SoylentNews

Phoenix666 writes:

Wired reports the LHC is back to full strength after running at half power for years to prevent another accident like that which took it down in 2008:

In the fall of 2008, CERN’s high-energy physicists ran into a problem. A faulty electronic connection at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland—the biggest, baddest, most powerful particle accelerator ever built—caused a couple of magnets to overheat and melt, triggering an explosion of pressurized helium gas. The accident, which happened just nine days after the LHC turned on for the first time, led to months of delays. “It was pretty depressing when we broke the accelerator,” says Aaron Dominguez, a physicist at the University of Nebraska. “That was not a good day.”

Eventually, engineers fixed the LHC, and in 2012, physicists used it to do what the accelerator was always supposed to: Find the elusive subatomic particle called the Higgs boson. It worked, earning much fanfare and a Nobel Prize. But to prevent another accident, CERN’s engineers had run the LHC at only half its designed capability. Now, after a two-year hiatus in which engineers upgraded the accelerator to prevent such magnetic meltdowns, the LHC is set to smash protons together harder than ever—the way it was intended. “It’s like having a new accelerator, really,” Dominguez says. The increased power will mean more violent collisions that might create bigger, even rarer particles...

protons will finally begin slamming together, hopefully creating particles that physicists have only theorized to exist. At first, the collisions will be at 13 TeV. Only later, once engineers get a better feel for how the machine works, will they boost it to its maximum of 14 TeV. And higher energies mean more particles. The first run produced 500,000 Higgs bosons, but detectors only identified a few hundred of them for physicists to study. With more collisions, the LHC should create 10 times as many Higgs bosons. More data could be the key to discovering all kinds of new physics. The Higgs, for example, might be responsible for dark energy, the force that’s causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.

I for one am looking forward to the flying cars and invisibility powers this will finally bring us.

mendax writes:

Here is a story for the computer history buffs. El Reg is reporting that Ken Shirriff, a programmer better known for work on Arduino, got access to a 50-year-old IBM 1401 mainframe in the collection of the Computer History Museum and programmed it to produce a Mandelbrot fractal, printing it out on a line printer. Even though the computer has a Fortran compiler, he wrote the program in assembly language.

While this is not exactly an amazing feat of software engineering in anyone's book, it is an object lesson in how difficult (and how fun) it was to program the ancient mainframes of our fathers' and grandfathers' times.

Mr. Shirriff's story and lots of pictures can be found on his blog.

Phoenix666 writes:

The sweet shop of the future will offer smaller portions in more elaborate forms, thanks to 3D printers adapted for food use.

Willy Wonka-esque candy floss lamps and edible diamonds were just some of the futuristic creations developed by self-proclaimed "food futurologist" Morgaine Gaye and award-winning British chocolatier Paul A Young at Future Fest, an event held in London this month.

They looked at the factors they thought likely to alter the landscape of confectionary manufacturing, and predicted that sweets as we know them were going to change dramatically over the next 20 years and beyond.

Perhaps the Chocolate Room isn't so far away after all. Let's hope chiral sugars arrive before it does...

Phoenix666 writes:

The BBC reports studies have shown that drinking or injecting the blood of the young is good for you.

Dr Saul Villeda, a biologist at the University of California, ... has been doing some extraordinary research looking at what happens if you inject blood from young mice into old mice. This is not being done simply to replace elderly blood but to transform it.

After an infusion of young blood, the old mice perform significantly better in memory tests, such as finding their way back to their nest.

The effects of young blood on elderly brains is particularly striking when you look at the brain cells themselves. When mice — like humans — age, the neurons end up looking like tired, shriveled peanuts.

Once the brain cells from an elderly mouse have been infused with young blood, however, they start sprouting new connections to fellow neurons and become much more like those of a young, smart, mouse.

Another reason to keep those tasty, ahem, young interns around...

Phoenix666 writes:

BBC reports the co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the Alps intentionally locked the pilot out of the cabin and initiated the flight's descent into the ground:

The co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps, named as Andreas Lubitz, appeared to want to "destroy the plane", officials said.

Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin, citing information from the "black box" voice recorder, said the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit.

He intentionally started a descent while the pilot was locked out.

Mr Robin said there was "absolute silence in the cockpit" as the pilot fought to re-enter it.

Air traffic controllers made repeated attempts to contact the aircraft, but to no avail, he said.

The story seems SN-worthy because it is an object lesson in the consequences for our lives when we put complex machines and systems into the hands of others. In this case it was a trained pilot who killed a plane full of people who were powerless to stop him. Another example could be engineers who sabotage a dam and wipe out entire communities downstream. We mostly don't think about stuff like this because there is an invisible web of trust, sometimes called a "social contract," that leads people to get on a plane, or go to work, or take their kids to school without giving it a second thought. But when that social contract unravels, all bets are off...

hemocyanin writes:

Nobody interested in technology has failed to notice how aggressive and remorseless prosecutors can be in pursuing relatively powerless individuals. Examples: any Whistleblower acting in the public interest is at serious risk, as are activists like Aaron Scwartz by the piling on of a century's worth of charges, or journalists who expose information the government would like kept secret, like Barrett Brown, and FBI agents and Federal prosecutors are perfectly happy to tell ridiculous lies to further their abuse (in court filings, the Feds claimed Ladar Levinson exited the back door of his 5th story apartment and drove off -- this would have required a 5 story jump from his balcony).

Of course, if you are politically connected, and you only leak in a self-glorifying manner, then you get a slap on the wrist, e.g., General Petraeus.

This morning I read a letter of apology written by a prosecutor who got an innocent man convicted -- to see that was very moving and makes me feel hopeful that perhaps, the sentiments he writes about will filter back into the prosecutorial community:

The full letter (if ever there is a time to RTFA, this is it) and an excerpt:

In 1984, I was 33 years old. I was arrogant, judgmental, narcissistic and very full of myself. I was not as interested in justice as I was in winning. To borrow a phrase from Al Pacino in the movie "And Justice for All," "Winning became everything."

After the death verdict in the Ford trial, I went out with others and celebrated with a few rounds of drinks. That's sick. I had been entrusted with the duty to seek the death of a fellow human being, a very solemn task that certainly did not warrant any "celebration."

kaszz writes:

The NASA Curiosity rover has found biologically useful nitrogen on Mars. The nitrogen was found near the crater Gale. The nitrogen may have been produced by non-biological processes but shows that the prerequisites for life has been present in the past. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has published the full story, Evidence for indigenous nitrogen in sedimentary and aeolian deposits from the Curiosity rover investigations at Gale crater, Mars.

Along with other nitrogen compounds, the instruments detected nitric oxide (NO -- one atom of nitrogen bound to an oxygen atom) in samples from all three sites. Since nitrate is a nitrogen atom bound to three oxygen atoms, the team thinks most of the NO likely came from nitrate which decomposed as the samples were heated for analysis. Certain compounds in the SAM instrument can also release nitrogen as samples are heated; however, the amount of NO found is more than twice what could be produced by SAM in the most extreme and unrealistic scenario, according to Stern [of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland]. This leads the team to think that nitrates really are present on Mars, and the abundance estimates reported have been adjusted to reflect this potential additional source.

"Scientists have long thought that nitrates would be produced on Mars from the energy released in meteorite impacts, and the amounts we found agree well with estimates from this process," said Stern.

gman003 writes:

A bipartisan-sponsored bill has been proposed to the United States House of Representatives, titled (accurately, for once) the "Surveillance State Repeal Act".

The bill (full text [PDF]) would completely repeal the Patriot Act and FISA Amendment Act, destroy most of the collected data, require warrants for all surveillance of Americans, forbid the government from requiring backdoors in hardware or software, and create a whistle-blowing immunity for reporting violations. Needless to say, this seems like a big step in the right direction.

I have already contacted my representative, and you may wish to do the same.

Phoenix666 writes:

Israeli researchers have demonstrated a proof of concept for defeating air-gapping through heat:

[...] [S]ecurity researchers at Ben Gurion University in Israel have found a way to retrieve data from an air-gapped computer using only heat emissions and a computer’s built-in thermal sensors. The method would allow attackers to surreptitiously siphon passwords or security keys from a protected system and transmit the data to an internet-connected system that’s in close proximity and that the attackers control. They could also use the internet-connected system to send malicious commands to the air-gapped system using the same heat and sensor technique.
...
currently, the attack allows for just eight bits of data to be reliably transmitted over an hour—a rate that is sufficient for an attacker to transmit brief commands or siphon a password or secret key but not large amounts of data. It also works only if the air-gapped system is within 40 centimeters (about 15 inches) from the other computer the attackers control. But the researchers, at Ben Gurion’s Cyber Security Labs, note that this latter scenario is not uncommon, because air-gapped systems often sit on desktops alongside Internet-connected ones so that workers can easily access both.

Oh yeah? Well, my computer's a difference engine, so there!

fleg writes:

Source The Guardian

The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) has pinpointed the level of drinking implicated in liver cancer after undertaking what it says was the biggest review so far of the evidence on the relationship between diet, weight, physical activity and the disease.

Its assessment of 34 previous studies covering 8.2 million people, more than 24,500 of whom had liver cancer, revealed “strong evidence” linking intake of three drinks a day to the disease.

“Around three or more drinks per day can be enough to cause liver cancer,” said Amanda Mclean, director of the charity’s UK branch. “Until now we were uncertain about the amount of alcohol likely to lead to liver cancer. But the research reviewed in this report is strong enough, for the first time, to be more specific about this.”

The WCRF’s findings prompted the Alcohol Health Alliance, a coalition of health organisations, to claim that alcohol is so toxic that cans and bottles should carry health warnings.

“Alcohol, like tobacco and asbestos, is a class 1 carcinogen and it is totally unacceptable that the public is not provided with such basic information”, said Prof Sir Ian Gilmore, the alliance’s chair.

On the flip side...

The WCRF’s analysis also found strong evidence that coffee could help protect against liver cancer, though it did not specify the amounts someone needs to drink.

morpheus writes:

European Space Agency (ESA) has tested a special net to catch satellites. The tests were carried out in a "parabolic" (capable of descents fast enough to produce a microgravity environment in the cabin) Canadian made Falcon 20 aircraft. The project is overseen by the Polish SKA Polska. The first orbital tests are planned for 2021 during the European e.Deorbit mission. The link below has some interesting footage of the tests.

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Clean_Space/Want_to_snag_a_satellite_Try_a_net

martyb writes:

According to a report in Phys.org, the Universe may be on the Brink of Collapse (on the Cosmological Timescale). From the article:

Physicists have proposed a mechanism for "cosmological collapse" that predicts that the universe will soon stop expanding and collapse in on itself, obliterating all matter as we know it. Their calculations suggest that the collapse is "imminent"—on the order of a few tens of billions of years or so—which may not keep most people up at night, but for the physicists it's still much too soon.

In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, physicists Nemanja Kaloper at the University of California, Davis; and Antonio Padilla at the University of Nottingham have proposed the cosmological collapse mechanism and analyzed its implications, which include an explanation of dark energy.

"The fact that we are seeing dark energy now could be taken as an indication of impending doom, and we are trying to look at the data to put some figures on the end date," Padilla told Phys.org. "Early indications suggest the collapse will kick in in a few tens of billions of years, but we have yet to properly verify this."

The main point of the paper is not so much when exactly the universe will end, but that the mechanism may help resolve some of the unanswered questions in physics. In particular, why is the universe expanding at an accelerating rate, and what is the dark energy causing this acceleration? These questions are related to the cosmological constant problem, which is that the predicted vacuum energy density of the universe causing the expansion is much larger than what is observed.

[...] The collapse time can be delayed by choosing an appropriate slope, which in this case, is a slope that has a very tiny positive value—about 10^-39 in the scientists' equation. The very gradual slope means that the universe evolves very slowly.

Importantly, the scientists did not choose a slope just to fit the observed expansion and support their mechanism. Instead, they explain that the slope is "technically natural," and takes on this value due to a symmetry in the theory.

As the physicists explain, the naturalness of the mechanism makes it one of the first ever models that predicts acceleration without any direct fine-tuning. In the mechanism, the slope alone controls the universe's evolution, including the scale of the accelerated expansion.

I was unable to find a non-paywalled copy of the full article, but did find an abstract.

I'm very curious about the 'slope' mentioned in the article — are there any cosmologists around who could explain this?

Phoenix666 writes:

Ars Technica used a public records request to obtain a large dataset of license plate scans from 33 License Plate Readers (LPRs) in Oakland, California:

OAKLAND, Calif.—If you have driven in Oakland any time in the last few years, chances are good that the cops know where you’ve been, thanks to their 33 automated license plate readers (LPRs).

Now Ars knows too.

In response to a public records request, we obtained the entire LPR dataset of the Oakland Police Department (OPD), including more than 4.6 million reads of over 1.1 million unique plates between December 23, 2010 and May 31, 2014. The dataset is likely one of the largest ever publicly released in the United States—perhaps in the world.

After analyzing this data with a custom-built visualization tool, Ars can definitively demonstrate the data's revelatory potential. Anyone in possession of enough data can often—but not always—make educated guesses about a target’s home or workplace, particularly when someone’s movements are consistent (as with a regular commute).

It seems the cars of police officers, politicians, and others doing the spying should have been captured by the LPRs too. A prize for the first person to separate out what they've been up to...

Phoenix666 writes:

Saw this project over on Instructables and thought it had the makings of a fun little practical joke:

This instructable was a LONG time coming. I had come up with this idea a while ago, after hearing about the details behind some basic "speech jamming" anomalies that occur when people use intercom systems. Basically, the intercom would introduce an ever so slight delay to the output of the speaker, so you would end up hearing an echo. I had planned on making this many months ago, as I previously stated but I was going to try and go discrete, aka, use a micro-controller and attempt to program some sort of delay code. But alas, I never could figure it out.

Then I found out about a very, very neat little IC, the PT2399. This thing is the heart of this circuit, and is actually pretty impressive considering the pricing.

This echo is typically within the range of 200 mS - 700 mS, and it varies a bit. But, what happens when this delayed speech hits your ears?

You have a tendency to start stumbling over your words, and you more or less, just lose your train of thought. I'm thinking this may be due to the way your brain processes your words; since there's an inherent "delay" that your mind creates, it somehow interferes with your speech processing center.

It's a pretty funny thing to play with and show people the effects of. However it's not foolproof; if you concentrate hard enough, and speak slowly you can overcome the effects of the jammer. It's still amusing to see your friends think "oh, this'll be easy!" and then proceed to have the speech capability of a 2-year-old.

Have any Soylentils done stuff like this? Share! April Fool's Day is right around the corner...

Phoenix666 writes:

The Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe's climate mild, is slowing down.

The gradual but accelerating melting of the Greenland ice-sheet, caused by human-made global warming, is a possible major contributor to the slowdown. Further weakening could impact marine ecosystems and sea level as well as weather systems in the US and Europe.

"It is conspicuous that one specific area in the North Atlantic has been cooling in the past hundred years while the rest of the world heats up," says Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, lead author of the study to be published in Nature Climate Change. Previous research had already indicated that a slowdown of the so-called Atlantic meridional overturning circulation might be to blame for this. "Now we have detected strong evidence that the global conveyor has indeed been weakening in the past hundred years, particularly since 1970," says Rahmstorf.

Because long-term direct ocean current measurements are lacking, the scientists mainly used sea-surface and atmospheric temperature data to derive information about the ocean currents, exploiting the fact that ocean currents are the leading cause of temperature variations in the subpolar north Atlantic. From so-called proxy data—gathered from ice-cores, tree-rings, coral, and ocean and lake sediments—temperatures can be reconstructed for more than a millennium back in time. The recent changes found by the team are unprecedented since the year 900 AD, strongly suggesting they are caused by human-made global warming.

Time to go long in wool futures?