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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

From Phys.org, copied from EPFL:

Graphene is the stuff of science fiction: the strongest material known, it also has exceptional – if not exotic – electrical properties, and possibly even beyond that. As for perovskites, their ability to convert light into electrical current has firmly placed them among the best materials for efficient solar panels.

To create such sensitive systems, Bonvin first developed a method to grow perovskite from a solution into thin nanowires directly on top of graphene sheets. This step is crucial, as the light sensitivity of the devices depends on the way the nanowires are structured; the architecture is the key to optimal photodetection.

Nonetheless, doing this is a challenge. In developing his own method, Bonvin drew from the lab's expertise in microfabrication of nanowires. The process involved high-precision machines and a lot of trial-and-error, but in the end, Bonvin saw his graphene-perovskite nanowires growing in beautiful straight lines. "The growth method is controllable, reproducible, cheap and scalable," he says excitedly. "It is ideal for large-scale processing."

Such ultra-sensitive photodetectors have multiple applications. These include night-vision systems, CT scanners, detectors used in particle accelerator experiments and even light-based quantum computing systems, which require detection of single photons. "I think our detectors can actually achieve that," says Bonvin.

Even more exotically, the detectors can be used in space telescopes, which detect weak signals from distant galaxies across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

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AndyTheAbsurd writes:

More at kurzweilai.net

Full research article: Morphological Evolution of Physical Robots through Model-Free Phenotype Development

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AnonTechie writes:

Earth Overshoot Day is the day when—according to estimates—the total combined consumption of all human activity on Earth in a year overtakes the planet's ability to generate those resources for that year.

How is it measured ? "It's quite simple," says Dr. Mathis Wackernagel of the think tank Global Footprint Network. "We look at all the resource demands of humanity that compete for space, like food, fiber, timber, et cetera, then we look at how much area is needed to provide those services and how much productive surface is available."

Here's his bottom line metaphor. Earth Overshoot Day is like the day you spend more than your salary for a year, only you are all humans and your salary is Earth's biocapacity. Ideally, Overshoot Day would come after December 31. It wasn't too far off in 1970, when it occurred on December 23. But Overshoot Day creep has kicked in ever since. August 13 is the earliest yet—four days ahead of last year's previous record.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/150813-earth-overshoot-day-earlier/

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Arthur T Knackerbracket would like a hand with this story:

One problem that prostheses present is that by lacking sensitivity, they can become damaged when exposed to objects emitting high temperatures and consequently burn the user. To avoid this, the Protesa group was given the task of designing sensors to warn prosthesis users of heat excess.

These sensors are mostly made of recyclable PET [polyethylene terephalate] material, making them lighter, but with the ability to lift up to eight kilograms, said Carlos Perez Roque, project leader and student of Engineering Mechatronics at the Technological University of Mexico (UNITEC).

"The temperature is calibrated to the human body, 35 degrees centigrade, to prevent a burn on the stump if that amount is exceeded. The sensors distributed in the hand, stump and arm of the prosthesis are connected to a device, which communicates through vibrations," he added.

When the prosthesis detects heat, it transforms thermal energy into electricity and activates the vibration motor located on the stump. Then the hand closes automatically as a protective reflex to prevent a burn.

Current sensors are 30 mm in length, and the design requires placing 15 in the hand, and another 25 along the arm to give full heat sensitivity to the prosthesis. Moreover, the price of the prosthesis ranges from 2,000 dollars just for hand and wrist to 2,500 for the entire limb.

For now, Perez Roque said, there are four prototypes that have undergone quality tests using a special bracelet placed on the arm for mobility and sensitivity of the prosthesis to be evaluated.

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AnonTechie writes:

THIS WEEKEND, A 3.3-magnitude earthquake rattled San Francisco ever so slightly. The small quake, like so many before it, passed, and San Franciscans went back to conveniently ignoring their seismic reality. Magnitude 3.3 earthquakes are clearly no big deal, and the city survived a 6.9-magnitude earthquake in 1989 mostly fine—how how much bigger will the Big One, at 8.0, be than 1989?

Ten times! As smarty-pants among you who understand logarithms may be thinking. But...that's wrong. On the current logarithmic earthquake scale, a whole number increase, like from 7.0 to 8.0, actually means a 32-fold increase in earthquake energy. Even if you can mentally do that math—and feel smug doing it—the logarithmic scale for earthquakes is terrible for intuitively communicating risk. "It's arbitrary," says Lucy Jones, a seismologist with the US Geological Survey. "I've never particularly liked it."

[Suggested New Earthquake Scale]: Seismological Review Letters

Maybe SN could suggest a better way to measure earthquakes ...

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AndyTheAbsurd writes:

Still experimental, but with a number of interesting ideas under considering. Also, take a look at the other shapes that the researches considered for Therabot before deciding on the beagle.

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Phoenix666 writes:

"We found that the small relationship between intelligence and life span was almost all genetic," said study researcher Rosalind Arden, a research associate at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
...
  Arden and her colleagues analyzed data from three long-running twin studies that all looked at sets of twins in which at least one twin had already died. One study looked at 377 pairs of male World War II-veteran twins from the United States. Another was a study of 246 pairs of twins from Sweden, and the third looked at 784 pairs of Danish twins.

In general, the researchers found, the more intelligent twin of each pair lived longer, whether the twins were fraternal or identical. But there was a much larger difference in longevity between fraternal twins, pointing to genes as the major driver of the life-span differences.

Statistically, the researchers found, lifestyle choices could explain only 5 percent of the link between intelligence and life span. The rest was genetic.

Another interesting inference to draw from the identical twins in their study is that intelligence is not purely a question of genes. If one half of the pair can be more intelligent than the other, despite sharing identical genes, then that must come down to lifestyle choices, work, and will.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket is planning what to do this weekend:

Researchers developed a protein-based, genetically encodable system that can bind water-soluble uranium with exceedingly high affinity and selectivity. This also is the first time that a protein has been designed with these characteristics using exclusively natural amino acids.

This is the first known demonstration of a bacterial system used to mine ocean-based uranium that reduces the expense while increasing the selectivity of current methods available. The overall method developed could find broad applications in sequestration and bioremediation of water-soluble uranium and similar transuranic elements. This biotechnology method could also have similar applications to other low-concentration ions in solution.

Uranium plays an important role in the search for alternative energies to fossil fuels; however, uranium resources on land are limited. The oceans are estimated to contain 1,000 times as much uranium as is buried in deposits on land, but unfortunately, the uranium in the ocean is in the form of water-soluble uranyl (UO₂ ²⁺) which is present at a very low concentration (~13.7 nM). The uranyl is bound by carbonate and other anions, with the added complication that seawater also contains various metal ions at high concentrations, making separating the uranium extremely complex.

After years of trying to find an efficient and affordable way to extract uranyl, researchers at the University of Chicago, Peking University, and Argonne National Laboratory turned to biology. There are no naturally occurring proteins known to bind uranyl, but by adapting a computational screening strategy for protein-protein interactions, a potential uranyl-binding motif was designed. The scientists used the motif to search the Protein Data Bank for proteins that could accommodate or be adapted to accommodate uranyl. One candidate in initial binding experiments showed promise and was further optimized. The engineered, thermally stable protein called Super Uranyl-binding Protein (SUP) binds uranyl tightly (Kd of 7.4 femtomolar) and with high selectivity (>10,000-fold selectivity over other metal ions). The SUP was also confirmed to contain the computationally designed structural features through examination of the protein crystal structure. This protein can repeatedly sequester 30 to 60% of the uranyl in synthetic sea water and thus provides a much needed advance in the isolation of uranyl from seawater.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

I had an interesting idea the other day that chapter one of Genesis didn't make much sense physically, but could as computer code. I wrote an R script that does accomplish this to some extent. The end result I got was impressive visually, but my code was not that faithful to the instructions. Here is how I interpreted the first two verses:

###In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
#install.packages("sphereplot")
require(sphereplot)

##Create Heavens
rgl.sphgrid(radius = 5, col.long="", col.lat="",
                        deggap = 15, longtype = "D", add = T, radaxis=F)

http://postimg.org/image/3wvx1cvpd/

##Create Earth
rgl.sphgrid(radius = 1, col.long='', col.lat='',
                        deggap = 15, longtype = "D",add = T, radaxis=F)

http://postimg.org/image/he6w4kx19/

[ED NOTE: These links go to the images output by his code, which is neat, but the image host has some ads that, while not pornographic, may not be safe for work in all settings. Use your judgement. -LaminatorX]

Arthur T Knackerbracket is feeling run-down with this story:

IT’s relationship with privacy is delicate. Corporate IT needs to take privacy fears very seriously, but if IT jumps and shouts at every tiny possible privacy invasion, we’ll have the Bot That Cried Wolf. Put another way, the best way to weaken privacy protections is to embrace so many privacy problems that none have any significance.

Am I suggesting that manufactured privacy issues are obscuring real ones? Absolutely. For proof, one needs look no further than last week’s battery brouhaha from a report that noted that websites can track people based on their batteries, skirting opt-in privacy rules that allow battery strength reports to be shared without site visitor permission. For those who bother to read the full report, its details do a wonderful job of establishing that if a site manager wants to invade someone’s privacy, that manager could do far better than peeking at energy levels.

The researchers’ argument is that battery levels — both current power levels and battery capacity — are being reported so precisely that it would function as a poor admin’s cookie, albeit an unerasable cookie. The problem is that, in this situation, precision cuts both ways. A tracking system needs to have a static element, so that the user can be recognized the next time the user shows up, even anonymously. But given that battery levels change constantly, it will often not work. The researchers counter that this could be useful in a very short time frame. Possibly, but even so, it would sharply limit how valuable a tracking mechanism it is.

More after the break.

Airbnb followed the trend of numerous internet-related and IT companies by locating a major executive presence in Dublin, Ireland. Here, Airbnb has located its European HQ. This comes on the back of considerable proliferation of Irish based 'Airbnb hosts'. Anecdotal evidence suggests a huge cross section of socio-economic groups taking the decision to become such hosts and, though not necessarily following, there would seem to be an array of standards on offer to the discerning 'guest'. For some hosts this would seem to be a lifeline, for others an entertaining frivolity to bolster pocket money...

...Airbnb having profited nicely by taking the position of middle man in all this are now, like a sleeping cow being tipped, willing to play dead and sing like the proverbial parrot regarding the private data of hosts. This would seem to fly in the face of combative stances taken by companies such as Microsoft and Google, having similar status in Ireland, in recent times.

Where does this sit on the Uber/big-data/privacy/capitalism/tax haven/governance spectrum?

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NoMaster writes:

Australia's Federal Court has refused an application from the makers of the movie Dallas Buyers Club which would have forced ISPs to hand over the details of customers who illegally downloaded the film.

The decision is a huge win for a group of ISPs—iiNet, Internode, Adam Internet, Dodo, Wideband and Amnet Broadband—which fought the application against the owners of the Oscar award-winning film, Dallas Buyers Club LLC.

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captain_nifty writes:

As reported here

Chelsea Manning, the transgender Army private convicted of leaking national security secrets, faces a hearing Tuesday for prison infractions that could result in solitary confinement.

Manning, who was intelligence analyst Bradley Manning when arrested in 2010, is charged with disrespect of a prison officer and is accused having books and magazines including Vanity Fair and Cosmopolitan, among other offenses.

Noteable from the article, it is apparently "disrespect of an officer" to request a lawyer.

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ikanreed writes:

A piece titled A.I. Astrology on Medium documents a new application available for IBM's Watson AI framework. The new application analyzes writing to build an estimation of the Big five personality index (which is a bit like Meyers-Briggs, but with more reliable results) of the writer as well as a few others. The writer of the article performed analysis on some famous figures.

You can play with the tool yourself here.

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Phoenix666 writes:

In the most stringent test yet of differences between protons and antiprotons, scientists investigated the ratio of electric charge to mass in about 6,500 pairs of these particles over a 35-day period. To keep antimatter and matter from coming into contact, the researchers trapped protons and antiprotons in magnetic fields. Then they measured how these particles moved in a cyclical manner in those fields, a characteristic known as their cyclotron frequency, which is proportional to both the charge-to-mass ratio of those particles and the strength of the magnetic field.

(Technically, the researchers did not use simple protons in the experiments, but negative hydrogen ions, which each consist of a proton surrounded by two electrons. This was done to simplify the experiments — antiprotons and negative hydrogen ions are both negatively charged, and so respond the same way to magnetic fields. The scientists could easily account for the effects these electrons had during the experiments.

The scientists found the charge-to-mass ratio of protons and antiprotons "is identical to within just 69 parts per trillion," Ulmer said in a statement. This measurement is four times better than previous measurements of this ratio.

In addition, the researchers also discovered that the charge-to-mass ratios they measured do not vary by more than 720 parts per trillion per day, as Earth rotates on its axis and travels around the sun. This suggests that protons and antiprotons behave the same way over time as they zip through space at the same velocity, meaning they do not violate what is known as charge-parity-time, or CPT symmetry.
[...]
Using more stable magnetic fields and other approaches, the scientists plan to achieve measurements that are at least 10 times more precise than what they found so far, Ulmer said.

If matter and anti-matter are mirrors of each other, and were created in equal measure by the Big Bang, then where did all the anti-matter go?

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"exec" writes:

There are fewer than fifty days until the company building the [Australian] National Broadband Network (NBN) will blast its first broadband satellite 36,000 kilometres into orbit, with a planned launch date of October 1.

Blasting off from French Guiana, an overseas region of France, the announcement will be welcome news for those on the existing interim satellite service, which has suffered from slow speeds due to congestion.

Weighing[sic] nearly 6400 kilograms, it is one of the world's largest communications satellites and is the first of two that NBN will launch into space. The second will launch later next year "to ensure there is sufficient capacity to meet the needs of users in regional and remote areas", Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in a statement.

The satellites will deliver peak download speeds of up to 25 megabits per second regardless of where people live, Turnbull said, meaning that Australians living in rural and regional areas will have access to a satellite service "much better than they currently experience".

Scheduled to launch from Guiana Space Centre in South America, Sky Muster is set to progressively deliver broadband to more than 200,000 homes and businesses in rural and remote Australia from next year.

Julia Dickinson, NBN's company's managing space systems architect, said the satellite would play a crucial role in levelling the playing field between city and bush.

"Many rural and remote Australians do not have access to a quality broadband service and continue to experience dial-up level speeds,"; she said. "Sky Muster will help deliver world-class broadband services to the bush – it will offer better opportunities for distance education online through use of video-conferencing as well as improved access for specialist telehealth applications in the home."

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/nbns-sky-muster-satellite-gets-launch-date-20150813-giy5ec.html

-- submitted from IRC