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bitstream writes:

The proposed radio frequency (RF) resonant cavity thruster is unlike conventional thrusters and uses no reaction mass and emits no directional radiation. Designed using principles that are not supported by prevailing scientific theories, it apparently violates the law of conservation of momentum. The EmDrive, has roiled the aerospace world for the several years now, ever since it was proposed by British aerospace engineer Robert Shawyer. The essence of the claim is that by bouncing microwaves in a truncated cone, thrust will be produced out the open end. Most scientists have snorted at the idea, noting correctly that such a thing would violate physical laws. However, prestigious organizations like NASA have replicated the results showing thrusts.

MIT Technology Review has some reasoning on the subject, (possibly pay-walled) with a picture of the device. It's supposedly the so called unruh effect at play. When NASA tested the device, they measured with input of 17 W an average thrust of 91 µN (5.4 µN/W). A Chinese team used 2500 W and measured a thrust of 720 mN (288 µN/W). The expected radiation pressure is closer to 0.003 µN/W.

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takyon writes:

New research has found that over 2 billion people live in parts of the world where the Zika virus can spread via mosquitoes:

More than two billion people live in parts of the world where the Zika virus can spread, detailed maps published in the journal eLife show. The Zika virus, which is spread by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, triggered a global health emergency this year. Last week the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that the virus causes severe birth defects.

The latest research showed mapping Zika was more complex than simply defining where the mosquito can survive. One of the researchers, Dr Oliver Brady from the University of Oxford, told the BBC: "These are the first maps to come out that really use the data we have for Zika - earlier maps were based on Zika being like dengue or chikungunya. "We are the first to add the very precise geographic and environmental conditions data we have on Zika." By learning where Zika could thrive the researchers could then predict where else may be affected. The researchers confirmed that large areas of South America, the focus of the current outbreak, are susceptible.

To put that in perspective, a recent estimate states: "The world population (the total number of living humans on Earth) was 7.349 billion as of July 1, 2015 according to the medium fertility estimate by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. "

Related:
El Salvador Advises Against Pregnancy until 2018 over Zika Virus Birth Defect Fears
World Health Organization to Convene Emergency Meeting for Zika Virus
WHO Calls Zika Virus Outbreak an International Health Emergency
First U.S. Zika Virus Transmission Reported, Likely via Sex Rather than Mosquito Bite
Maybe “It’s Not the Zika Virus”
Pope Francis's Plane Reports Laser Incident
Zika Virus and Birth Defects

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takyon writes:

An FBI operation that installed spyware from a seized server to reveal the addresses of Tor users may be undermined by a failure to obtain the correct warrant:

A ruling by a US federal judge could unravel as many as 1,200 criminal prosecutions of alleged pedophiles by the FBI. Massachusetts District Court Judge William Young today declared that the magistrate judge who issued a warrant authorizing the FBI to infect suspects' PCs with tracking malware lacked the proper authority to do so. In early 2015, the Feds had used the warrant to install a so-called NIT – a Network Investigative Technique – on the computers of people who visited a website hidden in the Tor network that hosted a huge archive of photos and videos of child sex abuse.

[...] "It follows that the resulting search was conducted as though there were no warrant at all," Judge Young said in his ruling [PDF]. "Since warrantless searches are presumptively unreasonable, and the good-faith exception is inapplicable, the evidence must be excluded." [...] According to Judge Young, the problem with the warrant was that it was signed by a US magistrate judge, who only had the jurisdiction to authorize warrants in his local area. Collecting evidence outside of that area, which the FBI surely did with the NIT, can only be done with the authorization of a district judge. This is where things will be particularly frustrating for the Feds, as it turns out the federal judges who could have properly authorized the search were likely just yards away when the NIT warrant was signed.

Also at Reuters and TechCrunch.

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butthurt writes:

CBS News and Xinhua write about a report from the NOAA about the average global temperature and the Arctic sea ice cover during March. At 54.9° Fahrenheit (12.7° Celsius), the average was the warmest yet observed for March and "continues a record streak that started last May." The NOAA report says:

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, March set another heat record for the globe. As Earth continues to warm and is influenced by phenomena such as El Niño, global temperature records are piling up.

For 2016 year to date (January-March), the average temperature for the globe was 2.07 degrees F above the 20th-century average, according to scientists from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. This was the highest temperature for this period in the 1880–2016 record, surpassing the previous record set in 2015 by 0.50 degrees F. The globally averaged sea surface temperature for the year to date was also highest on record, surpassing the same period in 1998 by 0.42 degrees F, the last time a similar strength El Niño occurred.

For March, the average temperature for the globe was 2.20 degrees F above the 20th century average. This was not only the highest for the month of March in the 1880-2016 record, but also the highest monthly temperature departure among all months on record, surpassing the previous all-time record set last month by 0.02 degrees F. March also marked the 11th consecutive month a monthly global temperature record has been broken, and is the longest such streak in NOAA's 137-year climate record.

The Arctic was also impacted by record global heat. Arctic sea ice reached its maximum extent for the year at 5.61 million square miles March 24, the lowest annual maximum extent in the satellite record. This was 431,000 square miles below average and 5,000 square miles below the previous record from 2015.

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takyon writes:

San Francisco will require new buildings (2017 and onwards) to have solar panels installed, in an effort to meet its goal of meeting electrical demands with 100% renewable energy:

San Francisco will soon begin requiring new buildings to have solar panels installed on the roof. It's the first major U.S. city to have such a requirement, according to Scott Weiner, the city supervisor who introduced the bill.

The ordinance, which was passed unanimously by the city's Board of Supervisors, builds on an existing California law requiring new buildings to set aside 15 percent of the roof as "solar ready" — clear and unshaded. That law applies to residential and commercial buildings 10 stories or shorter. Now, instead of just preparing the roof for solar panels, such buildings would need to actually install some form of solar energy — either electricity-generating panels or solar heating units.

SolarCity's stocks rose 7.8% on the news. Also at the SF Examiner.

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butthurt writes:

Various media outlets mark the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster with stories.

• The Daily Mail (archived copy) reports on of the New Safe Confinement, which is being built off-site.
• The New Zealand Herald reports on tourism.
• AFP via Yahoo! 7 News considers lessons learned.
• The British Journal of Photography remarks on the book Chernobyl Legacy by photographer Paul Fusco, who documented "deformities and diseases" among people in the area.
• National Geographic writes about the proliferation of wild animals.
• The Guardian has an essay on the political effects of the disaster.
• The New Statesman reviews the book Chernobyl Prayer by Svetlana Alexievich.
• WTSP-TV presents a time-line.
• WUSA-TV interviews one of the liquidators.
• Belarus Digest says that "over 500,000 people in Belarus" suffer from thyroid problems.
• WTTW-TV interviews an artist born in Poland soon after the disaster, whose work is part of the exhibition "Chornobyl: Impact & Beyond" being shown in Chicago.
• The Irish Times interviews Adi Roche of the NGO Chernobyl Children International, who will speak to the UN General Assembly about the liquidators, by arrangement with the Belarussian government.
• AOL News interviews a 90-year-old man who lives on the outskirts of the exclusion zone.

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Volkswagen Reaches Deal to Buy Back Up to 500,000 Diesel Cars

takyon writes:

Volkswagen has reached a deal that could allow it to spend billions in order to buy back diesel vehicles sold with "defeat devices":

Volkswagen and US officials have reached a deal under which the car maker could offer to buy back up to 500,000 diesel cars in the US, according to reports. The German car giant has also agreed a compensation fund for owners. VW is expected to reveal the deal to a Federal judge in San Francisco on Thursday. A VW spokeswoman, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department declined to comment.

Volkswagen could also offer to repair diesel vehicles if US regulators approve a fix at a future date, reports said. US District Judge Charles Breyer in March gave VW until Thursday "to announce a concrete proposal for getting the polluting vehicles off the road."

Mitsubishi Motors Admits Falsifying Fuel Economy Tests

n1 writes:

BBC reports:

Mitsubishi Motors has admitted falsifying fuel economy data for more than 600,000 vehicles sold in Japan. Tyre pressure figures were falsified by employees to flatter mileage rates, the company said.

Almost 470,000 vehicles that Mitsubishi made for Nissan were affected and the issue was uncovered after Nissan found inconsistencies.

The announcement sent shares in Mitsubishi down more than 15% in Tokyo. Company bosses, including Mitsubishi Motors president Tetsuro Aikawa, bowed deeply at the start of a press conference on Wednesday afternoon in Tokyo.

"The wrongdoing was intentional. It is clear the falsification was done to make the mileage look better. But why they would resort to fraud to do this is still unclear," he said.

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bitstream writes:

Some Finnish people have built a drone-mounted chainsaw and one can ask what could possibly go wrong? It reminds somehow of the Mantrid Drones if anyone recall those. The drone is capable of sawing fir branches and icicles. So it can actually be of use.

Youtube Clip of the #killerdrone.

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butthurt writes:

BBC News reports that U.S. paper money is to feature new artwork.

The $5 note will feature Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, Jr. on its back and Abraham Lincoln on the front.

The design for the $20 bill will depict Andrew Jackson on the back, and Harriet Tubman on the front. Tubman was the favourite in an online poll conducted by the NGO Women on 20s.

According to a Treasury Department site devoted to the new designs, the $10 bill will also be changed. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul will be shown on the back, with an engraving of Alexander Hamilton remaining on the front.

Related story:
Meet The U.K.'s Cutting-Edge Research Vessel ... Boaty McBoatface?

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

In February, the White House announced its plan to put $1 billion toward a similar objective—a "Cancer Moonshot" aimed at making research more techy and efficient. But recent studies of the research enterprise reveal a more confounding issue, and one that won't be solved with bigger grants and increasingly disruptive attitudes. The deeper problem is that much of cancer research in the lab—maybe even most of it—simply can't be trusted. The data are corrupt. The findings are unstable. The science doesn't work.

In other words, we face a replication crisis in the field of biomedicine, not unlike the one we've seen in psychology but with far more dire implications. Sloppy data analysis, contaminated lab materials, and poor experimental design all contribute to the problem. Last summer, Leonard P. Freedman, a scientist who worked for years in both academia and big pharma, published a paper with two colleagues on "the economics of reproducibility in preclinical research." After reviewing the estimated prevalence of each of these flaws and fault-lines in biomedical literature, Freedman and his co-authors guessed that fully half of all results rest on shaky ground, and might not be replicable in other labs. These cancer studies don't merely fail to find a cure; they might not offer any useful data whatsoever. Given current U.S. spending habits, the resulting waste amounts to more than $28 billion. That's two dozen Cancer Moonshots misfired in every single year. That's 100 squandered internet tycoons.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/future_tense/2016/04/biomedicine_facing_a_worse_replication_crisis_than_the_one_plaguing_psychology.html

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butthurt writes:

ZDNet and VentureBeat‎ report on the announcement by Google that version 50 of its Chrome Web browser has been released.

With this version comes, in the company's words,

the end of Chrome's support for Windows XP, as well as Windows Vista, and Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8, since these platforms are no longer actively supported by Microsoft and Apple.

According to Microsoft, Windows Vista will be in "extended support" until 11 April 2017.

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Pornography Declared "Public Health Crisis" in Utah

butthurt writes:

BBC News reports on a resolution (non-Javascript version) passed by the legislature and the governor of the U.S. state of Utah, declaring pornography a "public health crisis." Supported by the NGO Fight the New Drug, the resolution ascribes various ill effects to pornography, concluding:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislature of the state of Utah, the Governor concurring therein, recognizes that pornography is a public health hazard leading to a broad spectrum of individual and public health impacts and societal harms.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Legislature and the Governor recognize the need for education, prevention, research, and policy change at the community and societal level in order to address the pornography epidemic that is harming the people of our state and nation.

Android Antitrust

Absolutely.Geek writes:

From ExtremeTech and the European Commission The EU is complaining that:

Google is countering with:

What does the Soylent community think? Is Google in a precarious position here? Android fragmentation is a massive issue, one that manufacturers seem unwilling to address; if Google is found to be in breach of the rules here will this lead to more fragmentation or the status quo?

[Continues...]

Phoenix666 writes:

Every year, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (part of the Department of Energy) releases an energy flow chart showing how much and what types of energy were consumed in the U.S. in the past year. In recent years there have mainly been small increases in energy use each year, but in 2015, that trend reversed and Americans actually used less energy than in the previous year.

Compared to 2014, Americans used 0.8 quadrillion BTU (quads) less energy in 2015. A BTU or British Thermal Unit, is a unit of measurement for energy and 3,600 BTU is equivalent to about 1 kilowatt-hour. Natural gas use increased by 3 percent while coal use decreased by 12 percent and it's that shift that could have had the biggest impact on the numbers since natural gas power plants are far more efficient at producing electricity than coal-fired ones.

The better news is that renewable energy use has continued to grow with wind energy use up 5 percent, geothermal up 11 percent and residential solar up 11 percent. The biggest increase was in utility-scale solar use which rose 25 percent thanks to a few major projects finally starting to feed into the grid in 2015.

A mild winter helped, but there were also gains in efficiency and conservation that added up to demand destruction.

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Demose writes:

Lasersaur has made their manual available with a bill of materials, build guide and CAD models. "The unit will cut any dense organic material such as plywood and cloth as well as some plastics such as acrylic glass up to 0.5 in (13 mm) thick (depending on the power of the laser tube selected) with up to 100 µm of accuracy."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasersaur

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