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takyon writes:

Deadlines in the competition to build a functional "medical tricorder" have been extended, and some requirements have been altered:

Today, XPRIZE announced the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE has been officially extended through early 2017, providing the seven finalist teams with additional time to make adjustments to their tricorder devices to ensure they can succeed in the competition.

[...] In addition, we modified some parameters of the competition and implemented some interim required steps before the next phase of consumer testing. Here is a snapshot of the revised guidelines and timeline:

• The number of conditions the tricorders are expected to diagnose was decreased from 16 to 13, eliminating the requirements to detect TB, Hepatitis A and stroke. (You can see the full list of required conditions here.) We did this to keep pace with current epidemiology, as well as to reduce risk of contagion to the testers.
• The teams will deliver at least 30 new prototypes once they accomplish additional steps. The deadline for these prototypes will be set early next year.
• The next phase of consumer testing will begin in September 2016
• Winners will be announced in early 2017.

This new schedule will allow us to support the teams as they further perfect their tricorders, and will ensure their prototypes are tested and viable before they enter the final phase of the competition.

Previously: The Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE Top Ten
The Race to Build a Real-Life Version of the "Star Trek" Tricorder
Ocean Discovery X Prize Competition for Mapping the Sea Floor, Sponsored by Shell

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Phoenix666 writes:

We're now treating [a new bone found] as part of a separate group, distinct from the bones from Red Deer Cave, or Maludong, and one that we now think is indeed very likely to be a hybrid. And direct dating on human bone now confirms that the specimen is only 10,500 years old.

If we're correct, then either there were archaic humans still around at that time in Southwest China who interbred with modern humans, or their hybrid features persisted longer after interbreeding occurred because of isolation and perhaps through the action of natural selection or genetic drift.

Our study published this week outlines detailed work on a thigh bone or femur from Maludong, located only 6km Southwest of the city of Mengzi, near the Northern Vietnam border.

Like the skull bones from the site, it is also dated to about 14,000 years old. But unlike them, it provides a much clearer indication of what at least some of the Red Deer Cave people bones might be.

Our work shows that the thigh bone strongly resembles very ancient species like early Homo erectus or Homo habilis, which lived around 1.5 million years ago or more in Africa.

Like these pre-modern humans, the Maludong femur is very small. The shaft is narrow, with the outer layer of the shaft (or cortex) very thin, the walls of the shaft are reinforced (or buttressed) in areas of high strain, the femur neck is long, and the place of muscle attachment for the primary flexor muscle of the hip (the lesser trochanter) is very large and faces strongly backwards.

A new contender to join the ranks of Denisovans and Homo floresiensis, the hobbit-like people, as sub-species of humans.

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FakeBeldin writes:

Rightscorp, a copyright enforcement company, won a $17 million verdict against ISP Cox. The reason?

Under the USA's DMCA, there's something called "safe harbor": ISPs have to take action against copyright infringement if they are notified of it. If you're aware, you're required to care. Do that and you're not liable for any copyright infringement perpetrated by those who use your services.

Actions can range up to terminating internet access for copyright infringement. They did for some users of Cox. However, an internal memo reads:

The judge didn't think that "DMCA termination = cut off, give stern talking to, reactivate" was in the spirit of the law. Therefore, he ruled that Cox did not satisfy the requirements of "safe harbor", and thus is liable for the infringements of its users.

[opining away]
Frankly, I have to agree - I might disagree with the law, sure. But where the law writes "termination", it doesn't mean "stern talking to".

I do not have a good definition of "termination" - keeping people permanently off the internet would not be justified in my opinion. But after repeatedly violating laws and being warned about that, and that the next time severe consequences would emerge, a cut until the first phone call is insufficient. Does the DMCA say anything at all about that?

And what do you guys think?

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Stepping into the world of NAS

Thesis writes:

After many years of accumulating family photos, videos, and other digital files, I decided to purchase a NAS to centralize my storage needs. I researched many different brands and prices. In the end I purchased a QNAP TVS-871 and populated it with three WD 4TB Red NAS drives in a RAID 5 configuration to start. It may be overkill for a home user such as myself, but I felt that it gave me the most bang for the buck, and allows me plenty of room to grow and learn. Hopefully, it will last me for many years to come. Yes, this is not being used as a backup, and I do have an off-site backup plan.

I do realize that many of you, who are certainly more tech savvy than myself, have more than likely built a home-brew NAS. This was simply the easiest way for a NAS noob such as myself to have something as close to plug-n-play as I could get. So my questions for the community:

1. Any general advice or tips that a NAS noob should know?

2. How do you manage your multimedia files? Is there any particular programs or folder structure you recommend for managing these files for easy viewing?

3. Do you have any other recommendations, thoughts, or experiences you wish to share with others who may be thinking of getting a NAS for home or small office use?

Re: Stepping into the world of NAS

cafebabe writes:

Don't use RAID5 because large qualities of data can be silently corrupted.

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Phoenix666 writes:

[Jacob] Haqq-Misra is a researcher at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, and he recently published an essay titled "The Transformative Value of Liberating Mars" in which he argues Mars should be totally independent from the very start. "With Mars, it seems like there's the potential to do something different with civilisation from what we've already done," he told me.

The idea is simple. Instead of having the humans who land and live on Mars answer back to their home planet's companies and institutions, they should be given total independence. To ensure this independence, Haqq-Misra outlines five provisions of liberation.

First, humans who land on Mars relinquish their Earthly citizenship. They are Martians now, not Earthlings. Second, governments, companies and people on Earth cannot interfere with the politics or economics of Mars. That means no coercive trading, no economic meddling, no backdoor deals for goods or services. Third, scientific exploration of Mars can continue as long as it doesn't interfere with whatever civilisation is developing independently. Fourth, land use on Mars must be determined by Martians. And Fifth, anything that was brought from Earth to Mars is now Martian, and Earthlings can't ask for it back.

Haqq-Misra's friends call him "Kuato."

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HughPickens.com writes:

We've all said "just one more episode before bed" to ourselves only to fall asleep halfway through while Netflix kept playing. It's frustrating to try to put the pieces back together the next day as you attempt to determine what you last saw before you dozed off -- and Netflix feels your pain. Now Nathan McAlone writes at Business Insider that Netflix has built socks that read your body to understand when you fall asleep, and then automatically pause your Netflix show.

The sleep detection socks uses an accelerometer to tell when you've stopped moving for a while (presumably when you've fallen asleep). In the socks prototype, an LED light in the cuff of the sock begins to flash red when you've been immobile, letting you know it is about to pause your show. If you move at all, it cancels the countdown. Netflix released a detailed parts list, including where you can purchase each item needed, as well as schematics you can follow as you build out the electronics. The company even put together the basic code you'll need to use to program the electronics, though you'll need to find your TV's IR signals to make it work. The knitting process for the socks doesn't seem too difficult (if you already know how to knit, of course), and Netflix offers a handful of patterns based on the company's popular shows -- including "BoJack Horseman," "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," "Bloodline," "Master of None" and "House of Cards."

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cmn32480 writes:

This evening, December 20, 2015, SpaceX will be launching the upgraded Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral with 11 Orbcomm communications satellites.

SpaceX's live webcast begins at 8:05 p.m. EST (0105 GMT), less than a half-hour before the Falcon 9's scheduled launch time of 8:29 p.m. EST (0129 GMT) with 11 communications satellites for Orbcomm.

Live updates, and the stream of the launch are available at SpaceflightNow.com

From the SpaceflightNow article (separate from the live stream):

SpaceX says Sunday is the target launch date for the first launch of a remodeled version of its Falcon 9 rocket, and the launcher's first mission since a June failure, after completing a practice countdown and engine ignition test Friday.

The mission's firsts, including a possible landing attempt for the Falcon 9's first stage, make it a critical launch for SpaceX as the company simultaneously resumes flying its fully-booked manifest, debuts a new generation Falcon booster, and continues a lengthy research and development initiative into rocket reusability.

Sunday's launch attempt is timed for 8:29 p.m. EST (0129 GMT Monday) from Cape Canaveral's Complex 40 launch pad.

Sources said only an instantaneous launch opportunity is available Sunday due to restrictions imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration, which may be hesitant to re-route holiday week air traffic around the Cape Canaveral launch base for several hours in case of launch delays.

Phoenix666 writes:

One of the fastest growing but barely covered areas in the sports industry is facility operators' gradual movement from old fashion metal halide lighting to state-of-the-art LED (Light Emitting Diode) lighting. It was once believed that lighting large venues with LED was an impossibility. In 2015, an estimated 90% of facility operators who installed a new lighting system chose LED .

Sports teams are choosing to make the switch to LED for a variety of reasons, including the immense savings on energy costs. According to LED lighting company Ephesus, facilities that convert from metal halide systems to its product save 75-85% on overall energy costs.

In 2012, the War Memorial Arena in Syracuse, New York (home of the AHL's Syracuse Crunch) reduced its power usage from 263,000 kilowatts to roughly 32,000 kilowatts by switching to LED. An 87% reduction in energy usage equates to real savings.

Demand destruction for electricity continues.

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takyon writes:

Air travel from the United States to Cuba, and in particular Havana, may see a massive increase as the result of a new deal between the two countries:

The United States and Cuba have struck a deal to allow as many as 110 regular airline flights a day, allowing a surge of American travel to Cuba that could eventually flood the island with hundreds of thousands more U.S. visitors a year, officials said Thursday on the anniversary of detente between the Cold War foes.

The deal reached Wednesday night after three days of talks in Washington opens the way for U.S. airlines to negotiate with Cuba's government for 20 routes a day to Havana and 10 to each of Cuba's other nine major airports, the State Department said. While it will likely take months before the first commercial flight to Havana, the reestablishment of regular aviation to Cuba after half a century will almost certainly be the biggest business development since the two countries began normalizing relations last year.

Even a fraction of the newly allowed number of flights would more than double current U.S. air traffic to Cuba but it may take years to reach that number. U.S. travel to Cuba has risen by more than 50 percent this year alongside an even great surge in travel from other countries, overwhelming the country's outmoded tourist infrastructure.

Havana Times has an op-ed marking the year after President Obama and Raul Castro's statements on normalizing relations.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Since it landed more than three years ago in a 96-mile-wide depression known as Gale Crater, Curiosity has made a number of discoveries, notably that the crater once held lakes of fresh water. For most of that time, the rocks it encountered were generally basaltic, a volcanic composition typical on Mars.

"Now in the recent few months, that has changed," Ashwin R. Vasavada, the project scientist for the mission, said at a news conference on Thursday at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, where researchers were presenting some of their newest results.
...
Each layer of sedimentary rock tells something about the geological conditions at the time the rock formed, meaning that Curiosity, which arrived at the base of the mountain in September 2014, is in a sense moving forward through the geological history of Mars as it climbs.

What has caught the attention of Dr. Vasavada and his colleagues lately is silica, a class of minerals made of silicon and oxygen. The evidence points to the action of liquid water even after the lakes disappeared.

"Groundwater passed through the rock multiple times, leaving different chemical signatures behind," Dr. Vasavada said.

Basalt is generally half silica. Curiosity has been examining two rock units: one a mudstone of lake bed deposits, among the oldest rocks the rover will examine, and the other a sandstone of coarse grains that were blown in and draped onto the mountain. "It probably is among the youngest rocks we'll encounter on the mission," Dr. Vasavada said.

In the mudstone and the sandstone, Curiosity found much higher levels of silica, up to 90 percent more than it had observed previously in basaltic rocks.

More silica means a greater, longer presence of water, which in turn improves the chances for life having developed on Mars.

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takyon writes:

Scientists at ETH Zurich's Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering have created a "molecular prosthesis" capable of treating symptoms of psoriasis:

Gene circuits created in the past typically monitored only whether a metabolic molecule A was present in their environment; if so, they produced a metabolic molecule X as a response. The new, more complex circuit can detect two molecules, A and B, simultaneously, and only if both are present does it produce the molecules X and Y. "We have used cellular components to build an AND logic gate, as is familiar in electronics and without which computers could not function," says Fussenegger. When researchers implanted a circuit with an AND gate of this kind into mice, the circuit was able to successfully suppress phases of psoriasis in the mouse model. The new molecular prosthesis uses the language by which immune cells in the body communicate with one another: the language of the numerous messenger molecules that the immune cells can both produce and detect.

The different cells of the immune system are involved in two ways during a psoriasis phase: first, they are responsible for triggering an inflammatory response by increasing the production of various messengers, including those referred to as TNF and IL-22. Second, at a later point, they produce a series of messengers that cause the inflammation to fade away again, among them IL-4 and IL-10. The circuit developed by the ETH researchers can detect the inflammatory molecules TNF and IL-22. If (and only if) these two messengers are present simultaneously, the circuit produces the anti-inflammatory molecules IL-4 and IL-10. "In this way, our molecular prosthesis helps the immune system to suppress the inflammatory response," explains Fussenegger.

The scientists took tiny porous capsules made of algal gelatine and encased 200 cells of a human cell line with this gene circuit in each capsule. They then injected 6,000 of these minute capsules into the abdomens of mice. New blood vessels formed naturally and connected the capsules to the bloodstream. Using a medicine, the scientists triggered an inflammatory response, similar to psoriasis, in the skin of the mice. They then compared the mice into which 'designer cell capsules' had been implanted with those without capsules. Only the latter showed symptoms of inflammation. The implant suppressed the inflammatory disease successfully.

Implantable synthetic cytokine converter cells with AND-gate logic treat experimental psoriasis (DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aac4964)

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Wearable technologies are today on the rise, becoming more common and broadly available to mainstream users. In fact, wristband and armband devices such as smartwatches and fitness trackers already took an important place in the consumer electronics market and are becoming ubiquitous. By their very nature of being wearable, these devices, however, provide a new pervasive attack surface threatening users privacy, among others.
In the meantime, advances in machine learning are providing unprecedented possibilities to process complex data efficiently. Allowing patterns to emerge from high dimensional unavoidably noisy data.

The goal of this work is to raise awareness about the potential risks related to motion sensors built-in wearable devices and to demonstrate abuse opportunities leveraged by advanced neural network architectures.

The LSTM-based implementation presented in this research can perform touchlogging and keylogging on 12-keys keypads with above-average accuracy even when confronted with raw unprocessed data. Thus demonstrating that deep neural networks are capable of making keystroke inference attacks based on motion sensors easier to achieve by removing the need for non-trivial pre-processing pipelines and carefully engineered feature extraction strategies. Our results suggest that the complete technological ecosystem of a user can be compromised when a wearable wristband device is worn.

The link to download the PDF of the original study is here.

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Teckla writes:

False beliefs and wishful thinking about the human experience are common. They are hurting people — and holding back science.

[...] These myths often blossom from a seed of a fact — early detection does save lives for some cancers — and thrive on human desires or anxieties, such as a fear of death. But they can do harm by, for instance, driving people to pursue unnecessary treatment or spend money on unproven products. They can also derail or forestall promising research by distracting scientists or monopolizing funding. And dispelling them is tricky.

Scientists should work to discredit myths, but they also have a responsibility to try to prevent new ones from arising, says Paul Howard-Jones, who studies neuroscience and education at the University of Bristol, UK. "We need to look deeper to understand how they come about in the first place and why they're so prevalent and persistent."

Some dangerous myths get plenty of air time: vaccines cause autism, HIV doesn't cause AIDS. But many others swirl about, too, harming people, sucking up money, muddying the scientific enterprise — or simply getting on scientists' nerves. Here, Nature looks at the origins and repercussions of five myths that refuse to die.

These are some of the science myths that will not die.

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Phoenix666 writes:

A research group of Osaka University and Tokyo Institute of Technology successfully developed technology which stabilizes hydrogen in a high-temperature, high-pressure environment without chemical reactions with surrounding matter.

Katsuya Shimizu, Professor of Osaka University and Kenji Ohta, Lecturer, Tokyo Institute of Technology in collaboration with the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute investigated the phase transformation of hot dense fluid hydrogen using static high-pressure laser-heating experiments in a diamond anvil cell. The results showed anomalies in the heating efficiency that are likely to be attributed to the phase transition from a diatomic to monoatomic fluid hydrogen (plasma phase transition) in the pressure range between 82 and 106 GPa. This study imposes tighter constraints on the location of the hydrogen plasma phase transition boundary and suggests higher critical point than that predicted by the theoretical calculations.

The observed plasma phase transition of high-temperature, high-density hydrogen fluid may be strongly related to insulator-metal transition, and these results may lead to the clarification of the internal structure and magnetic field of gas planets primarily made up of hydrogen, such as Jupiter and Saturn.

Additionally, it is expected that the clarification of the correlation between temperature and pressure in hydrogen will lead to the synthesis of a solid metallic hydrogen in which superconducting transition is expected to take place at a relatively high temperature, or nearly room temperature.

"metallic hydrogen" has a certain ring to it.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

In 2014, we reported on a "potentially habitable" exoplanet five times the mass of Earth found 16 light years away. Now we bring you a "potentially habitable" exoplanet at least 4.25 times the mass of Earth found 14 light years away:

"While a few other planets have been found that orbit stars closer to us than Wolf 1061, those planets are not considered to be remotely habitable," Dr Wright says.

The three newly detected planets orbit the small, relatively cool and stable star about every 5, 18 and 67 days. Their masses are at least 1.4, 4.3 and 5.2 times that of Earth, respectively. The larger outer planet falls just outside the outer boundary of the habitable zone and is also likely to be rocky, while the smaller inner planet is too close to the star to be habitable.

[...] The UNSW team made the discovery using observations of Wolf 1061 collected by the HARPS spectrograph on the European Southern Observatory's 3.6 metre telescope in La Silla in Chile.

Three planets orbiting Wolf 1061 [full paper]

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

As compiled by Science News [Caution: javascript required]:

It probably comes as no surprise that the New Horizons mission to Pluto takes the top spot in Science News' list of 2015's most important stories.

Since New Horizons awoke last December, we've devoted more than two dozen stories in the magazine and on the website — upwards of 10,000 words — to this first-ever visit. No other science news this year garnered so many headlines.

But it's not headlines alone that won this story, or the others, a spot on our list. What's important is how they launched our thinking in a new direction. The outer solar system is no longer seen as a vast area of indistinguishable specks, but instead as a new frontier. Advances in gene editing made us reconsider how far we'll go to rid our bodies of disease. A newly proposed species, Homo naledi, challenged our vision of the earliest members of our genus.

No one yet knows how H. naledi will rewrite our history, but one thing is certain: Like New Horizons, we have reoriented. We'll start 2016 on a new trajectory, with many new questions to ask.

One story I missed was, ranked at 24, an algorithm to test equivalence of two graphs - a well known problem for which no known manageable solution had existed.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Story

early humans also may have evolved a less obvious but equally important advantage: a peculiar sleep pattern. "It's really weird, compared to other primates," said Dr. David R. Samson, a senior research scientist at Duke University.
...
Dr. Samson and Dr. Nunn found that the time each primate species spends asleep generally corresponded to its physical size, along with other factors, such as the average number of primates in a group.

The one big exception: humans. We sleep a lot less than one would predict based on the patterns seen in other primates.
...
Early human ancestors probably continued to sleep in trees until about two million years ago, Dr. Samson said. By 1.8 million years ago, new hominins like Homo erectus had left the trees. "I think we can be safe in saying Homo erectus slept on the ground," Dr. Samson said.

Early humans probably slept around fires in large groups, able to ward off predators. The result, said Dr. Samson and Dr. Nunn, was the chance to get an even better night's rest. Humans were able to fall more soundly asleep and to experience deeper bouts of REM sleep.

Since it took less time to get the benefits of REM sleep, humans were able to get by with less sleep over all than other primates. They gained a few extra waking hours each day, which they might have used to make new tools or share stories.

If deeper, better sleep is a key competitive advantage for human cognition, perhaps we should all switch to DeCaf. [sips coffee]

Original Submission