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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:46 | Votes:103

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday December 07 2016, @10:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the fire-up-the-John-Deere dept.

According to a December 1st article from NASA:

On Nov. 10, 2016, scientists on NASA's IceBridge mission photographed an oblique view of a massive rift in the Antarctic Peninsula's Larsen C ice shelf....

The IceBridge scientists measured the Larsen C fracture to be about 70 miles [113 km] long, more than 300 feet [91 m] wide and about a third of a mile [a half of a kilometer] deep. The crack completely cuts through the ice shelf but it does not go all the way across it – once it does, it will produce an iceberg roughly the size of the state of Delaware.

The British Antarctic Survey's Halley VI research station is currently located on the Larsen C ice shelf. Fortunately, the station was designed to move. A December 7th article from The Guardian gives more information about that station and the upcoming move:

The British Antarctic Survey's Halley VI research station has recorded data relevant to space weather, climate change, and atmospheric phenomena from its site on the Brunt Ice Shelf shelf since 2012....

The new site, nicknamed Halley VI A, was identified during in-depth site surveys in the 2015-16 Antarctic summer. Now that winter has passed, the relocation team are preparing to tow the station 23km [14 miles] to its new home using large tractors.

The Telegraph outlines the timeframe for the move:

In 2012, satellite monitoring of the ice shelf revealed the first signs of movement in the chasm that had lain dormant for at least 35 years and, by 2013, it began opening at an alarming pace of one mile per year. If the base does not move, it could be in danger of tumbling into the chasm by 2020.

To make matters more time critical, in October, a new crack emerged 10 miles [16 km] to the north of the research station across the route sometimes used to resupply the base.

The team has just nine weeks to relocate operations, before the harsh winter begins, making it difficult to move the structure amid complete darkness, plummeting temperatures and gale-force winds.

Additional information about the Halley VI research station is available from the British Antarctic Survey.


Original Submission

posted by CoolHand on Wednesday December 07 2016, @08:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the thanks-for-the-memories dept.

Mobile OS outfit Cyanogen has made further sackings and parted ways with founder Steve Kondik.

A post by CEO Lior Tal says the company is closing its Seattle office and consolidating a single Palo Alto abode.

"The purpose of the change is to improve the communication and performance of the team which will now operate under one roof," Tal writes. "This consolidation effort will allow us to build in greater efficiencies and reduce restrictions in our product development lifecycle. Understandably some are unable to follow their role and relocate. We appreciate and value all of the amazing work these individuals have provided to the growth and success of Cyanogen."

Folks who work in Seattle will be offered the chance to make the move south.

Tal also says "With these changes, Cyanogen has separated ties with Steve Kondik, allowing him to continue to forge his path as he sees fit. We wish him the best of luck in his next venture."


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posted by takyon on Wednesday December 07 2016, @07:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the just-a-scratch dept.

Cassini moves in closer to the jewel of our solar system! According to NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's article Cassini Makes First Ring-Grazing Plunge:

Cassini crossed through the plane of Saturn's rings on Dec. 4 at 5:09 a.m. PST (8:09 a.m. EST) at a distance of approximately 57,000 miles (91,000 kilometers) above Saturn's cloud tops. This is the approximate location of a faint, dusty ring produced by the planet's small moons Janus and Epimetheus, and just 6,800 miles (11,000 kilometers) from the center of Saturn's F ring.

The BBC brings us news of new Saturn images from the Cassini mission, including the hexagon-shaped storm in Saturn's northern atmosphere:

Cassini began what are known as its ring-grazing orbits on 30 November. Each of these week-long orbits - 20 in all - lifts the spacecraft high above Saturn's northern hemisphere before sending it hurtling past the outer edges of the planet's main rings.

Nasa said that it would release images from future passes that included some of the closest-ever views of the outer rings and small moons that orbit there.

Carolyn Porco, the head of Cassini's imaging team, commented: "This is it, the beginning of the end of our historic exploration of Saturn.

"Let these images - and those to come - remind you that we've lived a bold and daring adventure around the Solar System's most magnificent planet."

See also NASA JPL's release regarding the new images.

For more information, NASA JPL also provides a summary page for Cassini's ring-grazing orbits, including a diagram of the probe's projected orbital path, a glossary, and a countdown timer to the second ring-grazing orbit.


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posted by on Wednesday December 07 2016, @05:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the if-you-have-the-cash-anything-is-for-sale dept.

WikiLeaks published on Monday a searchable archive of nearly 58,000 emails from the private email account of Berat Albayrak - Turkey's incumbent energy minister and son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – revealing the influence Albayrak has in Turkey and his correspondence regarding Powertrans, a company implicated in oil imports from ISIS-controlled oil fields.

The emails encompass 16 years between April 2000 and September 23, 2016. A search by the 'Powertrans' keyword in the published WikiLeaks emails returns 32 results, including emails sent to Albayrak regarding personnel and salary issues at Powertrans.

Turkey banned oil transportation by road or railway in or out of the country in November 2011, but included a provision in the same bill that it could revoke the ban in specific cases, such as meeting the needs of the military. The Turkish government later gave exclusive privilege to Powertrans for transit of oil, WikiLeaks says.


Original Submission

posted by on Wednesday December 07 2016, @03:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-are-they-buying-for-that-sum? dept.

SoftBank Group Corp. Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son told President-elect Donald Trump he would create 50,000 new jobs in the U.S. through a $50 billion investment in startups and new companies.

The money will come from SoftBank's previously announced $100 billion technology fund, according to a person familiar with the matter. That investment vehicle has a $45 billion commitment from the government of Saudi Arabia and $25 billion from Tokyo-based SoftBank, which operates technology and wireless companies around the world.

[...] Some investments from SoftBank's fund, which was unveiled in October, were probably destined for the U.S. anyway, given the nation's leadership in the global technology industry. But Son hadn't previously committed to creating a specific amount of jobs through the investment vehicle.

More coverage from Washington Post and Reuters.


Original Submission

posted by on Wednesday December 07 2016, @02:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the for-great-justice dept.

Howard Lisnoff reports via CounterPunch:

Stuart Allen died on November 22, 2016. I learned of his death by way of an email from Laurel Krause, whose sister Allison was gunned down by the National Guard on May 4, 1970, just after the noon hour during a demonstration against the U.S. incursion into Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

Stuart Allen would not like to be called a hero, although he certainly was one. Stuart was both an audio and video expert, with degrees in both fields and worked out of his lab and business in New Jersey that offers expert [analysis] of that kind of data. Stuart often worked for law enforcement, including the Justice Department and the FBI.

In 2010, both Stuart and another forensic audio expert, Tom Owen, provided information at the request of the Cleveland Plain Dealer (New analysis of 40-year old recording of Kent State shootings reveals that Ohio Guard was given an order to prepare to fire May 9, 2010) about a new analysis of the famous Strubbe tape, a recording of the events that led up to the death of four students and the wounding of nine others during a demonstration against the U.S. incursion into Cambodia.

[...] "Guard"... "All right, prepare to fire!"... "Get down!"... and finally "Guard!"...is followed by the fusillade of lethal bullets. It took seventeen seconds for those words to change history forever.

[Continues...]

The 2010 article by the The Plain Dealer notes:

The original 30-minute reel-to-reel tape was made by Terry Strubbe, a Kent State communications student in 1970 who turned on his recorder and put its microphone in his dorm window overlooking the campus Commons, hoping to document the protest unfolding below.

[...] The Justice Department paid a Massachusetts acoustics firm, Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., to scrutinize the recording in 1974 in support of the government's ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prosecute eight Guardsmen for the shootings. That review, led by the company's chief scientist, James Barger, focused on the gunshot pattern and made no mention of a command readying the soldiers to fire.

[...] Using sophisticated software initially developed for the KGB, the Soviet Union's national security agency, Allen weeded out extraneous noises - wind blowing across the microphone, and a low rumble from the tape recorder's motor and drive belt--that obscured voices on the recording.

He isolated individual words, first identifying them by their distinctive, spidery "waveform" traces on a computer screen, then boosting certain characteristics of the sound or slowing the playback to make out what was said. Owen independently corroborated Allen's work.

For hours on Thursday, first in Allen's dim, equipment-packed lab in Plainfield and later in Owen's more spacious, equally high-tech shop in nearby Colonia, the two men pored over the crucial recording segment just before the gunfire. They looped each word, playing it over and over, tweaking various controls and listening intently until they agreed on its meaning.

Original Submission

posted by on Wednesday December 07 2016, @12:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the can't-blame-them-for-trying dept.

London's standing as Europe's leading destination for tech start-ups is at risk if the British government does not clarify how it plans to keep the best technical talent, entrepreneurs and investors have warned.

In an open letter to Prime Minister Theresa May, nine leading UK-based technology entrepreneurs and investors, including Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, pressed the government to act to ensure a continued flow of skilled migrants after Britain leaves the European Union. It also called on the government to address EU market access and other issues.

From the letter, posted at TechCrunch:

UK startups require a commitment from the government that the investment drive of the last few years will continue in order for UK startups to maintain their lead in many areas. It is important for all the UK's business sectors that the tech sector continues to flourish, since all business now runs on and is affected by technology.


Original Submission

posted by on Wednesday December 07 2016, @11:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the but-i-like-soot dept.

The Guardian has a report which says that four of the world's biggest cities are to ban diesel vehicles from their centres within the next decade, as a means of tackling air pollution, with campaigners urging other city leaders to follow suit.

The mayors of Paris, Madrid, Athens and Mexico City announced plans on Friday to take diesel cars and vans off their roads by 2025.

[...] "Soot from diesel vehicles is among the big contributors to ill health and global warming," added Helena Molin Valdés, head of the United Nations' climate and clean air coalition, noting that more than nine out of 10 people around the globe live where air pollution exceeds World Health Organisation safety limits.

Miguel Ángel Mancera, mayor of Mexico City, said increasing investments in public transport would also help clean the city's air, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Giorgos Kaminis, mayor of Athens, said his goal was to remove all cars from the city centre. The city authorities will also work with national governments and manufacturers, and promote electric vehicles and cleaner transport.

Recent research has uncovered the scale of the problem, with 3 million premature deaths a year attributed to dirty air, as well as millions of other illnesses, particularly in children.

We seem to have a bunch of bad choices for medium term transport - carbon dioxide or nitrogen dioxide, direct pollution (vehicles) or upstream pollution (power stations).

Diesel trucks and buses seem to have urea containers - maybe they are needed in more cars? Adblue retro-fits for everyone?


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday December 07 2016, @09:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-about-at-home? dept.

A new federal report recommends that schools emphasize building children's "self-regulation" skills in order to increase opportunities for student success in a number of areas. The recommendation is one of several in the report, the fourth in a series on self-regulation research and practice from the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

Researchers have zeroed in on the importance of self-regulation skills, which allow children to manage their thoughts and feelings, control impulses, and problem-solve.

"Self-regulation affects wellbeing across the lifespan, from mental health and emotional wellbeing to academic achievement, physical health, and socioeconomic success," said Desiree Murray, associate director of research at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute and lead author of the report. "Unfortunately, prolonged or pronounced stress and adversity, including poverty and trauma, can delay children's self-regulation development."


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday December 07 2016, @08:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the but-can-it-leap-tall-buildings-in-a-single-bound? dept.

Roboticists at UC Berkeley have designed a small robot that can leap into the air and then spring off a wall, or perform multiple vertical jumps in a row, resulting in the highest robotic vertical jumping agility ever recorded. The agility of the robot opens new pathways of locomotion that were not previously attainable. The researchers hope that one day this robot and other vertically agile robots can be used to jump around rubble in search and rescue missions.

To build the robot, known as Salto (for saltatorial locomotion on terrain obstacles), the engineers studied the animal kingdom's most vertically agile creature, the galago, which can jump five times in just four seconds to gain a combined height of 8.5 meters (27.9 feet). The galago has a special ability to store energy in its tendons so that it can jump to heights not achievable by its muscles alone.

[...] Salto achieved 78 percent of the vertical jumping agility of a galago. Because of motor power limits, the best untethered robot before Salto had a vertical jumping agility of only 55 percent of a galago.

"By combining biologically inspired design principles with improved engineering technology, matching the agile performance of animals may not be that far off," [Ronald] Fearing said.

The research paper is available from Science Robotics.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday December 07 2016, @06:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-no-sharks? dept.

A bird in laser goggles has helped scientists discover a new phenomenon in the physics of flight.

Swirling vortices appear in the flow of air that follows a bird's wingbeat. But for slowly flying birds, these vortices were unexpectedly short-lived, researchers from Stanford University report December 6 in Bioinspiration and Biomimetics. The results could help scientists better understand how animals fly, and could be important for designing flying robots ( SN: 2/7/15, p. 18 ).

To study the complex air currents produced by birds' flapping wings, the researchers trained a Pacific parrotlet, a small species of parrot, to fly through laser light — with the appropriate eye protection, of course. Study coauthor Eric Gutierrez, who recently graduated from Stanford, built tiny, 3-D‒printed laser goggles for the bird, named Obi.

The source paper is available as well.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Wednesday December 07 2016, @04:54AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-a-galaxy-Jim,-but-not-as-we-know-it dept.

Not all galaxies sparkle with stars. Galaxies as wide as the Milky Way but bereft of starlight are scattered throughout our cosmic neighborhood. Unlike Andromeda and other well-known galaxies, these dark beasts have no grand spirals of stars and gas wrapped around a glowing core, nor are they radiant balls of densely packed stars. Instead, researchers find just a wisp of starlight from a tenuous blob.

"If you took the Milky Way but threw away about 99 percent of the stars, that's what you'd get," says Roberto Abraham, an astrophysicist at the University of Toronto.

How these dark galaxies form is unclear. They could be a whole new type of galaxy that challenges ideas about the birth of galaxies. Or they might be outliers of already familiar galaxies, black sheep shaped by their environment. Wherever they come from, dark galaxies appear to be ubiquitous. Once astronomers reported the first batch in early 2015 — which told them what to look for — they started picking out dark denizens in many nearby clusters of galaxies. "We've gone from none to suddenly over a thousand," Abraham says. "It's been remarkable."


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Wednesday December 07 2016, @03:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the probably-where-I-went-wrong dept.

Educators, policymakers, and parents have begun to focus more on children's math learning in the earliest years. Yet parents and teachers still find it challenging to know which kinds of early math skills merit attention in the classroom. Determining how to help children achieve in math is important, particularly for children from low-income families who often enter school with weaker math knowledge than their peers. A new longitudinal study conducted in Tennessee has found that low-income children's math knowledge in preschool was related to their later achievement—but not all types of math knowledge were related equally. The findings suggest that educators and school administrators may want to consider carefully which areas of math study they shift attention to as they develop curricula for the early years.

Conducted by researchers at Vanderbilt University, the study appears in the journal Child Development.

The study followed 517 low-income children from ages 4 to 11; the children were primarily Black and all qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, a measure of poverty. When the children were in the last year of preschool and near the end of first grade, researchers tested general skills (including self-regulated behavior, work-related skills, and reading) and six math skills (patterning, counting objects, comparing quantities, understanding written numbers, calculating, and understanding shapes). When the children were at the end of fifth grade, researchers tested a range of math knowledge, including knowledge about numbers, algebra, and geometry. The aim of the study was to determine whether children's math skills at ages 4 and 5 predicted their math achievement at age 11.

Preschool math skills supported first-grade math skills, which in turn supported fifth-grade math knowledge, according to the study. In preschool, children's skills in patterning, comparing quantities, and counting objects were stronger predictors of their math achievement in fifth grade than other skills, the study found. By first grade, patterning remained important, and understanding written numbers and calculating emerged as important predictors of later achievement.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Wednesday December 07 2016, @02:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the get-your-round-corners-here,-going-cheap! dept.

Supreme court unanimously rules on design patent, first time in over 100 years.

Samsung walks away with a win from a unanimous ruling from the supreme court about the ongoing design suite initiated by Apple back in 2012. The case goes back to the lower courts to determine the damages of the infringement on design only, not the entirety of the product. Hopefully this will bring some sanity to the patent wars and reduce the $399 million award to Apple.

"Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that damages could be calculated based on the entire profit of an infringing product or based on only part of the product's profit."

"...or based on only part of the product's profit." is the significant part of the judgement.

https://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-apple-scores-supreme-court-win-patent-design-infringement-case/
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/06/504545297/supreme-court-sides-with-samsung-against-apple-in-patent-infringement-fight
http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/6/13854354/apple-samsung-patent-battle-supreme-court-damages-calculation

And from the LA Times we get:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled for Samsung in its patent dispute with Apple and set aside a $400-million damages verdict for copying the look of the iPhone.

The justices dealt only with the question of how much the South Korean firm should pay for copying several design features of Apple's smartphone.

A jury had found that Samsung copied several features of Apple's patented design, and a judge said the South Korean firm should pay out its "entire profit" from the sale of its smartphones.

Those damages of $399 million were upheld by a federal appeals court, but they were set aside by the high court in an 8-0 decision Tuesday.


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

posted by janrinok on Wednesday December 07 2016, @12:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the never-underestimate-your-enemy dept.

South Korea's military cyber command, set up to guard against hacking, appears to have been breached by North Korea, the military has said.

A spokesman told the BBC that classified information was thought to have been stolen, although it is not clear exactly what data was accessed.

The North has previously been accused of hacking into banks and media outlets but never the South's military. Pyongyang has in the past rejected allegations of cyber crime involvement.

"It seems the intranet server of the cyber command has been contaminated with malware. We found that some military documents, including confidential information, have been hacked," a military spokesman told South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

It is not clear whether low-grade documents or more important details like war plans were accessed.

The military said that the compromised section of its network was isolated once the attack was detected.


Original Submission