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Phoenix666 writes:

A team from the Vancouver Cancer Center presented findings at the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology that patients being treated with radioactive "seeds" (chunks of metal) and 3D printed "shields" survive twice as long as those undergoing conventional therapy.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer affecting men, developing primarily in those over the age of 50. In 2012 there were 1.1 million reported cases with 307,000 deaths worldwide, and any improvement in treatment is bound to improve many lives. Brachytherapy is a highly cost-effective method, even though it requires long training and much experience to produce consistent results, according to James Morris, who led the Vancouver study.

Even with brachytherapy, though, there is room for improvement. Because the tumor is close to the radiation source, the dosage used is lower and thus the side-effects for healthy tissue aren't as bad. Still, implanted seeds release radiation in all directions.

A simple solution to minimize side-effects has been developed by researchers at Louisiana Tech University and University of Mississippi Medical Center. They created customizable 3D-printed shields for the low-dose-rate radioactive seeds used in prostate brachytherapy. The shields were made using a combination of plastic-forming raw material and barium sulphate, a chemical that is compatible with the human body's innards but also effective in stopping radiation.

This Brachytherapy gives those diagnosed with prostate cancer another option, for everyone else there's lycopene for prevention.

takyon writes:

City College of New York researchers have manipulated the polarization of a laser beam to create shapes that could boost data transmission rates:

Using special devices called "q-plates," the researchers manipulated a laser beam's polarization into novel shapes some of which Milione referred to as "radial" and "azimuthal." "While light's polarization (linear and circular) is used for many modern technologies, such as, 3D television, its shape is often left untouched," he said.

The researchers showed that each shape could carry an additional data stream. While the researchers used only four shapes, in principal, the number that can be used is unlimited. "The amount of data that can be transmitted on a single laser beam can be scaled to terabits or even petabits," said Alfano. "This technology is potentially compatible with building to building communication in NYC or even between Google data centers."

The research is published in Optics Letters [abstract].

Phoenix666 writes:

A researcher at University of California San Francisco has created an adaptive game with inputs from EEGs and fMRIs to enhance cognition in study participants:

The first step is to identify the target—the different facets of our cognitive capabilities and the underlying neural systems that drive them. These include attention, working memory and goal management. Gazzaley and his team measure these functions using fMRI and EEG. "We can gather biomarkers so we can see if we're having the impact we're looking for."

The second step focuses on taking advantage of the neuroplasticity of the brain to try and modify its functions. The chosen tool for achieving this is video games—"they are an immersive engaging interactive way of changing behaviour. Something happens in the brain when playing. The video game records in real time and adapts itself as well as giving feedback," explains Gazzaley. That goes back to your brain and creates the desired closed loop.

Finally, the team focuses on enhancing the effects by using high-resolution neural feedback to modify the game going forward. The team is using the Unity gaming engine to collate the data garnered from this.

One game the team has already created, Neuroracer, has already shown that 12 hours of gaming a week among 60- to 80-year-olds dramatically improves their ability to multitask, beyond the abilities of a 20-year-old playing the game for the first time. They are now carrying out a three-year study, to see how the game can be used as a diagnostics tool.

Gamification has been trying to devise ways to mimic the immersive quality of gaming in more training- and productive settings. Is biofeedback the missing link?

AnonTechie writes:

How does your salary compare with this survey ?

2015 Salaries: Staff and Entry-level Positions: http://www.computerworld.com/salarysurvey/breakdown/2015/joblevel/3

2015 Salaries: Middle IT Management: http://www.computerworld.com/salarysurvey/breakdown/2015/joblevel/4

2015 Salaries: Senior IT Management: http://www.computerworld.com/salarysurvey/breakdown/2015/joblevel/5

http://www.computerworld.com/category/salarysurvey2015

Also, here is a Dice 2015 salary survey also showing nice upward trends for the tech field.

Phoenix666 writes:

Scientists have speculated that should the Yellowstone super volcano erupt, it would be an epic catastrophe for North America. Now, researchers have discovered the missing link in the volcano's plumbing:

The new report fills in a missing link of the system. It describes a large reservoir of hot rock, mostly solid but with some melted rock in the mix, that lies beneath a shallow, already-documented magma chamber. The newly discovered reservoir is 4.5 times larger than the chamber above it. There's enough magma there to fill the Grand Canyon. The reservoir is on top of a long plume of magma that emerges from deep within the Earth's mantle.

This system has been in place for roughly 17 million years, with the main change being the movement of the North American tectonic plate, creeping at the rate of roughly an inch a year toward the southwest. A trail of remnant calderas can be detected across Idaho, Oregon and Nevada, looking like a string of beads, marking the migration of the tectonic plate. A similar phenomenon is seen in the Hawaiian islands as the Pacific plate moves over a hot spot, stringing out volcanoes, old to new, dormant to active.

Incidentally, here is explanation on the mechanism of geyser eruptions.

The lead researcher was said to bear a striking resemblance to Woody Harrelson...

From an anonymous submitter:

Surprise, surprise, the biggest R&D spender in recent years is Volkswagen. Multiple sources, here's one from Fortune - http://fortune.com/2014/11/17/top-10-research-development/:

Volkswagen

• R&D spending in 2013: $13.5 billion
• As a percentage of revenue: 5.2%

For the third year in a row, the German carmaker tops the Strategy& list of research and development spenders. Volkswagen says its spending results from being a “highly competitive and innovative car manufacturer which must fulfill a whole host of environmental and safety standards.” Much of that spending has gone into hybrid vehicles and adding new technology, including semi-autonomous features to some of its 12 brands. It also is looking to reduce CO2 emissions across its fleet and invest in ways to electrify vehicles.

The rest of the list from 2013: Samsung, Intel, Microsoft, Roche, Novartis, Toyota, Johnson & Johnson, Google, Merck

Hugh Pickens writes:

Ilan Brat reports at the WSJ that technological advances are making it possible for robots to handle the backbreaking job of gently plucking ripe strawberries from below deep-green leaves, just as the shrinking supply of available fruit pickers has made the technology more financially attractive. “It’s no longer a problem of how much does a strawberry harvester cost,” says Juan Bravo, inventor of Agrobot, the picking machine. “Now it’s about how much does it cost to leave a field unpicked, and that’s a lot more expensive.” The Agrobot costs about $100,000 and Bravo has a second, larger prototype in development.

Other devices similarly are starting to assume delicate tasks in different parts of the fresh-produce industry, from planting vegetable seedlings to harvesting lettuce to transplanting roses. While farmers of corn and other commodity crops replaced most of their workers decades ago with giant combines, growers of produce and plants have largely stuck with human pickers—partly to avoid maladroit machines marring the blemish-free appearance of items that consumers see on store shelves. With workers in short supply, “the only way to get more out of the sunshine we have is to elevate the technology,” says Soren Bjorn.

American farmers have in recent years resorted to bringing in hundreds of thousands of workers from Mexico on costly, temporary visas for such work. But the decades-old system needs to be replaced because “we don’t have the unlimited labor supply we once did,” says Rick Antle. "Americans themselves don't seem willing to take the harder farming jobs," says Charles Trauger, who has a farm in Nebraska. "Nobody's taking them. People want to live in the city instead of the farm. Hispanics who usually do that work are going to higher paying jobs in packing plants and other industrial areas."

The labor shortage spurred Tanimura & Antle Fresh Foods, one of the country’s largest vegetable farmers, to buy a Spanish startup called Plant Tape, whose system transplants vegetable seedlings from greenhouse to field using strips of biodegradable material fed through a tractor-pulled planting device. “This is the least desirable job in the entire company,” says Becky Drumright. With machines, “there are no complaints whatsoever. The robots don’t have workers' compensation, they don’t take breaks.”

takyon writes:

TorrentFreak has uncovered a "top-secret" presentation made by the Federation Against Copyright Theft and sent to Sony Pictures. "The document reveals suspects being filmed in cinemas, tracked using Facebook friends, and their connections to release groups mapped in intriguing diagrams."

FACT goes on to give Sony several examples of situations in which it has been involved in information exercises sharing with the authorities. The exact details aren't provided, but somewhat surprisingly FACT says they include murder, kidnap and large-scale missing persons investigations.

But perhaps of most interest are the details of how the group pursues those who illegally "cam" and then distribute movies online. The presentation focuses on the "proven" leak of five movies in 2010, the total from UK cinemas for that year.

[...] Considering the depth and presentation of the above investigations it will come as no surprise to most that many FACT investigators are former police officers. For the curious, the full document can be found here on Wikileaks.

Marneus68 writes:

Rachel Bryk, an active developer for the Dolphin Emulator[*] project, passed away on the 23rd of April at the age of 23.

While this is hardly the kind of news that would shake the tech world and be featured on major news site, I think the SoylentNews community can fully appreciate her work and commemorate that tragic loss with the team and the retro gaming and TAS community at large.

Most of her work was focused on making the Dolphin more suited to make tool assisted speedruns.

A full announcement and commemorative post can be found on the official Dolphin project blog.

Dolphin emulator:

Dolphin is an emulator for two recent Nintendo video game consoles: the GameCube and the Wii. It allows PC gamers to enjoy games for these two consoles in full HD (1080p) with several enhancements: compatibility with all PC controllers, turbo speed, networked multiplayer, and even more!

mendax writes:

The New York Times published a story that states the obvious for anyone who has studied economics, that Apple's dominant position today is not permanent. They may be very clever and innovative thanks to the spirit (and curse) of Steve Jobs lingering around 1 Infinite Loop, but all fame is fleeting.

In a few short years, Apple has become the biggest company on the planet by market value—so big that it dwarfs every other one on the stock market. It dominates the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index as no other company has in 30 years.

Apple’s market capitalization—the value of all of the shares of its stock—is more than $758 billion, greater than any other company’s. Yet the Wall Street consensus is that Apple is still having a growth spurt. In fact, if Apple’s watches, phones, laptops and other gadgets and services keep generating favorable publicity—and if its quarterly earnings report on Monday is as strong as the market expects it to be—there’s a reasonable chance that Apple’s value will keep swelling. Not far down the road, it might even reach the $1 trillion level that some hedge funds predict.

Yet, IBM was once a huge computer company, the one to beat, not unlike what Microsoft became.

IBM thrived for years afterward, but just as [Steve] Jobs had predicted, it turned out to be vulnerable to disruptive change, as all big companies are. For decades now, IBM has engaged in a sometimes painful transition, and as it revealed in its quarterly earnings report last week, it is still hurting: Its revenues have declined and it has endured wrenching business shifts.

My take on this is pretty straightforward. I own IBM stock; I don't own Apple except in the form of an S&P mutual fund. While I use Apple computers and like them, I have little faith in Apple's long-term future, whereas I think IBM will be around and relevant for much longer once they get their business properly reoriented.

AnonTechie writes:

From Ars Technica:

On Saturday the New York Times reported that "senior American officials briefed on the investigation" confirmed a hack of the White House's unclassified network last year. The breach "was far more intrusive and worrisome than has been publicly acknowledged," officials said, telling the Times that the perpetrators were likely Russians with ties to the government, if not with direct backing from Russia.

The White House's classified network, on which message traffic from President Obama's Blackberry is kept, was not breached, but e-mails he sent to the unclassified network from that device (as well as e-mails sent from that network to him) were obtained.

The Times noted that many senior staffers have two computers in their offices: "one operating on a highly secure classified network and another connected to the outside world for unclassified communications." The most highly secure material shared between "the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, and intelligence communities" is kept on a system called Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS), which was not breached. JWICS also gives access to the front-end for XKeyscore, a system that collects, manages, and processes the massive amounts of data collected by the NSA.

The White House discovered the breach in October 2014 and partially shut down the unclassified e-mail system until the end of the month when system administrators were sure that the hackers no longer had access to the system.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Stephen Jordan reports at the National Monitor that four of the world's greatest poker players are going into battle against a computer program that researchers are calling Claudico in the "Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence" competition at Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh. The pros — Doug Polk, Dong Kim, Bjorn Li and Jason Les — will receive appearance fees derived from a prize purse of $100,000 donated by Microsoft Research and by Rivers Casino. Claudico, the first machine program to play heads-up no-limit Texas Hold'em against top human players, will play nearly 20,000 hands with each human poker player over the next two weeks. "Poker is now a benchmark for artificial intelligence research, just as chess once was. It's a game of exceeding complexity that requires a machine to make decisions based on incomplete and often misleading information, thanks to bluffing, slow play and other decoys," says Tuomas Sandholm, developer of the program. "And to win, the machine has to out-smart its human opponents." In total, that will be 1,500 hands played per day until May 8, with just one day off to allow the real-life players to rest.

Aroused For Debian 8 "Jessie" reports:

Debian 8 "Jessie" was released on 25 Apr. A link to the Debian release page shows the changes and you can follow the release in 'real-time' should you desire to do so.

This release will be supported for 5 years and includes "improvements" to the UEFI software (both 32- and 64-bit) introduced in the previous version, "Wheezy". It also is the first release to use systemd as default init system replacing the earlier sysvinit, which is still available in the repos should you wish to revert the change. What effects such a change might have on the remainder of the system is not clear. Improvements to the support of Debian software include the ability to browse and search all source code distributed in the latest release.

takyon writes:

Doctors in California have removed a tumor that they described as an "embryologic twin" from deep inside the brain of a woman:

Yamini Karanam, 26, a PhD student in Indiana, had been experiencing difficulties with drowsiness, reading and concentration. The discovery was made when doctors performed a newly-developed form of surgery to remove the tumour. The growth, known as a teratoma[*], had bone and hair.

[...] Some medical experts have questioned whether it could be called a twin, but the doctor told the BBC it was "accurate, technically speaking" to call it an embryologic twin. He added that she would have died if she hadn't had the surgery.

The rare growth was removed using a minimally-invasive "keyhole" surgery that uses fibre-optics to burrow deep into the brain and perform the operation. "Traditionally they would have had to cut her from ear-to-ear, bring the scalp down in the back, and then open up the entire back of the skull," Dr Shahinian said. Instead, the doctor used a half-inch incision in the back of the skull.

[*] Teratoma:

A teratoma is a tumor with tissue or organ components resembling normal derivatives of more than one germ layer. Although the teratoma may be monodermal or polydermal, its cells may differentiate in ways suggesting other germ layers. The tissues of a teratoma, although normal in themselves, may be quite different from surrounding tissues and may be highly disparate; teratomas have been reported to contain hair, teeth, bone and, very rarely, more complex organs or processes such as eyes, torso, and hands, feet, or other limbs.

"gewg_" writes:

This would be considered a seriously large earthquake if it was in a place with strict building codes like the USA. For comparison, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake which damaged 80 bridges was a 6.9. The last "Big One" in California, the Fort Tejon event of 1857, was a 7.9.

US Geological Survey: Worldwide events by magnitude

Al Jazeera reports:

The government of Nepal has declared a state of emergency after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the country and killed hundreds of people, touching off a deadly avalanche on Mount Everest.

Officials said that more than 1,800 people were known to have died on Saturday in Nepal's most powerful quake in decades.

The epicentre was 80km northwest of Kathmandu. The Kathmandu valley is densely populated with nearly 2.5 million people and poorly enforced building regulations.

As aftershocks continued throughout Saturday, the toll was was expected to rise significantly as the scale of the disaster became clear.

[...] The earthquake destroyed many historical landmarks, including the UNESCO World Heritage temples at Basantapur Durbar Square and the Dharara tower, both in central Kathmandu.

[...] Emergency workers and army and police personnel, with the help of residents and bystanders, continued to work tirelessly on Saturday to clear the rubble from these sites and to rescue any survivors from under the debris, although [mostly corpses were] being pulled out.

As night fell [over] the country, thousands of people were staying outdoors and found refuge in Kathmandu's open spaces, in fear that subsequent aftershocks may cause further damage.

The Associated Press news agency cited a senior guide as saying that an avalanche swept a mountain near the Everest base camp. Al Jazeera has learned that at least 10 people were killed in the incident, which also left many climbers trapped.

Live Updates: Guardian, NYT, BBC, USGS, Wikipedia.