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VanessaE writes:

A man was arrested while attending a committee meeting at the Arizona House of Representatives, for doing nothing more than wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and otherwise sitting silently and unobtrusively. Capitol police were called to arrest the man, raising a huge ruckus among the other attendees, shouting and chanting phrases such as "shame, shame" and "the whole world is watching".

Department of Public Safety Captain Damon Cecil said the House's Sergeant of Arms wanted the man in the mask to leave and asked troopers to remove him.

[...] The man will be booked into Maricopa County jail on suspicion of resisting arrest and trespassing, Cecil said.

Cecil disagreed with witnesses who said the man wasn't disruptive.

"If he was peaceful, why wouldn't he just leave?" Cecil said.

Video shot by one of the attendees: https://www.facebook.com/jessicahcarlson/videos/10104729624721042/ [warning: graphic language]

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takyon writes:

Australia's National Coral Bleaching Taskforce has warned that the Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its worst coral bleaching on record. UNESCO recently voted not to add the Great Barrier Reef to its World Heritage in Danger list:

Evidence that Australia's Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its worst coral bleaching on record has renewed calls for the UN to list it as "in-danger". The National Coral Bleaching Taskforce says 95% of reefs from Cairns to Papua New Guinea are now severely bleached. It says only four reefs out of 520 have no evidence of bleaching.

[...] Experts say it is too early to tell whether the corals will recover, but scientists "in the water" are already reporting up to 50% mortality of bleached corals. Climate change and the effects of El Nino are being blamed for the rise in sea temperatures that causes coral bleaching. "What we're seeing now is unequivocally to do with climate change," Professor Justin Martin University of Queensland told the ABC.

NOAA and Wikipedia on coral bleaching.

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AnonTechie writes:

The research, published in the journal Industry and Innovation, calls into question increasing pressure on universities to act as drivers of economic growth, and suggests that policy-makers focus on more vocational FE colleges instead. The new study, carried out by Dr Ross Brown, found that pressure on universities to act as generators of high-tech start-ups has largely failed. Dr Brown, a lecturer in the University's School of Management, said: "While very much the received wisdom that universities are good for business and good at creating businesses, unfortunately the reality doesn't quite match these expectations.

"The strongly engrained view of universities as some kind of innovation panacea is deeply flawed. As occurred in the past when inward investment was seen as a "silver bullet" for promoting economic development, university research commercialisation has been granted an equally exaggerated role in political and policy making circles. Universities are not quasi economic development agencies."

While previously perceived as bodies which undertake teaching and 'blue-skies' research, Dr Brown says that universities are now operating in a new environment with a 'third mission' to help promote economic development. However, his study found that despite considerable expenditure committed towards research commercialisation in Scotland, the returns have been relatively minor in terms of numbers and growth of university start-ups, and levels of licensing agreements with Scottish SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises).

http://phys.org/news/2016-03-academics-poor-entrepreneurs.html

[Abstract]: Mission impossible? Entrepreneurial universities and peripheral regional innovation systems

[Source]: Commercialisation by Scottish universities is 'Mission Impossible'

Many Soylentils would have known about this. What has been your experience ?

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cmn32480 writes:

From CNET:

Angry Netflix customers are a force to be reckoned with, and they're the ones owed an explanation about why the company would slow the transmission of video streams to some wireless customers without informing them.

Netflix found itself in the hot seat after admitting, in a Wall Street Journal story Thursday, that for five years it had been tamping down service to Verizon and AT&T customers. What's more, the Los Gatos, California, company said the policy excluded customers of T-Mobile and Sprint.

Critics immediately cried foul on Netflix, seeing hypocrisy on the part of a company that two years ago led a fight to require the Federal Communications Commission to adopt "strong" Net neutrality rules that would ban Internet service providers from slowing traffic under almost any circumstances. Netflix also wanted the FCC to require operators to be more transparent in how they manage their networks.

But the most galling aspect may be that Netflix never notified its customers that it was imposing a slowdown.

"There is nothing wrong with what Netflix is doing," said Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom, a group that has opposed the FCC's Net neutrality regulations. "Except for not making it public."

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cmn32480 writes:

Many cities worldwide have begun to shift towards LED light bulbs in streetlights due to improved color rendering (broader spectrum light quality) and increased energy efficiency over time. In fact, the United States Department of Energy reports that residential LED's can reduce energy use by 75 percent and last 25 times longer than traditional incandescent lighting. In places like New York City, these changes are projected to result in up to $14 million annually (energy savings and maintenance) and are a huge step towards to[sic] city's goal of reducing carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030.

However, changes in light quality and quantity resulting from widespread changes in streetlight bulbs will almost certainly affect urban populations of plants and animals as well – but maybe not the bats?

This week, Rowse et al. (2015) demonstrated that bat populations in suburban areas of the UK were unaffected by a switch from low-pressure sodium (LPS) bulbs to higher efficiency LED bulbs.

PlosOne study

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takyon writes:

Verizon Enterprise Solutions, whose customers include 99% of the Fortune 500, has suffered a data breach. The contact details of 1.5 million customers are being offered for $100,000:

Earlier this week, a prominent member of a closely guarded underground cybercrime forum posted a new thread advertising the sale of a database containing the contact information on some 1.5 million customers of Verizon Enterprise.

The seller priced the entire package at $100,000, but also offered to sell it off in chunks of 100,000 records for $10,000 apiece. Buyers also were offered the option to purchase information about security vulnerabilities in Verizon's Web site.

Contacted about the posting, Verizon Enterprise told KrebsOnSecurity that the company recently identified a security flaw in its site that permitted hackers to steal customer contact information, and that it is in the process of alerting affected customers.

"Verizon recently discovered and remediated a security vulnerability on our enterprise client portal," the company said in an emailed statement. "Our investigation to date found an attacker obtained basic contact information on a number of our enterprise customers. No customer proprietary network information (CPNI) or other data was accessed or accessible."

Also at The Register.

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takyon writes:

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and IBM will begin testing an array of 16 TrueNorth neuromorphic microprocessors. The 4×4 array of TrueNorth chips costs $1 million and uses just 2.5 W of power. Each TrueNorth chip has 5.4 billion transistors and can supposedly simulate the activity of 1 million "neurons" and 16 million "synapses". The system will be used for machine learning tasks such as image recognition:

Lawrence Livermore, located in Livermore, Calif., has been evaluating TrueNorth since late 2014, but the 16-microprocessor machine is its first opportunity to run large-scale tests, Mr. Van Essen said. Mr. Van Essen's team will unload some supercomputing tasks to TrueNorth, similar to the way a personal computer uses a specialized graphics processing unit to draw images on a computer's screen. He expects the technology to help the lab weed out potential glitches in simulations of phenomena such as subatomic particle interactions and spot patterns in cybersecurity and video surveillance.

The 16-processor Lawrence Livermore machine is an important test of IBM's TrueNorth technology, according to Luis Ceze, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Washington. "It's great that they're doing this," he said. "It's very efficient, but they have to show that the accuracy of the models that they implement [is] good enough."

Big Blue isn't the only company trying to build processors that excel at deep learning. Qualcomm is working on a similar chip called Zeroth. Microsoft researchers are experimenting with programmable processors designed to work with the company's Bing search engine.

Found at NextBigFuture. IBM Research press release.

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cmn32480 writes:

A Chinese research team has developed a novel, environmentally friendly, low-cost battery that overcomes many of the problems of lithium ion batteries (LIB). The new aluminum-graphite, dual-ion battery (AGDIB) offers significantly reduced weight, volume, and fabrication cost, as well as higher energy density in comparison with conventional LIBs. AGDIB's electrode materials are composed of environmentally friendly, low cost aluminum and graphite, while its electrolyte is composed of conventional lithium salt and carbonate solvent.

The research, published in "A Novel Aluminum-Graphite Dual-Ion Battery," recently appeared in Advanced Energy Materials.

The discovery is particularly important given rising battery demand and existing LIB technology, which is reaching its limit in specific energy (by weight) and energy density (by volume).

LIBs are widely used in portable electronic devices, electric vehicles and renewable energy systems. Battery disposal creates major environmental problems, since most batteries contain toxic metals in their electrodes. According to the Freedonia Group, world battery demand is expected to rise 7.7 percent annually, reaching U.S. $120 billion in 2019.

"Compared with conventional LIBs, this battery (AGDIB) shows an obvious advantage in production cost (~ 50 percent lower), specific density (~1.3-2.0 times), and energy density (~1.6-2.8 times)," said TANG Yongbing, leader of the research team. The AGDIB mechanism follows a dual ion intercalation/alloying process.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-chinese-battery-technology.html

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martyb writes:

UMass Amherst Astronomers Report Most 'Outrageously' Luminous Galaxies Ever Observed:

Astronomers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report that they have observed the most luminous galaxies ever seen in the Universe, objects so bright that established descriptors such as "ultra-" and "hyper-luminous" used to describe previously brightest known galaxies don't even come close. Lead author and undergraduate Kevin Harrington says, "We've taken to calling them 'outrageously luminous' among ourselves, because there is no scientific term to apply."

Details appear in the current early online edition of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

[...] Harrington explains that in categorizing luminous sources, astronomers call an infrared galaxy "ultra-luminous" when it has a rating of about 1 trillion solar luminosities, and that rises to about 10 trillion solar luminosities at the "hyper-luminous" level. Beyond that, for the 100 trillion solar luminosities range of the new objects, "we don't even have a name," he says.

[...] They also conducted analyses to show that the galaxies' brightness is most likely due solely to their amazingly high rate of star formation. "The Milky Way produces a few solar masses of stars per year, and these objects look like they [are] forming one star every hour," [UMass astronomy professor Min] Yun says. Harrington adds, "We still don't know how many tens to hundreds of solar masses of gas can be converted into stars so efficiently in these objects, and studying these objects might help us to find out. (Emphasis added.)

Obviously, the next step after ultra-, hyper-, and outrageously-bright would be ludicrously-bright. Right?

An abstract and full article (pdf) are available.

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram.

Arctic sea ice appears to have reached a record low wintertime maximum extent for the second year in a row, according to scientists at the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA.

The new record low follows record high temperatures in December, January and February around the globe and in the Arctic. The atmospheric warmth probably contributed to this lowest maximum extent, with air temperatures up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit above average at the edges of the ice pack where sea ice is thin, said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The wind patterns in the Arctic during January and February were also unfavorable to ice growth because they brought warm air from the south and prevented expansion of the ice cover. But ultimately, what will likely play a bigger role in the future trend of Arctic maximum extents is warming ocean waters, Meier said.

"It is likely that we're going to keep seeing smaller wintertime maximums in the future because in addition to a warmer atmosphere, the ocean has also warmed up. That warmer ocean will not let the ice edge expand as far south as it used to," Meier said. "Although the maximum reach of the sea ice can vary a lot each year depending on winter weather conditions, we're seeing a significant downward trend, and that's ultimately related to the warming atmosphere and oceans." Since 1979, that trend has led to a loss of 620,000 square miles of winter sea ice cover, an area more than twice the size of Texas.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/2016-arctic-sea-ice-wintertime-extent-hits-another-record-low

There is a video available showing the change.

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

TechRights reports

Last month, we took note of Microsoft [licenses] in the midst of high-profile corruption and a former Romanian minister is finally going to prison over it. To quote one article about this (in English, not Romanian):

"Romania's high court of cassation and justice on Thursday jailed the former telecommunications minister, Gabriel Sandu, for two years for money laundering, abuse of office, and bribery involving the lease of Microsoft IT licenses for schools.

"The ex-mayor of the eastern town of Piatra Neamt, Gheorghe Stefan, and two other businessmen who acted as middlemen also got jail terms of up to three years.

"The four defendants have also to pay a total of almost 10 million euros in compensation. The Supreme Court's sentence is not final."

It is worth noting that, owing to such corruption, it is Microsoft--not GNU/Linux and Free software--that makes it into Romanian schools. Recent reports serve to indicate Microsoft corruption in other countries; this is still the subject of a US-led probe which maybe some more corruption can somehow scuttle.

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Our Thanks to Runaway1956, MostCynical, and e_armadillo for all writing in within minutes of each other with a variety of articles on this one.

The Justice Department is abandoning its bid to force Apple to help it unlock the iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino terrorist attack because investigators have found a way in without the tech giant's assistance, prosecutors wrote in a court filing Monday.

In a three-sentence filing, prosecutors wrote that they had "now successfully accessed the data" stored on Syed Rizwan Farook's iPhone and that they consequently no longer needed Apple's court-ordered help getting in. The stunning move averts a courtroom showdown pitting Apple against the government — and privacy interests against security concerns — that many in the tech community had warned might set dangerous precedents.

[Read the government's court filing]

It is unclear how, precisely, investigators got into the phone, or what FBI agents learned about the plot from the materials they were able to review. On the eve of a hearing in the case last week, the FBI had signaled that it may have found a way into Farook's device, writing in a court filing that "an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method." But government officials said they wanted to test that method further before employing it in Farook's case, and they did not offer details about who proposed it or how it would work.

The Justice Department declined to comment on Monday. Apple said it was still formulating a response to the news and had no immediate comment.

Also covered at:
TechCrunch,
The Sydney Morning Herald ,
CNET,
BBC,
El Reg , and many others.

[Continues...]

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The Zika virus has been known for quite some time, but it gained notoriety recently due to its possible linkage to birth defects.

Science News has a summary report on Zika virus:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/special-report-heres-what-we-know-about-zika

A report on the studies of its possible linkage to microcephaly, a birth defect of babies with undersized and underdeveloped brains:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-zika-became-prime-suspect-microcephaly-mystery

In short, studies are continuing, evidence is mounting, but still not quite a confirmation.

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GungnirSniper writes:

On Monday, Hocking College in Ohio has closed its campus due to the escape of a convicted murderer from a local prison. In an unrelated incident in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, schools were locked down due to a fleeing suspect. Last week, an anonymous caller reported an active shooter inside a Naval hospital, yet despite the lockdown no suspects were located.

With the recent attacks in Belgium, Turkey, and Pakistan, are you seeing any security changes in your communities or workplaces?

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fliptop writes:

In January, Target collaborated with global design firm IDEO and MIT Media Lab, spawning their Food + Future coLab to explore such topics as urban farming, food transparency and authenticity, supply chain and health. "We're working at a pace we could only achieve by putting all the right people in one room — from retail experts to bioengineers — and then giving them the freedom, autonomy and resources to make things happen," said Target's chief strategy and innovation officer Casey Carl.

The first of the two ideas developed by the team focused on food labeling. The line, Good & Gather, displays ingredients on the front of packaging rather than in fine print on the back.

The second, aimed at providing real time nutritional information, allows people to scan fruits and vegetables, learn the exact nutritional value and then pay based on freshness.

[...] Other projects that the Food + Future coLab is working on:

• City farming "across multiple scales of an open platform" is being explored in partnership with MIT Media Lab's Open Agriculture Initiative;
• With the assistance of spectroscopy experts at Ocean Optics, a platform is being built that can "see" inside food to evaluate everything from nutrient levels to contaminants

Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.

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