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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Cognitive curiosity, cognitive ability, melancholy, and introversion predict social psychological skill, a new Yale study shows.

[...] The authors asked more than 1.000 subjects about how people think, act, and feel in social contexts. The two psychologists began the survey [...] by asking: “Can you accurately infer how most people feel, think, and behave in social context?” Gollwitzer and Bargh did a series of experiments to try and identify traits of those who accurately answered the questions.

[...] The key predictors of social psychological skill were the willingness to tackle a complex problem and cognitive ability, the authors claim.

Interestingly, the authors also found that lonely individuals, as well as individuals with lower self-esteem, tended to answer questions more accurately. Likewise, introverts answered more accurately than extroverts.

Source: https://www.inquisitr.com/4829590/yale-study-sad-lonely-introverts-are-natural-born-social-psychologists/

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Increased letter spacing helps individuals read faster, but not due to visual processing, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.

"Generally speaking, our lab is interested in learning about how kids learn to read. More specifically, we want to know how the brain activity of kids that have difficulty learning to read differs from those who are not." said Elizabeth Sacchi, a doctoral candidate at Binghamton University. "Through some of my studies, I came across this effect called the letter-spacing effect, which is this finding that both kids and adults with or without specific reading impairment read faster and more fluidly when you increase the spaces between letters in words."

Sacchi's research on letter spacing is part of the National Science Foundation-funded Reading Brain Project, directed by Sarah Laszlo, adjunct associate professor of psychology. The Reading Brain Project studies how children read, measuring their brain activity as they play a computerized reading game. The goal of the project is to help children become more successful readers. According to Sacchi, this is the first letter-spacing research to look at what is happening inside the brain when reading occurs.

"Everybody seemed pretty certain up until this point that it was about decluttering your visual scene, which may make identifying letters easier," said Sacchi. "What my results show is that it doesn't look like the effect is happening early enough to be related to visual processing."

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The new report, which was released Thursday, comes on the heels of a related 2016 report showing that half of Americans’ faces are already in a facial recognition database.

“As currently envisioned, the program represents a serious escalation of biometric scanning of Americans, and there are no codified rules that constrain it,” the report concludes.

In July 2017, Ars reported that facial-scanning pilot programs are already underway in international departure airports at six American airports—Boston, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, New York City, and Washington, DC. More are set to expand next year. In a recent privacy assessment issued one month earlier, DHS noted that the “only way for an individual to ensure he or she is not subject to collection of biometric information when traveling internationally is to refrain from traveling.”

“We’re wondering if this is the best use of a billion dollars?” [Laura Moy, a Georgetown law professor and one of the report's authors] said. “We’ve done the research and we think the answer to that question is ‘no.’”

“When American citizens travel by air, they should not have to choose between privacy and security,” he said. “The implementation of DHS facial scanning program for US citizens leaving the country raises a number of questions.”

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

One of the latest beneficiaries of sharing music online, according to TorrentFreak, turns out to be the streaming music service Spotify:

Without The Pirate Bay, Spotify may have never turned into the success it is today. Ten years ago record labels were so desperate to find an answer to the ever-growing piracy problem that they agreed to take a gamble. Now, more than a decade later, Spotify has turned into a billion-dollar company, with pirate roots.

Last autumn the EU suppressed a 300-page copyright study showing yet again that copyright infringement does not harm sales. It often helps sales. Both factors have been known for a long time, with other studies going back to the 1990s.

Earlier on SN:

Spotify Files for IPO After Losing $1.5 Billion in 2017

Spotify Raises Cash to Fight Apple for Streaming Music Market

Band Earns $20K for Silent Album on Spotify

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Social media provides a new environment that makes it possible to carefully edit the image you want to project of yourself. A study from Lund University in Sweden suggests that many people are prepared to pay to "filter out" unfavorable information.

Economists Håkan Holm and Margaret Samahita have investigated how we curate our social image on the web using game theory.

Previous studies have been conducted on, for example, how anonymity affects our willingness to act pro-socially, and thus our concern for social image. However, the internet and social media now make it possible to edit the image we want to project of ourselves retroactively. One can therefore expect other, -- less impulsive, mechanisms to control this behavior. The purpose of the study was therefore to better understand online behavior.

Each subject participated in a cooperative situation with an anonymous person, and the participants earned real money during the experiment. They could be "good" and cooperate a lot, which is costly, or be less cooperative, which costs less. They then found out that information about how much they actually cooperated could be published online along with their name, but that they could avoid this publication if they paid to censor the information. It turned out that those who cooperated less, valued the censorship highest which meant that information about this group's actions tended to be filtered out.

"That the image people share of themselves is 'softened' on the internet is perhaps not that surprising. What is new is that this is shown under experimental control and that the will to 'filter out' is so strong that one is prepared to pay for it," explains Håkan Holm.

Hakan J. Holm, Margaret Samahita. Curating social image: Experimental evidence on the value of actions and selfies. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2018; 148: 83 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2018.02.008

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Nature is rife with symbiotic relationships, some of which take place out of sight, like the rich underground exchange of nutrients that occurs between trees and soil fungi.

But what happens in the dark may have profound implications above ground, too: A major new study reveals that soil fungi could play a significant role in the ability of forests to adapt to environmental change.

Kai Zhu, assistant professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz, took a unique "big data" approach to investigating the role of symbiotic fungi in tree migration in forests across the eastern United States.

"Our climate is rapidly changing, and our forests are responding, but in very slow motion -- it's hardly detectable," said Zhu, who wanted to identify factors that contribute to the pace of that response.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://gizmodo.com/a-once-a-day-male-birth-control-pill-shows-promise-in-h-1823890390

One of the latest experimental candidates for a male birth control drug is a compound that would be taken much like the daily birth control pill available for women. A pilot study presented Sunday at the Endocrine Society's annual meeting suggests that the compound—called dimethandrolone undecanoate (DMAU)—can be safe and effective in human test subjects.

[...] DMAU is meant to act on the same receptors as testosterone and progestin. But it seems to be more easily absorbed by the body and longer-lasting. That theoretically means a single dose a day (when taken with food) should cause sterility without leading to other serious consequences, the authors say.

[...] The few side effects Page's team observed were weight gain and lowered levels of HDL cholesterol (the "good" kind). But they feel a tweaked dose could alleviate these symptoms. Importantly, the pill didn't seem to cause any other lasting symptoms of low testosterone. Eight men in the treatment group did report lower libido, but the effect faded away after treatment had ended.

Original Submission

cocaine overdose writes:

CNN Exclusive: The more opioids doctors prescribe, the more money they make (archive)

The data:

The CNN/Harvard analysis looked at 2014 and 2015, during which time more than 811,000 doctors wrote prescriptions to Medicare patients. Of those, nearly half wrote at least one prescription for opioids.

Fifty-four percent of those doctors -- more than 200,000 physicians -- received a payment from pharmaceutical companies that make opioids.

Among doctors in the top 25th percentile of opioid prescribers by volume, 72% received payments. Among those in the top fifth percentile, 84% received payments. Among the very biggest prescribers -- those in the top 10th of 1% -- 95% received payments.

On average, doctors whose opioid prescription volume ranked among the top 5% nationally received twice as much money from the opioid manufacturers, compared with doctors whose prescription volume was in the median. Doctors in the top 1% of opioid prescribers received on average four times as much money as the typical doctor. Doctors in the top 10th of 1%, on average, received nine times more money than the typical doctor. [...]

Some studies have looked at whether the amount of money a doctor receives makes a difference. Studies by researchers at Yale University, the George Washington University Milken Institute of Public Health and Harvard Medical School have all found that the more money physicians are paid by pharmaceutical companies, the more likely they are to prescribe certain drugs.

The story:

Angela Cantone says she wishes she had known that opioid manufacturers were paying her doctor hundreds of thousands of dollars; it might have prompted her to question his judgment.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/microsoft-announces-the-next-step-in-gaming-graphics-directx-raytracing/

At GDC, Microsoft announced a new feature for DirectX 12: DirectX Raytracing (DXR). The new API offers hardware-accelerated raytracing to DirectX applications, ushering in a new era of games with more realistic lighting, shadows, and materials. One day, this technology could enable the kinds of photorealistic imagery that we've become accustomed to in Hollywood blockbusters.

[...] Because of the performance demands, Microsoft expects that DXR will be used, at least for the time being, to fill in some of the things that raytracing does very well and that rasterization doesn't: things like reflections and shadows. DXR should make these things look more realistic. We might also see simple, stylized games using raytracing exclusively.

The company says that it has been working on DXR for close to a year, and Nvidia in particular has plenty to say about the matter. Nvidia has its own raytracing engine designed for its Volta architecture (though currently, the only video card shipping with Volta is the Titan V, so the application of this is likely limited). When run on a Volta system, DXR applications will automatically use that engine.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12546/nvidia-unveils-rtx-technology-real-time-ray-tracing-acceleration-for-volta-gpus-and-later

In conjunction with Microsoft’s new DirectX Raytracing (DXR) API announcement, today NVIDIA is unveiling their RTX technology, providing ray tracing acceleration for Volta and later GPUs. Intended to enable real-time ray tracing for games and other applications, RTX is essentially NVIDIA's DXR backend implementation. For this NVIDIA is utilizing a mix of software and hardware – including new microarchitectural features – though the company is not disclosing further details.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Two people have been killed and four have been injured by explosions caused by package bombs in Austin, TX this month:

In Texas, Another Explosion Injures 2 Men In Austin

Authorities in Austin, Texas, responded to an explosion in the southwest part of the city late Sunday, with the city's emergency medical service tweeting that it caused two serious but non-life-threatening injuries.

The blast comes on the heels of three package-bomb explosions in recent weeks that have killed two people and wounded two more, as well as a bomb threat that canceled a Saturday hip-hop concert at the South by Southwest festival. It is not yet known if Sunday night's explosion is related to any of the prior incidents.

Austin's police chief Brian Manley had made a direct appeal to the bomber(s) just hours earlier.

Original Submission

hoeferbe submitted a story which became:

Fast Company reports that Police in Raleigh, North Carolina, have presented Google with warrants to obtain data from mobile phones from not just specific suspects who were in a crime scene area, but from the mobile phones of all people in the area.

The above story links to an investigative piece at WRAL:

In at least four investigations last year – cases of murder, sexual battery and even possible arson at the massive downtown fire in March 2017 – Raleigh police used search warrants to demand Google accounts not of specific suspects, but from any mobile devices that veered too close to the scene of a crime, according to a WRAL News review of court records. These warrants often prevent the technology giant for months from disclosing information about the searches not just to potential suspects, but to any users swept up in the search.

City and county officials say the practice is a natural evolution of criminal investigative techniques. They point out that, by seeking search warrants, they're carefully balancing civil rights with public safety.

Defense attorneys and privacy advocates, both locally and nationally, aren't so sure.

They're mixed on how law enforcement turns to Google's massive cache of user data, especially without a clear target in mind. And they're concerned about the potential to snag innocent users, many of whom might not know just how closely the company tracks their every move.

takyon writes:

HTC's Vive Pro virtual reality headset is now open for preorders. Resolution has been increased to 2800×1600 from 2160×1200, a microphone for noise cancellation analysis has been added, and it has two front-facing cameras instead of one, possibly allowing it to detect objects and hand movements:

The Vive Pro was announced early this year at CES, marking the first major upgrade to the Vive since its launch in 2016. It substantially increases the Vive's screen resolution, using two OLED displays that offer 1400 x 1600 pixels per eye compared to 1080 x 1200 on the current Vive. It also includes a variety of ergonomic changes, including built-in headphones and a head strap that tightens via dial instead of velcro. You could get these options via a kit for the original Vive, but now they're built into the core device, and we've found the hardware to be a distinct improvement over its predecessor.

The Vive Pro will not come with accessories at its launch price of $799, although existing Vive accessories can be used:

HTC's higher-resolution Vive Pro, first announced back in January, is setting new records for the price of a mass-market virtual reality headset. In pre-orders starting today ahead of planned April 5 shipments, customers will have to shell out $799 for the improved Vive Pro headset, a price that does not include any controllers or Lighthouse tracking base stations.

[...] HTC currently sells Vive controllers for $130 each and tracking base stations for $135 each. That means new Vive Pro customers will have to pay $1,330 for a higher-fidelity version of the same basic hardware included in the package for the original Vive (which is being reduced to $499 today, from the $599 price it has held since last April).

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A Ludwig Cancer Research study shows that ovarian cancer, which has proved resistant to currently available immunotherapies, could be susceptible to personalized immunotherapy. Led by Ludwig Lausanne investigator Alexandre Harari and George Coukos, director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Lausanne, the study shows that ovarian tumors harbor highly reactive killer T cells -- which kill infected and cancerous cells -- and demonstrates how they can be identified and selectively grown for use in personalized, cell-based immunotherapies.

"Tumors whose cells tend to be highly mutated, like those of melanoma and lung cancer, are the ones that respond best to immunotherapies," says Harari. "It has long been a question whether we'd even be able to detect sufficiently mutation-reactive T cells in patients with tumors that have low mutational loads."

[...] To get around this problem, researchers have been developing sophisticated methods to extract T cells from patients, select and expand those that best target a patient's cancer and reinfuse them into the patient. These approaches usually rely on T cells extracted from the bloodstream, not those already inside the tumor, which are referred to as TILs (for tumor infiltrating lymphocytes).

Journal Reference: Sara Bobisse, Raphael Genolet, et al. Sensitive and frequent identification of high avidity neo-epitope specific CD8 T cells in immunotherapy-naive ovarian cancer. Nature Communications, 2018; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03301-0

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

China said it will begin applying its so-called social credit system to flights and trains and stop people who have committed misdeeds from taking such transport for up to a year.

People who would be put on the restricted lists included those found to have committed acts like spreading false information about terrorism and causing trouble on flights, as well as those who used expired tickets or smoked on trains, according to two statements issued on the National Development and Reform Commission’s website on Friday.

[...] China has flagged plans to roll out a system that will allow government bodies to share information on its citizens’ trustworthiness and issue penalties based on a so-called social credit score.

China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains

INSIDE CHINA'S VAST NEW EXPERIMENT IN SOCIAL RANKING

China’s dystopian social credit system is a harbinger of the global age of the algorithm

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The United Launch Alliance's CEO Tory Bruno has been making his case for the upcoming Vulcan rocket and Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage. The system could compete against SpaceX's Falcon Heavy and BFR in the mid-2020s:

The maiden flight of the Vulcan currently is targeted for the middle of 2020. Two successful commercial launches are required as part of the government certification process, followed by a required upper stage upgrade to improve performance, either moving from two to four Centaur RL10 engines or using a different set of engines altogether. If all goes well, ULA will introduce its new upper stage in 2024, the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage, or ACES, that Bruno says will revolutionize spaceflight. "This is on the scale of inventing the airplane," Bruno told reporters during the media roundtable. "That's how revolutionary this upper stage is. It's 1900, and I'm inventing the airplane. People don't even know what they're going to do with it yet. But I'm confident it's going to create a large economy in space that doesn't exist today. No one is working on anything like this."

The Vulcan will stand 228 feet tall with a first stage powered by two engines provided by either Blue Origin, a company owned by Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, or Aerojet Rocketdyne. Blue Origin's BE-4 engine burns methane and liquid oxygen while Aerojet Rocketdyne's AR-1 powerplant burns a more traditional mixture of oxygen and highly refined kerosene.

[...] ULA plans to begin engine recovery operations after the Vulcan is routinely flying and after the ACES upper stage is implemented. Bruno said the engines represent two-thirds of the cost of the stage and getting them back every time, with no impact on mission performance, will pay big dividends. SpaceX, in contrast, must use propellant to fly its Falcon 9 stages back to touchdown. Heavy payloads bound for high orbits require most if not all of the rocket's propellant and in those cases, recovery may not be possible. As a result, SpaceX's ability to recover rocket stages depends on its manifest and the orbital demands of those payloads.

"Simplistically, if you recover the old booster propulsively then you can do that part of the time, you get all the value back some of the time," Bruno said. "Or, you can recover just the engine, which is our concept, and then you get only part of the value back, about two thirds ... but you get to do it every single time because there's no performance hit. So it really turns into math."

ULA expects to fly at least 7-8 more Delta IV Heavy rockets between now and the early 2020s, with some Atlas V launches happening concurrently with the beginning of Vulcan launches in the mid-2020s.

The U.S. Air Force has just awarded ULA a $355 million contract to launch two Air Force Space Command spacecraft, and SpaceX a $290 million contract to launch three GPS Block III satellites.

In addition to testing BFR with short hops starting in 2019, SpaceX plans to send BFR into orbit by 2020. The company is leasing land in Los Angeles, reportedly for the construction of BFR rockets.

Related: SpaceX's Reusable Rockets Could End EU's Arianespace, and Other News
Boeing CEO Says His Company Will Carry Humans to Mars Before SpaceX
Zuma Failure Emboldens SpaceX's ULA-Backed Critics; Gets Support from US Air Force [Updated]
SpaceX to Launch Five Times in April, Test BFR by 2019

Original Submission

takyon writes:

IBM has built a computer smaller than a grain of salt intended for anti-counterfeiting... and it uses a blockchain:

IBM has unveiled what it claims is the world's smallest computer—the size of a grain of salt. The computer will cost less than $0.10 to manufacture, and is intended for logistics applications.

The device is one type of what IBM calls "crypto-anchors"—"digital fingerprints" that can be embedded in everyday items in order to verify their provenance and contents. Another example of this concept is edible ink that can be stamped on pills.

The idea is to use these methods to link things to their records, which are stored on a blockchain.

The computer includes several hundred thousand transistors, static RAM, an LED and a photodetector for communication, and an integrated solar cell.

Also at Engadget, Notebookcheck, and CNET.

Original Submission