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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin who was considered earlier this year to be one of the two frontrunners (along with Jeb Bush) for the Republican nomination, is quitting the race, according to several news organizations ahead of a scheduled news conference. Walker created controversy in Wisconsin with his union-busting policies, making him a conservative favorite; however, he was unable to create enthusiasm for his bid on the campaign trail.

At times, Walker seemed to be both overly cautious and dangerously misinformed at the same time.

Recent polls in Iowa showed that Walker's support there has almost evaporated during the two months he's been on the campaign trail. The Iowa caucuses, scheduled for next January, is by tradition the first event of the primary season that produces party convention delegates for the winner. It was considered a must-win event for Walker, who was already fairly well known in Iowa, a state bordering Wisconsin.

takyon: Check https://soylentnews.org/my/homepage to prevent "Breaking News" nexus stories from appearing on the homepage. Or to ensure that they do.

Original Submission

GlennC writes:

John and Ed were approaching Black Rock desert on the way to Burning Man when the email arrived from a friend. "Thanks for letting us stay in your apartment this weekend!"

John looked at his husband in confusion. There must be some mistake – they had left their San Francisco apartment with their professional housesitter.

"No, it's definitely your house – your car, your wedding photos, your cats," said his friend. "We found it on Airbnb."

In what is just the latest symptom of San Francisco's overheated property market, John and Ed discovered that their housesitter had rented out their apartment while they were away, charging $2,000 for five days. Worse still, Ed had found the housesitter on TrustedHousesitters.com.

Full Story on the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/17/san-francisco-housesitter-rents-house-airbnb

Submitter's notes: No mention of how much John and Ed paid the housesitter. What's next, using Zipcar as your Uber vehicle?

Original Submission

jrmcferren writes:

PBS Reports the Exxon Ignored their own internal climate change warnings:

Despite its efforts for nearly two decades to raise doubts about the science of climate change, newly discovered company documents show that as early as 1977, Exxon research scientists warned company executives that carbon dioxide was increasing in the atmosphere and that the burning of fossil fuels was to blame.

The internal records are detailed in a new investigation published Wednesday by InsideClimate News, a Pulitzer Prize-winning news organization covering energy and the environment.

The investigation found that long before global warming emerged as an issue on the national agenda, Exxon formed an internal brain trust that spent more than a decade trying to understand the impact of rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere — even launching a supertanker with custom-made instruments to sample and understand whether the oceans could absorb the rising atmospheric CO2 levels. Today, Exxon says the study had nothing to do with CO2 emissions, but an Exxon researcher involved in the project remembered it differently in the below video [Ed: in linked story.], which was produced by FRONTLINE in association with the InsideClimate News report.

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"gewg_" writes:

Softpedia reports

Steam is the world's largest digital game distribution platform, supporting all major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux or SteamOS, Valve's own distribution derived from the acclaimed Debian GNU/Linux OS.

[...] There are approximately 6,500 titles in the Steam library. Almost all of them are being supported on the Microsoft Windows platform, a little over 2,300 have support for the Mac OS X operating system, and 1,500 titles offer support for Valve's SteamOS and any other GNU/Linux distribution out there.

[...] Even more good news: [...] Many other games will have support for the Linux platform soon, mainly because Valve will finally release its Steam Machines gaming console / personal computer in November, which will be powered by the company's Debian-based SteamOS GNU/Linux operating system.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34298363

Labs in the US states of Washington and Louisiana began "listening" on Friday for the gravitational waves that are predicted to flow through the Earth when violent events occur in space.

The Advanced Ligo facilities have just completed a major upgrade. Scientists believe this will now give them the sensitivity needed to pick up what should be a very subtle signal. The theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, one of the pioneers behind the experiment, went so far as to say that it would be "quite surprising" if the labs made no detection. "We are there; we are in the ball park now. It's clear that this is going to be pulled off," he confidently told The Documentary programme on the BBC World Service.

Gravitational waves are a prediction of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. They describe the warping of space-time that occurs when masses accelerate. But their expected weakness means only astrophysical phenomena on a truly colossal scale are likely to generate waves that will register on even the remarkable technologies assembled at Hanford in the American northwest and at Livingston in the southeast.

Sources that Advanced Ligo might observe include merging black holes and neutron stars (very dense, burnt-out stars), and, with luck, some exploding giant stars (supernovae).

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Economic inequality in the US has drawn attention to the attitudes and behaviours of the elite, as those who are educated in the top universities are both likely to start out wealthy and disproportionately likely to have an impact on the future of this country. To examine how this elite class would manage societal resources, the authors of a paper published in Science studied a group of Yale Law School students.

The findings indicate that they're more likely to make economic choices based on increasing the overall wealth of the nation rather than on increasing income equality within a nation. Thus, there's a chance we're selecting policymakers who are unlikely to address this issue.

The findings suggest that, perhaps due to their training or their disposition, the people most likely to end up making policy are less inclined than the general population to sacrifice efficiency for the sake of increased equality. This study adds a meaningful piece of data to the public discussion regarding income inequality and the factors that perpetuate it.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/09/the-elite-dont-hand-out-resources-like-the-rest-of-us/

[Abstract]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6254/aab0096

An alternative title could be "The One Percenters Don't Care About The Rest" and they have a research paper to prove it !!

Original Submission

frojack writes:

It probably wasn't keeping you up at night, nor anywhere on your list of worries. But some astronomers had predicted that Mercury would go rogue, leave its orbit and come crashing into earth in the distant future.

ScienceNews reports:

Physicist Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii lucked into SIX Weeks of uninterrupted time on a brand spanking new Cray Computer. He ran 1600 simulations of the Solar Systems future using the best planetary starting positions available.

In none of his scenarios was Earth struck by another planet. Whew! Some disagree, citing the work of Jacques Laskar, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory who ran simulations 6 years ago and found one case in which a planet hit Earth.

Both scientists agree that Mercury may be doomed, DOOMED they say. Both studies found that in roughly 1% of simulations, Mercury eventually acquired a highly elliptical orbit. In three simulations, Mercury hit the sun. And in seven other cases, it hit Venus.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Dung beetle behaviour has fascinated humans for thousands of years – including the ancient Egyptians, who incorrectly believed the beetles reproduced only from males. But Egyptian observations that the beetles' ball rolling is influenced by the sun is accurate and could be the first recorded accounts of animal behaviour.

Dung beetles evolved at least 65 million years ago, as the dinosaurs were in decline, and the mammals (and their droppings) were getting bigger. There are about 6000 species worldwide, concentrated in the tropics where they feed mainly on the dung of terrestrial vertebrates.

Dung beetles have been cleaning up the planet ever since; but what on earth do they do with all that poo? Here are the top five most interesting.

More after the break.

takyon writes:

DARPA is creating a small and cheap radiation detector that sends its data to a paired smartphone and a central server:

In the quest to make a better radiation detector, engineers at DARPA are taking a leaf from crowd-sourcing and have developed one that's small and cheap, integrates with a smartphone and sends its data to the cloud.

The gadget, on show at this week's Wait, What? conference in St. Louis, costs about $400 in volume -- significantly cheaper than existing detectors used by public safety agencies -- and provides a more accurate picture of any potential threats, said Vincent Tang, an applied physicist working for DARPA.

It works by sending a radiation reading to a companion smartphone over Bluetooth once every second. In St. Louis, attendees could borrow a phone and detector and try it out, searching for radioactive sources hidden around the room.

[...] In actual use, Tang envisions the sensors on things like public safety vehicles, constantly monitoring and reporting back levels. But that's only step one. What wasn't demonstrated in St. Louis, because the radiation sources were all safe, was that the signature of the radiation can be analyzed and its likely source determined. So, someone fresh from a nuclear medicine procedure at a hospital would be recognized but ignored by the system, while someone carrying illicit nuclear materials would set off alarm bells.

It's the first product of a DARPA program called Sigma, which is attempting to revolutionize detection and deterrent capabilities to counter nuclear terrorism. "The idea of Sigma is to try to leverage as much as possible existing commercial technology that could be applied to this area that would enable us to go from a low-volume, high-cost model to high-volume, low-cost model," Tang said.

NextBigFuture has some still images from the presentation (4:45).

Original Submission

basstard writes:

The discovery of a small community in the Dominican Republic, where some males are born looking like girls and only grow penises at puberty, has led to the development of a blockbuster drug that has helped millions of people, writes Michael Mosley, BBC.

Johnny lives in a small town in the Dominican Republic where he, and others like him, are known as "Guevedoces", which effectively translates as "penis at twelve". We came across Johnny when we were filming for a new BBC Two series Countdown to Life, which looks at how we develop in the womb and how those changes, normal and abnormal, impact us later in life. Like the other Guevedoces, Johnny was brought up as a girl because he had no visible testes or penis and what appeared to be a vagina. It is only when he approached puberty that his penis grew and testicles descended. Johnny, once known as Felicita, remembers going to school in a little red dress, though he says he was never happy doing girl things.

"I never liked to dress as a girl and when they bought me toys for girls I never bothered playing with them - when I saw a group of boys I would stop to play ball with them." When he became obviously male he was taunted at school, and responded with his fists. "They used to say I was a devil, nasty things, bad words and I had no choice but to fight them because they were crossing the line."

We also filmed with Carla, who at the seven is on the brink of changing into Carlos. His mother has seen the change coming for quite a while. "When she turned five I noticed that whenever she saw one of her male friends she wanted to fight with him. Her muscles and chest began growing. You could see she was going to be a boy. I love her however she is. Girl or boy, it makes no difference."

So why does it happen? Well, one of the first people to study this unusual condition was Dr Julianne Imperato-McGinley, from Cornell Medical College in New York. In the 1970s she made her way to this remote part of the Dominican Republic, drawn by extraordinary reports of girls turning into boys. When she got there she found the rumours were true. She did lots of studies on the Guevedoces (including what must have been rather painful biopsies of their testicles) before finally unravelling the mystery of what was going on.

More after the break.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A national team of researchers has developed a first-of-its-kind, 3D-printed guide that helps regrow both the sensory and motor functions of complex nerves after injury. The groundbreaking research has the potential to help more than 200,000 people annually who experience nerve injuries or disease.

Collaborators on the project are from the University of Minnesota, Virginia Tech, University of Maryland, Princeton University, and Johns Hopkins University.

Nerve regeneration is a complex process. Because of this complexity, regrowth of nerves after injury or disease is very rare, according to the Mayo Clinic. Nerve damage is often permanent. Advanced 3D printing methods may now be the solution.

In a new study, published today in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, researchers used a combination of 3D imaging and 3D printing techniques to create a custom silicone guide implanted with biochemical cues to help nerve regeneration. The guide's effectiveness was tested in the lab using rats.

To achieve their results, researchers used a 3D scanner to reverse engineer the structure of a rat's sciatic nerve. They then used a specialized, custom-built 3D printer to print a guide for regeneration. Incorporated into the guide were 3D-printed chemical cues to promote both motor and sensory nerve regeneration. The guide was then implanted into the rat by surgically grafting it to the cut ends of the nerve. Within about 10 to 12 weeks, the rat's ability to walk again was improved.

"This represents an important proof of concept of the 3D printing of custom nerve guides for the regeneration of complex nerve function."

Scanning and printing takes about an hour, but the body needs several weeks to regrow the nerves. McAlpine said previous studies have shown regrowth of linear nerves, but this is the first time a study has shown the creation of a custom guide for regrowth of a complex nerve like the Y-shaped sciatic nerve that has both sensory and motor branches.

"The exciting next step would be to implant these guides in humans rather than rats," McAlpine said. In cases where a nerve is unavailable for scanning, McAlpine said there could someday be a "library" of scanned nerves from other people or cadavers that hospitals could use to create closely matched 3D-printed guides for patients.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

China has successfully conducted the debut launch of its Long March-6 (Chang Zheng-6) rocket:

China initiated a new era in its space exploration with the debut of a new family of launch vehicle. The first Long March-6 (Chang Zheng-6) rocket was successfully launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, with a multi-payload cargo of 20 small satellites. Launch took place at 23:01:14.331 UTC on Saturday.

[...] The core stage consists of a single 120t-thrust YF-100 engine that burns oxygen and kerosene (LOX/Kerosene) propellant, which causes less pollution compared to the UDMH/N2O4 (nitrogen tetroxide) propellant currently in use. The Long March-6 is designed for small-load launch missions, with a sun-synchronous orbit (700km SSO) capability of 1,080 kg.

Original Submission

eof writes:

According to the Los Angeles Times, Berkeley scientists have

created a thin metamaterial that can conform to irregularly shaped objects and render them invisible in certain wavelengths of light.

For now, this cloak is exceedingly small and covers only an object about 1,300 square microns. But the device, described in the journal Science, offers a proof of concept that could potentially be scaled up in the future.

[...] The new and improved cloak is covered with nanoantennas made of tiny gold blocks of different sizes that can counteract that distortion [due to scattered wavefronts], making it seem to an observer like the light is coming from a flat surface.

In principle, the cloak could also be used to make a two dimensional object appear three dimensional. The ability to cover irregularly shaped objects is new. Unfortunately, a cloak made using this technology would be like passive camouflage, but there is hope that it can be made active. Its present metallic composition is also a drawback since "metals absorb optical wavelengths of light, they actually make what they're covering seem darker than their surroundings, which can be a dead giveaway." Currently the cloak only works for light of 730 nm.

An ultrathin invisibility skin cloak for visible light [abstract]

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab has figured out a lot of things over its thirty years of existence: it devised the electronic ink that makes e-readers possible, and the technology behind the video game Guitar Hero. Now the lab's Open Agriculture (OpenAG) initiative has its sights set on a loftier goal: how to feed the world. Here's how they're looking to do it, and why it might actually work.

Caleb Harper, who leads the OpenAG group, and his team have made have made a big bet on a box called the OpenAG food computer. It's a morass of pink LED grow lights, wires, seed trays, and, if you're there at harvest time, ready-to-pick vegetables, all housed in a structure the size of a shipping container. On my last visit, sturdy tomato plants held the most absurdly red fruit I'd ever seen. And yet, there was no soil to be seen, anywhere.

It works like this: plants are grown in plain boxes, with the stalk and fruit sprouting through the top and a tangle of wispy roots growing into the enclosed space below. The plants are fed a mist of nutrients—piped into the box at intervals controlled by a computer—that mimic what would be delivered by rich soil. The lab says their plants are two to three times more nutrient-dense, grow three to five times faster, and use 50 to 70 percent less water than conventional crops. But that's not even the most impressive thing about the OpenAG food computer.

The story goes on to describe a smaller, wine fridge-sized version called the food server, as well as how they foresee networking these together and making the technology generally available.

"In five to ten years, we foresee thousands of OpenAG food computers being used for these different purposes around the world," said Harper, who believes the project has the potential to reduce agriculture's water consumption by 98 percent, end the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, double nutrient densities in plants, and lead to better health outcomes on a massive scale.

http://luckypeach.com/how-to-feed-the-world/

[Related]: https://engineering.purdue.edu/oatsgroup/ / http://www.islandcreekfoundation.org/vision/

I am sure that this is not new. However, I still felt it was newsworthy because such initiatives could help the poorer countries provide food for their growing populations.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

AT THE END of a semester teaching an undergraduate math course a few years ago, Cornell Tech researcher and crypto professor Rafael Pass asked his students to fill out the usual anonymous online course evaluation. One of his brighter students stayed after class to ask him a question: Was the survey truly anonymous? Or could someone—a determined professor or even the university's survey service itself—dig up the identities of an individual respondent?

As a cryptographer, Pass had to confess that no, the survey wasn't cryptographically anonymous. Students had to blindly trust that the university wouldn't access their identifying information. "The data is there," Pass says he admitted.

In fact, on the web, anonymous surveys usually aren't, according to Pass and Shelat, his fellow cryptography researcher at Cornell Tech. To prevent ballot stuffing and spam responses, surveys often require a unique identifier like an email address. And the anonymity of the survey depends entirely on the survey service—or any hacker who can access its servers—choosing not to reveal the links between its supposedly anonymous responses and those identifiers.

...

So Pass and Shelat have built a free alternative called Anonize, designed to enable fully, cryptographically anonymous surveys. Their scheme promises that survey respondents can speak their minds with the assurance that it's mathematically impossible for anyone, even those with access to Anonize's servers, to identify them. And their system, which they and two other researchers presented at the IEEE Security and Privacy conference last year and have since been built into working software, still allows only a chosen group of respondents to submit answers, and only one response per person. "We set out to do these seemingly contradictory things, anonymity and accountability, without trusting a third party," says Shelat.

http://www.wired.com/2015/09/new-crypto-tool-makes-anonymous-surveys-truly-anonymous/

[Paper]: http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2014/papers/ANONIZE_c_ALarge-ScaleAnonymousSurveySystem.pdf [PDF]

Original Submission