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takyon writes:

To compete with popular live video streaming services such as Periscope and Meerkat, Facebook has debuted "Live Video" for a small percentage of U.S. iPhone users. Previously available only for celebrity accounts, the feature will allow Facebook users to broadcast to a select audience:

After letting just celebrities and journalists on its Periscope competitor for a few months, Facebook today began testing its Live streaming video broadcasting feature with average users on iOS in the U.S. What's different from Periscope is that only close friends will receive notifications about broadcasts, and afterwards, replay videos are automatically saved and remain permanently visible.

The expansion of Live is part of Facebook's push "to help friends and family feel like they're in the moment with you", according to Product Managers Vadim Lavrusik and Thai Tran.

Along the same lines, Facebook too unveiled a new sharing format which lets you post multiple photos and videos as tiles in what it calls Collages. Think of it like the multi-photo stories people could share on Facebook, but with videos too, and options to resize each white-bordered tile like in Instagram's standalone app Layout. You can see an example on Tran's Facebook profile here. Collages are coming to iOS starting today and Android next year.

Both Live and Collages show Facebook's willingness to adopt whatever sharing mediums are popular in order to stay relevant, no matter whether it's criticized for copying.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

A "useful and usable distribution of Perl 6" was released Saturday, a new Beta version of the Rakudo compiler to support the coming production release this Christmas. And there's already 467 Perl 6 modules on the new archive at proto.perl6.org (though Perl 6 will also be able to load modules written in other languages). "Perl has a huge community of avid users that continues to thrive in spite of detractors," says one developer, noting that it continues to find new user in today's world of big data in a new article reporting over one million people have downloaded ActivePerl's own Perl distribution just in 2015.

And this week saw the release of two new "Advent Calendars" of programming tips, one for Perl 5 and one for Perl 6.

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frojack writes:

Phys.Org has some super close up pictures of Pluto that just arrived from the New Horizons spacecraft.

One of the most interesting images appears to show snow drift like ice ridges in the flat frozen sections of water ice. The ridges look evenly spaced, as if drifted by wind, or amassed by accretion at the edges of a growing sheet of ice, not unlike ice flows off the Coast of Alaska

Be sure to watch the linked video: New Horizons' Best View of Pluto's Craters, Mountains and Icy Plains.

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Nollij writes:

Found this at HotHardware. From the article:

It's been discovered that some third-party heat sinks can physically damage Intel's new Skylake CPUs, along with the pins in the accompanying motherboard socket. The problem has prompted at least one cooler maker to change the design of its Socket 1151 heat sinks and it wouldn't be surprising if others soon followed suit.

The apparent issue is the substrate Intel used for its Skylake chips. A close-up shot of a Skylake CPU sitting side-by-side with a Broadwell processor shows that the substrate is noticeably thinner on Skylake, and thus prone to bending from the force that some third-party heat sinks exert. It also poses a problem for the tiny pins in the socket area of Skylake motherboards.

Sounds like something to be careful of when building that new rig. Has anyone experienced the issue?

takyon:

Update - 3:08PM: This just in from Intel...

"The design specifications and guidelines for the 6th Gen Intel Core processor using the LGA 1151 socket are unchanged from previous generations and are available for partners and 3rd party manufacturers. Intel can't comment on 3rd party designs or their adherence to the recommended design specifications. For questions about a specific cooling product we must defer to the manufacturer."

And so it would appear this is an OEM 3rd party manufacturer issue, rather than a generalized issue with the processor(s).

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Phoenix666 writes:

For John Dulac, analyst at the International Energy Agency's (IEA) Sustainable Energy Policy and Technology directorate, retrofits represent an essential part of reducing Europe's energy consumption.

"Deep energy retrofits of the existing building stock are critical to meeting a sustainable, cost-effective, low-carbon pathway for the European building sector," he says.

Dulac estimates that around 70 percent of Europe's building stock in 2050 will be composed of buildings that already exist today.

"Even if you're building hundreds of thousand of these passive-style [energy efficient] new buildings, when you're talking about 225 million existing households, it's peanuts, it's nowhere near where we need to be," he says. "So there really needs to be a drive of taking these new technologies for new constructions and translating them to low-cost technologies for existing buildings."

Dulac says that the technologies that need to be applied to existing buildings in terms of insulation, air sealing and low-emissivity, double-pane windows are typically readily available in most markets in Europe for new construction and are often highly cost effective.

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Phoenix666 writes:

A Japanese firm says it has the solution with what it describes the world's first smartphone that can be washed with soap and water.

Waterproof smartphones have been on the market for a while. But telecom company KDDI says its new "Digno rafre" phone—to be launched in Japan next week—is the only one that can withstand a soapy bath.

"Our development team washed the smartphone more than 700 times to test its durability," a company spokesman told AFP.

An online commercial aimed at proving its credentials features a child dropping the phone onto a plate of food topped with ketchup.

His mother assures her shocked family that those red globs are nothing to worry about as she soaps up the phone under a running tap.

The 21,600 yen ($175) gadget is mainly aimed at parents who want to keep their smartphones clean for their small children, a KDDI spokesman said.

Enjoy chatting while happy fresh phone.

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Phoenix666 writes:

In the mid-1800s, a railroad director, entrepreneur, and politician named Lewis Henry Morgan began visiting a largely undeveloped swath of land dotted with beaver ponds in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. What he saw amazed him: "[A] beaver district, more remarkable, perhaps, than any other of equal extent to be found in any part of North America," he wrote. "A rare opportunity was thus offered to examine the works of the beaver, and to see him in his native wilds."

[...] For years, he carefully documented how the beavers behaved and where they built their dams and ponds. Then, in 1868, Morgan published his 396-page beaver bible: The American Beaver and His Works. Folded into each copy was a map, carefully drawn by his railroad's engineers, which detailed the locations of 64 beaver dams and ponds spread over some 125 square kilometers near the community of Ishpeming.

Now, that rare map is giving researchers some new insight into just how busy beavers can be. A new survey shows that many of the dams and ponds that Morgan saw nearly 150 years ago are still there—testament to the resilience of the rodents and their ability to maintain structures over many generations.

All that remains for our energy needs to be met is to teach beavers how to install turbines.

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q.kontinuum writes:

Today, Nokia announced they sold their mapping business "HERE Maps" to a German automotive consortium consisting of Mercedes, BMW, and Audi
Sale of Maps business completed.

Although it was heavily rumoured for a while that Uber would acquire Nokia's Here Maps, a rival bid from German car manufacturers was accepted instead last August. But the consortium of BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler has just succeeded in buying the mapping service.

Now, with all of the necessary regulatory approvals out of the way, one obvious benefit to this transaction is that future German cars, including Volkswagens and other cars from brands in the group, will more than likely begin to have in-car satellite navigation systems driven by Here Maps.

Currently I know of three companies offering map data on a large scale: Google, HERE and TomTom. Additionally there is of course the open source solution, Open Street Map. The German antitrust-agency ("Bundeskartellamt") agreed on the deal on the base that map data remains accessible on fair terms to other car companies (sorry, only in German).

I would be interested to see some opinions on what this deal means for future technological development. Location based services and map data can be considered crucial for upcoming autonomous cars, where Google tries to get into the automotive business as well. Also for other services (finding nearest gasoline station, restaurant, etc.) and for social networking (alerts when friends are close by, e.g. traveling to Washington DC and receiving a notification that an old classmate/co-worker lives only two blocks away) location based services can be quite important. What do you think?

Full disclosure: I, the submitter, work for HERE Maps. I tried to write neutrally.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

At the University of Zurich, chemists have ... synthesised organometallic molecular structures endowed with individual metal atoms of iron, ruthenium or molybdenum. These designer molecules, which are only around two and a half nanometres long, are then carefully connected using two gold contacts at the IBM research lab in Rüschlikon before voltage can be applied to them.

For one of the molecule types tested, which has a molybdenum atom placed at its core, some quite remarkable properties were observed: similarly to a silicon transistor, this molecule switches back and forth between two different states, which differ by three orders of magnitude as regards their conductivity. Complex computer simulations were required in order to understand the underlying process; these were carried out by Robert Stadler and his doctoral student Georg Kastlunger at the Vienna Scientific Cluster (VSC). This allowed the mechanism to be decoded at a quantum physical level.

"Directly on the molybdenum atom there is a certain space which can be occupied by an electron," says Robert Stadler. "The amount of current that can flow through the molecule at a certain voltage depends on whether or not there is actually an electron occupying this space or not." And this in itself can be controlled. If the space is occupied, relatively little current will flow at a low voltage. At a higher voltage, however, the electron can be dislodged from its special place on the molybdenum atom. As a result, the system switches to a new state with conductivity improved by a factor of around a thousand, causing a sharp increase in the current flow. Both a switching and selection process can therefore be carried out via the two gold contacts, between which the molecule is fixed. A third electrode, as is usually required for a conventional transistor, is no longer necessary, which simplifies the wiring process significantly.
...
organic molecules with integrated metal atoms can lead the way to ultra-small switches for new storage systems; in any case, there is the potential for exciting applications, particularly since the omission of the third electrode allows for unrivalled integration densities."

The organic molecule is thought to potentially replace conventional transistors.

Field-induced conductance switching by charge-state alternation in organometallic single-molecule junctions

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takyon writes:

George Church is one of the biologists who attended the International Summit on Human Gene Editing, held from December 1-3 in Washington D.C. He believes that human aging could be cured in the near future. From the Washington Post:

Church thinks that one of the ailments he can cure is aging. When I met him early this year, in his laboratory at Harvard Medical School, where he is professor of genetics, he expressed confidence that in just five or six years he will be able to reverse the aging process in human beings. "A scenario is, everyone takes gene therapy — not just curing rare diseases like cystic fibrosis, but diseases that everyone has, like aging," he said. He noted that mice die after 2.5 years but bowhead whales can live to be 180 or 200.

So on Tuesday, I asked him if he was still on track to reversing the aging process in the next five years or so. He said yes — and that it's already happening in mice in the laboratory. The best way to predict the future, he said, is to predict things that have already happened.

For most of us lay people, what's striking here is not the way that scientists fiddle with the code of life but the mere fact that they do it at all. Awed though we may be by the skills of the experimenters, we naturally question whether this is a good idea. That's the whole point of the gene-editing summit: To find a path forward that fosters innovation but avoids crossing into ethically dubious territory. Gene-editing could be a tool for eliminating heritable diseases. But it just as easily could be used for purely cosmetic enhancements, or for something smacking of eugenics. The gravest concern is that CRISPR enables germline edits that get passed on to future generations. You're permanently changing the human species when you do that. Who calls the shots here?

Contrast Church's position with that of another biotech heavyweight, Craig Venter. Venter is focused on a "higher-quality life span" and recently said that billionaires extending their own lifespans would be "socially irresponsible". FightAging has additional discussion of the Washington Post article.

[More after the break.]

takyon writes:

Scientists at ETH Zurich identified 30 genes in the nematode C. elegans, zebrafish, and mice that have an effect on aging and lifespan:

After combing through 40,000 genes from three different organisms, scientists have identified 30 that have a big effect on aging and lifespan. Influence only one of the 30 genes and the animals stay healthier and live longer.

[...] By conducting experiments in which the mRNA of the corresponding genes were selectively blocked, the researchers pinpointed their effect on the aging process in nematodes. With a dozen of these genes, blocking them extended lifespan.

One of these genes proved to be particularly influential: the bcat-1 gene. "When we blocked the effect of this gene, it significantly extended the mean lifespan of the nematode by up to 25 percent," says Ristow.

The researchers were also able to explain how this gene works: The bcat-1 gene carries the code for the enzyme of the same name, which degrades branched-chain amino acids. Naturally occurring in food protein building blocks, these include the amino acids L-leucine, L-isoleucine, and L-valine.

When the researchers inhibited the gene activity of bcat-1, the branched-chain amino acids accumulated in the tissue, triggering a molecular signaling cascade that increased longevity in the nematodes—and extended the amount of time the worm stayed healthy.

As a measure of vitality, the researchers measured the accumulation of aging pigments, the speed at which the creatures moved, and how often the nematodes successfully reproduced. All of these parameters improved when the scientists inhibited the activity of the bcat-1 gene.

The scientists also achieved a life-extending effect when they mixed the three branched-chain amino acids into the nematodes' food. However, the effect was generally less pronounced because the bcat-1 gene was still active, which meant that the amino acids continued to be degraded and their life-extending effects could not develop as effectively.

Branched-chain amino acid catabolism is a conserved regulator of physiological ageing

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takyon writes:

Researchers are working on combining graphene with hexagonal boron nitride (known as "white graphene") in order to create flexible and transparent electronics:

A new era of electronics and even quantum devices could be ushered in with the fabrication of a virtually perfect single layer of "white graphene," according to researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

[...] ORNL's Yijing Stehle, postdoctoral associate and lead author of a paper published in Chemistry of Materials and colleagues are working on combining graphene and boron nitride in a 2-D capacitor and fuel cell prototype that are "super thin" and also transparent.

With their recipe for white graphene, ORNL researchers hope to unleash the full potential of graphene as a conductor. By combining it with white graphene as a substrate, researchers believe they can make thinner, more-flexible multilayer electronic devices.

"Imagine batteries, capacitors, solar cells, video screens and fuel cells as thin as a piece of paper," she said.

For its part, graphene on a white-graphene substrate also has several thousand times higher electron mobility than using graphene on other substrates. That feature could enable data transfers that are much faster than what is available today.

A recent theoretical study led by Rice University proposed the use of white graphene to cool electronics (see "Why 'white graphene' structures are cool"). Stehle and colleagues have made high-quality layers of hexagonal boron nitride that support that study; they believe the material can be cost-effectively scaled up to large production volumes.

The Rice process consists of standard atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition with a similar furnace, temperature and time. But Stehle describes "a more gentle, controllable way to release the reactant into the furnace and figuring out how to take advantage of inner furnace conditions."

Synthesis of Hexagonal Boron Nitride Monolayer: Control of Nucleation and Crystal Morphology [abstract]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology combined Microsoft Kinect 3D imaging data with polarized photographs in order to increase resolution 1,000-fold:

MIT researchers have shown that by exploiting the polarization of light — the physical phenomenon behind polarized sunglasses and most 3-D movie systems — they can increase the resolution of conventional 3-D imaging devices as much as 1,000 times. The technique could lead to high-quality 3-D cameras built into cellphones, and perhaps to the ability to snap a photo of an object and then use a 3-D printer to produce a replica. Further out, the work could also abet the development of driverless cars.

"Today, they can miniaturize 3-D cameras to fit on cellphones," says Achuta Kadambi, a PhD student in the MIT Media Lab and one of the system's developers. "But they make compromises to the 3-D sensing, leading to very coarse recovery of geometry. That's a natural application for polarization, because you can still use a low-quality sensor, and adding a polarizing filter gives you something that's better than many machine-shop laser scanners."

The researchers describe the new system, which they call Polarized 3D, in a paper they're presenting at the International Conference on Computer Vision in December.

[...] The researchers' experimental setup consisted of a Microsoft Kinect — which gauges depth using reflection time — with an ordinary polarizing photographic lens placed in front of its camera. In each experiment, the researchers took three photos of an object, rotating the polarizing filter each time, and their algorithms compared the light intensities of the resulting images. On its own, at a distance of several meters, the Kinect can resolve physical features as small as a centimeter or so across. But with the addition of the polarization information, the researchers' system could resolve features in the range of tens of micrometers, or one-thousandth the size. For comparison, the researchers also imaged several of their test objects with a high-precision laser scanner, which requires that the object be inserted into the scanner bed. Polarized 3D still offered the higher resolution.

Polarized 3D: High-Quality Depth Sensing with Polarization Cues

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced a Security Vulnerability Disclosure Program to deal with bugs in its recent major projects as well as with the software the organization uses:

At EFF we put security and privacy first. This means working hard at keeping our members and site visitors safe, as well as the people who use the software we develop. We also dedicate staff time to advising security researchers, maintaining resources like our Coders' Rights Project, and helping groups like Facebook improve their bug reporting policies.

Today we're following our own advice by announcing EFF's own Security Vulnerability Disclosure Program. The Disclosure Program is a set of guidelines on how to report bugs in software EFF develops, like HTTPS Everywhere or Let's Encrypt, as well as the software we use to run our sites and services. The scope of the bugs we're looking for is detailed on the Security Vulnerability Disclosure Program page, but we're not just looking for bugs in our code. Security vulnerabilities created by the specific configuration of software on EFF servers are also within the scope of this program.

Forget about cash bounties. You're looking at acknowledgment, t-shirts, complimentary EFF memberships, opportunities to meet EFF staff (based in San Francisco), and "complimentary tickets to EFF events like the Pioneer Awards for especially severe vulnerabilities."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

NPR reports EU Investigating Tax Deal Between Luxembourg, McDonald's:

European regulators have launched an investigation into Luxembourg's tax treatment of McDonald's, saying the fast-food giant's franchise office has paid virtually no taxes on franchise profits it earned in Europe and Russia since 2009.

It's the latest in a series of investigations into corporate tax avoidance schemes by the European Commission, which has also targeted Starbucks and Apple.

"A tax ruling that agrees to McDonald's paying no tax on their European royalties either in Luxembourg or in the U.S. has to be looked at very carefully under EU state aid rules," said Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who heads the European Commission's competition bureau.

Regulators say authorities in Luxembourg, where McDonald's Europe Franchising office is located, determined in March 2009 that the company should be exempt from corporate taxes because its profits were also taxed in the United States.

The company was required to submit proof every year that it actually paid US taxes on its profits, according to the statement. It stated:

"However, contrary to the assumption of the Luxembourg tax authorities when they granted the first ruling, the profits were not to be subjected to tax in the US. While under the proposed reading of Luxembourg law, McDonald's Europe Franchising had a taxable presence in the US, it did not have any taxable presence in the US under US law."

A subsequent ruling by Luxembourg in September 2009 said McDonald's no longer even had to submit proof it was paying U.S. taxes.

Since then, the company has paid no taxes on virtually all of its European income, despite hefty profits of 250 million euros in 2013 alone, the E.C. said. Investigators will determine whether this gave McDonald's an unfair advantage over its competitors, violating European law.

In a statement e-mailed to NPR, McDonald's said the allegations it paid no taxes are untrue:

"McDonald's complies with all tax laws and rules in Europe and pays a significant amount of corporate income tax. In fact, from 2010-2014, the McDonald's Companies paid more than $2.1 billion just in corporate taxes in the European Union, with an average tax rate of almost 27%.

Previously: Leaked Documents Expose Companies' Secret Tax Deals in Luxembourg
Multinationals Hiding more than USD$500 Billion from G20 Tax Collectors

Original Submission