SoylentNews

Nerdfest writes:

Ideas in a thirteenth-century treatise on the nature of matter still resonate today, say Tom C. B. McLeish and colleagues.

A paper called "De Luce" (On Light), written in 1225 in Latin and dense with mathematical thinking, explores the nature of matter and the cosmos. Four centuries before Isaac Newton proposed gravity and seven centuries before the Big Bang theory. To our knowledge, De Luce is the first attempt to describe the heavens and Earth using a single set of physical laws. Implying, probably unrealized by its author, a family of ordered universes in an ocean of disordered ones, the physics resembles the modern 'multiverse' concept.

This may be of special interest to those learning of the history of the universe on "Cosmos", which covers other famous historical thinkers.

AnonTechie writes:

The Smithsonian has an article on breakthroughs in Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS).

Deep brain stimulation, or DBS, combines neurology, neurosurgery and electrical engineering, and casual conversations in the operating room between doctors and their wide-awake patients are just one of the surprises. The entire scene is an eerie blend of the fantastic and the everyday, like something from the work of Philip K. Dick, who gave us the stories that became Blade Runner and Total Recall. During surgery, DBS patients are made literally bionic. Tiny electrodes are implanted in their brains (powered by battery packs sewn into their chests) to deliver a weak but constant electric current that reduces or eliminates their symptoms. DBS can improve a shaky putting stroke; it can also help the disabled walk and the psychologically tormented find peace.

silverly writes:

In Sweden, Jonathan Rieder Lundkvist resurrected PolitikerStarcraft, a StarCraft II tournament challenging each party in parliament, as well as the Feminist Initiative and the Pirate Party, to field a worthy StarCraft II contender, why? Bragging rights and respect.

Can we look forward to more governments coming to online battle grounds to prove their masterful tactics and decision making?

Teckla writes:

In the U.S., the floodgates have opened for Internet Service Providers to give higher or lower priority to certain kinds of Internet traffic, such as video streaming traffic. Netflix recently found itself paying Comcast so that Comcast customers would get acceptable Netflix streaming quality. In this blog post, Ken Florance, Vice President of Content Delivery at Netflix, explains the Netflix/Comcast deal in more detail and lays out a good argument against these kind of "ISP tolls".

Netflix also provides a monthly comparison of average internet speeds obtained by its viewers on different networks. For March 2014, Comcast (at 2.50 Mbps) and Time Warner Cable (at 2.41 Mbps) beat the USA average of 2.21 Mbps; but are ranked at only 5th and 6th place, respectively.

AnonTechie writes:

'North Korea says army must develop to be able to beat U.S.' Kim Jong Un has urged his military leadership in a story reported by Reuters News Agency. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un urged the army to improve a day after U.S. President Barack Obama warned the North of its military might. Kim led a meeting of the Central Military Commission and "set forth important tasks for further developing the Korean People's Army and ways to do so", KCNA news agency said. Reuters continues:

Obama said on Saturday on a visit to Seoul, where the U.S. army has a large presence, that the United States did not use its military might to "impose things" on others, but that it would use that might if necessary to defend South Korea from any attack by the reclusive North.

The impoverished North, which routinely threatens the United States and the South with destruction, warned last month it would not rule out a "new form" of atomic test after the U.N. Security Council condemned Pyongyang's launch of a mid-range ballistic missile into the sea east of the Korean peninsula. North Korea is already subject to U.N. sanctions over its previous three atomic tests. Recent satellite data shows continued work at the nuclear test site in North Korea, although experts analyzing the data say that preparations do not appear to have progressed far enough for an imminent test.

AnonTechie writes:

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University have come one step closer to eliminating heart disease. A world without heart disease seems impossible. But researchers at Johns Hopkins just got one step closer to eradicating debilitating heart diseases in humans, particularly those caused by excessive buildup of cholesterol. A new study published in the journal Circulation (abstract) shows that a synthesized drug reduces, and may even eradicate, the effects of high-fat and high-cholesterol diets. And though the drug is prosperous for the heart and brain most specifically, the entire body may benefit from this development.

The report continues:

"It's the entire cardiovascular system that's affected," Ekaterina Pesheva, a representative for Johns Hopkins, told The Daily Beast. "The reason we're worried about the heart and the brain is because those are the centers that end up being the most debilitating to human life when affected by fatty buildups."

The study shows that the new drug under examination, known now as D-PDMP, changes the way fat metabolism works, and eliminates the risk of heart attack and heart disease. The drug halts the development of atherosclerosis, a word referring to the hardening of the arteries. Atherosclerosis is based on a buildup of fat and cholesterol in blood vessels, and happens to be the main cause of heart attacks in humans. Most notably, atherosclerosis is the number one cause of death in humans (perhaps a little-known fact in a world rampant with famine, war, and crime).

FakeBeldin writes:

Dutch new media artist Sander Veenhof created an app for Google Glass to (surprisingly enough) improve your privacy. The app integrates open data with augmented reality. End result: while wearing Glass, the field of vision of any camera is highlighted for you. Suddenly it's evident where you're being watched.

The app even extends this to other Glass users: they are highlighted as well. To do this, the app uploads your GPS coordinates... yes, that is deliberate irony on part of the artist: "The app provides the illusion of a privacy solution, but at the same time your privacy is reduced. A double standard." (rough translation from NRC.nl). Finally: a short video of the app in action.

kaszz writes:

"The US based asteroid protection B612 foundation, has disclosed that their acoustic sensors show asteroid impacts to be much more common than previously thought. In the period 2000-2013 their infrasound system detected 26 major asteroid strike explosions. The impact energy were gauged at energies of 1 to 600 kilotons, which can be compared to 45 kilotons for the 1945 Hiroshima bomb.

kaszz writes:

Memes are cultural ideas that propagate by human imitation. Now a team of researchers has developed a way to automatically distinguish scientific memes from other forms of information for the first time. The method uses scientific papers that reference older papers on related topics. Running this algorithm on the half a million papers published by Physical Review 1893-2010 by matching common words or phrases. They define an interesting meme as one that is more likely to appear in a paper that cites another paper in which the same meme occurs.

Based on the assumption that interesting memes are more likely to replicate, the result is a list of words and phrases that has spread by replication and also shows how this spreading has changed over the last 100 years. The top-5 phrases are: loop quantum cosmology, unparticle, sonoluminescence, MgB2 and stochastic resonance; which all are important topics in physics. The team say the technique is interesting because it provides a way to distinguish memes from other forms of information that do not spread in the same way through replication. (Sounds quite similar to what google does with links, but instead of using links, use the references as a path to scan what citations that reoccurs)

jackb_guppy writes:

In a followup to our previous coverage on the search, a legendary trove of Atari's E.T. The Extraterrestrial video game has at long last been unearthed. The Associated Press reports that a documentary film production company dug the huge stash of game cartridges out of a landfill in Alamagordo, New Mexico on Saturday, confirming rumors that had circulated for decades regarding the fate of the notoriously terrible game.

Now let me get my 2600 hooked up and we are good to go!

Papas Fritas writes:

DARPA is developing a hybrid-powered motorcycle to soundlessly penetrate remote areas and execute complex, lightning-fast raids. The idea is to develop a hybrid power system that relies on both electric and gas power, allowing special ops to go off-road and zip past enemy forces with the silence of an electric engine, while also being able to handle extended missions and higher speeds with a supplemental gas tank. "Quieted, all-wheel-drive capability at extended range in a lightweight, rugged, single-track vehicle could support the successful operations of U.S. expeditionary and special forces in extreme terrain conditions and contested environments," says Wade Pulliam of Logos Technologies which was awarded a contract for a preliminary design to see just how viable the project is. "With a growing need to operate small units far from logistical support, the military may increasingly rely on adaptable, efficient technologies like this hybrid-electric motorcycle."

Logos plans to fit its quieted, multifuel hybrid-electric power system with an all-electric bike from San Francisco-based manufacturer BRD Motorcycles that uses an existing (and what BRD calls "barely legal") racing bike, the RedShift MX, a 250-pound all-electric moto that retails for $15,000. The RedShift MX has a two hour range, but will be extended with a gas tank the size of which will be determined by the military in the research period. The focus on the electric element suggests that DARPA is more concerned with the stealthiness of the motorcycle than it is efficiency. "The team is excited to have such a mature, capable system from which to build, allowing an accelerated development cycle that could not be achieved otherwise," says Pulliam.

Anonymous Coward writes:

The Internet has become increasingly essential to human activity- from reading the news and buying stocks to communicating and researching flu symptoms. However, it still has some problems; namely, its plumbing, according to Edmund Yeh, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University. "If you've got a lot of demand for a particular data type, it's like water building up," Yeh explained. That water, he said, can be managed in two ways - one is by getting it to its destination drain (i.e., the data server), the other is to drill a new drain somewhere along its journey (i.e., a caching point that temporarily stores the data)

The full report is available in PDF, PS and other formats.

Nerdfest writes:

A note from a "former" Nokia employee lamenting the sad end to the once great company.

On April 25, that Nokia ceases to exist, and in its place are two companies that officially have nothing to do with each other. Tomorrow I will still be an employee of Nokia. I will go to my office in Sunnyvale. It will be the same building it was yesterday. It will still say NOKIA on its facade basking in the California sun. But half of the people I've worked with will be gone. Up through today we shared everything. Tomorrow we will share nothing but our memories.

Sad to see it go.

Boxzy writes:

As someone who knows Facebook and as an ex-Whatsapp user, the FTC are hilariously attempting to bully Facebook into not monetising their purchase of Whatsapp for $19 Billion.

Does Anyone At All Think This Will Work?

They paid $19 Billion! Not monetise it? Are they nuts?

kaszz writes:

People all over the world should consider US companies as controlled by their (i.e. the US) government in all matters. Because a judge in US has now ruled that search warrants for customer email and other content must be turned over, regardless of whether the data is stored on servers in other countries. The case is one where law enforcement demanded data from Microsoft's servers in Ireland. Microsoft fought back, saying, 'A U.S. prosecutor cannot obtain a U.S. warrant to search someone's home located in another country, just as another country's prosecutor cannot obtain a court order in her home country to conduct a search in the United States. We think the same rules should apply in the online world, but the government disagrees.'