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An Anonymous Coward writes:

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd ( http://www.vttresearch.com JavaScript required ) has been the first to publish a scientific study on the successful generation of hybrid lager yeasts. For centuries the same few yeast strains have been used in the production of lager beer, in contrast to ale, whisky, wine and cider, for which there is a wide range of yeast strains available to produce different nuances of flavour. VTT has been developing hybrid lager yeasts so as to impart new flavour to the beer and accelerate the production process.

Traditionally, even very different tasting lagers have been produced using the reliable and cold-hardy Saccharomyces pastorianus yeast species. Studies have shown that this trustworthy brewmaster's helper is actually a hybrid composed of two different yeast species. One of them is the Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast commonly used in the production of ale, while the other, only recently discovered in the wild, has been named Saccharomyces eubayanus.

These findings have opened up possibilities for researchers to create new, customised lager yeasts through selective mating of strains of different yeast species. This enables the production of new flavours for beer or the acceleration of the fermentation phase in beer production, for example.

[Abstract]: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10295-015-1597-6

AnonTechie writes:

Pick up a handful of sand, and it flows through your fingers like a liquid. But when you walk on the beach, the sand supports your weight like a solid. What happens to the forces between the jumbled sand grains when you step on them to keep you from sinking ? An international team of researchers collaborating at Duke University ( http://www.duke.edu ) have developed a new way to measure the forces inside materials such as sand, soil or snow under pressure.

Described in the March 5 issue of Nature Communications, the technique uses lasers coupled with force sensors, digital cameras and advanced computer algorithms to peer inside and measure the forces between neighboring particles in 3-D.

The new approach will allow researchers to better understand phenomena like the jamming of grain hoppers or the early warning signs of earthquakes and avalanches, said study co-author Nicolas Brodu, now at the French institute Inria.

[Abstract/Paper]: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150305/ncomms7361/full/ncomms7361.html

Hugh Pickens writes:

Hollywood Reporter reports that Twentieth Century Fox recently picked up the movie rights to "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," based on the classic sci-fi book by Robert A. Heinlein and will retitle the movie as 'Uprising'. Heinlein's 1966 sci-fi novel centers on a lunar colony's revolt against rule from Earth and the book popularized the acronym TANSTAAFL (There ain't no such thing as a free lunch), a central, libertarian theme. The novel was nominated for the 1966 Nebula award (honoring the best sci-fi and fantasy work in the U.S.) and won the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel in 1967. An adaptation has been attempted twice before — by DreamWorks, which had a script by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, and by Phoenix Pictures, with Harry Potter producer David Heyman attached — but both languished and the rights reverted to Heinlein's estate. Brian Singer, who previously directed X-Men: Days of Future Past, will adopt the screenplay and reportedly direct. Several of Heinlein's novels have been adapted for the big and small screen, including the 1953 film Project Moonbase, the 1994 TV miniseries Red Planet, the 1994 film The Puppet Masters, and — very loosely — the 1997 film Starship Troopers.

n1 writes:

Science reports:

People are nicer to each other when they think someone is watching, many psychology studies have shown—especially if they believe that someone has the power to punish them for transgressions even after they’re dead. That’s why some scientists think that belief in the high gods of moralizing religions, such as Islam and Christianity, helped people cooperate with each other and encouraged societies to grow. An innovative study of 96 societies in the Pacific now suggests that a culture might not need to believe in omniscient, moral gods in order to reap the benefits of religion in the form of political complexity. All they need is the threat of supernatural punishment, even if the deities in question don’t care about morality and act on personal whims, the new work concludes.

[...] Norenzayan notes, “there’s a lot more to religion than moralizing gods.” All-powerful supernatural creators like the Abrahamic god are “at the extreme end of the spectrum” when it comes to beliefs that promote large-scale cooperation and social complexity. Certain rituals and beliefs like karma can also encourage prosocial behavior “without necessarily invoking big gods.”

tonyPick writes:

SemiAccurate has an interesting analysis of the persistent rumours around the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810.

You might recall a story that has been floating since early December about the then upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC. The narrative essentially started off along the lines that the 810 has overheating problems and with each passing iteration had more details and occasionally a new angle thrown in. SemiAccurate has been hunting down sources, leads, and hard data on the potential problem for far too long. What did we find at the bottom of this rabbit hole? Not what we expected.

The TLDR version: SemiAccurate thinks that Samsung are in trouble, and they know it:

The thoroughness of the FUD and smear campaigns strongly intone that Samsung is going to take a pounding during the next product cycle and that they know it too. If they had a winning product, they wouldn’t have gone to the extraordinary lengths they did to attack LG and the ODMs via the proxy of Qualcomm.

While SemiAccurate has to tip their hat to Samsung for the complexity and thoroughness of this campaign, everyone else should see it as a big red warning sign for the phone market. The times they are a’changin and the future is still up for grabs. About the only thing you can say for certain is that the 810 was an innocent bystander in this war, go buy one for yourself and see.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The ability to intercept unintended transmissions from an electronic device has been well known for many years. Signals Intelligence and the military take many precautions to prevent or reduce such emanations and this is known by the codename TEMPEST. However, a team from Tel Aviv University have demonstrated a rather worrying ability in a small number of cases to actually identify the GPG keys in use by a computer in a matter of seconds. There are limitations to this capability, in particular the receiver must be very close to the target device, and it is very dependent on the design and shielding of the target, but as the equipment used is relatively small then it can easily be hidden inside an innocent-looking device which doesn't look out of place in the target environment. The receiver is a consumer grade Software Designed Radio (SDR) controlled by a micro-controller. The receiver is small enough that it can be hidden inside a pita bread which resulted in the equipment being given the name PITA - Portable Instrument for Trace Acquisition.

Many in the business have long known that unauthorised access to a computer means that it must be considered compromised, but advancements in technology have raised the risk to the next level for computers that were previously unlikely to be targeted for emission intelligence. For instance, in the workplace having someone place their modified laptop near to your own could result in compromise of your data or encryption keys.

"gewg_" writes:

Chalachew Seyoum, an Arizona State University grad student, has found a piece of jawbone that pushes back the existence of our genus Homo by 400,000 years to 2.8 million years ago.

National Geographic notes:

The new jaw, known as LD 350-1, was found in January 2013 just a dozen miles from where [the mostly-complete skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis known as] Lucy was found in 1974.

[...] Fossils attributed to Homo in the period two to three million years ago are exceedingly rare.

[...] To the extent that the new jaw underscores an East African origin for the genus Homo, it would seem to confound the argument made by other researchers that the best candidate for our [genus'] immediate ancestor is a South African australopithecine, Australopithecus sediba.

El Reg adds:

The find is small--a tiny piece of jawbone from the left side of the face with five teeth embedded in it--but it tells us a huge amount about our time on the planet. The molars are small, typical of Homo species, and the bone contains a mix of ancient and more recent evolutionary features.

AnonTechie writes:

A consortium of environmental scientists has expressed strong concern about the impact of a controversial Central American canal across Nicaragua.

The path of the Nicaragua Interoceanic Grand Canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans will cut through Lake Cocibolca (aka Lake Nicaragua), Central America's main freshwater reservoir and the largest tropical freshwater lake of the Americas; this plan will force the relocation of indigenous populations and impact a fragile ecosystem, including species at risk of extinction, according to Rice University environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez and other members of the consortium.

Alvarez is co-corresponding author of an article that includes 21 co-authors from 18 institutions in the United States and Central and South America who gathered at a multidisciplinary international workshop in Managua, Nicaragua, last November to discuss the project. The paper, titled "Scientists Raise Alarms About Fast Tracking of Transoceanic Canal Through Nicaragua," was published this week by the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science and Technology.

http://phys.org/news/2015-03-scientists-nicaragua-canal.html
[Abstract]: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b00215
[Source]: http://news.rice.edu/2015/03/04/scientists-question-rush-to-build-canal-2/

"gewg_" writes:

El Reg reports:

Linux kernel developer Christoph Hellwig has sued VMware in Hamburg, Germany, over alleged violations of the GNU General Public License.

Hellwig's suit, which is backed by New York advocacy group the Software Freedom Conservancy, alleges that VMware's proprietary ESXi hypervisor products use portions of the code that Hellwig wrote for the Linux kernel, in violation of the terms of version 2 of the GPL.

"In addition to other ways VMware has not complied with the requirements of the GPL," the Conservancy wrote in a blog post on Wednesday, "Conservancy and Hellwig specifically assert that VMware has combined copyrighted Linux code, licensed under GPLv2, with their own proprietary code called 'vmkernel' and distributed the entire combined work without providing nor offering complete, corresponding source code for that combined work under terms of the GPLv2."

This isn't the first time Hellwig has made such claims. He first accused VMware of violating the GPL in 2006 via the Linux Kernel Mailing List, even threatening to sue. It now seems that the proverbial other shoe has finally dropped.

AnonTechie writes:

Lockheed Martin’s [NYSE: LMT] 30-kilowatt fiber laser weapon system successfully disabled the engine of a small truck during a recent field test, demonstrating the rapidly evolving precision capability to protect military forces and critical infrastructure.

Known as ATHENA, for Advanced Test High Energy Asset, the ground-based prototype system burned through the engine manifold in a matter of seconds from more than a mile away. The truck was mounted on a test platform with its engine and drive train running to simulate an operationally-relevant test scenario.

The demonstration marked the first field testing of an integrated 30-kilowatt, single-mode fiber laser weapon system prototype. Through a technique called spectral beam combining, multiple fiber laser modules form a single, powerful, high-quality beam that provides greater efficiency and lethality than multiple individual 10-kilowatt lasers used in other systems.

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/press-releases/2015/march/ssc-space-athena-laser.html

tt1649419 writes with an article from TheLocal.de:

While researching ways to discourage “Wildpinkler” – “free pee-ers” – annoyed members of IG St Pauli came across a hydrophobic paint which literally makes water droplets bounce off.

That means that anyone hoping to relieve themselves in unorthodox locations around the neighbourhood must reckon with the risk of a soaking for their shoes and trousers.

The video is in German, but that doesn't stop it from being hilarious.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Nick Wingfield reports at The New York Times that for the last couple of years, the companies building virtual reality headsets have begged the public for patience as they strive to create virtual environments that don't make people physically sick. “We’re going to hang ourselves out there and be judged,” says John Carmack, chief technology officer of Oculus, describing what he calls a “nightmare scenario” that has worried him and other Oculus executives. “People like the demo, they take it home, and they start throwing up,” says Carmack. "The fear is if a really bad V.R. product comes out, it could send the industry back to the ’90s." In that era, virtual reality headsets flopped, disappointing investors and consumers. “It left a huge, smoking crater in the landscape,” says Carmack, who is considered an important game designer for his work on Doom and Quake. “We’ve had people afraid to touch V.R. for 20 years.”

This time around, the backing for virtual reality is of a different magnitude. Facebook paid $2 billion last year to acquire Oculus. Microsoft is developing its own headset, HoloLens, that mixes elements of virtual reality with augmented reality, a different medium that overlays virtual images on a view of the real world. Google has invested more than $500 million in Magic Leap, a company developing an augmented reality headset. “The challenge is there is so much expectation and anticipation that that could fall away quite quickly if you don’t get the type of traction you had hoped,” says Neil Young

At least one company, Valve, believes it has solved the discomfort problem with headsets. Gabe Newell says Valve has worked hard on its virtual reality technology to eliminate the discomfort, saying that “zero percent of people get motion sick” when they try its system. According to Newell, the reason why no one has gotten sick yet is thanks to Valve’s Lighthouse motion-tracking system, a precise motion-tracking system that is capable of accurately tracking users as they move around a space. In the meantime the next challenge will be convincing media and tech companies to create lots of content to keep users entertained. “Virtual reality has been around for 20 years, and the one thing that has been consistent throughout this is that the technology is not mature enough,” says Brian Blau. “Today there’s the possibility for that to change, but it’s going to take a while for these app developers to get it right.”

midacre and writes:

Breaking News: Harrison Ford hospitalized after plane crash, Harrison family member reports that Harrison Ford will live, having suffered some cuts and bruises.

Actor Harrison Ford was hospitalized Thursday afternoon after a single-engine plane he was piloting crashed onto a Venice golf course shortly after takeoff.

[...] Aerial footage of the minutes after the crash showed the small single-engine vintage World War II trainer plane crashed on the ground at Penmar Golf Club, and one person being treated by paramedics and being transported to a hospital.

More information, including a picture of the plane can be found here.

quixote writes:

The Los Angeles Times reports on research published in The Astronomical Journal.

Astronomers have discovered a giant planet with four suns just 125 light-years from Earth. The planet is at least 10 times as big as Jupiter and scientists say it probably has no actual surface to stand on. But, if you could fly a spacecraft into its atmosphere and look up, you would see one primary sun, a bright red dot, and another star shining more brightly than Venus does in our night sky. ...

In a paper published in the Astronomical Journal, the researchers describe Ari 30 as a pair of binary systems. A large planet travels around the star known as 30 Ari B, taking about 355 days to complete its orbit. The newly discovered star is locked in a gravitational dance with 30 Ari B from a distance of less than 30 astronomical units away. (One astronomical unit is the distance between the sun and the Earth).

About 1,670 astronomical units away lie another pair of stars in a system known as 30 Ari A. The two binary systems orbit a central mass that lies in between them.

Only one other planet in a quadruple star system has been discovered before, but Roberts said that more may soon be detected.

[Editor's Note: For comparison purposes consider that Neptune orbits the Sun at an average distance of 30.1 astronomical units. See, too, this table of distances from the Sun in AU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit#Examples.]

n1 writes:

From an article at Medium.com :

You head an Internet company. It has a billion users. Your social product alone has over 400 million users and is actually kind of hip. You bring in four billion dollars of revenue a year, a billion of that in mobile. You make a profit! You’re the third biggest search engine. You are Katie Couric’s boss.

And yet…your company is worth less than zero.

That financial version of an Escher-esque contortion is familiar turf to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. The Yahoo market cap is around $44 billion. That valuation includes its ownership of 15.4 percent of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. That’s worth about $38 billion. Yahoo also has a long standing investment in Yahoo Japan, a separate company it co-founded in 1996. It’s worth around $7 billion. Those numbers can fluctuate. But there are days when you add those up and you can reach the odd actuarial conclusion that Yahoo’s core business—which has been looking a lot better since Mayer got there—has negative value.

See also: Parmy Olsen’s story in Forbes, “Finding Alibaba: How Jerry Yang Made The Most Lucrative Bet In Silicon Valley History”