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Fluffeh writes:

The newest figures show that the industry remains healthy despite continued and over-simplistic rhetoric by the MPAA that the sky is falling for the movie business due to the effects of online piracy. In 2011 the MPAA released figures claiming $58bn in losses due to piracy. These figures were later discredited and appear to have been removed from the MPAA website.

The US/Canada box office for 2013 was $10.9 billion (up just 1 percent from 2012), this was led by blockbusters like The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Iron Man 3. The meteoric rise of the international marketplace has driven the industry's massive profitability, which now constitutes 70 percent of all revenue, up from 64 percent in 2009. This brings industry revenue up to $35.9bn for last year.

Papas Fritas writes:

Urine is sterile, and chlorine is sterilizing. At least that's the justification swimmers offer themselves, to counter their shame. What's more, decorated Olympic swimmers Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte admit they do it too. "It's kind of a normal thing to do with swimmers," says Phelps. "You know, when we're in the water for two hours we don't really get out, you know, to pee."

It turns out that it's a pretty bad idea, for more reasons than just the ick factor as Julie Beck writes that a new study published in the American Chemical Society's journal Environmental Science & Technology, has looked at the chemistry of what happens when urine meets chlorine, and it's not pretty. When researchers mixed uric acid, found in both urine and sweat, with chlorine, they found that both trichloramine and cyanogen chloride form within an hour. "We know that there are associations between some of these chemicals and adverse human health outcomes, so we're motivated to understand the chemistry behind their formation and decay," says Ernest Blatchley III.

Exposure to trichloramine has been linked to respiratory problems (PDF), and cyanogen chloride can adversely affect the lungs, central nervous system, and cardiovascular system. Another issue is if a lot of people are peeing in the pool, there's the potential for a lot of cyanogen chloride to form, depleting the chlorine in the pool. While the cyanogen chloride would normally decay quickly, less chlorine means it might stick around longer, and that could be a real problem. All of this is to say that peeing in the pool is not harmless, despite Phelps' and Lochte's claims that it's normal and everybody does it. "There's a lot of people in the swimming community who look up to these people and listen to what they have to say," says Blatchley "[Phelps and Lochte] are not chemists and shouldn't be making statements that are that false."

tathra writes:

Phys.org reports:

"Researchers of the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC, in Spanish), the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech (UPC) and the Universidad Rovira i Virgili de Tarragona have developed a silicon photovoltaic cell capable of turning infrared radiation into electricity."

There are some problems however, currently these silicon cells have relatively high cost per watt generated and are not very efficient. Once the aforementioned issues are overcome, this could lead to much more efficient solar cells. Current solar cells can only create electricity from the visible spectrum.

The abstract of the paper can be found here.

dx3bydt3 writes:

An international team of astronomers using telescopes in 7 locations in South America have announced a discovery in the outer solar system. The team led by Felipe Braga-Ribas (Observatorio Nacional/MCTI, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) has discovered an asteroid with rings. The observation of an occultation of a star by an asteroid, Chariklo yielded an unexpected result.

Just before, and just after the occultation, two decreases in brightness of the star were recorded. By comparing the observations from the various telescopes the researchers were able to determine not only the size and shape of the asteroid, but also the characteristics of its ring system. This object is only the 5th in our solar system known to have rings, and by far the smallest at only ~300km diameter.

Anonymous Coward writes:

Last week, Siemens filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York against 100 "Doe" defendants. Siemens alleges that the defendants are downloading or using their software illegally. The software in question is product lifecycle management (PLM), computer aided design/manufacturing/engineering (CAD/CAM/CAE), and product data management (PDM) - none of which is typical fodder for small-time software theft. At this point, all Siemens has is an IP Address for each defendant. These lawsuits rely on the concept of "joinder", where unknown Doe defendants are joined together in a single suit.

Siemens will likely soon file a motion to allow "discovery", meaning they can subpoena each ISP for the defendants contact information. Each defendant can then be named in the lawsuit, or contacted to settle the claim.

Siemens' suit comes even in the wake of recent news that IP Address aren't people. Many of these "mass Doe" lawsuits have been filed over the past several years, most involving pornographic works or low-budget films. Siemens' suit is a bit different, in that they're a large commercial enterprise.

lhsi writes:

Six of the homeopathic products created by Terra-Medica have been recalled after it was discovered that the process that creates them might contain penicillin. As penicillin can potentially cause an allergic reaction, unknowingly taking it could be quite dangerous.

In the US homeopathic products do not require testing or any FDA approval process. They are essentially pre-approved by law. While this is a shameful scam, at least homeopathic remedies are completely inactive - nothing but water placed on sugar pills. However, some specific products have been found to have functional levels of active ingredients, so they are not truly homeopathic.

einar writes:

Irish Times has an article quoting Guardian deputy editor, Paul Johnson, that the Guardian was threatened to be closed by the British government. According to Johnson, the Snowden leak was the most difficult story the Guardian has ever done.

As a reminder, the newspaper was walking a tightrope keeping the balance between giving in where necessary and defending the freedom of press in a country where this right is rather weak. During the Snowden leaks, even PCs were destroyed in the presence of GCHQ agents. All in the name of national security.

From the article:

Mr Johnson said the whole attitude in the UK was that national security trumped press freedom and that the newspaper should not publish a word. This was in contrast to the US, where the Snowden revelations had led to a debate about how far intelligence agencies should go to protect the state.

FakeBeldin writes:

A team of doctors in the Netherlands, at the University Medical Center hospital in Utrecht, has surgically replaced the entire skull of a 22-year old woman. The patient was suffering from a condition where the skullbone keeps thickening, exerting more and more pressure on the brain. This was already causing a loss of eyesight and leading to coordination problems, and the effects would normally progressively worsen. The operation happened three months ago, but the hospital only recently announced it. The patient has fully recovered, regained eyesight and coordination, and is back working.

In previous cases, parts of the skull have been removed, sometimes to be replaced with a 3d printed piece of a skull, but this operation constitutes the first time that the entire skull has been replaced.

dotdotdot writes:

The Swiss National Competence Center of Research will host the first Cybathlon in Switzerland in October 2016. This 'Olympics for bionic athletes' will include races where competitors who are paralysed from the neck down control an avatar via a brain interface. There will also be races for those wearing arm or leg prosthetics, an exoskeleton race and a wheelchair race.

There will be two medals for each competition, one for the pilot and one for company that developed the device.

maratumba writes:

A few hours after the release of wiretaps incriminating the government on Youtube, the site has been blocked in Turkey. The wiretaps are from a meeting of high level government officials, including minister of foreign affairs. In the meeting, the methods to make Turkey go into war with Syria are being discussed, including staging a missile attack to Turkey from Syria.

The ban is currently at DNS level but it might escalate to blocking IP's. There are also some reports saying that the TOR website has been blocked, but this is not yet confirmed.

Angry Jesus writes:

A rare auction of valuable frequencies has sent the big four carriers on a lobbying spree that may determine who controls your cell phone. Verizon and AT&T want the FCC to remove restrictions that limit the amount of spectrum any one single buyer can purchase, making the size of the bid the only consideration, and they've surreptitiously commissioned academic research they can use to back-stop their claims of why that would be a good thing. T-Mobile and Sprint have hired their own set of think-tanks to do the same for the opposite position, but they don't have as much money as the two big companies have to spend on "useful idiots" who agree with their positions but not necessarily their goals.

Behind all of these machinations lies the larger question are spectrum auctions and the attendant spectrum oligopoly even in the public interest at all?

umafuckitt writes:

Early microscopists and electrophysiologists were pathfinders who built their own hardware to perform their experiments. Today, whilst much cutting edge biology still requires the experimenter to develop new equipment, a huge amount of excellent work can be done with off-the-shelf hardware.

The problem, however, is that a lot of this equipment is over-priced for what it is and it's usually closed and so hard to hack. Thus, it may not be surprising that a home-brew hardware revolution is quietly taking place in biology. Rather than building novel equipment, a lot of today's scientists are coming up with much cheaper and more flexible solutions for existing commercial devices. Opensource hardware is a great way of stretching grant money, bringing science into schools, and allowing researchers in poorer countries to do more with their limited budgets. Central to most Opensource hardware projects are easy to use microcontroller packages, such as Arduino, Maple, and Teensy, allowing biologists with no engineering background to re-invent their closed, mass-produced, and expensive hardware. One reason this reinvention has been so effective is because a lot of the equipment still being sold today is based upon older designs that have not been updated in many years.

lhsi writes:

"Courtesy stigma" is the stigmatization a person perceives or experiences due to their association with a stigmatized individual or group. Most HIV-related stigma scales have been developed for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs), but not for their HIV-uninfected family members.

Some new research has documented scales of "public stigma" and "self-perceived stigma" among non-infected family members of those with HIV.

While previous studies have assessed psychometric characteristics of HIV-related stigma scales in particular populations, few studies have empirically assessed an instrument that could be used with equal accuracy among PLWHA and their HIV-uninfected adult family members. Our findings document sound psychometric properties of the CCSS scales to measure HIV courtesy stigma among family members of HIV-infected individuals as well as among PLWHA themselves. The psychometric properties were very robust in the two different study populations with different HIV transmission modes (injection drug use vs. commercial blood donation) and across different investigation periods (2008 vs. 2010). The CCSSs have advantages over existing instruments in that it is brief, easy to administer, and applicable to diverse populations.

Anonymous Coward writes:

In a follow up to our story a few days ago, Newly unsealed documents from Google and Apple further prove their complicity in a secret illegal agreement to limit employees' careers and wages. Some background on this cartel is available in another article covering the US Department of Justice investigation into this matter earlier this week. When these companies were caught red-handed, blatantly breaking the law, the US government intervened on workers' behalf by asking the companies to, in effect, "please stop doing this," but the proposed settlement will only "be in effect" for the next five years.

Go justice!

qwade writes:

Astronomers have discovered a dwarf planet beyond Pluto approximately 450km across. It is approximately 80 Astronomical Units (AU) from the Sun. The new object, 2012 VP-113, is far beyond the Kuiper belt, an icy field of debris that sits beyond Neptune's orbit between 30 AU and 55 AU.

It could be part of an inner Oort cloud which scientists would find valuable to study as the objects there are far away from the gravitational pull of both the planets and the distant stars making them akin to dynamic "fossils" of interplanetary movement in the early solar system.

More interesting is that the movements of the newly discovered dwarf planet, coupled with Sedna discovered in 2003 hint that there could be a giant planet from 1 to 20 Earth masses further out influencing these bodies. More of these objects will need to be discovered and tracked before it can be definitively stated whether or not a giant planet is lurking in the inner Oort cloud.

arulatas writes:

CNN reports that we have a newly discovered dwarf planet in the Oort cloud. How many more objects of this size are still undiscovered in our own solar system?

toygeek writes:

This lighter than air wind turbine flies atop tethers to supply power for remote villages, bases, mines, or disaster zones. It can also lift communications equipment such as cellular transceivers or meteorological devices and other sensing equipment. From the article:

Unlike its earth-bound brethren, the airborne turbine is not intended to supply power for large electric grids. Instead, its sweet spot is serving far-flung villages, military bases, mines, or disaster zones. Various researchers have been developing floating wind turbines for years, but the 18-month project in Alaska will be the first longer-term, commercial project to test the technology, according to Altaeros.

Altaeros' Buoyant Airborne Turbine (BAT) is an inflatable, helium-filled ring with a wind turbine suspended inside. It will float at a height of 300 meters, where winds tend to be far stronger than they are on the ground. The altitude of the BAT is about double the hub height of the world's largest wind turbine.

The BAT has a power capacity of 30 kilowatts and will create enough energy to power about 12 homes, the company says. But that's just the beginning. It can also lift communications equipment such as cellular transceivers or meteorological devices and other sensing equipment. Altaeros said additional equipment does not affect the energy performance of the turbine.

pbnjoe writes:

Ars technica is reporting on new devlopments in GPU interconnect tech.

From the article:

Nvidia and IBM have developed an interconnect that will be integrated into future graphics processing units, letting GPUs and CPUs share data five times faster than they can now, Nvidia announced today. The fatter pipe will let data flow between the CPU and GPU at rates higher than 80GB per second, compared to 16GB per second today. NVLink, the interconnect, will be part of the newly announced Pascal GPU architecture on track for release in 2016.

GPUs have become increasingly common in supercomputing, serving as accelerators or "co-processors" to help CPUs get work done faster. In the most recent list of the world's fastest 500 supercomputers, 53 systems used co-processors and 38 of these used Nvidia chips. The second and sixth most powerful supercomputers used Nvidia chips alongside CPUs. Intel still dominates, providing processors for 82.4 percent of Top 500 systems.

"Today's GPUs are connected to x86-based CPUs through the PCI Express (PCIe) interface, which limits the GPU's ability to access the CPU memory system and is four- to five-times slower than typical CPU memory systems," Nvidia said. "PCIe is an even greater bottleneck between the GPU and IBM Power CPUs, which have more bandwidth than x86 CPUs. As the NVLink interface will match the bandwidth of typical CPU memory systems, it will enable GPUs to access CPU memory at its full bandwidth... Although future Nvidia GPUs will continue to support PCIe, NVLink technology will be used for connecting GPUs to NVLink-enabled CPUs as well as providing high-bandwidth connections directly between multiple GPUs.

mendax writes

The New York Times is reporting that air pollution claimed seven million lives around the world in 2012, according to figures released Tuesday by the World Health Organization. More than one-third of those deaths, the organization said, occurred in fast-developing nations of Asia, where rates of cardiovascular and pulmonary disease have been soaring.

Around the world, one out of every eight deaths was tied to dirty air, the agency determined - twice as many as previously estimated. Its report identified air pollution as the world's single biggest environmental health risk. The report found that those who are most vulnerable live in a wide arc of Asia stretching from Japan and China in the northeast to India in the south. Exposure to smoke from cooking fires means that poor women are especially at risk, the agency said. Indoor air pollutants loomed as the largest threat, involved in 4.3 million deaths in 2012, while toxic air outdoors figured in 3.7 million deaths, the agency said. Many deaths were attributed to both.

Ken_g6 writes:

Wired today reports on continued coal use around the world and efforts to promote carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Today coal produces more than 40 percent of the world's electricity, a foundation of modern life. And that percentage is going up: In the past decade, coal added more to the global energy supply than any other source. Nowhere is the pre-eminence of coal more apparent than in the planet's fastest-growing, most populous region: Asia, especially China.

Many energy and climate researchers believe that CCS is vital to avoiding a climate catastrophe. Because it could allow the globe to keep burning its most abundant fuel source while drastically reducing carbon dioxide and soot, it may be more important - though much less publicized - than any renewable-energy technology for decades to come. No less than Steven Chu, the Nobel-winning physicist who was US secretary of energy until last year, has declared CCS essential. "I don't see how we go forward without it," he says.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs projects that solar power will be cost-competitive with other electricity sources in the US by 2033. So will we build more coal plants or tear them down?