SoylentNews

Phoenix666 writes:

Someone is sick out in a very rural area and there are no good roads to get there. How do you get medical supplies to them in a timely fashion? Rwanda is giving a trial run to using drones instead of motorbikes:

The latest way that drones are helping to improve lives is by delivering needed medical supplies in Rwanda. The nation's government has started a drone delivery program that will get supplies like blood bags to people in rural areas.

Up until now, this aid was brought to people via motorbike, but unpaved and hard to navigate roads can make the journey difficult and long while people wait for necessary medical supplies on the other end. Drones can make these trips quickly and safely, getting people the supplies they need when they need them.

Rwanda is establishing what it's calling a Droneport, a centralized hub for the drones and supplies where deliveries will originate and then be distributed to rural areas for a pilot testing phase.

Maybe Amazon can get some delivery tips from Rwanda?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A restored version of the original Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope 35mm print has been uploaded online. The version contains none of the CGI effects or edits found in later editions, is not made from cut up sources like previous fan efforts, and has a better quality than the digital version included on a 2006 special edition DVD release:

The group behind the release, dubbed Team Negative 1, is made up of Star Wars fans and enthusiasts who spent thousands of dollars of their own cash to restore the film without the blessing of creator George Lucus, or franchise owner Disney. Lucas has famously disowned the original theatrical version of Star Wars, telling The Today Show back in 2004:

The special edition, that's the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it's on VHS, if anybody wants it. ... I'm not going to spend the—we're talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn't really exist anymore. It's like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I'm sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it.

Lucasfilm later claimed that the original negatives of Star Wars were permanently altered for the special edition releases, making restoration next to impossible. How Team Negative 1 got its hands on a 35mm print of the 1977 release of the movie is a mystery. But for fans who don't want to see ropey CGI, a pointless Jabba the Hutt scene, and know for a fact that Han shoots first, this restored version of the film—even with some pops, scratches, and colour issues—is the one to watch.

See also: http://moviemezzanine.com/the-fans-who-saved-star-wars/.

Do be aware: "The only issue with Team Negative 1's version of the film is that it isn't exactly legal."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Researchers at the University College London have created an optical receiver with fewer components which could enable cheaper 10 Gbps home fiber connections:

While major advances have been made in core optical fibre networks, they often terminate in cabinets far from the end consumers. The so called 'last mile' which connects households to the global Internet via the cabinet, is still almost exclusively built with copper cables as the optical receiver needed to read fibre-optic signals is too expensive to have in every home.

Lead researcher, Dr Sezer Erkilinc (UCL Electronic & Electrical Engineering), said: "We have designed a simplified optical receiver that could be mass-produced cheaply while maintaining the quality of the optical signal. The average data transmission rates of copper cables connecting homes today are about 300 Mb/s and will soon become a major bottleneck in keeping up with data demands, which will likely reach about 5-10 Gb/s by 2025. Our technology can support speeds up to 10 Gb/s, making it truly future-proof."

For the study, published today in the Journal of Lightwave Technology, scientists from the UCL Optical Networks Group and UNLOC programme developed a new way to solve the 'last mile problem' of delivering fibre connections direct to households with true fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband technology. They simplified the design of the optical receiver, improving sensitivity and network reach compared to existing technology. Once commercialised, it will lower the cost of installing and maintaining active components between the central cabinet and homes.

[...] The novel optical receiver retains many of the advantages of the conventional optical receivers typically used in core networks, but is smaller and contains around 75-80% fewer components, lowering the cost of manufacture and maintenance. Co-author, Dr Seb Savory, previously at UCL and now at the University of Cambridge, added: "Our receiver, is much simpler, containing just a quarter of the detectors used in a conventional coherent optical receiver. We achieved this by applying a combination of two techniques. First a coding technique often used in wireless communications was used to enable the receiver to be insensitive to the polarisation of the incoming signals. Second we deliberately offset the receiver laser from the transmitter laser with the additional benefit that this allows the same single optical fibre to be used for both upstream and downstream data."

Found on NextBigFuture.

Polarization-Insensitive Single Balanced Photodiode Coherent Receiver for Long-Reach WDM-PONs (DOI: 10.1109/JLT.2015.2507869)

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A new research project aims to develop the world's first flying robots capable of autonomously assessing and manufacturing building structures to help areas suffering from natural disasters.

The four year collaborative research project entitled 'Aerial Additive Building Manufacturing: Distributed Unmanned Aerial Systems for in-situ manufacturing of the built environment' involves researchers from the University of Bath, Imperial College and University College London.

The research team aims to develop drones that can use an Additive Building Manufacturing (ABM) system to reach remote and disaster areas, and 3D print structures such as shelters and buildings, providing much needed disaster relief.

The drones being developed could fly to a disaster zone, scan and model the landscape using Building Information Management (BIM) systems, design temporary shelters, and print them on the spot. This could give those in need a place to live until emergency services personnel can reach them.

How is this an improvement on providing tents?

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

The IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, a Cognitive Computing Competition, was announced on the TED Stage on Feb 17, 2016. It is a $5 million competition challenging teams from around the world to develop and demonstrate how humans can collaborate with powerful cognitive technologies to tackle some of the world's grand challenges.

Every year leading up to TED2020, teams will go head-to-head at World of Watson, IBM's annual conference, competing for interim prizes and the opportunity to advance to the next year's competition.

The three finalist teams will take the TED stage in 2020 to deliver jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring TED Talks demonstrating what they have achieved.

Those who wish to register may do so here.

[Also Covered By]: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/18/ibm_watson_offers_5bn_for_an_ai_to_save_the_world/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A Virgin Atlantic flight from London's Heathrow Airport destined for New York was forced to return following a "laser beam incident":

A flight heading to New York turned back to London Heathrow Airport after a "laser beam incident", Virgin Atlantic has confirmed. A crew member is recorded saying to Irish air traffic control that they had a "medical issue with one of the pilots after a laser incident after take-off". It happened at 20:13 GMT, shortly after take-off, the company said, before flight VS025 returned as a precaution. There were 252 passengers and 15 crew on board. Metropolitan Police tweeted: "Aircraft forced to return to Heathrow after being hit by a laser strike... #laserstrike CAD4."

[...] A new law introduced in 2010 means people could be charged with "shining a light at an aircraft in flight so as to dazzle the pilot".

Janet Alexander, a commercial airline pilot, said shining a laser beam into a cockpit was a very dangerous thing to do. "It's unfortunately becoming an increasingly problematic occurrence. It's very like a lightning strike in that it's very instantaneous, very, very bright light, which is dazzling basically," she said. "And of course if it's targeted in exactly the wrong way you could permanently damage someone's sight."

A total of 414 "laser incidents" in the UK were reported to the Civil Aviation Authority between January and June 2015. The highest number of them was at London Heathrow Airport - 48 were reported during this period. In 2014, there were 1,440 incidents in the UK, with 168 at Heathrow, according to the CAA.

The British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) has called for lasers to be classified as "offensive weapons" and banned in the UK, following the Virgin Atlantic flight VS025 laser incident. Members cite the frequency of laser incidents and say the 2010 legislation on lasers isn't tough enough.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

Phoenix666 writes:

The Veemo is VeloMetro's entry into the electric-assist 'velocar' market, which could help people replace many of their local trips in gas automobiles in favor of using a smaller and more efficient electric vehicle. These electric velocars seem to bridge the gap between an electric bike and a 'neighborhood electric vehicle,' and may help get people pedaling who otherwise wouldn't.

The vehicles are technically classified as bicycles, not cars, so no license or registration are necessary to drive one, and are limited to about 32 kph (20 mph), which may also help widen their appeal to non-drivers. The Veemo are said to have a range of about 100 km (62 miles) per charge, and its slim size allows for it to easily fit in bike lanes and parking areas.

The public roll-out of the Veemo won't be until next year, after some beta testing of the vehicles in the City of Vancouver's fleet, as well as the testing of a pilot fleet at the University of British Columbia, and the company plans to offer a point-to-point rental of the vehicles for a flat rate of US$0.20 per minute (CAD$0.28) in Vancouver and other cities.

Good to have a covered option in a rainy place.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

the Swedish parliamentary committee responsible for environmental policy has published a plan to go "carbon neutral" by 2045, building on a previous pledge to have no net emissions by 2050.

Of course "carbon neutral" can be a somewhat fuzzy term, so it's good to see that the committee has stated that 85% of the emissions reductions needed will be achieved at home. The remaining`15% would be achieved by supporting emissions reduction projects abroad.

It's an impressive goal. And it sends yet another strong signal to the markets that the low carbon transition is well underway. With New Zealand and the UK phasing out coal, many major cities and gigantic corporations committing to 100% renewables, and now entire nation states declaring huge carbon reduction goals and ambitious timeframes in which they intend to achieve them, I tend to think that fossil fuel execs ought to be thinking very hard about what their Plan B is if the world starts making good on even some of its lofty green promises.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Researchers at the UK's Southampton University have created a storage scheme that could supposedly store hundreds of terabytes for billions of years:

Researchers, led by Martynas Beresna, in the university's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) have built five-dimensional photonic structures in nano-structured fuzed quartz glass with femtosecond pulses of light; meaning one quadrillionth (one millionth of one billionth) of a second. Data is written in three layers of nano-structured dots, voxels, separated by five micrometres (one millionth of a metre).

A voxel is an optical vortex, a polarisation vortex using nano-gratings, and a paper by the researchers, "Radially polarized optical vortex converter created by femtosecond laser nanostructuring of glass" (pdf), explains how they: "...demonstrate a polarization vortex converter, which produces radially or azimuthally polarized visible vortices from a circularly polarized beam, using femtosecond laser imprinting of space-variant self-assembled form birefringence in silica glass."

When the femtolaser pulse hits the glass it causes polarisation vortices to be created which change the way light passes through the glass, modifying its polarisation. This polarisation can be detected using a combined optical microscope and polariser. The dimensions of the three-layered nano-structured dot voxel are length, width, depth, size and orientation.

We're told an optical disk, using this technology, could hold 360TB of data for 13.8 billion years at 190°C, meaning a virtually unlimited lifetime at room temperature. [...] Altechna, a Lithuanian laser optics company, is working on commercialising the technology.

This story is a bit of a throwback since the researchers originally published these claims back in 2013. However they are presenting their results under the title "Eternal 5D data storage by ultrafast laser writing in glass" on February 17, 2016 at the SPIE Photonics West 2016 conference in San Francisco.

5D Data Storage by Ultrafast Laser Nanostructuring in Glass

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Do you have low T, bro? It may be affecting your "mood":

As men age, they lose testosterone — which some say affects their sense of well-being and sexual function. But for healthy older men, using supplemental testosterone as a remedy has been controversial. Past studies of the supplement's use have been relatively small, and the evidence about benefits and risks has been mixed.

Now a well-designed study published [open, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1506119] online Wednesday, in the New England Journal of Medicine, confirms certain benefits in sexual function and mood for some men 65 and over, at least in the first year. Though the gains were modest, and some tended to wane in the latter months of treatment, researchers say the findings are encouraging, and merit further research.

[...] The University of Pittsburgh was one of 12 sites nationwide that collaborated to look at the possible benefits of testosterone in older men whose levels of the hormone were below 275 ng per deciliter of blood — that's just below the wide range that many doctors consider "normal" for healthy, younger men.

The scientists screened more than 51,000 men who were 65 or older for their study, and from that group found 790 with low testosterone, as measured by a blood test. The researchers say the study wasn't designed to get at whether the men had lost the hormone more rapidly than others, or whether they produced less testosterone to begin with. About half the participants were given testosterone gel, and the other half a placebo gel. Until the first year of the study was over, neither the participants nor the researchers knew which men were getting the placebo.

"The testosterone concentrations in the men in this trial [who got the active treatment] were increased, on average, to just the middle of the normal range for young men," says endocrinologist Dr. Peter Snyder, of the University of Pennsylvania, who led the study. After a year, Snyder says, though the benefits were only moderate, it was clear that mood and physical activity had improved among the group that had been getting a boost of testosterone. And the biggest improvement, he says, was in sexual function. "Testosterone improved sexual activity, sexual desire and improved erectile function," Snyder says.

[...] Past research has suggested that increasing testosterone levels might also increase the risk for of heart attack and stroke, or lead to prostate issues. But Snyder says, so far, his team of scientists has found no increase in adverse events among those taking the hormone. Still, that doesn't mean testosterone supplements are safe to take long-term, he says. To get those answers, he says, far more research is needed — larger studies that last longer periods of time.

Bonus article: Sound wave therapy is first alternative to Vîagra in 15 years

Original Submission

DeathMonkey writes:

After several years of declines, 2015 sees the first increase in extremist group membership.

The number of extremist groups operating in the United States grew in 2015 – a year awash in deadly extremist violence and hateful rhetoric from mainstream political figures, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center's annual census of hate groups and other extremist organizations.

The SPLC found that the number of hate groups operating in 2015 was 14 percent higher than in 2014. Antigovernment "Patriot" groups – armed militias and others animated by conspiracy theories – also grew 14 percent during the same period.

While the number of extremist groups grew in 2015 after several years of declines, the real story was the deadly violence committed by extremists in city after city," said Mark Potok, senior fellow at the SPLC and editor of the Intelligence Report. "Whether it was Charleston, San Bernardino or Colorado Springs, 2015 was clearly a year of deadly action for extremists."

The hate groups listed in this report include neo-Nazis, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, Klansmen and black separatists.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Trilobites are a fossil group of extinct marine invertebrate animals with external skeletons. As predators and scavengers, they flourished in the Cambrian period and were very prominent in the oceans that once were located in Missouri.
...
Using sophisticated three-dimensional laser scanning and digital photograph analyses, sections of the rocks revealed burrows or trails left behind by trilobites and their prey—often worm-like creatures—in ocean sediments. To the scientists, these intersecting trails show how the predators caught their prey. Additionally, previous studies by former MU geology professor, James Stitt, revealed that the trilobites had very large eyes, so the researchers were looking for clues as to how their anatomy played into their feeding habits.

Tracks from the site showed that the predators attacked from above, moving alongside to use their many legs for more effective grappling of their prey. Further, predators preferentially selected smaller prey, indicating that they attacked their food rather than randomly bumping into it.

"Predation, or the action of attacking one's prey, is a significant factor in evolution; this discovery is extremely important in the study of how organisms evolved in the Cambrian Period," Schiffbauer said. "In this study, we provide evidence that these trilobites were likely visual predators, displaying selectivity in seeking and hunting their food."

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Back in the day, one had less than ideal clothing for protection from the elements. Witness the classic oilskin. Many improvements have been made over the year with advanced fabrics. Now, there is the promise of clothing that knows when you sweat, releases it, and then closes back up to retain warmth.

Under the direction of Professor Hiroshi Ishii, the bioLogic team has unearthed a new behavior of the ancient bacteria Bacillus subtilis natto: the expansion and contraction of the natto cells relative to atmospheric moisture. The team is capitalizing on this natural phenomenon by embedding the bacteria into fabric to ventilate garments. They harvest the animate natto cells in a bio lab and assemble them with a micron-resolution bio-printing system, transforming them into responsive fashion, a "second skin." The synthetic bio-skin reacts to body heat and sweat, causing flaps around heat zones to open, enabling sweat to evaporate and cool down the body through an organic material flux.

Together with New Balance, bioLogic is applying this technology to creating sportswear that regulates athletes' body temperatures, thereby enhancing performance. Lining Yao, who is responsible for concept creation, interaction design, and fabrication for bioLogic, explains, "We are trying to explore how the physical materials and physical environment can be smarter, more adaptive, and become part of us. This garment will understand when you sweat, and it will sense and open up to release your sweat, and close up to keep you warm again. A garment can become an interface that can communicate with your body. The reason we started to explore this bacteria is that we knew that in the natural world there are a lot of smart materials that are naturally responsive. It's very sensitive to even tiny changes in the skin condition, so we thought an on-skin transformable textile would be a really interesting application."

If you get your knickers in a twist will that strangulate them?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Magnetic gears have several advantages over mechanical gears. The main one is the absence of direct contact between the parts. While mechanical gears, such as the meshing gears inside a watch, transmit the motion through the contact between moving teeth, magnetic gears are contactless. Magnetic gears require less maintenance, no lubrication, they have also better reliability, and efficiency, and they produce lower vibration and noise. Magnetic gears are often based on an alloy of iron, boron and neodymium, which creates the strongest permanent magnets known to date.

Some of our food mixers in the kitchen, magnetic stirrers in a chemistry lab or other industrial magnetic couplings are based on the idea that the two magnets rotate around the same axis. "I wanted to explore the possibility of positioning the input and output axes at any desired inclination angle," explains Dr Schönke. "Furthermore, there are certain configurations of the two magnets that allow the addition of a third magnet at a specific position and still maintain a smooth coupling". As an illustrative example, Dr Schönke modeled a paddle boat where two magnets are connected to the paddles and one to the driving system. If the magnet of the driving system is rotated, the paddles move in a synchronized way to push the boat forward. Interestingly, because of the contactless nature of the magnetic coupling, the paddle axle is fixed outside of the boat, and it does not penetrate the hull. However, the specific triangle geometry between the positions of the three magnets is crucial, to make the coupling work smoothly. In the future, this type of technology is going to be particularly useful in micro- and nanosystems. As for the paddles of the boat model, the motion of mini pumps and valves placed inside micro-channels can be controlled from outside in a contactless way.

There is a video illustrating the boat example.

Original Submission

GungnirSniper writes:

The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University has published a paper that suggests removing large-denomination currency would cut down on crimes that involves trafficking ill-gotten money.

Illegal money flows pose a massive challenge to all societies, rich and poor. Tax evasion undercuts the financing of public services and distorts the economy. Financial crime fuels and facilitates criminal activities from drug trafficking and human smuggling to theft and fraud. Corruption corrodes public institutions and warps decision-making. Terrorist finance sustains organisations that spread death and fear. The scale of such illicit money flows is staggering.

Our proposal is to eliminate high denomination, high value currency notes, such as the €500 note, the $100 bill, the CHF1,000 note and the £50 note. Such notes are the preferred payment mechanism of those pursuing illicit activities, given the anonymity and lack of transaction record they offer, and the relative ease with which they can be transported and moved. By eliminating high denomination, high value notes we would make life harder for those pursuing tax evasion, financial crime, terrorist finance and corruption. Without being able to use high denomination notes, those engaged in illicit activities – the "bad guys" of our title – would face higher costs and greater risks of detection. Eliminating high denomination notes would disrupt their "business models".

Former Harvard President and ex-Treasury Secretary concurs, saying "a moratorium on printing new high denomination notes would make the world a better place."

Nordic nations have been moving away from paper and coin, and have seen a decrease in physical theft attempts but a rise in credit card fraud.

Scandinavians rely on cash for less than 6% of all payments made. By contrast, around 47% of U.S. payments are still made with cash, according to the Norwegian central bank.

Will taking the $100 bill out of circulation make a significant impact on criminal activity?

Original Submission