Briefly banned in Ukraine, U.S. mobile-phone app Premise does defense work globally and has faced contributor safety issues. From a report: In 2019, Ukrainian users of a U.S.-based mobile-phone app offering paid, short-term tasks got what sounded like a straightforward assignment: Go into rural Ukraine and take smartphone photos of certain fields and farms around Odessa and Kyiv. But for one contributor, the job turned out to be anything but ordinary when one of the fields turned out to lie next to a military checkpoint. The contributor was chased off by armed soldiers, according to people familiar with the matter. The app's owner, Premise Data, said it immediately deleted the task from its platform after learning of the military checkpoint.

What that and other Ukrainian gig workers were doing was harvesting data for a U.S. Defense Department-funded research project. Descartes Labs, a government contractor that works with U.S. military and intelligence agencies, hired Premise to have its gig workers gauge how accurately the company's satellite algorithms were performing, the people said. Could they, for example, accurately tell barley from wheat in photos taken from space? Descartes's work was funded by DARPA, a research arm of the Pentagon, a Defense Department spokesperson said. Descartes declined to comment. Based in San Francisco, Premise is one of a number of companies offering a service that uses iPhone and Android smartphones around the world as tools for gathering intelligence and commercial information from afar, sometimes without the users knowing specifically who they are working for. The business model of companies like Premise has prompted questions about the safety and propriety of enlisting such people for government work --especially in potential or active conflict zones.

Business Insider reports: Serhiy Storchaka, a Ukrainian developer, is the second-most prolific recent contributor to Python and tenth-most prolific of all time, according to Lukasz Langa, the Python Software Foundation's developer in residence, based in Poznan, Poland... Storchaka faced an impossible choice as Russia invaded his country. Like many young male programmers in Ukraine, he decided to stay....

Storchaka lives outside of Konotop, a city in northeastern Ukraine which is occupied by Russian forces. He tweeted on February 26, "Russian tanks were on the road 2km from my house, and Russian armored vehicles were passing by my windows. Most likely, I will find myself in the occupied zone, where the law does not apply...."

Insider was unable to contact Storchaka, but spoke with Langa... [A]s the military crisis worsened on Friday and over the weekend, the Python developer community rallied to help Storchaka's younger family members. Communicating with Storchaka's family through Google Translate, Langa managed to secure temporary housing for Storchaka's niece and best friend, aged 11. They crossed the border to Poland via bus with their mother, and met Langa, who drove over 300km to Warsaw to pick up keys and secure basic necessities for the family.
"Two little 11-year-old girls (my niece and her best friend) are now safe thanks to @llanga," Storchaka tweeted last Monday, adding "My sister and I are immensely grateful." (He'd been especially worried because their town was near one of Ukraine's nuclear power plants, "a strategic target".)

Business Insider points out Storchaka is just one of many Python core developers from Ukraine, and one of many Ukrainians working in its tech sector. Andrew Svetlov, another influential Python developer who specializes in asynchronous networking support, also remains in Ukraine.... Svetlov is in Kyiv, where Russian troops have surrounded the city....

"Neither of them wanted to leave their country, even in the face of the great risk this poses for them," Langa told Insider.

"Staff at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are being told what to do by the Russian military commander who seized the site last week, in violation of international safety protocols," reports the Guardian: The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expressed "grave concern" at the situation at the six-reactor plant, the largest in Europe. The agency was told by the Ukrainian nuclear regulator that "any action of plant management — including measures related to the technical operation of the six reactor units — requires prior approval by the Russian commander". The IAEA director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said on Sunday that the Russian military command over the nuclear plant "contravenes one of the seven indispensable pillars of nuclear safety and security" which states that the operating staff must be able to carry out their safety and security duties and be able to make decisions "free of undue pressure".

Russian forces shelled the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early hours of Friday morning, damaging a walkway between two of the six reactors, and starting a fire in a nearby building used for training. As a result some of the reactors were shut down and others were put on low power. The reactors themselves are well protected by a thick concrete shell, but there is concern that more vulnerable spent fuel rods could be hit, or that the power and cooling systems could be affected, potentially triggering a meltdown....

The IAEA said that the operators at the plant were now being able to rotate between three shifts, relieving the operators who had been on duty at the time the plant was seized, but there were still "problems with availability and supply of food" which the Ukrainian regulator said was affecting morale on the plant.

"In better times, Ukrainian drone enthusiasts flew their gadgets into the sky to photograph weddings, fertilize soybean fields or race other drones for fun," writes the Associated Press.

"Now some are risking their lives by forming a volunteer drone force to help their country repel the Russian invasion." "Kyiv needs you and your drone at this moment of fury!" read a Facebook post late last week from the Ukrainian military, calling for citizens to donate hobby drones and to volunteer as experienced pilots to operate them. One entrepreneur who runs a retail store selling consumer drones in the capital said its entire stock of some 300 drones made by Chinese company DJI has been dispersed for the cause. Others are working to get more drones across the border from friends and colleagues in Poland and elsewhere in Europe....

Unlike the much larger Turkish-built combat drones that Ukraine has in its arsenal, off-the-shelf consumer drones aren't much use as weapons — but they can be powerful reconnaissance tools. Civilians have been using the aerial cameras to track Russian convoys and then relay the images and GPS coordinates to Ukrainian troops. Some of the machines have night vision and heat sensors.... They can also be used to assist search-and-rescue operations....

Small civilian drones are no match against Russian combat power but will likely become increasingly important in a protracted war...
The Associated Press points out there's now more than 15,000 members in one drone-focused Facebook group "who have been trading tips about how to assist Ukrainian troops." The operations chief for a Kyiv-based drone company tells the Associated Press, "Now in Ukraine no one remains indifferent. Everyone does what they can."

When Russia's invasion of Ukraine first began, Russian forces seized control of the Chernobyl nuclear plant — and then took its staff hostage.

A week later the Associated Press filed this update: The United Nations' atomic watchdog says Ukraine has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that staff who have been kept at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant since Russian troops took control of the site a week ago are facing "psychological pressure and moral exhaustion." IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Thursday that the staff must be allowed to rest and rotate so their crucial work can be carried out safely and securely.

Grossi received "a joint appeal from the Ukraine Government, regulatory authority and the national operator which added that personnel at the Chornobyl site 'have limited opportunities to communicate, move and carry out full-fledged maintenance and repair work,'" the IAEA said in a statement...

Ukraine has lost regulatory control over all the facilities in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to the Russians and asked the IAEA to undertake measures "in order to reestablish legal regulation of safety of nuclear facilities and installations" within the site, the statement added.
Their article quotes the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency as saying that "Any accident caused as a result of the military conflict could have extremely serious consequences for people and the environment, in Ukraine and beyond."

This morning CNN shared this update: The growing exhaustion of staffers confined for "10 days" at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is not only "difficult," but could pose "a danger to the world," Yuriy Fomichev, the mayor of Slavutych, told CNN in a telephone interview on Saturday. "People are tired; they are exhausted, both mentally and emotionally, but mainly physically," Fomichev said, adding that more than 100 people in the plant are shift personnel who should have been handed over after 12 hours. "A nuclear facility run by the same shift of 100 people without a break for 10 days in a row means their concentration levels are too low ... the main thing we want to convey is that it is very dangerous," Fomichev said.

Staffers in the plant only eat one meal per day and have limited amount of time to contact their families, Fomichev said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed News: Facebook and Twitter on Friday were blocked in Russia, amid President Vladimir Putin's ongoing military invasion of Ukraine. In a statement issued on Friday, Roskomnadzor, the country's communications regulator, explained the decision was made to "block access to the Facebook network" after at least 26 cases of "discrimination against Russian media and information resources" since October 2020. The agency highlighted Facebook's recent restriction of Kremlin-tied media sources RT News and Sputnik News across the EU. Hours later, Russian news agency Interfax reported that Roskomnadzor had also begun blocking Twitter. "Soon millions of ordinary Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable information, deprived of their everyday ways of connecting with family and friends and silenced from speaking out," Nick Clegg, president of global affairs for Facebook parent Meta, wrote on Twitter in response. "We will continue to do everything we can to restore our services so they remain available to people to safely and securely express themselves and organize for action."

Yesterday, Russian state-controlled news network RT announced it would be "ceasing production" and laying off most of its staff after YouTube blocked its channels.

More than 400,000 people have volunteered to help a crowdsourced Ukrainian government effort that is using digital means to disrupt Russian government and military targets, according to a Ukrainian cybersecurity official. From a report: Victor Zhora, deputy chief of Ukraine's information protection service, said in a briefing Friday that the country was engaged in a "cyber resistance" against Russia that was aimed at making the country weaker. The update comes after Ukraine's minister of digital transformation called on international computer specialists to attack Russian web infrastructure. "Our friends, Ukrainians all over globe, [are] united to defend our country in cyberspace," Zhora said. Ukraine was working to do "everything possible to protect our land in cyberspace, our networks, and to make the aggressor feel uncomfortable with their actions," he added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This week, the US Air Force Research Laboratory released a video on YouTube that didn't get much attention. But it made an announcement that is fairly significant -- the US military plans to extend its space awareness capabilities beyond geostationary orbit, all the way to the Moon. "Until now, the United States space mission extended 22,000 miles above Earth," a narrator says in the video. "That was then, this is now. The Air Force Research Laboratory is extending that range by 10 times and the operations area of the United States by 1,000 times, taking our reach to the far side of the Moon into cislunar space."

The US military had previously talked about extending its operational domain, but now it is taking action. It plans to launch a satellite, likely equipped with a powerful telescope, into cislunar space. According to the video, the satellite will be called the Cislunar Highway Patrol System or, you guessed it, CHPS. The research laboratory plans to issue a "request for prototype proposals" for the CHPS satellite on March 21 and announce the contract award in July. The CHPS program will be managed by Michael Lopez, from the lab's Space Vehicles Directorate. (Alas, we were rooting for Erik Estrada).

This effort will include the participation of several military organizations, and it can be a little confusing to keep track of. Essentially, though, the Air Force lab will oversee the development of the satellite. The US Space Force will then procure this capability for use by the US Space Command, which is responsible for military operations in outer space. Effectively, this satellite is the beginning of an extension of operations by US Space Command from geostationary space to beyond the Moon. [...] So why is US Space Command interested in expanding its theater of operations to include the Moon? The primary reason cited in the video is managing increasing space traffic in the lunar environment, including several NASA-sponsored commercial missions, the space agency's Artemis program, and those of other nations. Another strategic element includes the ability to detect space objects, such as those placed into cislunar space by other governments, that could swing around the Moon and potentially come back to attack a U.S. military satellite in geostationary space.

"I think that's far fetched, but it is feasible from a physics perspective and would definitely exploit a gap in their current space domain awareness," said Brian Weeden, director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation. "I think they are far more concerned about that than any actual threats in cislunar space because the US doesn't have any military assets in cislunar space right now."

Russian forces shelled Europe's largest nuclear plant early Friday in the battle for control of a crucial energy-producing city, and the power station was on fire. The Associated Press reports: Plant spokesman Andriy Tuz told Ukrainian television that shells were falling directly on the Zaporizhzhia plant and had set fire to one of the facility's six reactors. That reactor is under renovation and not operating, but there is nuclear fuel inside, he said. Firefighters cannot get near the fire because they are being shot at, Tuz said. A government official told The Associated Press that elevated levels of radiation were detected near the site of the plant, which provides about 25% of Ukraine's power generation. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information has not yet been publicly released. Tuz said it is urgent to stop the fighting to put out the flames.

Mayor Dmytro Orlov and the Ukrainian state atomic energy company reported that a Russian military column was heading toward the nuclear plant. Loud shots and rocket fire were heard late Thursday. [...] Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal called on the West to close the skies over the country's nuclear plants as fighting intensified. "It is a question of the security of the whole world!" he said in a statement. The U.S. and NATO allies have ruled out creating a no-fly zone since the move would pit Russian and Western military forces against each other.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan says that following a legal process, the Federal Bureau of Investigations has gained access to data in her Google account. Google itself informed her of the data release this week noting that due to a court order, the company wasn't allowed to inform her sooner. In January 2021, Twitter suspended the official Sci-Hub account so when site updates are published, they now tend to appear on Elbakyan's personal account. A new tweet this week reveals that Google was also required to hand over her account data.

In an email to Elbakyan dated March 2, 2022, Google advises that following a legal process issued by the FBI, Google was required to hand over data associated with Elbakyan's account. Exactly what data was targeted isn't made clear but according to Google, a court order required the company to keep the request a secret. [...] Google notes that since it is "not in a position" to provide Elbakyan with legal advice or to discuss the substance of the legal process, the Sci-Hub founder may wish to contact an attorney. The big question remains -- what exactly is the investigation about?

Given the scale of Sci-Hub and its notoriety around the world, it's certainly possible that a criminal copyright infringement investigation is underway in the United States that could feasibly lead to an indictment for Elbakyan and any cohorts involved in the operation. However, more serious allegations have been made in the past. Back in December 2019, The Washington Post reported that Elbakyan was being investigated by the US Justice Department on suspicion that she "may" be working with Russian intelligence to "steal U.S. military secrets from defense contractors." No solid evidence was published to back up those allegations but the publication did note that Elbakyan may have collected log-in credentials from journal subscribers in order to access academic literature, presumably so that it can be offered on Sci-Hub. "I know there are some reasons to suspect me: after all, I have education in computer security and was a hobby hacker in teenage years," said Elbakyan in a statement. "But hacking is not my occupation, and I do not have any job within any intelligence, either Russian or some another."

She added: "I think that whether I can be a Russian spy is being investigated by U.S. government since they learned about Sci-Hub, because that is very logical: a Russian project, that uses university accounts to access some information, of course that is suspicious. But in fact Sci-Hub has always been my personal enterprise."

Russia has decided to stop supplying rocket engines to the United States in retaliation for its sanctions against Russia over Ukraine. Reuters reports: "In a situation like this we can't supply the United States with our world's best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don't know what," [Dmitry Rogozin, head of the state space agency Roscosmos, said on state Russian television]. According to Rogozin, Russia has delivered a total of 122 RD-180 engines to the U.S. since 1990s, of which 98 have been used to power Atlas launch vehicles. Roscosmos will also stop servicing rocket engines it had previously delivered to the U.S., Rogozin said, adding that the U.S. still had 24 engines that would now be left without Russian technical assistance.

Russia has earlier said it was suspending cooperation with Europe on space launches from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana in response to Western sanctions over Ukraine. Moscow has also demanded guarantees from British satellite company OneWeb that its satellites would not be used for military purposes. OneWeb, in which the British government has a stake, said on Thursday it was suspending all launches from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Rogozin said Russia would now focus on creating dual-purpose spacecraft in line with the needs of Roscosmos and the Defence Ministry.

BrendaEM shares a report from The Register: Ukrainian news website Ukrainska Pravda says the nation's Centre for Defense Strategies think tank has obtained the personal details of 120,000 Russian servicemen fighting in Ukraine. The publication has now shared this data freely on its website. The Register and others have been unable to fully verify the accuracy of the data from the leak. The records include what appears to be names, addresses, passport numbers, unit names, and phone numbers. Some open source intelligence researchers on Twitter said they found positive matches, as did sources who spoke confidentially to El Reg; others said they couldn't verify dip-sampled data. Rumors swirled on the internet that activists were behind the disclosure. The Ukrainian news agency said the personnel records were obtained from "reliable sources." Whether or not the database's contents is real, the impact on Russian military morale -- knowing that your country's enemies have your personal details and can contact your family if you're captured, killed, or even still alive -- won't be insignificant.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Mykhailo Fedorov, the vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation of Ukraine, has publicly called on "all game development companies" to "temporarily block all Russian and Belorussian accounts" in response to Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. In a tweet from his verified account, Fedorov also called on esports platforms to "temporarily stop the participation of Russian and Belorussian teams and gamers in all international esports events and cancel all international events holding [sic] on the territory of Russia and Belarus."

These moves, Fedorov suggests, "will motivate the citizens of Russia to proactively stop the disgraceful military aggression" by the Russian government. "In 2022, modern technology is perhaps the best answer to the tanks, multiple rocket launchers... and missiles." In an additional note directed at the Xbox and PlayStation Twitter accounts, Fedorov wrote that "if you support human values, you should [leave] the Russian market!" In a follow-up tweet, Fedorov also asked Riot Games, EA, Ubisoft, Gameloft, and Wargaming to "close your office in Russia" in solidarity with Ukraine. "There's no place for [an] aggressor on the global technological map!"

The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog on Wednesday warned Russia's onslaught of Ukraine is raising the risk of nuclear accidents, calling for restraint from all actions that could jeopardize the safe operations of Ukraine's nuclear facilities. From a report: It comes as Russia's war with Ukraine enters its seventh day, with fighting raging across the country. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Russia's invasion of Ukraine marks the first time a military conflict has taken place amidst the facilities of a large and established nuclear power program -- which in this case includes the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986. "The situation in Ukraine is unprecedented and I continue to be gravely concerned," IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in an introductory statement to the 35-nation Board of Governors. "The safety and security of nuclear facilities, and nuclear and other radioactive material, in Ukraine must under no circumstances be endangered."

The corporate internet space race has taken a geopolitical turn. Russian space agency Roscosmos is refusing to launch the next batch of 36 OneWeb internet satellites Friday, unless the company meets the state agency's demands. From a report: Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin particularly emphasized that the ultimatum is a response to the U.K. sanctioning Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Roscosmos said in a statement that the Soyuz rocket will be removed from the launchpad at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan unless OneWeb meets two demands:

1.The U.K. government sells its stake in the company.
2. OneWeb guarantees that the satellites not be used for military purposes. U.K. Business and Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said in a statement that there is "no negotiation" with Roscosmos about OneWeb and that the government "is not selling its share." Kwarteng added, "we are in touch with other shareholders to discuss next steps."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard, written by Joseph Cox: Around the same time Russian forces launched a massive rocket into a square in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, killing and wounding an as of yet unknown number of people, Eugene Kaspersky, head of his namesake Russian cybersecurity firm, tweeted that he hoped negotiations between Ukraine and Russia would lead to "a compromise." The statement encapsulates the company's position since Russia invaded Ukraine six days ago -- that of attempted neutrality in a war where silence or fence sitting is implicitly siding with the Russian forces. In another statement to Motherboard sent on Monday, the company said "As a technology and cybersecurity service provider the company is not in a position to comment or speculate on geopolitical developments outside of its area of expertise."

Kaspersky is one of the best-known Russian companies, and for years its antivirus product has been among the most used in the world. The antivirus software also harvests telemetry data for Kaspersky's researchers who can then use that to identify and counter new threats. Its researchers are some of the best in the world, with its Global Research & Analysis Team (GReAT) regularly publishing leading research on various government malware operations. Famously the company first revealed details of a U.S. government hacking group that it dubbed Equation Group. Kaspersky has also researched suspected Russian government linked hackers. Eugene's tweet also brings something else to the surface again: how much is Kaspersky, the company, influenced by the Russian government, even if indirectly? As a Russian firm operating in Moscow under Russian laws, it may feel the need to toe the line on Russian issues.

Kaspersky's company statement on Monday added that "Kaspersky is focused on its mission to build a safer world. For 25 years, the company delivers deep threat intelligence and security expertise that is constantly transforming into innovative security solutions and services to protect businesses, critical infrastructure, governments and consumers around the globe. Kaspersky's business operations remain stable. The company guarantees the fulfillment of its obligations to partners and customers -- including product delivery and support and financial transaction continuity. The global management team is monitoring the situation carefully and is ready to act very quickly if needed." Kaspersky may not currently feel it is in a position to speculate or take a position on the invasion of Ukraine. But with a 40 mile long Russian military convoy making its way to Kyiv, and with the prospect of more cyber attacks playing a role in the invasion, Kaspersky may need to take a side.

Microsoft says it began detecting "destructive cyberattacks directed against Ukraine's digital infrastructure" several hours before the Russian military began launching missiles or moving tanks into the country last week. From a report: The disclosure Monday, part of a larger blog post about Ukraine by Microsoft President Brad Smith, provides a glimpse of how cyber-warfare is being used as part of the ongoing invasion. The company says it is giving ongoing guidance to the Ukrainian government about cyberthreats as the situation unfolds. Smith also outlined the company's efforts to combat state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, ensuring that its platforms are not displaying or distributing any content or apps from Russia's state-sponsored RT and Sputnik news organizations, in line with a recent European Union decision. He wrote that there's "a well-orchestrated battle ongoing in the information ecosystem where the ammunition is disinformation, undermining truth and sowing seeds of discord and distrust," he wrote.

Though the Russian government has tried geofencing access to crucial web sites, the Jerusalem Post reports that two Russian government web site still went offline Saturday — the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense. "Gosuslugi, Russia's web portal of state services, went offline on Saturday night as well, with the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media telling TASS that the site is facing cyberattacks on an 'unprecedented scale.'"

Meanwhile, the Washington Post interviews 22-year-old Alex Horlan, a Ukrainian cybersecurity expert in Spain "helping take down some of Russia's most powerful websites — including state media and even the official page of the Kremlin." The attacks he and others are helping to carry out on Russian websites are part of a wide information war in the background of the much larger conflict here, as Ukrainians target Russian websites to rewrite the narrative Moscow is presenting to Russians back home. "We are creating an IT army," Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted on Saturday. Horlan is a cybersecurity expert who recently launched an app called disBalancer that helps take down scam websites by overwhelming them with online traffic. He has redirected his team's efforts in recent days to instead target Russian websites he says are spreading dangerous disinformation about the Russian invasion of Ukraine....

Thousands of people are joining Horlan and others' efforts to target the Russian sites, with around 2,000 logging into his app at any given time, he said. The main challenge is that many are losing WiFi when air raid sirens force them to retreat to underground bunkers....

Volunteers are gathering information on attacks and casualties to fact check and challenge Russia's version of events, posting messages on Telegram and other Russian social media platforms [according to Liuba Tsbulska, a Ukrainian analyst and activist who has tracked Russian disinformation for eight year]. Others work to educate international audiences or produce patriotic content. Some also target Russian military and intelligence officers, flooding their emails and other platforms with messages. Volunteers are reaching out to the mothers of Russian soldiers to convince them to call for Russian President Vladimir Putin to bring their boys back home.

In Kharkiv, after reports that Russian troops and armored vehicles entered Ukraine's second largest city early Sunday, one local Telegram channel with more than 400,000 subscribers urged people to continue to document the adversary's movements as a way to aid Ukraine's forces in the area. In one message, the Truha Kharkiv channel asked citizens to "carefully film and send information about the movement of Russian troops to our channel. This is vital to the defense of our city."

Another message instructed citizens on how to make molotov cocktails.

Harvard's School of Public Health has an announcement...

"Multiple sclerosis (MS), a progressive disease that affects 2.8 million people worldwide and for which there is no definitive cure, is likely caused by infection with the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), according to a study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers."

Epstein-Barr virus has already been linked to some forms of cancer. But now, as the New York Times put it, "New research proves a virus — one that almost all of us have — 'causes' multiple sclerosis." (More than 90% of adults have the Epstein-Barr virus, and "The very ubiquity of Epstein-Barr has made it especially difficult to isolate as a causal factor...") Researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and elsewhere, however, devised a novel way to carry out that study, and they published their findings in January in Science. U.S. military recruits, a group of more than 10 million people, are screened for H.I.V. when their service starts and biennially thereafter. Their blood serum samples are then archived in the Department of Defense Serum Repository and can be retested for other pathogens. Between 1993 and 2013, the researchers identified cases of M.S. among active-duty U.S. military personnel. Then they tested their first serum sample; their last sample before M.S. onset; and one in between. They found that of 801 soldiers with M.S., 800 were positive for Epstein-Barr....

"In practical terms, if you're not infected with E.B.V., your risk of M.S. is virtually zero," says Alberto Ascherio, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard and a senior author of the Science study. "After infection, your risk jumps by over 30-fold." The odds of that increase having occurred by chance are less than one in a million....

That was the strongest evidence yet that Epstein-Barr initiates M.S., but it didn't explain why. Just over a week after the Science paper came out, though, Robinson and colleagues published their own paper in Nature that demonstrated how the virus triggers the disease in some people. Epstein-Barr produces proteins that mimic a protein in the myelin sheath, they found; when the immune system makes antibodies to attack the virus, they also attack the myelin — "the insulation around your neurons," as Robinson puts it. "Like electrical wires, if the insulation gets stripped off, it short-âcircuits," he says. "That's what results in M.S."

This protein mix-up, though, can only explain about a quarter of M.S. cases. And while the Science paper concludes that Epstein-Barr is the "leading cause" of M.S., Cohen says he wants to be careful with the word "cause." He thinks the study proves that the virus is a necessary precondition for M.S., but the fact that so many people have Epstein-Barr and so few of them get M.S. demonstrates that other factors, very likely including genetic susceptibility, must play a significant role in the development of the disease....

What is exciting about the discovery that Epstein-Barr is necessary for M.S. is that it raises the prospect that a vaccine could prevent that disease — as well as other serious conditions — even if we never understand precisely why the virus behaves as it does in a given individual.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Thelasko for sharing the news!

On Friday the Washington Post's live updates on the Russia-Ukraine situation included the story of a tech firm trying to get its employees out of Kyiv: John Sung Kim, chief executive of the software outsourcing company JetBridge, has been communicating with his 24 employees in Kyiv, all software developers, through Slack. Half of them are trying to leave Ukraine, but Kim says he is struggling to help them and has been unable to get them train tickets, a rental car or gasoline.

"The other half of my team wants to stay and fight," said Kim. "I got on an all-hands with them this morning and told them it's not their responsibility to be soldiers and there's other ways they can contribute since they're software engineers, but there's nothing I can say to dissuade them." Kim said JetBridge's clients are almost exclusively Silicon Valley tech companies that are publicly traded or have raised venture capital financing. "The universal issue other than transportation logistics seems to be grandparents. 'My babushka' is the common theme of why they're torn from actually leaving," he said. The fallout from Russia's invasion has also impacted JetBridge's employees in Belarus. "The males in Belarus are scared that there's going to be military conscription, and unlike the Ukrainians, my Belarusian engineers have zero desire to pick up a rifle. Zero," he said.

In anticipation of European Union sanctions on Belarus, Kim said JetBridge has started paying employees in bitcoin.