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Phoenix666 writes:

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have developed a web application and data set that gives researchers worldwide a powerful interactive tool to advance understanding of the mutations that lead to and fuel pediatric cancer. The freely available tool, called ProteinPaint, is described in today's issue of the scientific journal Nature Genetics.

ProteinPaint provides users with a gene-by-gene snapshot of mutations from pediatric cancer that alters genetic instructions for encoding proteins. The application provides critical information unavailable with existing visualization tools. For example, ProteinPaint shows whether mutations are present at diagnosis or just at relapse, or whether mutations occur in almost every cell (germline) or just cancer cells (somatic).

ProteinPaint's novel interactive infographics also let researchers see at a glance all mutations in individual genes and their corresponding proteins, including detailed information about mutation type, frequency in cancer subtype and location in the protein domain. That information provides clues about how a change might contribute to cancer's start, progression or relapse.

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julian writes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y65LbFWCf0A (duration: 1:01:33)

From the Youtube description:

The future does not look much brighter than ten years ago. What comes next, and what can the hacker community do to make things better?

The talk "We Lost The War" was presented at [Chaos Communication] Congress ten years ago, causing quite a stir. It was a prediction of a dark future that did not sit well with many people, but unfortunately many predictions have come true meanwhile. This talk will try to address what comes next, as well as what the hacker community can do to make things better.

It's a broad-spectrum talk that covers analysis of past and current events and possible futures in specific fields such as surveillance and digital rights, as well as a broader analysis of where the speakers think the world might be in 5-10 more years.

xpda writes:

DJI Innovations, the leading manufacturer of drones, launched a beta version of its new "geofencing" system that should keep its drones from flying into restricted airspace. The new feature is called Geospatial Environment Online (GEO), and it will let users know about areas where drone flight is restricted, either due to regulations or because of safety issues.

GEO will stop DJI drones from taking off in restricted areas like airports, Washington D.C., and temporarily restricted areas such as places near forest fires or big stadium events. Sensitive areas around prisons and power plants will be off limits in the system as well.

DJI owners can temporarily opt out of GEO and unlock some of the flight restrictions, but there's a catch. They must have verified accounts with the company, with a credit card, debit card, or cellphone number on file. Users cannot turn off all the flight restrictions though; places like Washington D.C. will remain completely off limits.

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Runaway1956 writes in with some article excerpts and his personal observations:

An engineer who inspected damage across North Texas after Saturday's deadly tornadoes says he saw "rampant irresponsibleness" in the way many homes and buildings were constructed.

"We saw a tremendous number of improper attachment of the walls to the foundations, which just made walls fall either in or out," said Timothy Marshall, a forensic engineer and meteorologist who volunteered as part of a damage survey team created by the Fort Worth office of the National Weather Service.

The construction Marshall flagged as faulty included that of a Glenn Heights elementary school that suffered extensive damage.

"We saw problems at [Donald T.] Shields Elementary school that were horrific in my view as an engineer," Marshall said. "Walls not attached properly, and they're just falling down like a house of cards."

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/dallas/20151230-engineer-finds-examples-of-horrific-construction-in-tornado-wreckage.ece

We saw the same sorts of conclusions two years ago, after the Moore, Oklahoma tornadoes.

[Moore after the break.]

Phoenix666 writes:

There are actually only a handful of stars in the night sky with proper names, and they're usually the brightest stars in the night sky. We know where to find Sirius, the brightest star in the sky (near Orion), and Betelgeuse, a supergiant star in the shoulder of Orion. If you dig a bit deeper, you will find a number of other stars with Arabic names, which date back to one of the earliest catalogues of stars, compiled by Ptolemy, and later translated into Arabic; the Arabic names were then adopted by Western star catalogues. As an example, still within Orion, the stars in Orion's belt are named Alnilam, Alnitak, and Mintaka.

Unfortunately, many of the transcribers in the middle ages, being unfamiliar with Arabic words, were not always particularly consistent with their spelling of the Arabic names, so many of these stars (as they have been adopted into European usage) either have more than one spelling of their name, or have been given a name which is a loose interpretation of the Arabic spelling. Many of these names are simply a description of their location within a constellation – Mintaka and Alnitak both have names which indicate that they are in the belt, and could have been written al-Mantaqa and an-Nitāq.

Very rarely, you might find a star which is named after a particular person – Barnard's star, for instance, which was found by E.E. Barnard. Barnard's star is interesting because it was found to be moving very rapidly through our sky, meaning that it must be relatively close by. This sort of nomenclature tends to stick only for very unusual stars, where there isn't already a better naming system in place.

I always liked Aldebaran.

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Phoenix666 writes:

We generally picture lasers as being encased within hard housings, much like most other electronics. Thanks to research being conducted at Kent State University and Japan's Kyoto Institute of Technology, however, we could soon see sensors or other devices that incorporate stretchable laser-emitting rubber.

In traditional lasers, a beam of laser light is reflected back and forth between mirrored surfaces within a small cavity. This process essentially tunes the emitted laser beam to a given frequency.

Previously, some of the key scientists had demonstrated that liquid crystals within a liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) material could be used to "bounce" laser light, although it wasn't possible to control the tuning of the beam. Now, using a new type of cholesteric LCE, they've overcome that limitation.

In lab tests, a cavity within the LCE was successfully used to form a tunable beam of laser light, while the material was being stretched. Additionally, as the LCE deforms due to mechanical strain or other factors such as changes in temperature, the frequency of the laser is altered. According to one of the study leaders, Kent State's Dr. Peter Palffy-Muhoray, this quality could make the material ideal for certain sensing applications.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Scooping up all the plastic waste in the world's oceans would be a massive undertaking given that scientists estimate there's around 5 trillion pieces of it currently bobbing about in the water. But the Ocean Cleanup project believes it is up to the challenge and has today announced plans for the first real-world test of its rubbish collection barriers off the coast of The Netherlands.

The Ocean Cleanup project is the brainchild of Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat, who dreamt up the concept while studying aerospace engineering at Delft University. Rather than chasing after the rubbish, Slat's plan is to have the the oceans' natural gyres, or rotating currents, do the work for him.

By using this natural system of circular ocean currents to push plastic waste into long floating arms and onwards into a central collection point, Slat's system would be highly energy efficient. He claims that it would cut the time required to clean up the oceans from millennia to mere years, and a positive feasibility study and US$2.1 million crowdfunding phase have since given him impetus to put his plan into action.

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Whatever you call it, the humble AC adapter, external power supply, plug pack, plug-in adapter, domestic mains adapter, line power adapter, wall wart, or power brick is due for significant changes next month.

From http://electronicspurchasingstrategies.com/2015/04/27/get-ready-for-the-level-vi-efficiency-regulation/

This article includes a quote (& pun) from one power supply vendor,

Another article can be found at http://www.metlabs.com/blog/energy-star-2/external-power-supplies-must-meet-level-vi-energy-efficiency-requirements-for-u-s-doe-by-february-2016/

US Department of Energy has an information page with several linked documents
https://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/appliance_standards/rulemaking.aspx/ruleid/28
"Rulemaking for Battery Chargers and External Power Supplies Energy Conservation Standard"

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Phoenix666 suggested this story from politico.com

In the constant battle to keep information secure, consumers have a powerful weapon on their side: strong encryption, which locks their data into unbreakably coded form, allowing people to transfer account information, personal data and messages without fear of being hacked. It also lets them store it safely—for example, on smartphones, which are effectively becoming wallets for our most sensitive information and thoughts.

But it's not just law-abiding citizens who take advantage of newly ubiquitous encryption. It's also criminals, who need to communicate without being overheard. Government agencies call it the "going dark" problem: An encrypted message essentially vanishes from their view. Law enforcement wants a federally mandated "back door," a way to lawfully break encryption and read messages.

There lies one of the biggest emerging conflicts in the cyber realm. The shorthand is the "Crypto Wars," and it drives much of the debate over cybersecurity policy. Should tech companies and the public be encouraged to encode their information as securely as possible to guard against theft? Or should the government be given tools to snoop, even if it severely weakens the protections of encryption?

The story goes on to point out that developing complex systems is difficult and error prone to the extent that we cannot 100% rely on them to transmit information securely. The alternative is to assume transmission is error-prone and to encrypt our messages so that, even if they are intercepted, no information is lost. To provide a backdoor would require a key escrow that would become a tantalizing target — one that could not be guaranteed to be kept secure. And, the introduction of a backdoor weakens security by exposing a larger attack surface thereby putting the information at risk. The entire article is well worth reading.

Familiar topic around here, but happening in a more laymen's forum.

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HughPickens.com writes:

Adolf Hitler's Nazi manifesto Mein Kampf was originally printed in 1925 - eight years before Hitler came to power. After Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945, the Allied forces handed the copyright to the book to the state of Bavaria who refused to allow the book to be reprinted to prevent incitement of hatred. Now BBC reports that under European copyright law, the rights of an author of a literary or artistic work runs for the life of the author and for 70 years after his death - in Hitler's case on 30 April 1945, when he shot himself in his bunker in Berlin, so for the first time in 70 years, Mein Kampf will be available to buy in Germany.

Authorizing the book's release into the public domain has been a tortuous process. In 2012 it was agreed, after much consultation between Bavarian authorities and representatives of Jewish and Roma communities, that a scholarly edition should be planned in an attempt to demystify the book. Munich's Institute of Contemporary History will publish the new edition with thousands of academic notes and will aim to show that Mein Kampf (My Struggle) is incoherent and badly written, rather than powerful or seductive. From the original book's 1,000 pages, the publisher has produced a two-volume book that is twice as long as the original, with 3,700 annotations. Christian Hartmann, one of the team of five historians who spent several years working on the academic edition, described his relief at being able to analyse the text, even if he felt in need of regularly airing his tiny Munich office in order to cope with the task. "It is a real feeling of triumph, to be able to pick over this rubbish and then to debunk it bit by bit."

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Phoenix666 writes:

The benefits of exercise are ultimately down to the way it remodels our metabolism. Physical activity also shapes the microbes in the gut, a community whose composition is more malleable during early human development. Physiologists now believe that exercising in early life creates a microbial community that helps metabolic activity in later years.

Microbes start colonising the human digestive tract shortly after birth, and the community grows until the gut is home to over 100 trillion microbial cells – roughly 3x more than the number of body cells in an adult human. Those microorganisms add 5 million genes to a person's genetic profile, encoding proteins that influence physiology and are vital to proper development of a healthy metabolism, brain and immune system.

The conclusions come from a review in the journal Immunology and Cell Biology led by Monika Fleshier of the University of Colorado Boulder. In one study, for example, juvenile rats who voluntarily exercised every day developed a microbial community containing more 'good bacteria' in the gut compared to sedentary counterparts, or adults who also performed physical activity.

If the benefits of exercise are the microflora it encourages in your gut, could you skip the exercise and take an "exercise" pill with the proper microflora?

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mendax writes:

El Reg is reporting that Google has finally decided to dump its port of Apache Harmony, the now-defunct cleanroom implementation of Java, for Oracle's OpenJDK. As the article points out:

This move allows Google to bring in new Java 8 features, such as lambda expressions, which OpenJDK supports, and pass the benefits to app programmers. Google has previously contributed to OpenJDK.

So what effect does this move have on Oracle's longstanding battle with Google over alleged copyright infringement (or lack thereof) over Java APIs?

... Oracle bought Sun Microsystems in 2010, taking ownership of Java in the process. Oracle then sued Google for allegedly breaching copyright law by using Java language APIs in Android. That legal battle is still rumbling on, and has yet to be settled. Now here's a bombshell: OpenJDK is developed by Oracle. By moving to OpenJDK, Google is still using the APIs that Oracle threw a fit over – it's just now, amusingly, using Oracle's GNU GPL licensed code.

It seems like Google should have done this long ago.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Objects can be a real pearl on the shores of history of science. Telescopes and steam engines still figure prominently in our field, and rightfully so. From the edited volume Making Instruments Count (1993) to Frans van Lunteren's blog 'Mediating Machines' here at Shells & Pebbles, many scholars research the role of scientific instruments in the history of discoveries, experiments, applications, and education. But besides microscopes and machines I would argue that some artisan objects and ordinary materials deserve similar attention. Piss, poop and pots might appear unrelated to history of science at first sight, but on closer inspection they open up new perspectives in academic research.

I recently visited the exhibition 'A Wealth of Waste' ('Rijk van Rotzooi') on recycling in The Netherlands around 1800 in Museum Boerhaave, Leiden. Frisian entrepreneur Watse Gerritsma takes you on a tour of smart reusing, showing how sand was transformed into glass, street waste was turned into gunpowder, faeces into fertiliser, etc. I was particularly struck by one very mundane object: the urine pot. Does such a jar with liquid excrement really deserve a place in a science museum and the history of science? This blog will show the fresh approach a dirty material can give on history of science by following the places where piss dripped and drizzled in the 18th-century Low Countries.

Hmm, but how did those scientists' spouses feel about their experiments?

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Phoenix666 writes:

A world scientific body says Japanese scientists have met the criteria for naming a new element, the synthetic highly radioactive element 113.

The U.S.-based International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry said Thursday that researchers at the Riken institute had conclusively identified and earned the right to name the element. It provisionally was named ununtrium. The new name wasn't immediately disclosed.

A joint working group of the IUPAC and International Union of Pure and Applied Physics were due to announce decisions on naming rights to elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 in January.

Element 113 sits between copernicium and flerovium on the periodic table. A joint team of scientists in Russia and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the U.S. also were vying for naming rights for 113.

Hyakujyusan-ium?

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Phoenix666 writes:

A new history shatters myths about an extraordinary nation.

Which is the largest nation in Europe to lack a state of its own? The Catalans? The Walloons? Wrong and wrong. It is the English: population 50 million-plus, all of them under the government of a multinational entity, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Until recently, nobody worried much about the statelessness of the English. After all, they dominated not only the U.K., but also for much of the past 300 years a vast global empire. The empire is gone, but its legacy of language and law and political systems endures from California to Calcutta.

Suddenly, though, the future of England has become a very live question. Since the late 1990s, Scotland has obtained more autonomy for itself. Nearly 45 percent of Scots voted for outright independence in 2014. And Scotland's governing nationalists are weighing a second try if reelected in 2016. Meanwhile, the U.K. as a whole faces a referendum on exiting the European Union that could trigger a different constitutional crisis if England votes narrowly in favor of leaving the EU, but is kept in Europe by Scottish, Irish, and Welsh votes. Such an outcome could prod the English to follow the Scots in rethinking the United Kingdom.

It's quite imaginable that sometime within the next U.S. presidential term, England could under one scenario or another part ways from Scotland and emerge as a self-governing entity (albeit with Wales and a sliver of Ireland still attached) for the first time since Shakespeare started his writing career.

Interesting article for history buffs and Anglophiles.

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