flavors. It has been difficult to define and quantify those off flavors, though, because it has been difficult to define and quantify the components essential for proper orange flavor.

Now, researchers at the USDA Agricultural Research Service performed a comprehensive chemical evaluation of 179 different citrus combinations—oranges, mandarins, and assorted hybrids—and cross-referenced their chemical compositions with evaluations of orange and mandarin flavors in juice samples performed by a “trained panel.”

Enlarge / The Red V-Raptor X. (credit: Red)

Nikon is buying the ultra-high-end video camera company Red Digital Cinema. Nikon has a press release saying that "RED will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Nikon" for an undisclosed sum. Nikon is typically more of a still-image camera company and wants to use Red to "expand the fast-growing professional digital cinema camera market."

Red was founded in 2005 by Jim Jannard, founder of the Oakley sunglasses company. The company is a big player in digital film production, and, at the peak of its movie market share in 2016, over 25 percent of the top 100 grossing domestic films were shot on Red cameras. A lot of big YouTubers also use the cameras, so there's a lot more room for growth there. In the early days, the company was a pioneer in 4K digital filmmaking (see Peter Jackson's 48 fps film The Hobbit as a famous example), but since then, the competition has caught up. The company also made a terrible smartphone that one time.

"This acquisition marks a significant milestone for Nikon, melding its rich heritage in professional and consumer imaging with RED's innovative prowess," Red's president, Jarred Land, wrote on Facebook. "Together, Nikon and RED are poised to redefine the professional digital cinema camera market, promising an exciting future of product development that will continue to push the boundaries of what is possible in film and video production."

Enlarge / Red Bull Racing team boss Christian Horner faced the media at an F1 press conference earlier today in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. (credit: Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)

Formula 1 has been embroiled in a scandal as its 2024 season gets underway. As Ars detailed on Monday, the team principal for Red Bull Racing, Christian Horner, was investigated by his organization for what was described as "controlling and inappropriate behavior" toward a female member of his staff. Now, we've learned that the staff member has been suspended with pay by the F1 team.

A spokesperson for the team told The Guardian that Red Bull was unable to comment on an internal matter.

Last week, Red Bull issued a statement about the dismissal of the grievance, stating that the complainant has a right of appeal but that it "is confident that the investigation has been fair, rigorous, and impartial."

Enlarge / A Google sign stands in front of the building on the sidelines of the opening of the new Google Cloud data center in Hesse, Hanau, opened in October 2023. (credit: Getty Images)

On Wednesday, authorities arrested former Google software engineer Linwei Ding in Newark, California, on charges of stealing AI trade secrets from the company. The US Department of Justice alleges that Ding, a Chinese national, committed the theft while secretly working with two China-based companies.

According to the indictment, Ding, who was hired by Google in 2019 and had access to confidential information about the company's data centers, began uploading hundreds of files into a personal Google Cloud account two years ago.

The trade secrets Ding allegedly copied contained "detailed information about the architecture and functionality of GPU and TPU chips and systems, the software that allows the chips to communicate and execute tasks, and the software that orchestrates thousands of chips into a supercomputer capable of executing at the cutting edge of machine learning and AI technology," according to the indictment.

Enlarge / Artist's conception of Apple attempting to dodge the concerns of EU regulators. (credit: Epic Games)

European Union regulators are investigating whether Apple's recent revocation of an Epic Games iOS developer account puts the iPhone-maker in violation of the Digital Markets Act and other rules in the continent. If Apple is found in violation, the European Commission could impose significant fines as part of its effort to put some force behind its sweeping tech regulations.

"We have requested further explanations on this from Apple under the DMA (Digital Markets Act)," a European Commission spokesperson told Reuters late Thursday. "We are also evaluating whether Apple's actions [regarding Epic Games] raise doubts on their compliance with the DSA (Digital Services Act) and the P2B (Platform to Business Regulation), given the links between the developer program membership and the App store as designated VLOP (very large online platform)."

More than just the DMA

Apple's plans for what Epic calls "malicious compliance" under the DMA, which goes into effect today, have gotten plenty of attention in recent months. But the European Commission's statement suggests its investigation could encompass other regulations as well.