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takyon writes:

Tired of seeing [abstract only] on SoylentNews? Try searching for the title on the Library Genesis search engine.

TorrentFreak reports that the academic publishing giant Elsevier has filed a complaint in a New York District Court to attempt to shut down the Library Genesis and SciHub.org search engines:

According to Elsevier the company is losing revenue because of these sites, so in order to stem the tide the publisher has filed a complaint [PDF] at a New York federal court hoping to shut them down.

"Defendants are reproducing and distributing unauthorized copies of Elsevier's copyrighted materials, unlawfully obtained from ScienceDirect, through Sci-Hub and through various websites affiliated with the Library Genesis Project," the complaint reads. "Specifically, Defendants utilize their websites located at sci-hub.org and at the Libgen Domains to operate an international network of piracy and copyright infringement by circumventing legal and authorized means of access to the ScienceDirect database," it adds.

According to Elsevier, the websites access articles by using unlawfully obtained student or faculty access credentials. The articles are then added to the "pirate" library, backed up on their own servers.

Tom Allen, President of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), informs TF that websites such as Libgen pose a threat to the quality of scientific publications, as well as the public health. "Scholarly publishers work to ensure the accuracy of the scientific record by issuing corrections and revisions to research findings as needed; Libgen typically does not," Allen says. "As a result, its repository of illegally obtained content poses a threat to both quality journal publishing and to public health and safety."

The court has yet to decide whether the injunctions should be granted, but considering outcomes in recent piracy cases there's a good chance this will happen. For the time being, however, the Libgen and Sci-hub websites remain online.

AnonTechie writes:

For the first time ever a computer has managed to develop a new scientific theory using only its artificial intelligence, and with no help from human beings.

Computer scientists and biologists from Tufts University programmed the computer so that it was able to develop a theory independently when it was faced with a scientific problem. The problem they chose was one that has been puzzling biologists for 120 years. The genes of sliced-up flatworms are capable of regenerating in order to form new organisms -- this is a long-documented phenomenon, but scientists have been mystified for years over exactly what happens to the cells to make this possible.

By presenting the computer with this problem, however, it was able to reverse engineer a solution that could explain the mechanism of the process, known as planaria. The details discovered by the computer have been published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, along with the artificial intelligence method used to develop the theory.

The significant thing that the two researchers Daniel Lobo and Michael Levin were hoping to discover was not how new tissue is generated, but how it knows what shape and proportions to grow in. That sacred information is locked away in our genes.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-06/05/computer-develops-scientific-theory-independently

takyon writes:

A team of researchers has inserted approximately 20 billion nanoparticles into the brains of mice. According to the abstract, about 10 µg of CoFe₂O₄–BaTiO₃ 30-nm nanoparticles were injected into the tail veins of mice, and then forced to cross the blood-brain barrier using a magnetic field:

Sakhrat Khizroev of Florida International University in Miami and his team inserted 20 billion of these nanoparticles into the brains of mice. They then switched on a magnetic field, aiming it at the clump of nanoparticles to induce an electric field. An electroencephalogram showed that the region surrounded by nanoparticles lit up, stimulated by this electric field that had been generated.

"When [magnetoelectric nanoparticles] are exposed to even an extremely low frequency magnetic field, they generate their own local electric field at the same frequency," says Khizroev. "In turn, the electric field can directly couple to the electric circuitry of the neural network."

Khizroev's goal is to build a system that can both image brain activity and precisely target medical treatments at the same time. Since the nanoparticles respond differently to different frequencies of magnetic field, they can be tuned to release drugs.

"When [they are] injected in the brain, we can 'see' the brain and if necessary, we can release a specific drug inside a specific neuron on demand," says Khizroev. His team has already shown that the particles can be used to carry and release an anti-HIV drugs, as well as the cancer drug paclitaxel.

Although beyond the scope of current research, Khizroev's nanoparticle system may offer a new way to interact with computers. He hasn't tried it yet, but he says running it in reverse, so that the nanoparticles produce a measurable magnetic field in response to the brain's own electrical fields, is possible. Our brain states would then become input parameters for computers, which would be able to directly stimulate specific regions of the brain in return.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Ed Mazza writes that Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum says he loves Pope Francis, but he wants the pontiff to stop talking about climate change and "leave science to the scientists." Santorum's comments come as the Pope, who holds a degree as a chemical technician and worked as a chemist before turning to the priesthood, has become increasingly vocal about climate change. "The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists," says Santorum, "and focusing on what we're really good at, which is theology and morality, When we get involved with political and controversial scientific theories, I think the church is not as forceful and credible."

But Santorum's not a scientist either so using Santorum's own logic why is Santorum more qualified than the Pope to discuss climate change? "I guess the question would be, if he shouldn't talk about it, should you?" asked Chris Wallace of Fox News. "Politicians, whether we like it or not, people in government have to make decision with regard to public policy that affect American workers," answered Santorum, adding that while "the pope can talk about whatever he wants to talk about," he questions the Pope's use of his moral authority to combat the issue of climate change.. Santorum — a devout Catholic — disagrees with the Pope's stance that climate change is man-made and has often called climate science "political science," arguing that a scientific consensus on climate change underscores this point. "All of this certainty, which is what bothers me about the debate, the idea that science is settled," says Santorum. "Any time you hear a scientist say science is settled, that's political science, not real science."

ticho writes:

We've previously covered the Lightsail projects tribulations... Now there is better news.

Washington Post reports:

Since launching on May 20, the Planetary Society's solar sail prototype -- called LightSail and inspired by an idea Carl Sagan championed decades ago -- hasn't exactly had smooth seas.

A glitch made the tiny satellite holding the folded sail unreachable from Earth for a time. Even after communications were re-established, it took days to get the spacecraft to do the one thing it was sent up to do -- deploy its sail, proving that a propulsion system thinner than human hair could be packed away and unfurled safely in space.

On June 7, the Planetary Society reports, the sail finally unfurled.

Original announcement straight from Planetary Society can be found here.

TWX writes:

In NASA's bid to land increasingly heavy payloads on Mars they've had to reinvent the parachute, and helping test these new designs is the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator, or LDSD. The flat disc platform is lifted by balloon from the island of Kauai in Hawaii, then spin-stabilized and launched into the upper atmosphere to re-enter and test parachutes at air pressures and other conditions most like those on Mars. The second test is scheduled for June 8, 2015, around 1:30pm EST for initial balloon lift, with rocket burn and parachute test approximately three hours later. Should be quite the video if it goes anything like the first launch did.

UPDATE1: The full 4 hour Youtube video is now available for viewing.

UPDATE2: NASA's blog site reports:

Two experimental decelerator technologies – a supersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator and a supersonic parachute – were tested. The supersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator deployed and inflated. The supersonic parachute also deployed; however, it did not perform as expected. Data were obtained on the performance of both innovative braking technologies, and the teams are beginning to study the data.

Apple announced several products and updates Monday at its World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC).

An Anonymous Coward wrote in with news of Apple's OS X 10.11 "El Capitan":

The next version of OS X, Apple's laptop and desktop operating system, has been announced at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference! Its version number is 10.11, and its moniker is "El Capitan," in reference to the superb and truly American El Capitan rock formation at America's premiere national park, the Yosemite National Park.

Details are still coming in, but it's expected to include updates to Safari, Mail and Spotlight. Metal for Mac will combine the "computing power of OpenCL and graphics power of OpenGL into a new API that does both." It's expected to be available in public beta starting this July, with the final public release coming in the fall. This is an important release of OS X that Mac users worldwide are looking forward to.

ghost sent in two submissions to tell us that Apple will open source the Swift programming language:

In today's WWDC keynote, Apple announced that Swift (the programming language from last year's WWDC) will be open sourced sometime later this year. They specifically noted Linux support but neglected to mention *BSD or Windows. (LLVM, the back-end behind Swift and clang, supports *BSD and Windows). Reactions from Open Source advocates were tempered, as they noted the source code has not yet been released, nor has the license been announced.

The Swift Blog has been updated with information about new features and the open source efforts: Swift source code will be released under an OSI-approved permissive license. Contributions from the community will be accepted — and encouraged. At launch Apple intends to contribute ports for OS X, iOS, and Linux. Source code will include the Swift compiler and standard library. Apple thinks "it would be amazing for Swift to be on all your favorite platforms".

jdccdevel writes:

Airbus, which leads production of the Ariane rocket, has a new re-usable rocket concept called Adeline.

The BBC explains:

The firm's engineers believe the basic Adeline idea could be incorporated into any liquid-fuelled launcher, however big or small.

It takes the form of a winged module that goes on the bottom of the rocket stack.

Inside are the main engines and the avionics - the high-value parts on all rockets.

The module would be integral to the job of lifting the mission off the pad in the normal way, but then detach itself from the upper-stages of the rocket once the propellants in the tanks above it were exhausted.

The Adeline module's next step would be re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. For this, it would have a protective heat shield on its bulbous nose.

At a certain point in the descent, Adeline would pull up using its small winglets, and steer itself towards a runway.

Small deployable propellers would aid control as it essentially operated like a drone to find its way home.

Spacenews.com elaborates:

Herve Gilibert, technical director for Airbus’ Space Systems division, said the Adeline propulsion unit — engine and avionics — is where lies most of the value of the first stage. The Airbus team concluded that SpaceX’s design of returning the full stage to Earth could be simplified by separating the propulsion bay from the rest of the stage, protecting the motor on reentry and, using the winglets and turbofans, return horizontally to a conventional air strip.

“We are using an aerodynamic shield so that the motor is not subjected to such high stress on reentry,” Gilibert said. “We need very little fuel for the turbofans and the performance penalty we pay for the Ariane 6 launcher is far less than the 30 percent or more performance penalty that SpaceX pays for the reusable Falcon 9 first stage.

It sounds like they're planning on modifying the Ariane 6 (set to fly for the first time in 2020) to use this technology at some point, but not right away. They expect it will reduce launch costs by a projected 20 to 30 percent.

tonymercmobily writes:

One upon a time, movies were released in different countries at different times. This could be done because there was no easy way to copy and store away a movie. If you lived in Italy, you could wait up to two years before you saw a popular movie. Then two things happened: it became easy to copy and store movies; and everybody in the world suddenly became interconnected. The regional segregation has ended: the only ones to believe that it's still there are the dinosaurs from a past era.

AnonTechie writes:

The New York Times has published an interesting article about Hacking as a business:

In 2011, two Dutch hackers in their early 20s made a target list of 100 high-tech companies they would try to hack. Soon, they had found security vulnerabilities in Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter and 95 other companies’ systems.

They called their list the Hack 100.

When they alerted executives of those companies, about a third ignored them. Another third thanked them, curtly, but never fixed the flaws, while the rest raced to solve their issues. Thankfully for the young hackers, no one called the police.

Now the duo, Michiel Prins and Jobert Abma, are among the four co-founders of a San Francisco tech start-up that aims to become a mediator between companies with cybersecurity issues and hackers like them who are looking to solve problems rather than cause them. They hope their outfit, called HackerOne, can persuade other hackers to responsibly report security flaws, rather than exploit them, and connect those “white hats” with companies willing to pay a bounty for their finds.

In the last year, the start-up has persuaded some of the biggest names in tech — including Yahoo, Square and Twitter — and companies you might never expect, like banks and oil companies, to work with their service. They have also convinced venture capitalists that, with billions more devices moving online and flaws inevitable in each, HackerOne has the potential to be very lucrative. HackerOne gets a 20 percent commission on top of each bounty paid through its service.

ticho writes:

Several years ago, while doing research for a school project, a group of MIT students realized that, for a few days every three months or so, the most reliably lucrative lottery game in the country was Massachusetts' Cash WinFall, because of a quirk in the way a jackpot was broken down into smaller prizes if there was no big winner. The math whizzes quickly discovered that buying about $100,000 in Cash WinFall tickets on those days would virtually guarantee success. Buying $600,000 worth of tickets would bring a 15%–20% return on investment, according to the New York Daily News.

When the jackpot rose to $2 million, the students bought in, dividing the prize money among group members. But they didn't stop there; they were so successful in their caper that they were eventually able to quit their day jobs and bring in investors to front the money they needed to purchase the requisite number of lottery tickets.

takyon writes:

The World Health Organization expects cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) to spread in South Korea. 200 primary schools are being closed and 1,300 people have been quarantined:

Health officials announced Wednesday [3 June] that five more people had been diagnosed, bringing the total infected with the virus to 30. Two patients have died. That makes the outbreak the largest outside the Arabian Peninsula, where the disease emerged in 2012. The virus, which primarily causes flu-like symptoms such as fever and cough, kills an estimated three to four out of every 10 patients infected.

The situation in South Korea has alarmed the global health community because the virus has spread so fast and wide from a single individual. Other countries have imported cases in the same manner but the virus infected only a few others.

How did MERS get to South Korea and why is it spreading so fast?

The first known case, called an "index" case, was reported on May 20. It involved a 68-year-old man who was returning from a 16-day business trip to four Middle Eastern countries. The man was asymptomatic during his return flight but was subsequently treated at two different out-patient clinics and two hospitals which created a lot of opportunities for the virus to spread. Health care workers did not suspect the man of having MERS so he was not put in isolation.

Others who have been infected include health care workers, other patients, family members and visitors. The World Health Organization reported that some of the cases were patients in the same room or ward as the man, and that their exposure may have been from 5 minutes to a few hours.

Two recent cases represent an alarming development — a third generation of transmission. That is, a patient who did not have contact with the index patient but came into contact with an intermediary who had been exposed to the virus. "That raised fears that infections could now spread exponentially from all people who test positive," Korea's JoongAng Daily reported.

The BBC is announcing the sixth Mers-related death in S Korea and outlining the containment strategy being adopted by the government.

A sixth person has died after contracting Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers) in South Korea, amid a sharp rise in infections.

More than 23 people were confirmed to have contracted the disease on Sunday, bringing the total to 87, health officials say.

[...] About 2,300 people have been placed under quarantine and nearly 1,900 schools have been closed.

Phoenix666 writes:

Atlanta IP lawyer Sanford Asman isn't happy that CaseRails CEO Erik Dykema won't hand his company's name over to him—in fact, he's filed a trademark lawsuit over it, just as he said he would last month.

Asman believes that CaseRails is infringing his trademark rights to CaseWebs and CaseSpace, two websites that house his own litigation-management software. In fact, Asman believes any Web-based legal software with "case" in its name should be under his purview.

But even worse than having "Case" in his company's name, Dykema made the mistake of daring to discuss the ordeal with Ars Technica. And to Asman, the interview was pure defamation.

In an amended complaint (PDF), Asman maintains Ars' May 22 story about his case led to "numerous (unsuccessful) attempts to infiltrate" his websites, casewebs.com and casespace.com. And there's more:

Defendants Dykema, Zeller, and CaseRails... encouraged that website to publish derogatory comments as to Asman, and such publication did, in fact, take place, whereby, inter alia, (1) Asman was referred to as "Ass man"; (2) one of the readers of the blog apparently registered the domain "sanfordasman.com" and is using it to link to another website (namely, "The Scuzz Feed" which appears under the url, "sanfordasman.com") that Asman does not sponsor or endorse.

Writing "Ass Man" in a comment section isn't just mean talk on the Internet—to Asman, it's legally actionable defamation, and his lawsuit wants Dykema and CaseRails co-founder Kyle Zeller to pay.

[Editor's Comment: This looks like the second Atlanta-based IP lawyer to sue/to have sued EFF - the previous we reported here .]

Yog-Yogguth writes:

Icelandic Össur Technology announces that they have successfully made and installed subconsciously controlled prosthetic lower legs, ankles, and feet for two amputees and are preparing large-scale clinical trials. They hope to have such artificial legs (requiring surviving thighs) widely commercially available within three to five years. The company previously won the 2005 'Best of What's New' Popular Science magazine award for their artificial knee.

The legs use implants called myoelectric sensors (IMES Implanted MyoElectric Sensor) provided by the Alfred Mann Foundation from the United States. It's a bit unclear why Össur claims to be first as IMES have previously been used to trigger prosthetic leg movement by the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago but it seems that Össur are the first to have amputees using such artificial legs, from the Popular Science article:

The IMES are surgically implanted in residual muscle tissue and connected to a receiver in the prosthetics, the signaling is continuous, immediate/real-time, and subconscious or instinctual (in addition to deliberate) in the same manner as with ordinary leg use.

The story has also been reported by RT which has some different images of the devices.

kaszz writes:

British airlines is accused of exposing cabin crew to breathing in fumes mixed with engine oil and other toxic chemicals like TCP, an organophosphate known to be dangerous to human health in high enough quantities. But the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says incidents of smoke or fumes on planes are rare and there is no evidence of long-term health effects.

Safety reports submitted to the CAA show that between April 2014 and May 2015 there were at least 251 separate incidents of fumes or smoke inside a large passenger jet operated by a British airline.

Pilot Richard Westgate died in December 2012, aged 43, after complaining of long-term health problems. The coroner said the body "disclosed symptoms consistent with exposure to organophosphate compounds in aircraft cabin air". A similar case is 34-year-old Matthew Bass who died in 2014.

Time to pack a gas mask when flying?