SoylentNews

AnonTechie writes:

There's a mysterious threshold that's predicted to exist beyond the limits of what we can see. It's called the quantum-classical transition.

If scientists were to find it, they'd be able to solve one of the most baffling questions in physics: why is it that a soccer ball or a ballet dancer both obey the Newtonian laws while the subatomic particles they're made of behave according to quantum rules? Finding the bridge between the two could usher in a new era in physics.

We don't yet know how the transition from the quantum world to the classical one occurs, but a new experiment, detailed in Physical Review Letters , might give us the opportunity to learn more.

The experiment involves cooling a cloud of rubidium atoms to the point that they become virtually motionless. Theoretically, if a cloud of atoms becomes cold enough, the wave-like (quantum) nature of the individual atoms will start to expand and overlap with one another. It's sort of like circular ripples in a pond that, as they get bigger, merge to form one large ring. This phenomenon is more commonly known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, a state of matter in which subatomic particles are chilled to near absolute zero (0 Kelvin or −273.15° C) and coalesce into a single quantum object. That quantum object is so big (compared to the individual atoms) that it's almost macroscopic—in other words, it's encroaching on the classical world.

[Also Covered By]: http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/05/atomic-telescope-brings-atoms-to-standstill/

takyon writes:

Google announced "Android M" at the Google I/O developer conference. It follows "Android L," or Lollipop, which only represents about 10% of the install base.

Google outlined six major areas of improvement in Android M. Permissions controls will be more granular, with apps asking for permission when some features are used (e.g. "Allow WhatsApp to access your microphone?"). You can install apps without allowing them all of the permissions they ask for, and manage permissions after the fact at any time. However, only apps targeting Android M with the latest Android SDK will allow these changes; existing apps won't automatically gain this functionality unless they update.

A feature called Chrome Custom Tabs will allow apps to have a customized instance of the Chrome browser run atop the application when a user clicks on a hyperlink. This allows customization of the user interface, increases performance vs. launching the full browser, and means that "all of a user's autofill data, passwords, and cache are available when they open links within that application." Custom Tabs are an alternative to using a WebView. Apps will also be able to communicate with their own web servers to verify that links to their own websites should be redirected to the app. Previously, clicking a link may bring up a menu asking if you want to complete the action using a browser or an app.

Users will be able to use their fingerprint to authorize Android Pay transactions. Other apps will also be able to use the fingerprint authentication API.

Finally, Android M will introduce a new feature called Doze, which will use motion detection to decide whether the device should shut down background activity to reduce idle power usage, such as when it is sitting unused on a desk. Google is claiming two times longer idle battery life on the Nexus 9 using Doze.

AnonTechie writes:

The workplace is where people go to work. But much of the day is increasingly padded out with less productive activities, writes Peter Fleming. A few years ago a disturbing story appeared in the media that seemed to perfectly capture the contemporary experience of work and its ever increasing grip over our lives: "Man Dies at Office Desk - Nobody Notices for Five Days".

The case was unnerving for one reason mainly. People die all the time, but usually we notice. Are things so bad in the modern workplace that we can no longer tell the difference between the living and the dead? Of course, the story turned out to be a hoax. An urban myth.

As it happens, each country has its own variation that still fools people when they periodically appear. In the US the dead person is a publisher. In other countries, a management consultant.

Apart from getting the actual task done, which is typically completed in short bursts, there is also a good deal of messing about, chatting, paying the bills, surfing the net, daydreaming and waiting for the day to finish. Most importantly, much of our day is spent busy being busy rather than doing things that are socially useful.

A recent study of overworked management consultants in the US found that 35% employed in this occupation actually "faked" an 80-hour work week. For various reasons these individuals pretended to sacrifice themselves on the altar of work and still got everything done.

In this respect, entire occupations might be considered phoney - from life coaches to "atmosphere co-ordinators" (people hired to create a party vibe in bars) to "chief learning officers" in the corporate world. For those economists trying to figure out the present "productivity puzzle" in the UK, best start looking here.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32829232

[Source]: http://www.city.ac.uk/news/2015/may/why-do-people-waste-so-much-time-at-the-office

takyon writes:

The Intercept reporter Lee Fang obtained emails through an Idaho public records request exposing dairy lobbyist involvement in crafting "Ag-gag" legislation. "Ag-gag" describes a class of agricultural industry anti-whistleblower legislation that now exists in several states, usually prohibiting photography and audio/visual recording:

State Sen. Jim Patrick, R-Twin Falls, said he sponsored the bill in response to an activist-filmed undercover video that showed cows at an Idaho plant being beaten by workers, dragged by the neck with chains, and forced to live in pens covered in fæces, which activists said made the cows slip, fall and injure themselves. The facility, Bettencourt Dairies, is a major supplier for Burger King and Kraft. The workers who were filmed were fired.

Introducing the bill, Patrick compared the activists behind the Bettencourt video to marauding invaders who burned crops to starve their enemies. "This is clear back in the sixth century B.C.," Patrick said, according to Al Jazeera America. "This is the way you combat your enemies." Patrick's bill was introduced on February 10, 2014, sailed through committee within days, and was signed by Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter on February 28. The legislation calls for a year in jail and fines up to $5,000 for covertly recording abuses on farms or for those who lie on employment applications about ties to animal rights groups or news organizations.

But the groundwork was laid by Dan Steenson, a registered lobbyist (pdf) for the Idaho Dairymen's Association, a trade group for the industry. Steenson testified in support of the ag-gag bill, clearly disclosing his relationship with the trade group. Emails, however, show that he also helped draft the bill. On January 30, before Sen. Patrick's bill was formally introduced, Steenson emailed Bob Naerebout, another Dairymen lobbyist, and Brian Kane, the Assistant Chief Deputy of the state attorney general's office, with a copy of the legislation. "The attached draft incorporates the suggestions you gave us this morning," Steenson wrote, thanking Kane for his help in reviewing the bill. Kane responded with "one minor addition" to the legislation, which he described to Steenson as "your draft." The draft text of the legislation emailed by Steenson closely mirrors the bill (pdf) signed into law.

AnonTechie writes:

Boffins [Scientists] that want to see Internet protocols extend to outer space – the so-called “Interplanetary Internet” – need to prove they're offering something useful, according to one of the father-figures of the Earth-bound Internet.

Vint Cerf, who has taken an interest in beyond-Earth applications for the Internet protocol stack since the 1990s, told last week's InterPlanetary Networking SIG (IPNSIG) meeting that to get beyond a mere curiosity, the SIG needs to be useful.

“Our challenge, to the extent that we're interested in serious expansion of communications capability for space exploration, is to demonstrate its utility,” Cerf told the gathering.

“It's not that anyone thinks that you should just build this interplanetary thing and hope that somebody uses it,” he added.

One possibility, for example, is that spacecraft that support these kinds of protocols could, having fulfilled their primary mission, have a longer economically-useful life if they can then become nodes in the interplanetary backbone.

And there's no doubt that there'll be a lot more data being flung around in space: last year, for example, the success of NASA's LADEE broadband experiment showed that free space optics could cook along at hundreds of megabits a second without an atmosphere to get in the way.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/27/interplanetary_network_sig/

IPNSIG presentations and videos: http://ipnsig.org/2015/05/26/speaker-presentation-materials-2015/

takyon writes:

Gameplay streaming site Twitch has banned Adults Only (AO) titles, as rated by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB):

"While the ESRB ratings apply exclusively to US titles, our policy extends to versions of these games in all territories," the company blog said. "Generally, if the US version is rated for Adults Only (18+) or has an equivalent rating in your territory, you should not broadcast that game on Twitch."

So what games cannot be streamed on Twitch? The list of AO titles can be found here and includes Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude Uncut and Uncensored, Thrill Kill, All Nude Nikki, Body Language, Riana Rouge, Manhunt 2 and several others. The list is surprisingly short.

Games previously rated AO but later rated Mature, such as Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, are allowed.

Ting Model writes:

The Economist reports that based on an analysis of census data the proportion of all women who reach their mid-40s without ever having a child has fallen, but the decline is sharpest among the best-educated women. In 1994, 35% of women with a doctoral degree aged 40 to 44 were childless; by last year, this had fallen to 20%. Their families are bigger, too. In 1994, half of women with a master’s degree had had two more or more children. By last year, the figure was 60%. Why might older, better-educated women be having more children? Partly because access to education has widened—and so women who were always going to have children are spending more time in college. Another reason is that fertility treatment has improved dramatically, and access to that, too, has widened. Older women who, in the past, wanted children but were unable to have them are now able to.

But according to demographer Philip Cohen this does not explain the entire leap. Social changes in the nature of marriage seem to be driving the change. Whereas marriage was once near-universal and unequal, in recent decades it has become a deliberate option and more equal. Well-educated women have been able to form strong relationships with similarly brainy men, in which both parents earn and both do some child care. Getting an education and having a career are no longer always a barrier to having children; sometimes, they make it easier. Also as more career-minded women have had children, they have become powerful enough to demand time off from their employers. Although America has no national system of paid maternity leave, many professional firms now offer paid maternity leave—Ernst & Young, an accountancy firm, offers 39 weeks to its employees, for example. Meanwhile poorer women have had little luck of that sort. "If I’m a lower-income woman," says Stephanie Coontz, "do I want to hitch myself to a guy who may become just another mouth to feed?”

GlennC writes:

The US website Motherboard reported two months ago that "thousands" of Uber account details were available to buy for as little as $1 each on the anonymous "dark web".

From an article at motherboard.vice.com:

Further information, including a couple of first-person accounts, are in an article at the BBC.

I know that Uber is not the only service suffering from data breaches, but given that Uber has thus far denied any breach or compromised accounts, this is yet another example of what I see as their questionable business practices.

Rich writes:

Science journalist John Bohannon, whose former work included exposing the awful quality of science journal peer reviewing, has landed a new coup. With only minor effort, as described in http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800, he tricked a significant part of mainstream media into running stories how chocolate helps with weight loss.

"Slim by Chocolate!" the headlines blared. A team of German researchers had found that people on a low-carb diet lost weight 10 percent faster if they ate a chocolate bar every day. It made the front page of Bild, Europe's largest daily newspaper, just beneath their update about the Germanwings crash. From there, it ricocheted around the internet and beyond, making news in more than 20 countries and half a dozen languages. It was discussed on television news shows. It appeared in glossy print, most recently in the June issue of Shape magazine ("Why You Must Eat Chocolate Daily," page 128). Not only does chocolate accelerate weight loss, the study found, but it leads to healthier cholesterol levels and overall increased well-being. The Bild story quotes the study's lead author, Johannes Bohannon, Ph.D., research director of the Institute of Diet and Health: "The best part is you can buy chocolate everywhere."

I am Johannes Bohannon, Ph.D. Well, actually my name is John, and I'm a journalist. I do have a Ph.D., but it's in the molecular biology of bacteria, not humans. The Institute of Diet and Health? That's nothing more than a website.

Other than those fibs, the study was 100 percent authentic. My colleagues and I recruited actual human subjects in Germany. We ran an actual clinical trial, with subjects randomly assigned to different diet regimes. And the statistically significant benefits of chocolate that we reported are based on the actual data. It was, in fact, a fairly typical study for the field of diet research. Which is to say: It was terrible science. The results are meaningless, and the health claims that the media blasted out to millions of people around the world are utterly unfounded.

After a little actual, but mostly nonsensical research operation, he had a paper accepted by a supposedly reputable journal. With the aid of a media seeding agent, the story was placed and then took its course.

takyon writes:

U.S. surveillance imagery has spotted weapons on artificial islands in the South China Sea:

The U.S. imagery detected two Chinese motorized artillery pieces on one of the artificial islands built by China about one month ago. While the artillery wouldn't pose a threat to U.S. planes or ships, U.S. officials said it could reach neighboring islands and that its presence was at odds with China's public statements that the reclaimed islands are mainly for civilian use.

"There is no military threat," a U.S. official told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. "But it is about the symbolism."

While posing no military threat to the U.S., the motorized artillery was within range of an island claimed by Vietnam that Hanoi has armed with various weaponry for some time, the American officials said. Vietnamese officials didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Chinese Embassy spokesman in Washington wouldn't comment specifically on the weaponry, but said its development work within the Spratly Islands—known by the Chinese as the Nansha Islands—was primarily civilian.

China's first white paper on military strategy [single page], published on May 26th by the State Council Information Office, reveals that China is planning to project naval power beyond its offshore borders and focus on "open seas protection." Additional BBC reporting.

ticho writes with an Ars Technica report:

At its WinHEC hardware conference in Shenzhen, China, Microsoft talked about the hardware requirements for Windows 10. The precise final specs are not available yet, so all this is somewhat subject to change, but right now, Microsoft says that the switch to allow Secure Boot to be turned off is now optional. Hardware can be Designed for Windows 10 and can offer no way to opt out of the Secure Boot lock down.

The presentation is silent on whether OEMs can or should provide support for adding custom certificates.

takyon writes:

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is teaming up with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on its Memex "deep Web" search project:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been developing tools as part of its Memex program that access and catalog this mysterious online world. Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have joined the Memex effort to harness the benefits of deep Web searching for science. Memex could, for example, help catalog the vast amounts of data NASA spacecraft deliver on a daily basis.

"We're developing next-generation search technologies that understand people, places, things and the connections between them," said Chris Mattmann, principal investigator for JPL's work on Memex. Memex checks not just standard text-based content online but also images, videos, pop-up ads, forms, scripts and other ways information is stored to look at how they are interrelated. "We're augmenting Web crawlers to behave like browsers -- in other words, executing scripts and reading ads in ways that you would when you usually go online. This information is normally not catalogued by search engines," Mattmann said.

Additionally, a standard Web search doesn't get much information from images and videos, but Memex can recognize what's in this content and pair it with searches on the same subjects. The search tool could identify the same object across many frames of a video or even different videos.

The video and image search capabilities of Memex could one day benefit space missions that take photos, videos and other kinds of imaging data with instruments such as spectrometers. Searching visual information about a particular planetary body could greatly facilitate the work of scientists in analyzing geological features. Scientists analyzing imaging data from Earth-based missions that monitor phenomena such as snowfall and soil moisture could similarly benefit. Memex would also enhance the search for published scientific data, so that scientists can be better aware of what has been released and analyzed on their topics. The technology could be applied to large NASA data centers such as the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center, which makes NASA's ocean and climate data accessible and meaningful. Memex would make PDF documents more easily searchable and allow users to more easily arrive at the information they seek. Awareness of existing publications also helps program managers to assess the impact of spacecraft data.

JPL had previously been involved with DARPA's XDATA project. Memex is inspired by a 1945 article by Vannevar Bush in The Atlantic Monthly.

An Anonymous Coward wrote in with the news that a Sleep study raises hope for clinical treatment of racism, sexism and other biases

When the desired behavior is performed, a sound is played. When the test subjects reach deep sleep, that same sound is played repeatedly. Subjects were then more likely to perform the desired behavior.

The article, "Unlearning implicit social biases during sleep" appears in the journal Science; an abstract and full report are available.

takyon writes:

Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, aka the "Dread Pirate Roberts," has been sentenced to life in prison on multiple charges by a federal judge in Manhattan. The charges he faced carried a minimum sentence of 20 years, but he received the maximum sentence of life in prison for "engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise" (The Kingpin Statute):

Ross Ulbricht, the man behind illegal online drug emporium Silk Road, was sentenced to life in prison on Friday by Judge Katherine Forrest of Manhattan's US district court for the southern district of New York. Before the sentencing the parents of the victims of drug overdoses addressed the court. Ulbricht broke down in tears. "I never wanted that to happen," he said. "I wish I could go back and convince myself to take a different path." Ulbrict was handed five sentences one of 20 year, one of 15 years, one of five and two of life. All are to be served concurrently.

Ulbrict, 31, begged the judge to "leave a light at the end of the tunnel" ahead of his sentence. "I know you must take away my middle years, but please leave me my old age," he wrote to Forrest this week. Prosecutors wrote Forrest a 16-page letter requesting the opposite: "[A] lengthy sentence, one substantially above the mandatory minimum is appropriate in this case."

Forrest rejected arguments that Silk Road had reduced harm among drug users by taking illegal activities off the street. "No drug dealer from the Bronx has ever made this argument to the court. It's a privileged argument and it's an argument made by one of the privileged," she said.

Also at Ars Technica, Wired, and The Verge. Ulbricht faces additional charges in Maryland over an alleged murder-for-hire plot.

AnonTechie writes:

Engineers have produced an alloy that springs back into shape even after it is bent more than 10 million times. "Memory shape alloys" like this have many potential uses, but present incarnations are prone to wearing out. The new material - made from nickel, titanium and copper - shatters previous records and is so resilient it could be useful in artificial heart valves, aircraft components or a new generation of solid-state refrigerators. The work appears in Science Magazine.

Memory alloys are already used in some situations, including surgical operations. A stent, for example, might be squashed into a small space and then spring into its designed shape to prop open a blood vessel. But the alloys have never entirely fulfilled their promise and entered the world of "high cycle fatigue" applications.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32886000