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ah.clem writes:

A new study by a team of physicists at Rice University, Zhejiang University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Florida State University and the Max Planck Institute adds to the growing body of evidence supporting a theory that strange electronic behaviors -- including high-temperature superconductivity and heavy fermion physics -- arise from quantum fluctuations of strongly correlated electrons.

The study, which appeared in the Jan. 20 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes results from a series of experiments on a layered composite of cerium, rhodium and indium. The experiments tested, for the first time, a prediction from a theory about the origins of quantum criticality that was published by Rice physicist Qimiao Si and colleagues in 2001.

The ScienceDaily article may or may not be here.

tonyPick writes:

The BBC is reporting that the British army is setting up the "77th Brigade" to fight the "social media war"

The Army is setting up a new unit that will use psychological operations and social media to help fight wars "in the information age".

The title of the unit is a reference to the original 77th Indian Infantry Brigade:

The Army spokesman said it would share the "spirit of innovation" of the Chindits in the Burma Campaign of 1942 to 1945.

Chindits was the name given to the Long Range Penetration (LRP) groups that operated in the Burmese jungle behind enemy lines, targeting Japanese communications.

The same story is also covered at The Guardian, ITV News and The Telegraph. The Psy Ops element is likely to be from the 15 Psy Ops Gp which has been operational for many years. There is concern regarding the manpower required to establish the Brigade: the British Army is already facing manpower cuts and the diversion of soldiers from existing combat units to a specialist unit would not be welcomed by many serving and former commanders.

LancePodstrong writes:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/new-e-mail-shows-feds-considered-snooping-on-cars-parked-at-gun-shows/

Nearly six years ago, two federal law enforcement agencies considered using license plate readers (LPRs) at gun shows—at least in the Phoenix, Arizona area.

LPRs scan plates at a very high speed—often 60 plates per second—and record the date, time, and precise location that a given plate was seen. Typically, on a patrol car, that plate is then immediately compared to a list of wanted or stolen cars, and if a match is found, the software alerts the officer. But all scans are routinely kept by various law enforcement agencies for long periods of time, sometimes as long as years or more.

According to a heavily redacted set of documents that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) received and published earlier this week, a 2009 e-mail presumably from the Drug Enforcement Agency states that the “DEA Phoenix Division Office is working closely with the [Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms] on attacking the guns going to [REDACTED] and the gun shows, to include programs/operation with LPRs at the gun shows.”

Wow, shocking. /s

Appalbarry writes:

The last time that I installed Cyanogenmod, it was because "Official" Android had added a "feature" that made the phone considerably less useful for me. Now, with my fourth Android phone, running KitKat, they've done it again, eliminating USB Mass Storage mode.

That's why I'm excited to see that, according to ABI Research, non-Google forks of Android account for more than 40% of Android installs. As reported elsewhere:

It seems to be research release season and ABI has also reported numbers for smartphone shipments. However, this time we have a breakdown of what proportion of Android is forked (AOSP). That is, Android devices that aren’t sanctioned by Google, haven’t passed compatibility testing and don’t have Google Apps and Google Play Services (at least not legally anyway).

Even though most of these are assumed to be oddball Asian variants of Android, it still means that end users have options that fit their needs - the kind of choice that Linux users expect and love.

ticho writes:

After having used the Internet profusely for propaganda and recruitment, jihadist organizations have realized that investigators are gleaning crucial information online and are increasingly concealing their web presence, experts say.

Apart from recent orders given to fighters to limit their exposure, erase the footprint of their online activity and avoid revealing too many place names or faces, the Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front groups are increasingly using the "Dark Web" -- the hidden part of the Internet protected by powerful encryption softwares.

cnst writes:

OpenSSH developer Damien Miller wrote from Down Under about a new feature he implemented and committed for the next upcoming 6.8 release of OpenSSH — hostkeys@openssh.com — an OpenSSH extension to the SSH protocol for sshd to automatically send all of its public keys to the client, and for the client to automatically replace all keys of such server within ~/.ssh/known_hosts with the fresh copies as supplied (provided the server is trusted in the first place, of course).

The protocol extension is simple enough, and is aimed to make it easier to switch over from DSA to the OpenSSL-free Ed25519 public keys. It is also designed in such a way as to support the concept of spare host keys being stored offline, which could then seamlessly replace main active keys should they ever become compromised.

frojack writes:

The BBC is reporting that Cold Plasma may be a potent tool to control Norovirus, which is infamous for causing gastroenteritis outbreaks on cruise ships.

Norovirus is highly resistant to several chemical disinfectants — it usually requires a wipe down with chlorine bleach. Obviously this won't work on food.

The new research shows that cold plasma, a so called "4th state of matter" is effective at destroying viruses, while not affecting food at all. It is safe to the touch as well. It could be used in permanent fixtures in food service areas as well as restrooms.

The work was performed by a team of German veterinary scientists in Hanover. The full paper is on line at American Society for Microbiology.

ah.clem writes:

Despite earlier reports of a possible detection, a joint analysis of data from ESA’s Planck satellite and the ground-based BICEP2 and Keck Array experiments has found no conclusive evidence of primordial gravitational waves.

The Universe began about 13.8 billion years ago and evolved from an extremely hot, dense and uniform state to the rich and complex cosmos of galaxies, stars and planets we see today.

An extraordinary source of information about the Universe’s history is the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB, the legacy of light emitted only 380 000 years after the Big Bang.

The ESA dishes the dirt here.

DeathMonkey writes:

Carbonbrief.org is reporting on a new paper published today in the journal 'Nature.'

Claims that Climate Models Overestimate Warming are "Unfounded", Study Shows

The abstract is located here.

A new paper takes an in-depth look at the suggestion that climate models routinely overestimate the speed at which Earth's surface is warming - and finds the argument lacking.

A look back over the past century shows that, by and large, what we see in global average temperature is extremely well captured by models, the authors tell Carbon Brief.

The new research, a collaboration between scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany and the University of Leeds, is published today in the journal Nature.

They go on to note:

The past 15 years has received a fair bit of attention. It's notable that 14 of those years topped the charts as the warmest on record. But the difference between individual years has been slight, meaning the earth's surface has risen a fair bit slower than in previous decades.

... it's worth remembering that we're talking here about surface temperature, not the globe as a whole, says lead author Prof Jochem Marotzke from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany. He tells us:

"[Surface temperature is] the temperature of a very thin layer of the climate system. Anthropogenic climate change has continued, it's just not so visible in the surface ... It's clearly visible if you look at the heat stored in the ocean, which has kept going during these 15 years. So climate change is continuing, even though surface warming has slowed down quite a bit."

[...]So what causes real-world temperatures to diverge from the models over periods as short as 15 years? That's down to natural fluctuations that temporarily boost or dampen the speed of warming, such as the global weather phenomenon known as El Niño, the paper notes.

Hugh Pickens writes:

While the New England Patriots have absorbed a beating in the press, with many scientists concluding that only the surreptitious hiss of air being released from their footballs could explain the loss of pressure making them easier to handle, James Glanz reports at the NYT that the first detailed, experimental data has concluded that most or all of the deflation could be explained by environmental effects.

[The NFL is investigating whether the New England Patriots intentionally deflated footballs during their victory over the Indianapolis Colts in Sunday's rain-soaked AFC Championship Game.]

“This analysis looks solid to me,” says Max Tegmark, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who reviewed the paper. “To me, their measurements mean that there’s no evidence of foul play.” Some academic and research physicists now concede that they made a crucial error in their initial calculations, using an equation called the ideal gas law. But applying the equation to real situations can be surprisingly deceptive. When a gauge indicates that the ball contains 12.5 p.s.i. — the minimum allowed by the N.F.L. — the actual pressure is more than twice that amount because the surrounding pressure of the atmosphere must be considered. This roughly doubles how much a dip in temperature can lower the pressure. “I stand corrected,” says Tegman, “It’s pretty funny that the ideal gas law is making headlines."

Thomas Healy measured the pressure drop in 12 footballs when they were moved from a room at 75 degrees to one at 50 degrees (the approximate temperature on the field in the Colts game). In the experiment, the deflation of the footballs was close to the larger, correctly calculated value. When Healy moistened the balls to mimic the effects of the rainy weather that day, the pressure dropped even further, close to the deflation of 2 pounds per square inch that the N.F.L. is believed to have found. Healy, who is from the Boston area, conceded that he would be rooting for the Patriots — whether he gets tickets or not — but says engineers who were not Patriots fans had helped with the experiments. Healy says his interest was just in the science. “It’s bringing science to a really public light, especially when everybody is getting interested in the Super Bowl."

Non-USA readers may wish to refer to our earlier story about the Super Bowl which explains some of the terminology and background on the game.

oaklandwatch writes:

"I've never been able to work up a fear of the robot apocalypse," admits R.U. Sirius, who more than 20 years after Mondo 2000's original guide to geek culture has again collaborated on a new encyclopedia of emerging technologies. As we progress to a world where technology actually becomes invisible, he argues that "everything about how we will define the future is still in play," suggesting that the transhumanist movement is "a good way to take isolated radical tech developments and bundle them together". While his co-author argues transhumanists "like to solve everything," Sirius points out a much bigger concern is a future of technologies dominated by the government or big capital.

juggs writes:

Slightly later than planned (due mostly to the holiday season and people's lives away from SN being hectic) the next bunch of updates for the site is ready to go. It's a bumper crop!

We have some further changes to the moderation system. As before, this is certainly not the end of changes in this area, rather another step along the road of improvement. We will be watching how the changes affect moderation usage with a view to further improvements.

There's also a number of more general improvements and bug fixes.

All being well these changes should go live around 03:00 26th January UTC. So no need for alarm if there's some minor site disruption at that point. Changes went live at approximately 22:00 31st January UTC.

As always, feedback will be welcome once this deployed.

A major thanks to TheMightyBuzzard for the bulk of the work, paulej72 for sanity checking and martyb for testing/QA.

More details after the break....

Admin Note: it looks like we found a late breaking bug that is a blocker for this update. Spam mods are not showing up to the admins with the proper unmodding options. We will update when we find the issue. Hopefully this will be fixed in the next day or so.

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

cbiltcliffe writes:

About a month ago, a story was submitted to another site that the Pirate Bay domain name was back online. That story mentioned a timer, which supposedly showed the time since the police raid on the pirate bay servers. I didn't notice at the time, but a more recent check showed this counter was counting down, not up, with a time to reach zero at the end of January. Sometime around a week ago, the waving pirate flag video changed to a graphic of an orange phoenix, and a disabled search box showed up. I've been watching the site since, and now, about 12 hours before the timer was to reach zero, the site is back up, complete with searches.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Lily Hay Newman reports at Future Tense that the police department in Columbia, Missouri, recently announced that its lobby will be open 24/7 for people making Craigslist transactions or any type of exchange facilitated by Internet services following a trend begun by police stations in Virginia Beach, East Chicago and Boca Raton. Internet listings like Craigslist are, of course, a quick and convenient way to buy, sell, barter, and generally deal with junk. But tales of Craigslist-related assaults, robberies, and murders where victims are lured to locations with the promise of a sale, aren’t uncommon, an item being sold could be broken or fake, and the money being used to buy it could be counterfeit. "Transactions should not be conducted in secluded parking lots, behind a building, in a dark location especially when you’re dealing with strangers. Someone you’ve never met before – you have no idea what their intentions are – whether they have evil intent or the best of intentions,” says Officer James Cason Jr. With surveillance cameras running 24 hours a day, plus the obvious bonus of a constant police presence, meeting in the lobby of the police department can help weed out people trying to rip others off. "People with stolen items may not want to meet at the police department," says Bryana Maupin.