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tonyPick writes:

Mentalfloss has a collection of chemical reaction videos, with explanations of the processes involved.

Each minute, a whopping 100 hours worth of videos are uploaded to YouTube—and a small, yet endlessly fascinating number of those are chemical reaction videos. To explain what exactly is happening in some of these videos we reached out to an expert at the American Chemical Society, John M. Malin, Ph.D, to let us in on some of these awesome chemistry secrets.

This has some overlap with the content from the previous story on burning NH4Cr2O7 With HgSCN, together with a bunch of additional experiments.

AnonTechie writes:

The story of the British Army on the Western Front during the First World War is waiting to be discovered in 1.5 million pages of unit war diaries. We need your help to reveal the stories of those who fought in the global conflict that shaped the world we live in today.

Become a Citizen Historian and help Imperial War Museums and The National Archives reveal the story of the British Army on the Western Front during the First World War.

http://www.operationwardiary.org/#/

gewg_ writes with an article from Common Dreams:

Registered nurses from California to Maine will hold strikes, picketing, and other actions Wednesday, November 12 in 16 U.S. states and the District of Columbia--with possible support actions globally--as National Nurses United, the largest U.S. organization of nurses steps up the demand for tougher Ebola safety precautions in the nation’s hospitals.

One centerpiece of the actions will be a two-day strike by 18,000 RNs and nurse practitioners at 86 Kaiser Permanente hospitals and clinics who have been protesting the erosion of patient care standards in Kaiser facilities for months, and see Kaiser’s failure to adopt the optimal safeguards for Ebola as symbolic of its overall dismissal of nurses’ concerns about patient care.

Strikes will also affect 400 RNs at Providence Hospital in Washington D.C. on Wednesday and some 600 RNs Tuesday and Wednesday at two other Northern California hospitals, Sutter Tracy and Watsonville General Hospital.

Among other prominent national actions will be a vigil outside the White House Wednesday, rallies at state capitols in Michigan and Minnesota, several actions in Chicago, and a rally at the federal building in New York City.

tonyPick writes:

Science is running an article on human echolocation.

This follows a studies into the importance of body movement in human echolocation by Professor Lutz Wiegrebe, and although the paper itself appears to be paywalled the Science summary is fascinating.

Blackmoore writes:

Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, found at Zero Hedge takes a look at the oligarchs, and sociopaths who want to control the governments and your lives.

In a nutshell, while almost all oligarchs are extremely wealthy (or have access to extreme wealth), not all people with extreme wealth are oligarchs. The term oligarch is reserved for those with extreme wealth who also want to control the political process, policy levers and most other aspects of the lives of the citizenry in a top-down tyrannical and undemocratic manner. They think they know best about pretty much everything, and believe unelected technocrats who share their worldview should be empowered so that they can unilaterally make all of society’s important decisions. The unwashed masses (plebs) in their minds are unnecessary distractions who must to be told what to do. Useless eaters who need to be brainwashed into worshipping the oligarch mindset, or turned into apathetic automatons incapable or unwilling to engage in critical thought. Either outcome is equally acceptable and equally encouraged.

These oligarchs and the centralized institutions they control pose the greatest threat to humanity at this time. I’m not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that the entire balance of the planet depends on their defeat. A world created in their image will be at best a technocratic, fascist dictatorship, and at worst end in a nuclear holocaust.

The positions of these very influential people are made clear:

He [Adelson] claims he doesn’t like journalism, yet owns a newspaper and wants to buy the New York Times. I suppose it makes sense. The best way to rob a bank is to own one, and the best way to destroy journalism is to own a propagandist newspaper.

He also does not seem to have much of a belief in democratic principles:

Adelson also said Israel would not be able to survive as a democracy: “So Israel won’t be a democratic state, so what?” he asked Saban, adding that democracy, after all, is not mentioned in the Torah, and recommended that the country build a “big wall” to protect itself, saying, “I would put up a big wall around my property.”

Their political influence is not restricted to Israel:

Adelson, 81, and Saban, 70, have gained enormous political power in the new era of super PACs and unlimited contributions, and both made it clear during a rare joint appearance Sunday before an audience of several hundred Israeli Americans that they intend to assert that power during the next presidential campaign and beyond with policy demands for their candidates. In particular, they vowed to press both sides for a more hawkish approach to the Middle East.

Still, Saban said that he thinks Clinton would repair the relationship and that he has told her he would spend “whatever it takes” to propel her into the White House.

Mike Krieger reported previously:

The case of Adelson exhibits all these issues of corruption and eccentricity. Much of his current fortune is recent and derives from the Macao casino, and Adelson has admitted to “likely” breaking Federal rules against using bribes to do business in other countries. (A reference to allegations that his company was involved in rewarding legislators of the Chinese Communist Party for supporting his Macao project.) There was a time when this admission alone would put the donor off limits for mainstream politicians.

pixeldyne writes:

At 8.35AM GMT the lander craft will separate from the Rosetta probe and make an historic landing on the surface of a comet. There will a delay of approximately 30 minute for telemetry broadcast. Read more at space.com and "tune in" to NASA TV for live broadcast from the ESA mission control.

[UPDATE 1]

xkcd

Philae has successfully separated from the Rosetta orbiter and is on its way towards the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Both Philae and Rosetta are in contact with Earth, and the landing legs on Philae are deployed. Ars Technica

The ESA will livestream events from mission control starting at 4pm US Eastern time today (19:00 GMT)

[UPDATE 2]

There's cheering in the control room as signal has been received from Philae, indicating it is on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Someone in the control room has just said "if it would have bounced, we would have lost this," which suggests that it is remaining on the surface. Ars Technica

gewg_ writes:

Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), reports at AlterNet:

A new study identifying minor differences in the brain imaging of habitual marijuana consumers compared to non-users may be ideal for stimulating sensational headlines (e.g., "Regular pot smokers have shrunken brains, study says," Los Angeles Times, November 10), but tells us little in regard to whether pot poses actual health risks.

Specifically, an MRI scan revealed less gray matter in the orbital frontal cortex of pot-smoking subjects compared to those who had never used the drug. Researchers also identified increased connectivity between certain regions of the brain in regular marijuana users compared with non-users.

So precisely what do these findings tell us in regard to pot use and health? Not much. Since the study design is not longitudinal, investigators cannot determine whether these differences are caused by subject's cannabis use, whether these differences existed prior to subjects' ever trying cannabis, or whether these differences persist when users' cannabis consumption ceases.

Most importantly, investigators in this study failed to determine whether any of these differences are positively associated with any measurable adverse performance outcomes, such as cognitive performance or quality of life. It may be that these cannabis users are functioning in their daily lives in a manner that is indistinguishable from controls, in which case the imaging differences may hold little if any real-world significance.

timbim writes:

Hours after President Obama called for the Federal Communications Commission to pass tougher regulations on high-speed Internet providers, the agency’s Democratic chairman told a group of business executives that he was moving in a different direction.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/11/11/the-fcc-weighs-breaking-with-obama-over-the-future-of-the-internet/

novak writes:

After the uproar on the internet covered here yesterday, Groupon appears to be backing down on its Gnome trademarks, and says it will choose a new name going forward.

https://engineering.groupon.com/2014/misc/gnome-foundation-and-groupon-product-names/#updated

AnonTechie writes:

A Kickstarter project aims to give you a Bluetooth Low Energy-enabled wristband that replaces keys and passwords. Everykey ( http://everykey.com ) from the Cleveland, Ohio-based company of the same name, Everykey, is a fashionable band that can be instantly disabled if your Everykey ever gets lost or stolen. You call the team or go online to deactivate it. A message is immediately sent to all of your devices letting them know that they should not unlock for your wristband. The team would overnight you a new wristband at a discount. As the team says in their promotional video, it pretty much "unlocks your life." When the Everykey wristband is within range of a user's device, the wristband will allow the user to bypass that device's password or physically unlock it automatically. When the wristband is out of range, the device automatically re-enables security mechanisms.

They say their security is military-grade. (Everykey uses AES 128-bit encryption), and they also highlight an "obsession with design and usability." Fashion, they said, was their "north star." Color options were selected to reflect a unique personality. The band has a silicon exterior with a lightweight metal skeleton. Everykey works with Mac OS 10.9 (Mavericks), Windows 8.1, and Android 4.4 (KitKat). They are currently developing support for jailbroken versions of iOS as well as Ubuntu 14+ (Linux). The circuit board is powered by their custom bent lithium-polymer battery. The team said that you would need to charge it about once a month. After the battery runs out, you can charge Everykey using an included Micro USB to USB cable.

http://phys.org/news/2014-11-wristband-encryption-grant-access-devices.html

[More Info]: http://www.prweb.com/releases/everykey/kickstarter/prweb12262874.htm

What does SN think about this project ?

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Today's the day! After months of deliberations, Emacs will now use git as the primary version control system. Previously, bzr was the primary VCS with a git mirror. Eric Raymond (a self-proclaimed "topic expert in version-control systems and the surrounding tools", presumably due to his work on reposurgeon, cvs-fast-export, and, of course, his own version control system) lead the effort from start to finish. In theory, using a more popular VCS will help attract new developers.

Blackmoore writes:

Derek Lowe keeps a blog, that alone wouldn't be news worthy but his blog is the home of Things I Won't Work With, a fascinating look at chemicals so noxious, so volatile that even the names will make amateur chemists flinch.

Such things as:

Peroxide Peroxides

Everyone knows hydrogen peroxide, HOOH. And if you know it, you also know that it's well-behaved in dilute solution, and progressively less so as it gets concentrated. The 30% solution will go to work immediately bleaching you out if you are so careless as to spill some on you, and the 70% solution, which I haven't seen in years, provides an occasion to break out the chain-mail gloves.

Mercury Azides

When we last checked in with the Klapötke lab at Munich, it was to highlight their accomplishments in the field of nitrotetrazole oxides. Never forget, the biggest accomplishment in such work is not blowing out the lab windows.

and FOOF

And a hard core it is! This stuff was first prepared in Germany in 1932 by Ruff and Menzel, who must have been likely lads indeed, because it's not like people didn't respect fluorine back then. No, elemental fluorine has commanded respect since well before anyone managed to isolate it, a process that took a good fifty years to work out in the 1800s. (The list of people who were blown up or poisoned while trying to do so is impressive). And that's at room temperature.

Has anyone here had to work with any of these?

Hugh Pickens writes:

Justin Gillis writes in the NYT that Denmark is pursuing the world’s most ambitious policy against climate change aiming to end the burning of fossil fuels in any form by 2050 — not just in electricity production, as some other countries hope to do, but in transportation as well. The trouble is that while renewable power sources like wind and solar cost nothing to run, once installed, as more of these types of power sources push their way onto the electric grid, they cause power prices to crash at what used to be the most profitable times of day. Conventional power plants, operating on gas or coal or uranium, are becoming uneconomical to run. Yet those plants are needed to supply backup power for times when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. With their prime assets throwing off less cash, electricity suppliers in Germany and Denmark have applied to shut down a slew of newly unprofitable power plants, but nervous governments are resisting, afraid of being caught short on some cold winter’s night with little wind. “We are really worried about this situation,” says Anders Stouge, the deputy director general of the Danish Energy Association. “If we don’t do something, we will in the future face higher and higher risks of blackouts.”

Environmental groups, for their part, have tended to sneer at the problems the utilities are having, contending that it is their own fault for not getting on the renewables bandwagon years ago. But according to Gillis, the political risks of the situation also ought to be obvious to the greens. The minute any European country — or an ambitious American state, like California — has a blackout attributable to the push for renewables, public support for the transition could weaken drastically. Rasmus Helveg Petersen, the Danish climate minister, says he is tempted by a market approach: real-time pricing of electricity for anyone using it — if the wind is blowing vigorously or the sun is shining brightly, prices would fall off a cliff, but in times of shortage they would rise just as sharply.

gewg_ writes:

Replacing parts of the OS kernel without requiring a reboot is a neat trick. First there was kexec, next came Ksplice, which Oracle bought in 2011 and pretty much turned into Oracle-only payware. kGraft (SuSE) and kpatch (RedHat) were released in February 2014.

Now, Phoronix reports:

The newest kernel live patching solution uses an ftrace-based mechanism and kernel interface for doing live patching of the kernel with kernel module functions. According to Seth Jennings who posted the patches, "it represents the greatest common functionality set between kpatch and kGraft." Seth Jennings is a Red Hat developer. This new kernel live patching can accept kernel patches built by both kGraft and Kpatch. This design came out of the live patching mini-conference at the Linux Plumbers' Conference last month.

This new approach is just over one thousand lines of code in the kernel.

Blackmoore writes:

Ars Technica reports - New particle accelerator technology gets high speeds in short distances

The new technology, which could promise more compact particle accelerators, has just been described in a study in Nature. The study suggests that if bunches of electrons are passed through a short column of lithium vapor plasma in rapid succession, the electric field of the plasma is able to translate enough energy to accelerate particles hundreds of times more quickly than the LHC. It is able to achieve all this while only being 30cm in length.

Plasma is a state of matter where atoms are broken down into positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons. Most of the matter in the Sun exists as plasma, and we can create that state on Earth using high energy lasers.

The electric field between particles in a plasma can be extremely high. In this experiment, a bunch of high-energy electrons is sent through the plasma, causing the electrons of the plasma to move, leaving behind it a region of oscillating electrons. This oscillation generates a “wakefield” that can then be used to accelerate a second set of trailing electrons following closely behind the first bunch. A meter of plasma was sufficient to raise the electrons' energy by 1.6 Giga-electronVolts.