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takyon writes:

NASA engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center have created a rocket engine using 3D-printing for around 75% of the parts:

"We manufactured and then tested about 75 percent of the parts needed to build a 3-D printed rocket engine," said Elizabeth Robertson, the project manager for the additively manufactured demonstrator engine at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "By testing the turbopumps, injectors and valves together, we've shown that it would be possible to build a 3-D printed engine for multiple purposes such as landers, in-space propulsion or rocket engine upper stages."

[...] To make each part, a design is entered into a 3-D printer's computer. The printer then builds each part by layering metal powder and fusing it together with a laser – a process known as selective laser melting. The 3-D printed turbopump, one of the more complex parts of the engine, had 45 percent fewer parts than similar pumps made with traditional welding and assembly techniques. The injector had over 200 fewer parts than traditionally manufactured injectors, and it incorporated features that have never been used before because they are only possible with additive manufacturing. Complex parts like valves that normally would take more than a year to manufacture were built by in a few months. This made it possible to get the parts built and assembled on the test stand much sooner than if they had been procured and made with traditional methods. Marshall engineers designed the fuel pump and its components and leveraged the expertise of five suppliers to build the parts using 3-D printing processes.

"This new manufacturing process really opened the design space and allowed for part geometries that would be impossible with traditional machining or casting methods," said David Eddleman, one Marshall's propulsion designers. "For the valve designs on this engine, we used more efficient structures in the piece parts that resulted in optimized performance."

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frojack writes:

The non-bees aren't as efficient at pollination as the bees, perhaps due to the sheer amount of pollen that bees carry around, but it turns out non-bees make more visits to flowers, which can compensate for carrying less pollen.

Reported Here.

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Identity-theft Security Firm Lifelock Fined $100m for Lapses

Phoenix666 writes:

A company which sells identity-theft protection services agreed Thursday to pay a fine of $100 million for failing to protect consumer data in the largest settlement on record, officials said.

The US Federal Trade Commission said its settlement with LifeLock came after the company failed to comply with a 2010 federal court order requiring it to secure consumers' personal information and prohibiting deceptive advertising.

It is the largest monetary award obtained by the commission in an order enforcement action, the FTC said.

"This settlement demonstrates the Commission's commitment to enforcing the orders it has in place against companies, including orders requiring reasonable security for consumer data," said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez.

"The fact that consumers paid LifeLock for help in protecting their sensitive personal information makes the charges in this case particularly troubling."

[More after the Break]

Phoenix666 writes:

For more than 15 years, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has been a part of the H-1B debate, calling for raising or eliminating visa caps. He did so again this week.

Greenspan's view is that the economy will expand with the size of the talent pool. But is he a credible source for arguing that the H-1B cap needs to be increased?

At a Council of Foreign Relations conference in New York, Greenspan was asked by Steve Liesman, a senior economics reporter for CNBC, whether productivity can be improved, in part, through immigration. Greenspan did not miss the beat.

"I thought the H-1B program is much too small," said Greenspan. "Every other major country looks to the quality of whom they are inviting in, and we're not doing that: We're restricting that very significantly," he said, according to a video of the conference.

New H-1B's to replace economists and Wall Street bankers are indeed sorely needed.

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cmn32480 writes:

So I'm sitting at work, on a Sunday, waiting for the Comcast tech that was supposed to be here between 8am and 10am.

It is now a little after 12pm, and I'm on the phone with customer service for the second time. I was supposed to get a phone call within 30 minutes of the first time I called (at 10:40).

I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I finally called back at 11:30am, and got the same run around. I've been on the phone with them for over 30 minutes now, and have talked to customer service, and am now chewing on a supervisor.

I was just told (at 12:15pm) that the ticket was invalidated and was never put through. So I've been sitting here for NOTHING. They didn't bother to tell me this when I called in 2 hours ago, or to do the courteous thing and call or email me when the ticket got invalidated. Adding insult to injury, they also tell me that they only compensate for down service, not for people sitting waiting on their non-existent technicians.

It is no wonder people hate Comcast and many other internet service providers. I remember now why I swore off using Comcast for anything.

So now, because misery loves company (and many people hate their ISP), what are your horror stories?

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Phoenix666 writes:

From Wired:

Here's what most people can agree on: Clickbait is annoying, but by god, it works—even when readers recognize it for what it is. The word's substantial semantic drift may be behind some of this effectiveness. But a hefty helping of behavioral science is at play, too. As a number of new studies confirm, you can blame your clickbait habit on two things: the outsized role emotion plays in your intuitive judgements and daily choices, and your lazy brain.

Manufacturing Emotion

Clickbait doesn't just happen on its own. Editors write headlines in an effort to manipulate you—or at least grab your attention—and always have. "Headless Body In Topless Bar," and "Sticks Nix Hick Pix" wouldn't exist if publications didn't care about attracting eyeballs. The difference with clickbait is you're often aware of this manipulation, and yet helpless to resist it. It's at once obvious in its bait-iness, and somehow still effective bait.

This has a lot to do with emotion and the role it plays in our daily decision-making processes, says Jonah Berger, who studies social influence and contagion at the University of Pennsylvania. Emotional arousal, or the degree of physical response you have to an emotion, is a key ingredient in clicking behaviors. Sadness and anger, for example, are negative emotions, but anger is much more potent. "It drives us, fires us up, and compels us to take action," Berger says. If you've ever found yourself falling for outrage clickbait or spent time hate-reading and hate-watching something, you know what Berger is talking about. "Anger, anxiety, humor, excitement, inspiration, surprise—all of these are punchy emotions that clickbait headlines rely on," he says.

Other tactics include opening a Curiosity Gap, using Numbers and Lists, building Anticipation, and creating happiness by confirming expectations of clickbait. There you go, Ye Budding Marketroids, a how-to manual for casting effective Clickbait.

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frojack writes:

Reported on Sci-News.com:

A team of researchers from the United Kingdom has uncovered the first evidence of tool use by greater vasa parrots. Studying 10 captive vasa parrots, the scientists observed the birds adopt a novel tool-using technique to acquire calcium from seashells:

The bird's interest in the shells was greatest from March to mid-April, just before the breeding season. While this may be due to calcium supplementation being critical for egg-laying, the odd part was that it was the males that used the tools to harvest calcium, and then regurgitated the calcium to the females.

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HughPickens.com writes:

Dominic Gates reports at the Seattle Times that until this year, Boeing's Renton plant housed two highly productive assembly lines, each churning out 21 single-aisle 737's per month but in a rabbit-out-of-the-hat transformation, Boeing has now fitted a third assembly line within the same factory space for the new 737 MAX that will allow the production rate in Renton to climb to 52 jets per month in 2018 and possibly past 60 per month by the end of the decade.

"The complexity of this is not so much the changes in the airplane itself, but more about how you weave this new airplane into a factory that's been producing (the current 737) for 19 years now," says Keith Leverkuhn, vice president of the 737 MAX program. Leverkuhn says Boeing will build the first airplanes relatively slowly to understand all the intricacies of the new assembly process, then will ramp up quickly. "The first airplane went together very, very well. The second one is going together even better. This is the closest thing we've got to automotive production (rates)," says Leverkuhn. "We are going to have to hit 52 (jets per month), and it's going to have to happen fast."

[More after the break.]

Phoenix666 writes:

Led by Dr. Seda Kizilel, a team of scientists at Turkey's Koc University mixed the salt potassium formate with a hydrophobic (water-repelling) polymer known as styrene-butadiene-styrene. That mixture was in turn added to bitumen, which is the main binding ingredient in asphalt. The resulting composite material was found to be just as tough as regular bitumen, yet its salt content "significantly delayed" the formation of ice on its surface.

In lab tests, it continued to release salt for a period of two months, still melting ice as it did so. The effect could reportedly last for much longer on an actual road, however. This would be because as the top layer of salt-depleted asphalt was worn away by traffic, fresh "salty" asphalt would be exposed from beneath.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Cichlid fish from a tiny volcanic crater lake in Africa have been caught in the act of sympatric speciation, whereby a new species evolves when there is no geographic barrier to physically separate the new species from the old. The study, led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and co-authored by the University of Bristol, is published today in Science.

Scientists studied the whole-genome sequences of 146 small fish in the 700m-wide Lake Massoko in Tanzania in order to answer two of the most debated questions in evolutionary biology: is sympatric speciation possible and, if so, what are the genetic and physical traits that drive this form of evolution (sexual attraction or specialisation in lifestyle, diet or other ecological factors)?

Senior author, Professor George Turner of the School of Biological Sciences, Bangor University said: "The idea of sympatric speciation has divided evolutionary opinion for a long time. It has been difficult to substantiate that new species can arise when genetic variations can be exchanged easily between the two evolving groups. But we have caught this form of evolution in the act by identifying two different forms of cichlid fish that are separating from each other within a lake that is only 700m wide."

Cichlid fish are a valuable model of evolution. In nearby Lake Malawi, many hundreds of cichlid species have been found, differentiated by size, shape, colour, feeding habits and ecological preferences such as living towards the surface of the lake or at the bottom. Because of this vast diversity the lake is known as 'Darwin's Pond'. In contrast Lake Massoko is 'Darwin's puddle': a much simpler place with many fewer species and fewer factors to drive speciation.

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Appalbarry writes:

Lost in the midst of all of the G8, Climate Change, and First Nations coverage, is the utterly important news that Canada's new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a serious geek.

First he was interviewed with his kids at Comicon, wearing a Superman T-shirt, and expounded his views on The Man of Steel, geeked out on meeting Peter Mayhew, and talked about introducing his kids to the Star Wars franchise. Then he was interviewed and admitted that the best Christmas gift purchase he ever made was a Millennium Falcon lego set that, because his son was too young for it, he got to build. And then this week he booked a private screening of "The Force Awakens" and invited a roomful of kids from the local Children's hospital.

Why this matters: We've got leader who is a science-fiction geek, obviously, and some of us are very hopeful that his government will make decisions based on scientific fact, not political expediency.

Oh yes - his Achilles heel "I geek out too easily."

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The good news is that any student's negative perception of math can dramatically change, Boaler [professor of mathematics education at Stanford Graduate School of Education] said. In her recent summer math camp for seventh- and eighth-grade students, which can be seen in this video, students learned to enjoy math and they improved their achievement dramatically through open, creative math lessons.

Boaler works with Stanford psychology Professor Carol Dweck to deliver growth mindset interventions to teachers and students. A "growth mindset" is built around the idea that most basic abilities can be developed and expanded upon through dedication and hard work. By contrast, with a "fixed mindset," people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits.

"When we open up mathematics and teach broad, visual, creative math, then we teach math as a learning subject instead of as a performance subject," Boaler said.

Boaler offers resources on how to develop growth mindsets for math learners. Her new Stanford center, youcubed, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, provides free mindset math lessons that were used in over 100,000 schools last fall. The website has attracted millions of visitors in the last month alone. She also has online courses for teachers and parents and for students to help them teach and learn math.

When schools teach young people growth mindset mathematics, Boaler said, the outcome is that the subject becomes deeper and filled with more connections, so students enjoy it more and achieve at higher levels.

A new approach to teaching math is most welcome.

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takyon writes:

Both DDR4 and DDR3 memory prices are in steep decline, due to industry oversupply following process shrinks and a drop in demand for PCs and tablets:

Just a year ago DDR4 dynamic random access memory (DRAM) was rather expensive and was sold at a noticeable premium compared to DDR3. Today, DDR4 memory modules cost less than DDR3 modules cost a year ago and continue to get more affordable. Next year prices of DDR4 are expected to decline further as manufacturers of DRAM are gradually increasing production of memory in general and DDR4 in particular.

The average spot price of one 4Gb DDR4 memory chip rated to run at 2133MHz was $2.221 at press time, according to DRAMeXchange, one of the world's top DRAM and NAND market trackers based in Taipei, Taiwan. Spot price of a similar memory integrated circuit (IC) was $2.719 in late September and $3.618 in late June, 2015. As it turns out, the price of a single 4Gb DDR4 DRAM IC dropped 38.62% in about half of a year.

Spot prices of DDR3 memory are also declining. One 4Gb DDR3 chip rated to operate at 1600MHz cost $1.878 in Taiwan at press time. A similar chip was priced at $2.658 in late June, which means that the spot price of a 4Gb DDR3 IC dropped 29.4% in less than six months.

The difference between a 4Gb DDR3 memory chip and a 4Gb DDR4 DRAM IC used to be approximately 26.5% in June. Today, a 4Gb DDR4 chip costs about 18.5% more than a 4Gb DDR3 memory IC. Spot prices of DRAM chips directly affect prices of actual memory modules. At present one 4GB DDR4 SO-DIMM costs $18 in Taiwan, according to DRAMeXchange. A DDR3 4GB SO-DIMM is priced at $16.75. For many PC configurations, price difference between DDR3 and DDR4 memory modules is already negligible. Next year it will erode further and the new type of memory will replace DDR3 as the mainstream DRAM for personal computers and servers.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A 6,000-year-old temple holding human-like figurines and sacrificed animal remains has been discovered within a massive prehistoric settlement in Ukraine.

Built before writing was invented, the temple is about 60 by 20 meters (197 by 66 feet) in size. It was a "two-story building made of wood and clay surrounded by a galleried courtyard," the upper floor divided into five rooms, write archaeologists Nataliya Burdo and Mykhailo Videiko in a copy of a presentation they gave recently at the European Association of Archaeologists' annual meeting in Istanbul, Turkey.

Inside the temple, archaeologists found the remains of eight clay platforms, which may have been used as altars, the finds suggested. A platform on the upper floor contains "numerous burnt bones of lamb, associated with sacrifice," write Burdo and Videiko, of the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The floors and walls of all five rooms on the upper floor were "decorated by red paint, which created [a] ceremonial atmosphere." [See Photos of the Prehistoric Temple & Animal Remains]

[...] The temple, which was first detected in 2009, is located in a prehistoric settlement near modern-day Nebelivka. Recent research using geophysical survey indicates the prehistoric settlement is 238 hectares (588 acres), almost twice the size of the modern-day National Mall in Washington, D.C. It contained more than 1,200 buildings and nearly 50 streets.

A number of other prehistoric sites, of similar size, have been found in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe. These sites are sometimes referred to as belonging to the "Trypillian" culture, a modern-day name. The name is derived from the village of Trypillia in Ukraine, where artifacts of this ancient culture were first discovered.

Original Submission

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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