t-CONSPECTUS

The Brontosaurus Would Like to Know: What Is a Species, Really?

A new paper reverses the 1903 demotion of the beloved dinosaur genus—and calls into question the way we classify the natural world.

In 1989, the U.S. Postal Service released a collection of 25-cent commemorative postage stamps celebrating a series of dinosaurs. The stamps featured the tyrannosaurus, and the stegosaurus, and the pteranodon. They also featured, however, the brontosaurus, or the "thunder lizard"—which had been reclassified under the genus apatosaurus ("deceptive lizard") in 1903.

This was an egregious mistake, but an understandable one. The brontosaurus—the gentle giant that ate plants and sneezed on children—has spent the past century-plus as, if not an actual genus, then a cultural one. Tyrannosaurus, stegosaurus, triceratops, ... and brontosaurus. The sauropod was like the fourth Beatle, only more beloved. Sure, the long-necked lizard might not have technically existed; in another sense, though, the brontosaurus was more real in the human imagination than the apatosaurus ever was.

So it was big news, this week, when a new paper brought some redemption—for brontosaurus fans, for Linnaean taxonomy, for the U.S. Postal Service. A team of scientists, cross-referencing the digital scans of bones from hundreds of long-necked dinosaurs, is claiming that the brontosaurus deserves to be reinstated as a genus unto itself. Deceptive lizards here; thunder lizards there. As Roger Benson, one of the study's co-authors, explained to Wired: “It was a number of small differences that were important, but probably the most obvious features that would help distinguish the two is that the Apatosaurus has an extremely wide neck, where brontosaurus' is more high than wide.”

You could say a lot of things about that little taxonomic shift, but one of them is that the brontosaurus—something that existed, and then didn’t exist, but then existed in a broader sense, and now exists in the actual sense again—is a tidy reminder of the ongoing churn of scientific knowledge. The sun, the center of it all and then very much not. Caffeine, both healthful and harmful. Jurassic Park’s velociraptor, which was, in reality—as far as we know—much more like a feather duster than like an agile T. Rex. And, of course, Pluto. The late, lamented Pluto.

From a scientometric perspective, occasional updates to the rambling facts of our world are to be expected: Facts are contingent, and we’re always learning new things, and science is a discursive discipline, and all that. From a more human perspective, though, the dynamism of scientific truths can be jarring: If you can just, one day, take away the “planet” from “My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets,” what else can you do?

The good and the bad news is: a lot. The whole Brontus interruptus saga may be close to the heart of every kid who had a dinosaur phase growing up—and every adult for whom that phase continues—and it may have been made more interesting because of its roots in the fascinating "bone wars" of the 19th century. Beyond that, though, it isn’t unusual. Taxonomies, despite their promise of easy categorization, can be wonderfully, and also somewhat terrifyingly, fluid. That thing we think about as an animal unto itself—Ursus arctos, Homo sapiens sapiens, Aptostichus angelinajolieae—is a human construction more than anything else.

“Species delineation is more than meets the eye,” Paul Sereno, a professor of paleontology at the University of Chicago and a National Geographic "explorer-in-residence," told me. That’s in part because of the fact that genetic diversity isn’t always expressed phenotypically, in terms of animals’ appearances. It’s also because animals don’t just evolve, over long stretches of time; they also, of course, grow and change—in size, in color, sometimes in sex—over the course of their lives. Which means that understanding how species relate to each other, as environment-sharers and Darwinian competitors, requires more than one-off encounters with them. The biggest challenge to understanding what a species is, ultimately, may simply be one of human exposure. According to one paper, there are an estimated 8.7 million species on Earth; some 86 percent of those, the paper claims, have yet to be described.

There's reason to believe, too, that the percentage of those mystery species will soon drop drastically. Our abilities to observe animals in their habitats, for one thing, are improving. Digital technologies in particular mean that there are more people than ever walking around with cameras to record biological diversity. We’re living in the age of the “Internet naturalist,” as Atlantic contributor Rose Eveleth put it, and that means more information, and more nuance, about the genetic diversity of the natural world.

And that means: more species. New taxonomies. Amended classifications. As Sereno puts it, “we’re in the midst of a mini-revolution in understanding how many discrete genetic packets and species are present today.” And all that means, in turn, that we can expect more news like the resurrection of the brontosaurus—for animals both long-dead and still-living. “We’re constantly revising,” Sereno says, “because material is constantly being found.”

El Niño on its way to Australia, says Bureau of Meteorology

Australia will be hit by a “substantial” El Niño event for the first time in five years, heightening the chances of widespread drought and warmer temperatures, the Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed.

The BoM said the El Niño phase will become the “dominant influence on Australian climate during the second half of the year”. The tropical Pacific is already in the early stages of the event.

El Niño is a periodic climatic event that occurs when tropical Pacific waters warm, affecting wind circulation patterns. The winds push warm waters westwards, towards Australia.

Although no El Niño periods are the same, in Australia they are generally associated with less rainfall, warmer temperatures, shallower snow depths and higher fire risk. Of the 26 El Niño events since 1900, 17 have resulted in widespread drought.

The warmer ocean waters also pose a risk to the corals of the Great Barrier Reef, which can bleach and die in extreme temperatures.

“This will be quite a substantial El Niño event,” said David Jones, a climatologist at BoM. “This isn’t a weak one or a near miss as we saw last year.”

In 2014, the BoM anticipated an El Niño period due to warming oceans, but the atmospheric conditions did not tally. The confirmation of a full El Niño event is the first in Australia since March 2010.

“The most obvious thing we know is that El Niño events tend to lead to drier winter and spring periods,” Jones said. “There is an increased risk of drought which obviously isn’t good for people already in drought.

“Australian temperatures are already warming and El Niño tends to give those temperatures a boost, so we’d expect winter, spring and even early summer to have well above average daytime temperatures.”

El Niños have raised daytime temperatures on average by 1.5C in Australia in the past. However, they also bring cooler nights which means there are more frosts.

The pattern also makes floods less likely and it is expected to reduce the number of cyclones expected in northern Australia.

“We’d expect this El Niño to peak in intensity around spring and early summer, lasting to February perhaps,” Jones said. “We’d hope for a one-in-10 scenario where we’d fluke a bit of rain but it’s likely that dry conditions will emerge.”

Jones said that despite the El Niño event, it was “very unlikely” that 2015 would be Australia’s hottest year, due to cooler months in the first half of the year.

However, he said there was a “significant probability” that the world would have its warmest year, beating the mark set in 2014.

The Foreign Office has brushed off Russia's complaints that a remark by Prince Charles comparing Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler over Ukraine was "outrageous" and "low".

A British official told the Russian deputy ambassador, Alexander Kramarenko, at a meeting on Thursday afternoon that "the Foreign Office could not be expected to comment upon reports of private conversations".

The brevity of the response to what the Kremlin described as "unacceptable" remarks was underscored by the selection of a mid-ranking official – Sian MacLeod, the FCO's additional director for eastern Europe and central Asia – to deliver the message. No ministers were involved.

Russia had wanted clarification on exactly what Charles said, but instead MacLeod restated the government's hope that ahead of the Ukrainian presidential elections this weekend Russia would step back from comment or actions provoking instability in Ukraine.

The meeting had been called by the Russians over what the Kremlin described as "outrageous remarks made by Prince Charles in Canada".

The prince is reported to have made his comments during a private conversation with a Jewish survivor of the second world war about the dispute over Russia's annexation of Crimea. "Now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler," he reportedly told Marianne Ferguson, a volunteer at the Canadian Museum of Immigration in Halifax.

Moscow's foreign ministry spokesman, Alexander Lukashevich, said: "If these words were truly spoken, then without doubt, they do not reflect well on the future British monarch. We view the use of the western press by members of the British royal family to spread the propaganda campaign against Russia on a pressing issue –that is, the situation in Ukraine – as unacceptable, outrageous and low."

Aides at Prince Charles's London home again declined to comment on the remarks, saying they were part of a private conversation.

Charles returned from the three-day royal visit to Canada on Wednesday, and his next engagement comes on Saturday at a concert in a church near his Gloucestershire manor house.

British diplomats played down the seriousness of the situation, suggesting the Kremlin was capitalising on the remarks to distract from the crisis in Ukraine.

Mark Malloch-Brown, a former Foreign Office minister, said he was sure there was "some eye-rolling in the Foreign Office" about Charles's remark but said that "this doesn't rise up the league of genuinely serious diplomatic incidents".

"It suits the Russian position to make this about antiquated bits of the British political system and distract from the real issue, which is their behaviour in Ukraine," he said. "An off-the-cuff comment to an elderly lady is not a public statement."

Tony Brenton, the former UK ambassador to Moscow, said Russia's outspoken reaction was predictable but the incident would not affect British-Russian relations.

"You can't say anything ruder about a Russian leader than comparing him to Hitler given what happened in the second world war," he said. "They were bound to have to make a lot of noise publicly. Their own people will have expected some sort of response. But the professionals in the FCO and the Kremlin know the Prince of Wales wasn't speaking for the government."

The Foreign Office showed no sign of being distracted following the meeting with Kramarenko.

"This weekend, the Ukrainian people will vote in one of the most important elections in their history," a spokesperson said. "As the Foreign Secretary has repeatedly made clear, they have the right to choose their own government in a free and fair election and Russia must exercise its influence to restrain those responsible for violence and disorder."

Until Thursday Russian officials had not responded publicly to the remarks, and Russian TV channels had remained unusually quiet on the issue.

After president Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on Prince Charles' statement, the incident did not even make the evening television news in Russia.

Many prominent pro-Kremlin pundits did not mention the matter, with editor-in-chief of the government channel Russia Today, Margarita Simonyan, tweeting that the media would do better to report on the recent release of a British RT contributor by Ukrainian authorities than Prince Charles.

The popular Russian daily paper Moskovskij Komsomolets said the remarks risked "triggering an international scandal" and complicating "clouded" UK-Russian relations.

Internet entrepreneur and former MP Konstantin Rykov tweeted the infamous photo of Prince Harry at a costume party with a Nazi armband and the caption: "From childhood, Prince Charles instilled in his son good manners and an intolerance for fascism."

In the popular newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, political columnist Mikhail Rostovsky argued that Prince Charles' comment was not just an example of the "stupid moves" the monarch is known for, but rather an indication of the West's diminished view of Russia.

"In demonstrating his sharply negative view of Russian policy, Prince Charles expressed an opinion that unfortunately is not only his … From the point of view of most political circles in the west, the incorporation of Crimea into Russia was a howling violation of international law," Rostovsky wrote.

"As long as a breakthrough in these relations hasn't happened, Ukraine's political crisis will always be with us, regardless of whether the action is taking place in Moscow, Beijing, Halifax or London," he concluded.

Single Americans Now Comprise More Than Half the U.S. Population

Single Americans make up more than half of the adult population for the first time since the government began compiling such statistics in 1976.

Some 124.6 million Americans were single in August, 50.2 percent of those who were 16 years or older, according to data used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its monthly job-market report. That percentage had been hovering just below 50 percent since about the beginning of 2013 before edging above it in July and August. In 1976, it was 37.4 percent and has been trending upward since.

In a report to clients entitled “Selfies,” economist Edward Yardeni flagged the increase in the proportion of singles to more than 50 percent, calling it “remarkable.” The president of Yardeni Research Inc. in New York said the rise has “implications for our economy, society and politics.”

Singles, particularly younger ones, are more likely to rent than to own their dwellings. Never-married young singles are less likely to have children and previously married older ones, many of whom have adult children, are unlikely to have young kids, Yardeni wrote. That will influence how much money they spend and what they buy.

He argued the increase in single-person households also is exaggerating income inequality in the U.S.

“While they have less household earnings than married people, they also have fewer expenses, especially if there are no children in their households,” Yardeni wrote.

The percentage of adult Americans who have never married has risen to 30.4 percent from 22.1 percent in 1976, while the proportion that are divorced, separated or widowed increased to 19.8 percent from 15.3 percent, according to the economist.

Yardeni is known in the financial markets for coining the phrase “bond vigilantes” in the 1980s to describe investors who were selling Treasury securities because of fears about big U.S. budget deficits.

File sync services provide covert way to control hacked computers

File synchronization services, used to accommodate roaming employees inside organizations, can also be a weak point that attackers could exploit to remain undetected inside compromised networks.

Researchers from security firm Imperva found that attackers could easily hijack user accounts for services from Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and Box if they gain limited access to computers where such programs run -- without actually stealing user names and passwords.

Once the accounts are hijacked, attackers could use them to grab the data stored in them, and to remotely control the compromised computers without using any malware programs that could be detected by antivirus and other security products.

The Imperva researchers found that all of the file synchronization applications they looked at provide continued access to users' cloud storage accounts via access tokens that are generated after users log in for the first time. These tokens are stored on users' computers in special files, in the Windows registry or in the Windows Credential Manager, depending on the application.

The researchers developed a simple tool they dubbed Switcher, whose role is to perform what they call a "double-switch" attack.

Switcher can be deployed on the system through a malicious email attachment or a drive-by download exploit that takes advantage of a vulnerability in a browser plug-in. If an exploit is used, the program doesn't even have to be written to disk. It can be loaded directly into the computer's memory and doesn't need high-level privileges to execute its routine.

The Switcher first makes a copy of the user's access token for the targeted file synchronization app and replaces it with one that corresponds to an account controlled by the attacker. It then restarts the application so that it synchronizes with the attacker's account.

The previously saved user token is copied to the synchronized folder so that the attacker receives a copy and then the Switcher app restores it back, forcing the app to be linked back to the user's real account -- hence the double-switch name.

However, since the attacker now has a copy of the user's access token, he can use the Switcher on his own computer and synchronize it with the user's real account, getting a copy of all of the files stored in it.

The attack can be taken to the next step by having the Switcher create a scheduled task or a Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) event that would be triggered when a specific file appears in the synchronized folder. That file could be created by the attacker and could contain commands to be executed by the scheduled task.

This mechanism would give the attacker persistent remote access to the computer even after Switcher deletes itself or is removed from memory. After executing a command and saving its output to the synchronized folder, the attacker could delete it, as well as the trigger file in order to cover his tracks.

If the attacker is not looking for stealthiness and persistence, another possible attack scenario would be to encrypt all of the files in the user's account and ask for a ransom to decrypt them -- an approach used successfully in recent years by ransomware programs.

According to Amichai Shulman, the chief technology officer at Imperva, these attacks against file synchronization services would be very hard to detect by antivirus programs, because the Switcher is not performing any unusual activity that could be interpreted as malware behavior.

The program is made up of just 10 lines of code that read and write to files and registry keys that other applications also modify, he said. The WMI task that gets left behind is not unusual either because a lot of other applications create WMI tasks for various reasons, he added.

In addition, the Switcher might not even get stored on disk and would remove itself after setting up the conditions for the attack.

Security products operating at the network perimeter wouldn't be able to block the traffic because it's encrypted by default and it's generated by known, legitimate file synchronization applications organizations have approved.

Right now none of the tested services notify users that their accounts have been accessed from a new location, like some websites do. Some of them allow users to view the recent activity for their accounts which could reveal the unauthorized access from an unusual location or IP address, but they don't actually alert users via email when that happens, according to the Imperva researchers.

Even if such a compromise would be detected, recovering from it could be problematic because in some cases the access tokens remain valid even if users change their passwords. The only way to recover in those situations is to actually delete the account and create a new one, the researchers said in a report that will be released Wednesday at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

Attackers have already shown an interest in abusing trusted cloud services or social media sites, both to exfiltrate data and for command and control. In December, security researchers from Blue Coat reported an attack campaign against military, diplomatic and business targets that used a Swedish file synchronization service called CloudMe for command and control. FireEye recently reported that a Russian cyberespionage group known as Hammertoss used cloud storage services to exfiltrate data from organizations.

At the BSides security conference this week, also in Las Vegas, software developers Gabriel Butterick, Dakota Nelson and Byron Wasti released a framework that can create an encrypted covert communication channel for malware by using images, audio clips and text messages posted on social media sites like Twitter, SoundCloud and Tumblr.

Maybe some of the cloud storage providers will improve things in the future, but that doesn't change the underlying issue: Whatever is useful for users can also be useful for attackers, Shulman said. Attackers will eventually find a way to compromise endpoint systems, but most of the time their goal will be to use them as launchpads for attacks against the organization's databases and file servers, where the interesting information is stored. Because of that, it's important for companies to monitor and strictly control access to their important data, he said.