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- The next premium Helldivers 2 Warbond includes a new lightning shotgun, and of course more capes PC Gamer
Tag Archives: Explaining
Alzheimer’s Disease Has At Least Five Variants, Possibly Explaining Treatment Failures – IFLScience
- Alzheimer’s Disease Has At Least Five Variants, Possibly Explaining Treatment Failures IFLScience
- Cerebrospinal fluid proteomics in patients with Alzheimer’s disease reveals five molecular subtypes with distinct genetic risk profiles Nature.com
- Dutch scientists uncover five different biological variants of Alzheimer’s disease News-Medical.Net
- Different biological variants discovered in Alzheimer’s disease Medical Xpress
- Scientists discover there’s FIVE types of Alzheimer’s and are hopeful breakthrough could lead to cure Daily Mail
Demi Lovato Re-Adopted ‘She/Her’ Pronouns Because Explaining ‘They/Them’ Was ‘Exhausting’ – Rolling Stone
- Demi Lovato Re-Adopted ‘She/Her’ Pronouns Because Explaining ‘They/Them’ Was ‘Exhausting’ Rolling Stone
- Demi Lovato Re-Adopted She/Her Pronouns Because Explaining They/Them Was Tiring PEOPLE
- Demi Lovato says adjusting pronouns came from ‘exhausting’ explaining USA TODAY
- Demi Lovato ‘got tired’ of using ‘they/them’ pronouns: ‘It was absolutely exhausting’ Page Six
- Demi Lovato Explains the ‘Exhausting’ Process That Led to Them Re-Adopting Feminine Pronouns Billboard
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Four charts explaining the Southwest Airlines crisis
CNN
—
A blast of severe winter weather last week caused thousands of Southwest Airlines flight cancellations and spiraled into a complete meltdown of its flight system. In the days since, the carrier’s scramble to recover has been slow and, some passengers argue, largely unsuccessful. But experts say Southwest’s mess is actually the culmination of issues that have been building over several years.
Since Dec. 22, the beleaguered airline has canceled more than half of its typical flight schedule, and by late Wednesday about 87% of all canceled flights in the US were from Southwest alone, according to industry trackers FlightRadar24 and FlightAware.
The dire situation, which has exasperated passengers and caught the eye of government regulators, has magnified this week as other major airlines recovered from the extreme cold, ice and snow that gripped much of the United States over the holiday weekend.
The company has apologized to its passengers and employees for the daily cancellations and reduced its capacity by roughly two thirds on Thursday, according to a CNN review of flight data.
This week’s meltdown is not the first time the company has found itself in this predicament. In October 2021, Southwest canceled more than 2,000 flights over a four-day period. While the airline blamed the crisis partly on bad weather in Florida, Southwest canceled flights for far longer than its competitors.
But much of Southwest’s mess may be the result of long-term problems unrelated to the weather.
Chief among them are outdated internal processes and information technology. Southwest’s scheduling system hasn’t changed much since the 1990s, according to Captain Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association.
CNN
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Southwest canceled about two-thirds of its flights. See how travelers are faring
Southwest has also acknowledged the company’s outdated infrastructure. “We’ve talked an awful lot about modernizing the operation, and the need to do that,” CEO Bob Jordan told employees in a memo obtained by CNN.
Over the years, the airline’s cancellation rate has crept up, tripling from 2013 to September 2022, the most recent data available from US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, which tracks the airlines’ performance, and well before the recent crisis.
The bureau has only released data for 2022 through September. To ensure a fair comparison, CNN only analyzed the carrier’s data from January to September in previous years.
Cancellation rates among airlines fluctuate year-to-year, depending on weather and other factors, such as Covid-19, which resulted in a major industry-wide disruption in the early months of the pandemic in 2020.
But Southwest has consistently failed to perform as well as its competitors when it comes to cancellations, according to bureau data.
In several years over the last decade, the airline had higher cancellation rates compared to other major airlines, the data shows.
It’s not just cancellations. Southwest has also seen its on-time percentage slide in recent years to the lowest point in a decade. Through September of 2022, well before the carrier’s current struggles, only about 7 in 10 of its flights have arrived on time.
Rosenthal: MLB’s massive free-agent spending is just getting started. Explaining the forces at work.
Tyler Anderson jumped too soon.
Oh, anyone can understand why Anderson on Nov. 15 agreed to a three-year, $39 million free-agent deal with the Angels rather than accept a one-year, $19.65 million qualifying offer from the Dodgers. In his first six seasons, Anderson had an adjusted ERA that was precisely league-average. Last season, at age 32, he broke out with the Dodgers, producing the eighth-best adjusted ERA in the majors. The Angels offered him nearly $40 million. He wanted to play in Anaheim. Why mess around?
Reasonable question. Too reasonable, it turned out. Anderson acted rationally in an environment that quickly turned irrational. The contracts, for starting pitchers, in particular, but really, for all players, are getting crazier by the day. And the spending orgy at the Winter Meetings, rivaling the 2019 and 2000 editions, if not quite something out of Ancient Rome, is just getting started.
On Monday, Justin Verlander, turning 40 on Feb. 20, matched new Mets teammate Max Scherzer, 38, for the highest average annual salary in the game’s history, $43.33 million. Trea Turner agreed with the Phillies on an 11-year, $300 million contract that will take him through — gasp— age 40. Still to come: Aaron Judge, Carlos Correa, Xander Bogaerts, Carlos Rodón. And more.
Welcome to the perfect storm of baseball excess, a confluence of events that already has produced more than $1 billion in free-agent contracts. Each deal is more jaw-dropping and seemingly more nonsensical than the last. And yet, none of it comes as a surprise.
Consider the forces at work:
• It’s the first full offseason of a new collective-bargaining agreement. Owners historically react to the assurance of labor peace over a sustained period by spending more freely.
• The sport’s revenues last season approached $11 billion, according to commissioner Rob Manfred. That number potentially will exceed the record of $10.7 billion set in 2019, the last full season played without COVID-19 restrictions.
• The league in November sold the remaining 15 percent of BAMTech to Disney for $900 million. While that amount technically breaks down to $30 million per team, it’s possible the league held back a portion of the money for its Central Fund.
• The higher luxury-tax thresholds in the new CBA created more flexibility for the game’s biggest spenders. The lowest threshold increased from $210 million in 2021 to $230 million in 2022 and then $233 in 2023. The impact only is now starting to show. Last offseason started under the old CBA and ended after a 99-day lockout with an abbreviated conclusion to free agency.
• The new, expanded postseason format — and the surprise appearances of the Padres and Phillies in the National League Championship Series — is perhaps creating greater hope for clubs that previously were also-rans, and providing more incentive to spend.
So, there you have it, the makings of a splurge.
The offseason began with Edwin Díaz becoming the highest-paid reliever in history, agreeing to a five-year, $102 million contract with the Mets. Two other relievers, Robert Suárez (five years, $46 million) and Rafael Montero (three years, $34.5 million) followed with inflated deals. One general manager looking for bullpen help was scrambling to meetings with agents on Sunday night, trying to strike a reasonable two-year deal with a quality reliever, and looking rather harried.
The starting-pitching market, peaking with the Rangers’ signing of Jacob deGrom for five years and $185 million, is even more intense, and not just at the top. Two weeks after Anderson signed with the Angels, Zach Eflin reached a three-year, $40 million agreement with the Rays despite pitching only 75 2/3 innings last season. And things were just getting started.
Matthew Boyd turned 13 1/3 innings with the Mariners last season into a one-year, $10 million contract with one of his previous teams, the Tigers. Mike Clevinger joined the White Sox on a one-year, $12 million deal after missing all of 2021 while recovering from Tommy John surgery and producing an adjusted ERA 14 percent below league average in 2022. Both contracts seemed excessive initially. Not even a month later, both might be bargains, just like Anderson’s.
The middle tier of free-agent starting pitchers — Chris Bassitt, Nathan Eovaldi, Jameson Taillon, Andrew Heaney, Taijuan Walker, et al — will be the next to be overpaid. One of those pitchers received five new offers after deGrom signed, according to his agent, who asked not to be identified while in the middle of negotiations. Bassitt and Eovaldi might be weighed down slightly by their qualifying offers. But the way money is flying around, will teams even blink at the prospect of giving up a draft pick or two and international bonus pool space to get the pitcher they want?
Of course, it’s not just the starting pitchers benefiting. For a look at the possible ramifications of some of the bigger position-player deals, let’s fast forward to the 2031 Phillies. Bryce Harper will be 38 that season, playing out the final year of his contract. Turner also will be 38, but with two years left on his deal. The Phillies can bask in the relatively low average annual values of both players — Turner ranks 27th all-time at $27.27 million, Harper 35th at $25.38 million. But both contracts include full no-trade clauses and lack opt-outs. Barring something dramatic, neither player is going anywhere.
All of which is fine, as long as teams get the production they anticipate in the early years of the contracts. Harper to this point has been well worth the money for the Phillies, winning an MVP award in 2021 and leading them to the World Series in 2022 while serving as a DH because of an elbow injury that led to Tommy John surgery. How will Harper age? What kind of player will Turner be when he starts to lose his speed? Neither question will trouble the Phillies, as long as they win a World Series or two while each is under contract.
The performance of the oft-injured deGrom over the next five years will bear perhaps closer inspection. One writer joked that Díaz as a reliever might pitch more innings over the next five years than deGrom as a starter. Verlander at $86.66 million is no bargain, but at nearly $100 million less than deGrom, the Mets are practically giddy over their “savings.”
Hey, it’s not my money, or even your money — ticket prices are driven by the principles of supply and demand, not by the sizes of player contracts. If the owners didn’t have the money, they wouldn’t spend it. And boy do they have it, more than ever before.
Poor Tyler Anderson. He got rich before he could have gotten even richer. Amid the wackiness of the 2022-23 offseason, he’s baseball’s unfortunate son.
(Top photo of Trea Turner: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
Padres-Mets: Explaining Joe Musgrove’s bizarre ear check during postseason elimination game
In the bottom of the sixth inning of the win-or-go-home Game 3 of the Wild Card Series, Padres starting pitcher Joe Musgrove was checked by the umpiring crew for a possible illegal substance. Mets manager Buck Showalter had a quick conference to request the check with the umpires, who chatted together and then checked Musgrove.
Musgrove had been dealing up to that point in an eventual 6-0 Padres win. Through five innings of scoreless ball, he had allowed only one hit and struck out four with no walks. Here’s a look at the check:
Per MLB rules: “Any pitcher who possesses or applies foreign substances will be subject to immediate ejection from the game and suspended automatically in accordance with the rules. If a player other than the pitcher is found to have applied a foreign substance to the ball, both the position player and pitcher will be ejected.”
After the check, the umpires cleared Musgrove of any wrongdoing and he stayed in the game. Musgrove then induced a groundout before striking out the next hitter and staring down the Mets’ dugout — likely Showalter — and then ended the inning by getting a deep flyout. It then appeared that Musgrove had an exchange with the Mets dugout as he walked off the field.
Musgrove ended up throwing seven scoreless innings while allowing only one hit. He is the first pitcher to throw at least seven innings and allow less than two hits in an elimination game in MLB history, per Sarah Langs. He said the Mets requesting the check “lit a fire under his ass.”
Early in the game, fan conspiracies started circling social media regarding Musgrove’s ears looking red and shiny. There’s obviously nothing illegal about having red and shiny ears, as ridiculous as it sounds to even utter such a phrase, and veteran big leaguer Andrew McCutchen weighed in:
Somewhat sparse chants of “cheater” could be heard in Citi Field after the check, which was odd timing considering the umpires had already checked and cleared Musgrove, but it’s a high-intensity, elimination game.
Musgrove’s velocity and spin rate — things that could increase drastically with the use of certain foreign substances — were up ever-so-slightly on Sunday, but not to levels that would indicate something funky is going on. And, hey, it’s an elimination game. He’s probably fired up and throwing harder due to the adrenaline.
Here’s how Showalter explained why he wanted a check after his team’s season-ending loss:
Musgrove won a World Series ring with the 2017 Astros — purveyors of the sign-stealing scandal — and has recently said he wants to win a “true” championship and he doesn’t “feel great” wearing that ring. Musgrove and the Padres are moving on to the NLDS to face the Dodgers.
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Christina Ricci recalls Johnny Depp explaining to her ‘what homosexuality was’ as a child
Christina Ricci has opened up about a childhood memory, which involved Johnny Depp explaining to her “what homosexuality was”.
The Yellowjackets actor was nine when she co-starred alongside Depp’s then-girlfriend Winona Ryder in 1990 romance drama Mermaids.
“There was something going on on set and someone was not being nice to someone else. And they were like, ‘Oh, well, he might be homophobic,’” Ricci explained to Andy Cohen during a recent appearance on his SiriusXM radio show.
“And then I was like, ‘Well, I don’t understand what that is,’” she continued. “And I was in Winona’s trailer and she was like, ‘I don’t know how [to explain].’
“So she put me on the phone with Johnny, and Johnny explained it to me,” she remembered.
Ricci described Depp’s explanation as being given “very matter-of-factly”.
“He was like, ‘It’s when a man wants to have sex with a man and when a woman wants to have sex with a woman.’ And I was like, ‘Ah, okay,’” she said.
Christina Ricci on SiriusXM
The Emmy-nominated actor went on to star alongside Depp in multiple films, including 1998 comedy Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1999 horror Sleepy Hollow, and 2000 romance The Man Who Cried.
Depp was recently involved in a high-profile court case with his ex-wife Amber Heard. He claimed she had defamed him in an op-ed published in The Washington Post, in which she described herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse”. Heard filed a counter-suit in November 2020, asking to be granted immunity against Depp’s claims.
On 1 June, a jury overwhelmingly found in Depp’s favour that his ex-wife Amber Heard had defamed him in three statements. Jurors also found that an attorney for Depp defamed Heard in one of three statements highlighted in her counter-suit. Depp was awarded $10.35m in damages, while Heard was awarded $2m.
As part of the release of pretrial documents relating to the case, Depp’s former girlfriend Ellen Barkin testified that Depp gave her a drug before they had sex for the first time.
Experian, You Have Some Explaining to Do – Krebs on Security
Twice in the past month KrebsOnSecurity has heard from readers who’ve had their accounts at big-three credit bureau Experian hacked and updated with a new email address that wasn’t theirs. In both cases the readers used password managers to select strong, unique passwords for their Experian accounts. Research suggests identity thieves were able to hijack the accounts simply by signing up for new accounts at Experian using the victim’s personal information and a different email address.
John Turner is a software engineer based in Salt Lake City. Turner said he created the account at Experian in 2020 to place a security freeze on his credit file, and that he used a password manager to select and store a strong, unique password for his Experian account.
Turner said that in early June 2022 he received an email from Experian saying the email address on his account had been changed. Experian’s password reset process was useless at that point because any password reset links would be sent to the new (impostor’s) email address.
An Experian support person Turner reached via phone after a lengthy hold time asked for his Social Security Number (SSN) and date of birth, as well as his account PIN and answers to his secret questions. But the PIN and secret questions had already been changed by whoever re-signed up as him at Experian.
“I was able to answer the credit report questions successfully, which authenticated me to their system,” Turner said. “At that point, the representative read me the current stored security questions and PIN, and they were definitely not things I would have used.”
Turner said he was able to regain control over his Experian account by creating a new account. But now he’s wondering what else he could do to prevent another account compromise. That’s because Experian does not offer any type of multi-factor authentication options on consumer accounts.
“The most frustrating part of this whole thing is that I received multiple ‘here’s your login information’ emails later that I attributed to the original attackers coming back and attempting to use the ‘forgot email/username’ flow, likely using my SSN and DOB, but it didn’t go to their email that they were expecting,” Turner said. “Given that Experian doesn’t support two-factor authentication of any kind — and that I don’t know how they were able to get access to my account in the first place — I’ve felt very helpless ever since.”
To be clear, Experian does have a business unit that sells one-time password services to businesses. But it does not offer this directly to consumers who sign up to manage their credit file at Experian’s website.
Arthur Rishi is a musician and co-executive director of the Boston Landmarks Orchestra. Rishi said he recently discovered his Experian account had been hijacked after receiving an alert from his credit monitoring service (not Experian’s) that someone had tried to open an account in his name at JPMorgan Chase.
Rishi said the alert surprised him because his credit file at Experian was frozen at the time, and Experian did not notify him about any activity on his account. Rishi said Chase agreed to cancel the unauthorized account application, and even rescinded its credit inquiry (each credit pull can ding your credit score slightly).
But he never could get anyone from Experian’s support to answer the phone, despite spending what seemed like eternity trying to progress through the company’s phone-based system. That’s when Rishi decided to see if he could create a new account for himself at Experian.
“I was able to open a new account at Experian starting from scratch, using my SSN, date of birth and answering some really basic questions, like what kind of car did you take out a loan for, or what city did you used to live in,’ Rishi said.
Upon completing the sign-up, Rishi noticed that his credit was unfrozen.
Like Turner, Rishi is now worried that identity thieves will just hijack his Experian account once more, and that there is nothing he can do to prevent such a scenario. For now, Rishi has decided to pay Experian $25.99 a month to more closely monitor his account for suspicious activity. Even using the paid Experian service, there were no additional multi-factor authentication options available, although he said Experian did send a one-time code to his phone via SMS recently when he logged on.
“Experian now sometimes does require MFA for me now if I use a new browser or have my VPN on,” Rishi said, but he’s not sure if Experian’s free service would have operated differently.
“I get so angry when I think about all this,” he said. “I have no confidence this won’t happen again.”
In a written statement, Experian suggested that what happened to Rishi and Turner was not a normal occurrence, and that its security and identity verification practices extend beyond what is visible to the user.
“We believe these are isolated incidents of fraud using stolen consumer information,” Experian’s statement reads. “Specific to your question, once an Experian account is created, if someone attempts to create a second Experian account, our systems will notify the original email on file.”
“We go beyond reliance on personally identifiable information (PII) or a consumer’s ability to answer knowledge-based authentication questions to access our systems,” the statement continues. “We do not disclose additional processes for obvious security reasons; however, our data and analytical capabilities verify identity elements across multiple data sources and are not visible to the consumer. This is designed to create a more positive experience for our consumers and to provide additional layers of protection. We take consumer privacy and security seriously, and we continually review our security processes to guard against constant and evolving threats posed by fraudsters.”
ANALYSIS
KrebsOnSecurity sought to replicate Turner and Rishi’s experience — to see if Experian would allow me to re-create my account using my personal information but a different email address. The experiment was done from a different computer and Internet address than the one that created the original account years ago.
After providing my Social Security Number (SSN), date of birth, and answering several multiple choice questions whose answers are derived almost entirely from public records, Experian promptly changed the email address associated with my credit file. It did so without first confirming that new email address could respond to messages, or that the previous email address approved the change.
Experian’s system then sent an automated message to the original email address on file, saying the account’s email address had been changed. The only recourse Experian offered in the alert was to sign in, or send an email to an Experian inbox that replies with the message, “this email address is no longer monitored.”
After that, Experian prompted me to select new secret questions and answers, as well as a new account PIN — effectively erasing the account’s previously chosen PIN and recovery questions. Once I’d changed the PIN and security questions, Experian’s site helpfully reminded me that I have a security freeze on file, and would I like to remove or temporarily lift the security freeze?
How does Experian differ from the practices of Equifax and TransUnion, the other two big consumer credit reporting bureaus? When KrebsOnSecurity tried to re-create an existing account at TransUnion using my Social Security number, TransUnion rejected the application, noting that I already had an account and prompting me to proceed through its lost password flow. The company also appears to send an email to the address on file asking to validate account changes.
Likewise, trying to recreate an existing account at Equifax using personal information tied to my existing account prompts Equifax’s systems to report that I already have an account, and to use their password reset process (which involves sending a verification email to the address on file).
KrebsOnSecurity has long urged readers in the United States to place a security freeze on their files with the three major credit bureaus. With a freeze in place, potential creditors can’t pull your credit file, which makes it very unlikely anyone will be granted new lines of credit in your name. I’ve also advised readers to plant their flag at the three major bureaus, to prevent identity thieves from creating an account for you and assuming control over your identity.
The experiences of Rishi, Turner and this author suggest Experian’s practices currently undermine both of those proactive security measures. Even so, having an active account at Experian may be the only way you find out when crooks have assumed your identity. Because at least then you should receive an email from Experian saying they gave your identity to someone else.
In April 2021, KrebsOnSecurity revealed how identity thieves were exploiting lax authentication on Experian’s PIN retrieval page to unfreeze consumer credit files. In those cases, Experian failed to send any notice via email when a freeze PIN was retrieved, nor did it require the PIN to be sent to an email address already associated with the consumer’s account.
A few days after that April 2021 story, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that an Experian API was exposing the credit scores of most Americans.
Emory Roan, policy counsel for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, said Experian not offering multi-factor authentication for consumer accounts is inexcusable in 2022.
“They compound the problem by gating the recovery process with information that’s likely available or inferable from third party data brokers, or that could have been exposed in previous data breaches,” Roan said. “Experian is one of the largest Consumer Reporting Agencies in the country, trusted as one of the few essential players in a credit system Americans are forced to be part of. For them to not offer consumers some form of (free) MFA is baffling and reflects extremely poorly on Experian.”
Nicholas Weaver, a researcher for the International Computer Science Institute at University of California, Berkeley, said Experian has no real incentive to do things right on the consumer side of its business. That is, he said, unless Experian’s customers — banks and other lenders — choose to vote with their feet because too many people with frozen credit files are having to deal with unauthorized applications for new credit.
“The actual customers of the credit service don’t realize how much worse Experian is, and this isn’t the first time Experian has screwed up horribly,” Weaver said. “Experian is part of a triopoly, and I’m sure this is costing their actual customers money, because if you have a credit freeze that gets lifted and somebody loans against it, it’s the lender who eats that fraud cost.”
And unlike consumers, he said, lenders do have a choice in which of the triopoly handles their credit checks.
“I do think it’s important to point out that their real customers do have a choice, and they should switch to TransUnion and Equifax,” he added.
More greatest hits from Experian:
2017: Experian Site Can Give Anyone Your Credit Freeze PIN
2015: Experian Breach Affects 15 Million Customers
2015: Experian Breach Tied to NY-NJ ID Theft Ring
2015: At Experian, Security Attrition Amid Acquisitions
2015: Experian Hit With Class Action Over ID Theft Service
2014: Experian Lapse Allowed ID Theft Service Access to 200 Million Consumer Records
2013: Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service
Explaining Mystery Behind Fast Magnetic Reconnection
Researchers identify the physics that enables rapid magnetic explosions in space.
When magnetic field lines of opposite directions merge, they create explosions that can release tremendous amounts of energy. The merging of opposing field lines on the sun creates solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which are massive blasts of energy that can travel to Earth in less than a day.
While the general mechanics of magnetic reconnection are well understood, researchers have struggled for over a half-century to explain the precise physics behind the rapid energy release that occurs.
A new Dartmouth research study published yesterday (April 28, 2022) in the journal Communications Physics provides the first theoretical description of how a phenomenon known as the “Hall effect” determines the efficiency of magnetic reconnection.
“The rate at which magnetic field lines reconnect is of extreme importance for processes in space that can impact Earth,” said Yi-Hsin Liu, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth. “After decades of effort, we now have a full theory to address this long-standing problem.”
Magnetic reconnection exists throughout nature in plasmas, the fourth state of matter that fills most of the visible universe. Reconnection takes place when magnetic field lines of opposite directions are drawn to each other, break apart, rejoin, and then violently snap away.
In the case of magnetic reconnection, the snapping of magnetic lines forces out magnetized
The Dartmouth research focused on the reconnection rate problem, the key component of magnetic reconnection that describes the speed of the action in which magnetic lines converge and pull apart.
Previous research found that the Hall Effect— the interaction between electric currents and the magnetic fields that surround them—creates the conditions for fast magnetic reconnection. But until now researchers were unable to explain the details of how exactly the Hall effect enhances the reconnection rate.
The Dartmouth theoretical study demonstrates that the Hall effect suppresses the conversion of energy from the magnetic field to plasma particles. This limits the amount of pressure at the point where they merge, forcing the magnetic field lines to curve and pinch, resulting in open outflow geometry needed to speed up the reconnection process.
“This theory addresses the important puzzle of why and how the Hall effect makes reconnection so fast,” said Liu, who serves as deputy lead of the theory and modeling team for
The new theory could further the technical understanding of solar flares and coronal mass ejection events that cause space weather and electrical disturbances on Earth. In addition to using the reconnection rate to estimate the time scales of solar flares, it can also be used to determine the intensity of geomagnetic substorms, and the interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetosphere.
The research team, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA, is working alongside NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission to analyze magnetic reconnection in nature. Data from four satellites flying in tight formation around Earth’s magnetosphere as part of the NASA mission will be used to validate the Dartmouth theoretical finding.
“This work demonstrates that fundamental theory insights reinforced by modeling capabilities can advance scientific discovery,” said Vyacheslav Lukin, a program director for plasma physics at NSF. “The technological and societal implications of these results are intriguing as they can help predict impacts of space weather on the electrical grid, develop new energy sources, and explore novel space propulsion technologies.”
The new study can also inform reconnection studies in magnetically confined fusion devices and astrophysical plasmas near neutron stars and black holes. Although there is no current applied use, some researchers have considered the possibility of using magnetic reconnection in spacecraft thrusters.
Reference: “First-principles theory of the rate of magnetic reconnection in magnetospheric and solar plasmas” by Yi-Hsin Liu, Paul Cassak, Xiaocan Li, Michael Hesse, Shan-Chang Lin and Kevin Genestreti, 28 April 2022, Communications Physics.
DOI: 10.1038/s42005-022-00854-x
This work is funded by the NSF’s PHY and AGS Divisions, NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, and the U.S. Department of Energy.
Co-authors of the study are Paul Cassak, West Virginia University; Xiaocan Li, Dartmouth; Michael Hesse, NASA’s Ames Research Center; Shan-Chang Lin, Dartmouth; and Kevin Genestreti, Southwest Research Institute.
Explaining why gamers are adopting Windows 11 more slowly than Windows 10
There was a time shortly after Windows 10’s release when Microsoft would release specific adoption numbers frequently, trumpeting how quickly the then-novel free update was being adopted by users of Windows 7 and Windows 8. The company hasn’t repeated that strategy for Windows 11, leaving us to rely on third-party data to see how quickly people are picking up the new OS.
We’ve pulled a few months’ worth of the Steam Hardware & Software Survey data and compared it to the months immediately following Windows 10’s release. This data is imperfect and inevitably a bit noisy—Steam users need to volunteer to send in the data—but the disparity in adoption is large enough that we can draw at least some conclusions.
Windows 11 was released to the public in October 2021, and Windows 10 was released in July 2015. In both cases, we used the Internet Wayback Machine to dig up seven months of data, including the month immediately before the release of each operating system. We charted the usage numbers for 64-bit versions of the operating systems (32-bit versions, along with versions like Vista and XP, are lumped into “other”), combining the numbers for Windows 8.1 and 8.0.
The upshot is that Steam users are migrating to Windows 11 about half as quickly as they moved to Windows 10. Six months after its release, Windows 10 ran on 31 percent of all Steam computers—nearly one in three. As of March 2022, Windows 11 runs on just under 17 percent of Steam computers—about one in six. Three-quarters of all Steam computers in 2022 are still running Windows 10.
It’s easy to interpret these results as an indictment of Windows 11, which generated some controversy with its relatively stringent (and often poorly explained) security-oriented system requirements. At least some of this slow adoption is caused by those system requirements—many of the PCs surveyed by Steam probably can’t install Windows 11. That could be because users have an older unsupported CPU or have one or more of the required security features disabled; Secure Boot and the firmware TPM module were often turned off by default on new motherboards for many years.
But there are other compelling explanations. Windows 11’s adoption looks slow compared to Windows 10, but Windows 10’s adoption was also exceptionally good.
Windows 8 and 8.1 were not well-loved, to put it mildly, and Windows 10 was framed as a response to (and a fix for) most of Windows 8’s user interface changes. And people who were still on Windows 7 were missing out on some of the nice quality-of-life additions and under-the-hood improvements that Windows 8 added.
You can see that pent-up demand in the jump between July 2015 and September 2015. In the first two months of Windows 10’s availability, Windows 8 hemorrhaged users, falling from around 35 percent usage to 19 percent. Virtually all of those users—and a smaller but still notable chunk of Windows 7 users—were moving to Windows 10. Windows 11 also got a decent early adopter bump in November 2021, but its gains every other month were much smaller.
In contrast, Windows 11 was announced with little run-up, and it was replacing what users had been told was the “last version of Windows.” Where Windows 10 replaced one new, unloved OS and one well-liked but aging OS, Windows 11 replaced a modern OS that nobody really complained about (Windows 10 ran on over 90 percent of all Steam computers in September 2021—even Windows 7 in its heyday couldn’t boast that kind of adoption).
It’s also worth noting that Microsoft didn‘t try to re-create that initial burst of adoption for Windows 11. Following some turbulence after early Windows 10 servicing updates, Microsoft began rolling updates out more methodically, starting with small numbers of PCs and then expanding availability gradually as problems were discovered and ironed out. Windows 11 only entered “its final phase of availability” in February, ensuring that anyone with a compatible PC could get Windows 11 through Windows Update if they wanted it.