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q.kontinuum writes:

As mentioned 4 months ago, a ruling by the European Court of Justice invalidated the Safe Habour treaty, which was the base for a lot of the data transfered from EU to US. Until now, the ruling seemed not to have many consequences, as there was a moratorium in place, basically giving the US some time to propose new, stricter rules to protect data of EU citizens stored in the US.

The moratorium runs out end of January. This means, the EU should start enforcing the laws without "Safe Habour" starting beginning of February.

The news agency said that EU data protection authorities (DPAs) are considering implementing a ban on companies agreeing [to] new binding corporate rules (BCRs) or installing model contract clauses into new data transfer agreements. The DPAs are expected to adopt a common approach on issues relating to EU-US data transfers at a meeting on 2 February.

Looks like the US government didn't budge yet.

What do you think, who will be affected worse in short and long run? Apparently lots of EU companies rely on US cloud services, and might suffer when they can't use them anymore. On the other hand it could mean a stronger competitive advantage for EU cloud-service providers in the future.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Origami, the ancient art of paper folding, may soon provide a foundation for antennas that can reconfigure themselves to operate at different frequencies, microfluidic devices whose properties can change in operation -- and even heating and air-conditioning ductwork that adjusts to demand.

The applications could result from reconfigurable and reprogrammable origami tubes developed by researchers at three institutions, including the Georgia Institute of Technology. By changing the ways in which the paper is folded, the same tube can have six or more different cross sections. Though the models are now reconfigured by hand, magnetic or electrical actuators could make the changes when the tubes are used in real-world applications.

The tubes can be folded flat for shipping, and made in a range of sizes from the nanoscale up to architectural scale. By developing the mathematical theory behind the folding, the researchers can design tubes with the exact properties needed for electrical engineers, civil engineers or other users. The tubes employ the Miura-ori pattern, one of many unique patterns used in origami.

"We have developed a new type of origami tube that is reconfigurable to many different cross sections," said Glaucio Paulino, a professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "We have also developed a mathematical theory that goes along with it that allows us to design the tubes and predict how they can be reconfigured or reprogrammed.

Origami tubes with reconfigurable polygonal cross-sections (DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2015.0607)

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takyon writes:

Activist investor Carl Icahn has convinced the Xerox Corporation to split into two companies. The split will create an $11 billion company that continues to sell copiers and printers, as well as a $7 billion company that operates outsourced services such as bill processing and call centers for governments and corporations. MarketWatch has more details:

As part of the move, billionaire Mr. Icahn will get three seats on the services company's board. Mr. Icahn in November disclosed a stake in Xerox and said he would seek talks with the company about its future. With an 8.1% stake in the company, Mr. Icahn's hedge fund is now the second-largest shareholder after index giant Vanguard Group.

[...] Xerox would continue a trend in corporate America in which diversified companies are splitting into more highly specialized pieces. H-P split into Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., which is focused on servers, professional services and software, and HP Inc., which sells personal computers and printers. Online-auction pioneer eBay spun off its PayPal payments-processing unit in 2015.

The separation would unwind what had been Ms. Burns's signature deal, one that she started pursuing shortly after being named Xerox's CEO in 2009. The ACS acquisition was a way to shift the company's focus from document handling to a range of services for business and government customers. The deal jolted Xerox's corporate identity, adding 74,000 new ACS employees to a workforce of 54,000, and turned it into a company with $22 billion of revenue practically overnight.

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number6 writes:

EMC Corportaion, owner of VMware since 2004 and soon to be a subsidiary of Dell, has pulled the plug on the Hosted UI development team responsible for products such as Workstation and Fusion. It seems that this action by EMC Corp was purely corporate reshuffling to appease Wall Street and Private Equity financial backers; the Workstation and Fusion product teams were incidental casualties. According to the Ars Technica article, the products will continue to be developed and supported.

A former member of the team has written a blog article giving full details and insights on this decision...along with a eulogy on the Hosted UI development team.

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Phoenix666 writes:

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has determined that Charlie Lyne's 10-hour Paint Drying contains "no material likely to offend or harm", and has accordingly awarded it a "suitable for all" U certificate.

Nicely described by the BBFC as "a film showing paint drying on a wall", Paint Drying is the result of a Kickstarter campaign aimed at highlighting the "prohibitively expensive" cost of presenting cinematic works for classification.

The BBFC charges a £101.50 submission fee and £7.09 per minute of film. However, it is obliged to sit through every single frame of material, so Lyne decided he'd make the censors work for their money.

Previous coverage of the Kickstarter campaign.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers at Oregon State University announced today that they have essentially stopped the progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease, for nearly two years in one type of mouse model used to study the disease - allowing the mice to approach their normal lifespan.

The findings, scientists indicate, are some of the most compelling ever produced in the search for a therapy for ALS, a debilitating and fatal disease, and were just published in Neurobiology of Disease.

"We are shocked at how well this treatment can stop the progression of ALS," said Joseph Beckman, lead author on this study, a distinguished professor of biochemistry and biophysics in the College of Science at Oregon State University, and principal investigator and holder of the Burgess and Elizabeth Jamieson Chair in OSU's Linus Pauling Institute.

In decades of work, no treatment has been discovered for ALS that can do anything but prolong human survival less than a month. The mouse model used in this study is one that scientists believe may more closely resemble the human reaction to this treatment, which consists of a compound called copper-ATSM.

Copper delivery to the CNS by CuATSM effectively treats motor neuron disease in SOD^G93A mice co-expressing the copper-chaperone-for-SOD (DOI: 10.1016/j.nbd.2016.01.020)

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frojack writes:

The BBC is reporting that The Bank of Japan has officially introduced a negative interest rate. That's right, the central bank will charge commercial banks 0.1% on some of their deposits. The European Central Bank also has negative rates, however, it is a first for Japan.

The idea is to force commercial holders of large cash deposits to put their money to work, to counter the ongoing economic slump in the world's third-largest economy. Money sitting in the bank does no one any good.

Not everyone is convinced it will work, it hasn't worked in the EU, to any measurable effect, and it may just drive large cash holders to take their money off shore.

Most of the depositors getting charged, rather than paid, to keep funds in the central banks are smaller banks, and large corporations. The banks can lend their funds, for low, but not zero, interest. But large corporate depositors really have little incentive to spend their money until the economy picks up, and will probably seek interest overseas.

Where would you put your funds if banks started charging you to keep your money safe?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Talk about mighty oaks growing from little acorns! A 9-year-old's homework assignment has led to the world's most comprehensive tree-counting project, which in turn stands to increase the value of upcoming missions from NASA and other space agencies.

Felix Finkbeiner was a fourth-grade student in Bavaria in 2007 when his teacher assigned a classroom presentation on climate change. His research brought him to the story of Wangari Maathai of Kenya, the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Among other accomplishments, she started a grassroots movement to counter deforestation and inspired the United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) Billion Tree Campaign.

Felix challenged his classmates—and ultimately, children throughout the world—to plant a million trees in each country, an idea that grew into an international youth organization called "Plant-for-the-Planet." In 2011, the UNEP turned its Billion Tree Campaign over to the organization Felix had started. By that time, the UN program had celebrated the planting of 12 billion trees.

Twelve billion trees is a lot, but how much does it increase the world's tree population? By a few percent? By half? No one knew. Enter Tom Crowther, then a postdoc at Yale.

[Continues.]

Phoenix666 writes:

Worldwide, around a billion people have a disability, says the World Health Organisation.

In Europe and America, this is one in five people. And since they are less likely to be in work, their poverty rate is about twice as high.

So technologies that could help disabled people contribute more in the workplace - and improve their quality of life - are surely welcome.

And it also makes good business sense.

If a million more disabled people could work, the UK economy alone would grow 1.7%, or £45bn ($64bn), says disability charity Scope.

The article covers a range of sensory enhancement and/or replacements, as well as limb prostheses of various sorts.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Zika, a mosquito-borne virus linked to birth defects, is spreading, and the World Health Organization will convene an emergency session on Monday to deal with the problem:

The World Health Organization announced Thursday that it would convene an emergency meeting to try to find ways to stop the transmission of the Zika virus — which officials said is "spreading explosively" across the Americas.

"The level of alarm is extremely high, as is the level of uncertainty. Questions abound. We need to get some answers quickly, " Margaret Chan, the director-general of the WHO, said in a briefing to member countries in Geneva.

Chan said that the situation today is dramatically different than last year because of the surge in the number of cases and the severity of the symptoms and that "the level of alarm is extremely high."

Health officials said the number of countries impacted by mosquitoes that are spreading the virus locally is now up to 23. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the United States now has 31 laboratory confirmed cases in 11 states and the District of Columbia. All are travel-related, the CDC's Lyle Petersen said, and "this number is increasing rapidly." The country also has 20 additional cases because of local transmission in U.S. territories — 19 in Puerto Rico and one in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Alternately at The Guardian. Some believe that South American countries will loosen abortion restrictions in response to the virus. For example, Brazil's Supreme Federal Court ruled in 2012 that abortion was legal in cases when a fetus develops anencephaly (no brain). The Zika virus in Brazil is being linked to a 20x increase in microcephaly (abnormally small brain) prevalence, which is not always fatal.

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Phoenix666 writes:

NASA's Orion spacecraft is another step closer to launching on its first mission to deep space atop the agency's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. On Jan. 13, 2016, technicians at Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans finished welding together the primary structure of the Orion spacecraft destined for deep space, marking another important step on the journey to Mars.

Welding Orion's seven large aluminum pieces, which began in September 2015, involved a meticulous process. Engineers prepared and outfitted each element with strain gauges and wiring to monitor the metal during the process.

The pieces were joined using a state-of-the-art process called friction-stir welding, which produces incredibly strong bonds by transforming metals from a solid into a plastic-like state, and then using a rotating pin tool to soften, stir and forge a bond between two metal components to form a uniform welded joint, a vital requirement of next-generation space hardware.

[Ed Note: Added Link to Wikipedia for friction-stir welding per suggestion in the comments. - 2016_01_30 15:00]

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takyon writes:

A proposed supersonic plane design would be capable of carrying passengers from London to New York in just 11 minutes. The plane is described as decades away from commercialization, assuming it can be built at all:

Remember the Skreemr, a concept for a supersonic plane that could travel at Mach 10? Scratch that, there's now a design for a plane that could cruise from London to New York in 11 minutes, traveling at Mach 24 -- that's 12 times faster than the Concorde!

Charles Bombardier, the industrial designer who came up with both designs, has dubbed this newest concept the Antipode, which he conceived in collaboration with Lunatic Koncepts founder Abhishek Roy. In theory, it could carry up to ten passengers up to 12,430 miles in under an hour.

[...] The Antipode's wings would be fitted with rocket boosters that would propel the aircraft to 40,000 feet, and enable it to reach Mach 5. Like the Skreemr, the plane would be powered by a scramjet engine.

[...] After the Skreemr concept made the rounds, Bombardier was contacted by Joseph Hazeltine, an engineer at Wyle, which provides technical support to both NASA and the U.S. Department of Defence. Hazeltine suggested using an aerodynamic technique called long penetration mode, or LPM, which would use a nozzle on the aircraft's nose to blow out air and cool down the surface temperature, while muffling the noise made from breaking the sound barrier.

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xpda writes:

On January 25, an old GPS satellite launched in 1990 failed and was decommissioned. It was the oldest GPS satellite in use. This triggered a bug in the GPS ground system software at January 26 12.49 am Mountain Time, and caused the GPS time to be off by 13 microseconds in the legacy L1 band. It was fixed at 6:10 am Mountain Time. While core navigation systems were apparently not affected, 13 microseconds is equal to about 4 kilometers in the GPS world. The Air Force reported that no weapons systems were affected.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

In the past few weeks, the nation's attention has increasingly focused its attention on Flint's public health disaster. At least 15 percent of the city's homes have water with lead levels exceeding the safe limit established by the federal government. Several of those homes had water with lead levels 900 times above the safe limit. Poor political decisions caused the crisis, but it wouldn't have happened at all if the lead pipes weren't there to begin with. The current solution is a stopgap—spiking the water supply with an anticorrosive chemical. But if the powers that be want to eliminate the risk completely, they will ultimately have to replace all the lead plumbing. A September estimate, only recently released by Michigan governor Rick Snyder, puts the cost of replacing all the lead pipes in Flint at $60 million. And the project will take 15 years.

Oh, for Pete's sake. People can only take bottled water baths for so long. "I don't understand, are they only going to fix four pipes a day?" says Harold Harrington, business manager of Flint's plumber's union, the United Association Local 370. He says with the right kind of investment, the city—or state, or whoever ends up taking responsibility—could move a lot faster.

Most of the corroded pipes in Flint—20,000 to 25,000 in total—are what is known as service lines. These are one inch in diameter, and connect homes to the larger, main pipes running under the middles of streets. (The mains are cast iron.) Because Flint is in Michigan, and Michigan is a very cold place, the service lines have to be buried about three and a half feet deep, below the frost line. "But most of the main pipes are between five to seven feet deep, so the service lines are at a similar depth," says Martin Kaufman, a geographer at the University of Michigan-Flint. So that's the basic challenge: dig up several thousand miles of poisonous pipe buried as deep as dead bodies.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Are you ready for a close-up—a really, really close close-up? The microbes in your mouth probably are and, boy, are they looking fabulous.

Using genetic and fluorescent probes, researchers lit up the ornate structures of microbes that glom onto human teeth. The resulting images and analysis, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that mouth-dwelling microbes don't just amass in haphazard globs on the outside of unclean teeth. Instead, the microbes build consistent structures that organize inhabitants into areas where they perform specific functions. The unexpected finding suggests that teeth tenants set up highly ordered and collaborative ecosystems on human choppers.

Those structured ecosystems expose "unanticipated interactions and provides a framework for understanding the organization, metabolism, and systems biology of the microbiome and ultimately, its effect on the health of the human host," the authors of the study report.

Gotta admit--pretty cool looking.

Biogeography of a human oral microbiome at the micron scale (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1522149113)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Researchers from Google subsidiary DeepMind have published an article in Nature detailing AlphaGo, a Go-playing program that achieved a 99.8% win rate (494 of 495 games) against other Go algorithms, and has also defeated European Go champion Fan Hui 5-to-0. The researchers claim that defeating a human professional in full-sized Go was a feat expected to be achieved "at least a decade away" (other statements suggest 5-10 years). The Register details the complexity of the problem:

Go presents a particularly difficult scenario for computers, as the possible number of moves in a given match (opening at around 2.08 x 10¹⁷⁰ and decreasing with successive moves) is so large as to be practically impossible to compute and analyze in a reasonable amount of time.

While previous efforts have shown machines capable of breaking down a Go board and playing competitively, the programs were only able to compete with humans of a moderate skill level and well short of the top meat-based players. To get around this, the DeepMind team said it combined a Monte Carlo Tree Search method with neural network and machine learning techniques to develop a system capable of analyzing the board and learning from top players to better predict and select moves. The result, the researchers said, is a system that can select the best move to make against a human player relying not just on computational muscle, but with patterns learned and selected from a neural network.

"During the match against [European Champion] Fan Hui, AlphaGo evaluated thousands of times fewer positions than Deep Blue did in its chess match against Kasparov; compensating by selecting those positions more intelligently, using the policy network, and evaluating them more precisely, using the value network – an approach that is perhaps closer to how humans play," the researchers said. "Furthermore, while Deep Blue relied on a handcrafted evaluation function, the neural networks of AlphaGo are trained directly from gameplay purely through general-purpose supervised and reinforcement methods."

The AlphaGo program can win against other algorithms even after giving itself a four-move handicap. AlphaGo will play five matches against the top human player Lee Sedol in March.

Google and Facebook teams have been engaged in a rivalry to produce an effective human champion-level Go algorithm/system in recent years. Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg hailed his company's AI Research progress a day before the Google DeepMind announcement, and an arXiv paper from Facebook researchers was updated to reflect their algorithm's third-place win... in a monthly bot tournament.

Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search (DOI: 10.1038/nature16961)

Previously: Google's DeepMind AI Project Mimics Human Memory and Programming Skills

Original Submission