[URL="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mathematics-of-hacking-passwords/"]The Mathematics of (Hacking) Passwords[/URL]

[URL="https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-discover-the-perfect-way-to-multiply-20190411/"]Mathematicians Discover the Perfect Way to Multiply[/URL]

[URL="https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2019/04/16/mit-scientists-simulation-hypothesis-makes-compelling-case-for-the-matrix/"]MIT scientist’s ‘Simulation Hypothesis’ makes compelling case for The Matrix[/URL]

[URL="https://www.npr.org/2019/04/18/711356336/a-woman-of-no-importance-finally-gets-her-due"]'A Woman Of No Importance' Finally Gets Her Due[/URL]

[URL="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/scientists-partly-restore-activity-dead-pig-brains/587329/"]Scientists Partly Restore Activity in Dead-Pig Brains[/URL]

[URL="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-do-neutrons-live-physicists-close-in-on-decades-old-puzzle/"]How Long Do Neutrons Live? Physicists Close in on Decades-old Puzzle[/URL]

[URL="https://www.popsci.com/dog-plants-weird-trancing"]What is 'trancing' and why does it make my dog act so weird around plants?[/URL]

[URL="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324998.php"]Stimulating brain with ultrasound can influence decisions[/URL]

[URL="https://neurosciencenews.com/health-sleep-myths-11088/"]Common sleep myths compromise good sleep and health[/URL]

[url=https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/just-10-us-plastic-gets-recycled-new-kind-plastic-could-change]Just 10% of U.S. plastic gets recycled. A new kind of plastic could change that[/url] | Science

[url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-22/even-clorox-and-unilever-want-the-booming-bacteria-business-to-thrive]Germ-Killing Brands Now Want to Sell You Germs[/url] | Bloomberg: [i]The world’s best-known antibacterial labels are pouring millions into probacterial health and beauty startups[/i]
[QUOTE]The term “microbiome” is widely traced to a 2001 Scientist magazine article that deployed it “to signify the ecological community of commensal, symbiotic, and pathogenic microorganisms that literally share our body space.” That group includes fungi, viruses, and bacteria, some of which help produce vitamins, hormones, and other chemicals vital to our immune system, metabolism, mood, and much more. In the typical person, these microorganisms account for about 2 pounds and roughly as many cells as the ones containing human DNA.

In recent decades our microbiomes have been altered by poor dietary habits; overuse of disinfectants, antibiotics, and other germ fighters; dwindling contact with vital environmental microbes, including those carried by wildlife and livestock; and the rise in cesarean section births, which don’t immerse babies in the valuable bacteria found in the birth canal. According to one 2015 study, Americans’ microbiomes are about half as diverse as those of the Yanomami, an isolated Amazonian tribe. A series of studies begun in 1998 examined the relationship between bacteria and disease incidence in the Finnish-Russian border region of Karelia, where people share similar genetics. On the richer, cleaner Finnish side, people were as many as 13 times likelier to suffer from inflammatory disorders as on the Russian side, where the majority live in rural homes, keep animals, and tend their own gardens.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;514521]<snip>
[url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-22/even-clorox-and-unilever-want-the-booming-bacteria-business-to-thrive]Germ-Killing Brands Now Want to Sell You Germs[/url] | Bloomberg: [i]The world’s best-known antibacterial labels are pouring millions into probacterial health and beauty startups[/i][/QUOTE]Reminds me of something from [i]Allen's Alley[/i], as recounted in [u]Treadmill to Oblivion[/u]:

[quote]CLAGHORN: (...) the Army spent two billion dollars for fly swatters to send to Alaska. When the fly swatters got up there they found there wasn't no flies in Alaska.

ALLEN: They sent the fly swatters back?

CLAGHORN: Not the Army, son! The Army spent four billion dollars more to raise flies to ship to Alaska so's they could use them fly swatters. That's how the Army works, son![/quote]

Re. the Claghorn joke - a common term for this sort of thing is a [url= en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licking_ice_cream_cone]self-licking ice cream cone[/url].

[URL="https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/belgian-programmer-solves-mits-20-year-old-cryptographic-puzzle"]Belgian programmer solves MIT’s 20-year-old cryptographic puzzle[/URL]

[QUOTE=nomead;515190][URL="https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/belgian-programmer-solves-mits-20-year-old-cryptographic-puzzle"]Belgian programmer solves MIT’s 20-year-old cryptographic puzzle[/URL][/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]
[I]The puzzle essentially involves doing roughly 80 trillion successive squarings of a starting number...[/I]

[I]Meanwhile, Peffers' team used a novel squaring algorithm (designed by Erdinç Öztürk from Sabanci University) to run on a programmable hardware accelerator called an FPGA. The team, which is working as part of a collaboration called Cryptophage, is on track to finish the puzzle on May 11 after only two months of computation.[/I]
[/QUOTE]

What is this novel algorithm for squaring numbers?

Could we use it to LL test Mersenne exponents up to 80 trillion in two months????

Edit:
Probably not. The Belgian guy solved it in three and a half years using nothing but GMP and a consumer PC. So it's obviously a much simpler problem.

[QUOTE=GP2;515198]What is this novel algorithm for squaring numbers?

Could we use it to LL test Mersenne exponents up to 80 trillion in two months????

Edit:
Probably not. The Belgian guy solved it in three and a half years using nothing but GMP and a consumer PC. So it's obviously a much simpler problem.[/QUOTE]The puzzle is here:

[url]https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/lcs35-puzzle-description.txt[/url]

Basically compute 2^(2^79685186856218) mod (pq)

Where p and q are 1024 bit primes.

The following may be illuminating:
[quote]"There have been hardware and software advances beyond what I predicted in 1999," says MIT professor Ron Rivest, who first announced the puzzle in April 1999. "The puzzle’s fundamental challenge of doing roughly 80 trillion squarings remains unbroken, but the resources required to do a single squaring have been reduced by much more than I predicted."[/quote]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;515277]The following may be illuminating:[/QUOTE]I first formulated Rivest's Law and it continues to hold. 40 quadrillion years was another of Ron's. To be fair, I've made similar predictions which have also demonstrated the validity of Rivest's Law. One of mine was made to some senior security people at the Bank Of England. About 6 months after RSA-512 was cracked by a group of experts who used very substantial resources which included a MasPar supercomputer, I was asked how long it would be before a non-specialist could break 512-bit RSA using only equipment which could be expected to be owned by a small group of cooperating private individuals. I replied "about 5 years". It took 17 months.

For those unaware of the law, I framed it around 20 years ago as "Making predictions about how long it will take to perform a calculation in computational number theory carries a great risk of making the predictor appear foolish ". Or words to that effect. I don't think a canonical version has ever been published but I do know that several MF contributors have heard me state it in public --- at Peter Montgomery's tribute colloquium at CWI for instance.

[URL="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/theres-origami-revolution-industrial-design-180972019/"]How Origami Is Revolutionizing Industrial Design[/URL]

[URL="https://www.us.mensa.org/featured-content/these-new-board-games-run-the-table/"]These New Board Games Run the Table[/URL]

[URL="https://www.sfchronicle.com/science/article/California-scientists-unravel-genetic-mysteries-13786816.php?psid=1R9GA"]California scientists unravel genetic mysteries of world’s tallest trees[/URL]

[URL="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325025.php"]Study reveals how general anesthetics affect the brain[/URL]

[URL="https://qz.com/quartzy/1600647/world-book-day-print-is-the-future-of-luxury/"]BOOKS ARE COOL PRECISELY BECAUSE WE DON’T NEED THEM ANYMORE[/URL]

[URL="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/invention-of-gelatin-jello"]Before Jell-O, Colorful Gelatin Desserts Were Haute Cuisine[/URL]

[URL="https://qz.com/1600255/botanists-are-using-drones-to-rediscover-extinct-flowers/"]Botanists rediscover a rare Hawaiian flower thought to be extinct—thanks to a drone[/URL]

[URL="https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/housework-brain-young-023/"]Even light physical activity like housework might keep the brain young[/URL]

[URL="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/notre-dame-bees-survived-the-fire"]Notre Dame’s Bees Seem to Have Survived the Blaze[/URL]

[url]https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/05/highly-efficient-thermoelectric-generation-but-only-in-the-cold/[/url]