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tonyPick writes:

Nautilus has an interview with Milton Wainwright, a microbiologist and astrophysicist at the University of Sheffield who believes he has evidence for panspermia - the hypothesis that life travels through the cosmos via meteoroids and other objects:

Wainwright sends large balloons up to the stratosphere, as high as 25 miles above the planet's surface, to look for microorganisms drifting in from space.

"Nearly every time we go to the stratosphere, we find these unusual organisms," he says. "They're not coming up from Earth." If they were, he argues, his samples would contain earthly particles or look like earthly beings—which, he says, they don't. But he's had a hard time overcoming his critics' skepticism that the samples differ enough from Earth-bound life to count as aliens. "We cannot get away from the 'little green man syndrome,'" he says.

The article contains a summary of the key points, and the full interview from January is available for viewing.

This earlier space.com article has more details on the counter arguments to these theories, and wikipedia has more background on Panspermia theories.

Originally spotted at Cocktail Party Physics Week in Review.

Original Submission

tonyPick submitted a story:

Gizmodo has a link to a Youtube video on non-Newtonian liquids and how they react to various impacts when viewed with a high speed camera:

The Backyard Scientist went and filled up balloons with non-Newtonian fluids and ripped a chainsaw through them, shot a BB-gun at them, and fired off a golf ball cannon at them too.

He wanted to compare how non-Newtonian fluid would react vs regular ol' water in the same situation.

The fluid in question is Oobleck:

An inexpensive, non-toxic example of a non-Newtonian fluid is a suspension of starch (e.g. cornstarch) in water, sometimes called "Oobleck," "ooze," or "magic mud" (1 part of water to 1.5–2 parts of corn starch)

Spotted at Cocktail Party Physics Week in review.

[According to this simple definition "Non-Newtonian fluids change their viscosity depending on the amount of stress or force applied." -Ed.]

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Queen's University Microbiologists Unmask the Hannibal Route Enigma:

Where did Hannibal cross the Alps?

Hannibal was the Commander-in-Chief of the Carthaginian army during the Second Punic War with Rome (218 –201 BC). He famously led his troops (thirty thousand men, just thirty seven elephants and over fifteen thousand horses and mules) across the Alps to invade Italia - bringing the Roman army to its knees. ...this campaign is rightly regarded today as one of the finest military endeavours of antiquity.

[...] For over two thousand years, historians, statesmen and academics have argued about the route Hannibal took across the Alps. Until now, no solid archaeological evidence has been forthcoming. However, this week – publishing on-line in the Journal Archaeometry– Queen's University's microbiologist Dr Chris Allen and his international team of colleagues, led by Professor Bill Mahaney (York University, Toronto), have finally provided solid evidence for the most likely transit route that took Hannibal's forces across the Alps via the Col de Traversette pass (~3000 m).

[...] Using a combination of microbial metagenome analysis, environmental chemistry, geomorphic and pedological investigation, pollen analyses and various other geophysical techniques, the researchers have shown that a 'mass animal deposition' event occurred near the Col de Traversette - that can be directly dated to approximately 2168 cal yr BP, i.e. 218 BC.

Dr Chris Allen, from the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen's University Belfast, said: "The deposition lies within a churned-up mass from a 1-metre thick alluvial mire, produced by the constant movement of thousands of animals and humans. Over 70 per cent of the microbes in horse manure are from a group known as the Clostridia, that are very stable in soil - surviving for thousands of years. We found scientifically significant evidence of these same bugs in a genetic microbial signature precisely dating to the time of the Punic invasion."

Additional Coverage at The Conversation.

Biostratigraphic Evidence Relating to the Age-Old Question of Hannibal's Invasion of Italy, I: History and Geological Reconstruction (DOI: 10.1111/arcm.12231)

Biostratigraphic Evidence Relating to the Age-Old Question of Hannibal's Invasion of Italy, II: Chemical Biomarkers and Microbial Signatures (DOI: 10.1111/arcm.12228)

💩 submitted from IRC

Original Submission

tonyPick writes:

At Laughing Squid is the link to an animation by Alexey Zakharov which uses camera projection to synthesize some elaborate "film" footage of early 20th century US cities from still image sources:

It's a travel back in time with a little steampunk time machine. The main part of this video was made with Camera projection based on photos.

The main video page is on Vimeo which has versions available for download and also contains a link to source images and some in-progress shots which show the elements of the video construction.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Contactless payments may be all the rage these days, but you still have [to] tap your smartphone, smartwatch or card on a terminal of some kind. And at busy times, this can mean standing in queues or hanging around for ages waiting for the restaurant bill to arrive. All that could be about to change.

"Payments are vanishing inside apps," explains Dave Birch, a payments expert at Consult Hyperion. "That's where all the interesting stuff is going on."

Take the Starbucks or Hailo apps for example. They let customers pay for products and services via apps linked to bank services - there's no need for physical interaction with a terminal at all. And at Starbucks, that means you don't have to join a queue for the till before you get your coffee.

[...] And when EU regulation comes into force in 2018 requiring banks to provide access to data for third party app developers, companies like Facebook or Twitter may well start incorporating payment functionality within their own apps.

"Once you can connect Facebook directly to your bank account, why would you go to your bank app?" asks Mr Birch.

But there's another issue at stake with mobile payment apps, besides convenience and functionality: security. "Mobile apps are miniature web apps, so there are many vulnerabilities associated with those," says Tom Kellermann, chief executive of security investment fund Strategic Cyber Ventures. Around half of mobile payment apps have not had their code effectively audited for security flaws prior to release, he believes.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://medium.com/invironment/an-army-of-ocean-farmers-on-the-frontlines-of-the-blue-green-economic-revolution-d5ae171285a3

Mass-farming is more sustainable than mass-hunting(fishing) with its attendant huge amounts of dead bystander species (bycatch): http://www.bycatch.org/about-bycatch

Those rich people hunting a few lions a year are a smaller problem than millions eating Filet-O-Fish etc. daily from poorly-regulated mass-hunts.

See also: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-08/bluefin-tuna-farming-japan/6373310
http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-farmed-fish-are-taking-over-our-dinner-plates-1415984616

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

TechRepublic and PC World report that Dell Inc. persists with Project Sputnik, an initiative begun late in 2012 under which it offers laptop computers running a Linux-based version of the Ubuntu operating system. The company markets the devices to programmers. The XPS 13 Developer Edition has a Thunderbolt port, an Intel Skylake processor and can optionally be fitted with a 3200×1800-pixel, 276 ppi (109 pixels per cm) touch screen.

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

The Chistian Science Monitor carries a story showing the increasing role that Muslims in USA can play in the next election; the story bears the title of For Muslim-Americans, a big election about more than Trump:

Donald Trump has energized a lot of Muslim-American voters. But their rising political activism goes beyond a backlash to one man.

Subhan Chaudry wants to be heard. That's why the 17 year old (who will be 18 by Election Day) scoured Dearborn, Mich., to register as many Muslim-American voters as possible before his state's primary last month.

And when Democrats in his city – which is 40 percent Arab – handed Bernie Sanders a convincing victory in the primary, it was a sign to him that things are changing.

[...] A generation ago, the Muslim-American community tilted conservative and in many ways was most concerned with just fitting in. But since 9/11, the political shift has been dramatic.

In 2004, a majority of Muslims voted for John Kerry. By 2008, 49 percent of Muslims identified as Democrats and 89 percent voted for Barack Obama. By 2012, the number of Muslims identifying as Democrat hit 66 percent and 85 percent voted for Mr. Obama's re-election, according to surveys by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

This year, the reasons for that shift have become even more apparent, with Mr. Trump proposing to temporarily ban all non-citizen Muslims from entering the country and Sen. Ted Cruz claiming that Muslim neighborhoods should be patrolled to prevent them becoming radicalized.

[Continues...]

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Looks like those Forever stamps may not have been so great an inflation hedge after all. The price of first class US stamps is scheduled to fall to 47 cents (was: 49 cents) on April 10, unless Congress acts. Forty seven cents was the price of a first class stamp in 2013, when Congress passed a law allowing the US Postal Service (USPS) to add a temporary 4.3 percent surcharge to reduce their huge operating losses, blamed in part on the Great Recession. That authority is about to expire.

This would be the first decrease in the price of first class US stamps since 1919. The USPS is lobbying furiously Congress for an extension of the surcharge. Postmaster General Megan Brennan: "Removing the surcharge and reducing our prices is an irrational outcome considering the Postal Service's precarious financial condition."

But Wikipedia has already been updated, optimistically, with the new rate.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Charlie Sobeck​, NASA's Kepler and K2 mission manager, has announced that the Kepler exoplanet-finding space observatory has entered "Emergency Mode":

Something's gone wrong aboard the planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft. On Friday evening, mission manager Charlie Sobeck announced that Kepler had entered "emergency mode." This is the lowest functioning operation mode and, critically, consumes the most fuel. The last time NASA contacted Kepler, on April 4th, the spacecraft was in good health. On Thursday, however, Kepler was found to have been in emergency mode for about a day and a half. Even though it takes roughly 13 minutes for messages to travel the 120 million km from Earth to the spacecraft, it is a positive sign that NASA can still communicate with Kepler. This leaves open the possibility of some technical repair.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Tesla has received 325,000 preorders in the first week for its Model 3 electric car. The starting price of the car is $35,000, and preorders cost $1,000. However, those preorders are refundable, and the company has faced delays for previous vehicles, leading to skepticism about the company's ambitions:

Especially at a time when the automobile seems to be slouching toward commodification, the sight of Tesla fans lining up at stores across the world hoping to put down deposits on a car they had never seen before was nothing short of mind-blowing. But as stunning as this feat of stunt salesmanship was, it was just that: Tesla has not actually sold any Model 3s and there are a wide range of reasons for believing that these pre-order eggs will not hatch into the chickens that Tesla is already counting. In fact, there are reasons to suggest that the entire pre-order play is all a gambit designed to boost the company's stock ahead of a much-needed return to capital markets.

The article goes on to point out Tesla's troubles in China, where speculators placed huge amounts of orders and inflated the actual demand.

takyon writes:

Astrophysicists from the Physics Institute at the University of Bern have calculated upper and lower limits for the size, temperature, and luminosity of the hypothetical icy giant known as "Planet Nine":

In their paper accepted by the journal "Astronomy & Astrophysics" the scientists conclude that a planet with the projected mass equal to 10 Earth masses has a present-day radius of 3.7 Earth radii. Its temperature is minus 226 degrees Celsius or 47 Kelvin. "This means that the planet's emission is dominated by the cooling of its core, otherwise the temperature would only be 10 Kelvin," explains Esther Linder: "Its intrinsic power is about 1000 times bigger than its absorbed power." Therefore, the reflected sunlight contributes only a minor part to the total radiation that could be detected. This also means that the planet is much brighter in the infrared than in the visual. "With our study candidate Planet 9 is now more than a simple point mass, it takes shape having physical properties," says Christoph Mordasini.

The researchers also checked if their results explain why planet 9 hasn't been detected by telescopes so far. They calculated the brightness of smaller and bigger planets on various orbits. They conclude that the sky surveys performed in the past had only a small chance to detect an object with a mass of 20 Earth masses or less, especially if it is near the farthest point of its orbit around the Sun. But NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer may have spotted a planet with a mass equal to 50 Earth masses or more. "This puts an interesting upper mass limit for the planet," Esther Linder explains. According to the scientists, future telescopes like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope under construction near Cerro Tololo in Chile or dedicated surveys should be able to find or rule out candidate Planet 9. "That is an exciting perspective," says Christoph Mordasini.

Evolution and magnitudes of candidate planet nine (open, DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201628350) and arXiv link

Previously: Closing in on Planet Nine

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

Network World interviewed H. D. Moore, one of the founders of the Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) and creator of the Metasploit Framework. The closing of the OSVDB project was announced in a blog post (archived copy) during the first week of April.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Linus Torvalds: The mind behind Linux (transcript)

In a rare interview with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Torvalds discusses with remarkable openness the personality traits that prompted his unique philosophy of work, engineering and life. "I am not a visionary, I'm an engineer," Torvalds says. "I'm perfectly happy with all the people who are walking around and just staring at the clouds ... but I'm looking at the ground, and I want to fix the pothole that's right in front of me before I fall in."

Related: Linus Torvalds on 25 Years of Linux

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

Australian Broadcast Corporation reports on the "signs of our time", like health insurance's reliance on gadgets to assess a healthy life style, privacy issues, and trust/security:

In a perfect world, we'd all walk 10,000 steps a day. But if you find looking at your fitness tracker a bit depressing, these US artists may have a solution. Unfit Bits is a satirical project, prompted by a recent push for insurance customers to share their health data. It offers creative ways to "spoof" your stats - without taking a step.

Tega Brain is a New York-based artist and data engineer who, together with Surya Mattu, developed Unfit Bits.

"Unfit Bits is a project that presents solutions and ways that you might be able to spoof your fitness data," Ms Brain said.

"So you might be able to create or fabricate a fitness dataset that makes it look like you are much more active than maybe you are."

On the Unfit Bits website you can find a bunch of innovative — and comic — ways to fake your fitness data, such as attaching your fitness tracker to a dog or a metronome.

[...] But as funny as watching a video of an office worker spin her fitness device on a power drill is, there's also a serious side to the Unfit Bits project.

[Continues...]