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PiMuNu writes:

FTFA:

An x-ray feature recently detected by different astronomy groups may be the long-awaited signature of dark matter.

The Chandra X-ray Observatory and XMM-Newton are satellite telescopes that were both launched in 1999. Shortly after their first science results were released, it was shown that these x-ray astronomy missions could provide a test of certain dark matter theories through observations of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. In particular, dark matter particles with mass in the kilo-electron-volt (keV) mass range could decay into x-ray photons with keV energy. The leading particle dark matter candidate for this x-ray signature is a sterile neutrino.

There are a few experiments which have attempted to detect sterile neutrinos, but none have produced conclusive results for or against. LSND measured a non-standard model signal at 99% significance (not enough for a discovery); but subsequent attempts to validate their measurements have failed. On the other hand, no one has quite been able to shake the feeling that there is something weird going on... and a few more experiments have been proposed to try to resolve this

"gewg_" writes:

El Reg reports

University of Manchester researchers reckon they've eliminated one of the mechanisms that might have linked mobile phones to cancer. The research is also bad news for those who think power lines are cancer-carriers.

Dr Alex Jones in the University's School of Chemistry led a team examining whether weak magnetic fields affected flavoproteins. Since this protein class handles DNA repair, among other things, it was a favourite candidate for those who believed that the weak magnetic fields associated with phones and power lines are dangerous to health.

The research, to appear in the Royal Society journal Interface, was unable to observe any reaction involving flavoproteins that would occur in the human body.

[...]one of the roles of flavoproteins is to transfer electrons from one place to another. These are referred to as electron transfer flavoproteins, and their activities assist in processes like oxidation.

The electron transfer process involves the creation of chemicals called radical pairs and these had been put forward as a mechanism by which weak magnetic fields might interact with cells--but [...] the research "suggests the correct conditions for biochemical effects of WMFs are likely to be rare in the human body".

"gewg_" writes:

El Reg reports

Lenovo is recalling about 500,000 AC power cords for its B, G, and V-series laptops and IdeaPads--after 15 cases were reported of the cables overheating, sparking, melting, and burning.

"Only the AC Power Line Cord is being recalled," Lenovo said on its global recall website.[1]

"The Adapter that connects to the computer is not being recalled. Do not discard the adapter. Lenovo apologizes for the inconvenience caused by this issue. Shipment of quality products always has been and continues to be the foremost concern."

The power cords were sold between February 2011 and June 2012, and are easy to identify. They are black and have LS-15 printed on the head. Lenovo's website also has a serial number checker for identification.

So far there have been no reports of the power cables burning up in the US, but 15 cases have been logged in Asia, with no injuries. The cause of the problem is dodgy insulation in the power cord itself which degrades over time and allows the cables to overheat.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Binyamin Appelbaum writes at the NYT that the share of prime-age men — those 25 to 54 years old — who are not working has more than tripled since the late 1960s, to 16 percent as many men have decided that low-wage work will not improve their lives, in part because deep changes in American society have made it easier for them to live without working. These changes include the availability of federal disability benefits; the decline of marriage, which means fewer men provide for children; and the rise of the Internet, which has reduced the isolation of unemployment. Technology has made unemployment less lonely says Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, who argues that the Internet allows men to entertain themselves and find friends and sexual partners at a much lower cost than did previous generations. Perhaps most important, it has become harder for men to find higher-paying jobs as foreign competition and technological advances have eliminated many of the jobs open to high school graduates. The trend was pushed to new heights by the last recession, with 20 percent of prime-age men not working in 2009 before partly receding. But the recovery is unlikely to be complete. "Like turtles flipped onto their backs, many people who stop working struggle to get back on their feet," writes Appelbaum. "Some people take years to return to the work force, and others never do "

A study published in October by scholars at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies estimated that 37 percent of the decline in male employment since 1979 can be explained by this retreat from marriage and fatherhood (PDF). “When the legal, entry-level economy isn’t providing a wage that allows someone a convincing and realistic option to become an adult — to go out and get married and form a household — it demoralizes them and shunts them into illegal economies,” says Philippe Bourgois, an anthropologist who has studied the lives of young men in urban areas. “It’s not a choice that has made them happy. They would much rather be adults in a respectful job that pays them and promises them benefits.”

tonyPick writes:

The parable of the polygons is an interactive (Javascript based) page which shows how small individual biases can lead to large collective biases, and the impacts of actively promoting diversity on the outcomes.

Our cute segregation simulation is based off the work of Nobel Prize-winning game theorist, Thomas Schelling. Specifically, his 1971 paper, Dynamic Models of Segregation [PDF]. We built on top of this, and showed how a small demand for diversity can desegregate a neighborhood. In other words, we gave his model a happy ending.

The bottom of the page has a set of links to relevant research articles.

Spotted on the Physics week in review

NotSanguine writes:

Complex life evolved here on Earth, but we still don't clearly understand the forces and mechanisms which drove evolution in that direction. Could those same factors exist elsewhere in our solar system and beyond?

An evolutionary geneticist, Frank Rosenzweig with financial assistance from NASA is going to spend the next five years trying to gain some clarity, as phys.org is reporting.

The University of Montana researcher is studying how life evolves complex traits in his lab. From the Phys.org article (which is an interesting read, BTW):

"Over my career, I've been interested in what are the genetic bases of adaptation and how do complex communities evolve from single clones," Rosenzweig said. "Related to these questions are others such as how do the genetic 'starting point' and ecological setting influence the tempo and trajectory of evolutionary change."

...

Rosenzweig's previous NASA funding came from the Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program. The first project, initiated in 2007, examined how genetic material (or genomes) evolve in yeast species that were cultured under limited resources. A second project, initiated in 2010, is investigating how founder cells in E. coli genotypes, and the environment in which they evolve, influence the diversity and stability of subsequent populations.

The first project led to an unexpected finding: stress may increase the frequency with which genome sequences are rearranged. Stress introduces new chromosomal variants into the species' population that could prove beneficial under challenging circumstances. Indeed, previous studies have indicated that new chromosomal variants are stress resistant. In 2013, Rosenzweig's team, led by University of Montana research professor Eugene Kroll, began studying how yeast cultures respond to starvation.

The yeast research was reported in a paper published on PLOS one in July, 2013.

"gewg_" writes:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports

Telling users how to strip the [Debilitating Restrictions Mechanisms] from their legally purchased ebooks is not contributory copyright infringement, according to a ruling last month by [federal judge Denise Cote.]

[...]Abbey House Media operated an ebook store for the publishers Penguin and Simon & Schuster from 2010, and was contractually obligated to wrap the ebooks sold in that store with DRM. When Abbey House shut down the ebook store in 2013, it gave its customers a month's notice that they would no longer be able to add new devices to read their purchased books on--and explained that some customers were using the free software package Calibre to remove the DRM so they would be able to move their library to new hardware.

[...]Penguin and Simon & Schuster argued that, by making that announcement and pointing to a specific piece of software, Abbey House was engaging in contributory infringement and inducing people to infringe.

[...]Judge Cote dismissed the inducement claim by noting that the uses Abbey House was enabling--personal backup and device transfers--were non-infringing.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

After a few days of the pirate bay being raided, Isohunt has reloaded into a new search engine. Isohunt previously has resurrected isohunt.com. source: http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/12/isohunt-unofficially-resurrects-the-pirate-bay/

Hugh Pickens writes:

Nathaniel Popper writes at the NYT that the Citizens Bank of Weir, Kansas, or CBW, has been taken apart and rebuilt, from its fiber optic cables up, so it can offer services not available at even the nation’s largest bank. The creation of the new bank, and the maintenance of the old one, are the work of Suresh Ramamurthi and his wife, Suchitra Padmanabhan who were born in India and ended up buying the bank in Kansas in 2009 after living in Silicon Valley and passing through jobs at Google and Lehman Brothers. Their goal was to find solutions to logjams that continue to vex consumers all over the country, such as the obstacles that slow money moving from one bank to another and across international borders. The new services that CBW is providing, like instant payments to any bank in the United States, direct remittance transfers abroad and specialized debit cards, might seem as if they should be painless upgrades in an age of high-frequency trading and interplanetary space missions. But the slowness of current methods of moving money is a widely acknowledged problem in the financial industry.

In the United States the primary option that consumers have to transfer money is still the ACH payment. Requests for ACH transfers are collected by banks and submitted in batches, once a day, and the banks receiving the transfers also process the payments once a day, leading to long waits. ACH technology was created in the 1970s and has not changed significantly since. The clunky system, which takes at least a day to deliver money, has become so deeply embedded in the banking industry that it has been hard to replace. CBW went to work on the problem by using the debit card networks that power ATM cash dispensers. Ramamurthi’s team engineered a system so that a business could collect a customer’s debit card number and use it to make an instant payment directly into the customer’s account — or into the account of a customer of almost any other bank in the country. The key to CBW's system is real-time, payment transaction risk-scoring - software that can judge the risk involved in any transaction in real time by looking at 20 to 40 factors, including a customers’ transaction history and I.P., address where the transaction originated. It was this system that Elizabeth McQuerry, the former Fed official, praised as the “biggest idea” at a recent bank conference. "Today's banks offer the equivalent of 300-year-old paper ledgers converted to an electronic form -- a digital skin on an antiquated transaction process," says Suresh Ramamurthi. "We'll now be one of the first banks in the world to offer customers a reliable, compliant, safe and secure way to instantly send and receive money internationally."

NotSanguine writes:

The BBC is reporting about a new type of vibration sensor that is sensitive enough to detect minute vibrations such as blood flow and speech.

The new type of sensor uses a thin layer of platinum embedded on a polymer that mimics sense organs present in the joints of some spiders. Vibrations cause cracks in the platinum to open and close, which can be detected and quantified. I can see many applications for such sensors, including ultra-sensitive body activity sensors, vibration detection in highly sensitive experimental gear, and the ever popular choice, spy equipment. The research is presented in an article published recently in Nature.

From the BBC News article:

Speaking to BBC News, Prof Mansoo Choi said the project began two years ago, when one of his colleagues at Seoul National University read a paper in the same journal.

It described how a particular species of wandering spider communicates with potential mates, metres away on the same plant, by scratching the leaves and "hearing" the vibrations. The organ in the spiders' legs that detects these incredibly faint vibrations is made up of a series of slits. It is called the "lyriform organ" because the slits vary in length, like the strings of a lyre. "We tried to mimic the cracked shape of the organ," Prof Choi said.

"gewg_" writes:

El Reg reports

Good news, hayseeds: the FCC has ruled that rural broadband should be held to the same standard as that of connections in built-up cities and towns.

The stateside regulator has issued a new order, which states that in the US countryside, providers must maintain at least a 10Mbit/s downlink speed for subscribers if they want to call it "broadband". The ruling will apply to ISPs that receive taxpayer dollars through the FCC's Connect America Fund.

Previously, the FCC required ISPs to deliver a 4Mbps connection in order to get the rural broadband funding. Companies are also required to deliver 1Mbps upload speeds. The increased bandwidth is supposed to match the speeds of urban connections, and is the first [uptick] for the Connect America Fund program since 2011.

[...]The $4.5bn Connect America Fund was established in 2011 with the aim of expanding and improving phone and broadband service in the American countryside. The fund is slated to run through 2020 with the goal of connecting 100 million US homes countrywide with 100Mbps broadband.

sigma writes:

Ex-Apple engineer Rod Schultz wrote a paper in 2012 citing “a secret war” that Apple fought with iTunes competitors. In the paper, he wrote, “Apple was locking the majority of music downloads to its devices".

The engineer was subpoenaed to show that Apple tries to suppress rivals to iTunes and iPods. The court submission argues that Apple’s anti-competitive actions drove up the prices for iPods from 2006 to 2009 and plaintiffs are seeking $350 million in damages, which could be tripled under antitrust laws.

The Wall Street Journal notes that 'Outside the courtroom Schultz said the early work of his former team reflected the digital-music market’s need for copyright protections of songs. Later, though, he said it created “market dominance” for the iPod. Schultz left Apple in 2008.'

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/12/12/former-itunes-engineer-tells-court-he-worked-to-block-competitors/

novak writes:

Fake Cell phone base stations, or ISMI catchers, which allow a third party to listen to phone conversations and monitor other phone activity, were found in Oslo around the Norwegian parliament building, the Prime Minister's home, among other places. At this point it is not known, or at least revealed, who planted them. Criminals? Members of the government spying on other members? More Five-Eyes shenanigans?

Article in English:
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Secret-surveillance-detected-in-Oslo-7825278.html

Full (original) article in Norwegian:
http://mm.aftenposten.no/stortinget-og-statsministeren-overvakes/

sigma writes:

Microsoft has just confirmed that their recent update (KB 3004394) is causing a range of serious problems and recommends removing it.

Users are reporting that USB 3.0 drivers are broken, User Account Control (UAC) prompts are behaving oddly and the Windows Defender anti-malware service has been disabled by the update. Microsoft has acknowledged that it even prevents the installation of future Windows Updates.

Note that the problems with this patch only apply to Windows 7, so if you have been diligent in paying your Microsoft tax, you're safe. If insist on staying with an old OS, and have Windows 7 set to automatically update every Tuesday, you should consider permanently disabling that feature.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2014/12/13/new-windows-7-patch-is-effectively-malware-disables-graphics-driver-updates-and-windows-defender/

Hugh Pickens writes:

Andrew Pollack reports at the NYT that a federal judge has blocked an attempt by the drug company Actavis to halt sales of an older form of its Alzheimer’s disease drug Namenda in favor of a newer version with a longer patent life after New York’s attorney general filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing the drug company of forcing patients to switch to the newer version of the widely used medicine to hinder competition from generic manufacturers. “Today’s decision prevents Actavis from pursuing its scheme to block competition and maintain its high drug prices,” says Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney general. “Our lawsuit against Actavis sends a clear message: Drug companies cannot illegally prioritize profits over patients.” The case involves a practice called product hopping where brand name manufacturers (“product hoppers”) make a slight alteration to their prescription drug (PDF) and engage in marketing efforts to shift consumers from the old version to the new to insulate the drug company from generic competition for several years. For its part Actavis argued that an injunction would be “unprecedented and extraordinary” and would cause the company “great financial harm, including unnecessary manufacturing and marketing costs.” Namenda has been a big seller. In the last fiscal year, the drug generated $1.5 billion in sales. The drug costs about $300 a month.