SoylentNews

Phoenix666 writes:

M.I.T. Technology Review reports:

At the giant Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park under construction near Dubai, a desalination facility goes into operation this month. Run by an array of solar panels and batteries, the system will produce about 13,200 gallons of drinking water a day for use on site. That's tiny compared to desalination plants elsewhere, but it's a start toward answering a pressing question: can countries stop burning fossil fuels to supply fresh water?

Hundreds of desalination plants are planned or under way worldwide because fresh water is increasingly precious. According to a report from the International Food Policy Research Institute, more than half the world's population will be at risk of water shortages by 2050 if current trends continue.

...
Unfortunately, solar-powered desalination is expensive: as much as three times the cost of water from grid-powered plants, according to a World Bank report. Desalination plants need to run 24 hours a day, requiring expensive battery packs to supplement solar power when the sun's not shining. Thanks to increased efficiency and the falling price of solar power, costs are expected to fall rapidly: from more than $50 per 1,000 gallons today, in the Middle East, to half of that by midcentury. But that's still likely too much to make solar-powered desalination economically viable without government subsidies, even in places such as the Middle East that are optimal for solar power.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Scientists understand that stress in early childhood can create lifelong psychological troubles, but have only begun to explain how they emerge in the brain.

For example, they have observed that stress incurred early in life attenuates neural growth. Now a new study with male mice exposed to stress shows that the hippocampus reaches some developmental milestones early—essentially maturing faster in response to stress.

The findings, the first to track and report signs of stress-related early maturation in a brain region as mice develop, may lend some credence to the expression that children facing early adversity have to "grow up too fast."

Kevin Bath, assistant professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown University, became curious about whether some brain regions were maturing faster when he observed that certain traits in humans and rodents—such as fear-driven learning and memory, sexual development, and neural connectivity among some brain regions—were accelerated, rather than stunted, after early life stress. Some of these qualities, particularly memory and emotion regulation, involve the hippocampus.

It makes sense as an evolutionary adaptation--mature faster, survive longer, reproduce earlier. But how much of our societal ills are secondary effects of that process?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

In the south-east of Romania, in Constanța county close to the Black Sea and the Bulgarian border, there lies a barren featureless plain. The desolate field is completely unremarkable, except for one thing.

Below it lies a cave that has remained isolated for 5.5 million years. While our ape-like ancestors were coming down from the trees and evolving into modern humans, the inhabitants of this cave were cut off from the rest of the planet.

Despite a complete absence of light and a poisonous atmosphere, the cave is crawling with life. There are unique spiders, scorpions, woodlice and centipedes, many never before seen by humans, and all of them owe their lives to a strange floating mat of bacteria.

How does the life thriving in this alien environment boost the probability we might find similar ecosystems on Mars, Europa, Titan, or Enceladus?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Women who plan to become pregnant are told they need enough folate to prevent birth defects, but new research suggests there could be serious risks in having far too much of the nutrient.

The researchers found that if a new mother has a very high level of folate right after giving birth—more than four times what is considered adequate—the risk that her child will develop an autism spectrum disorder doubles.

Further, very high levels of another vitamin, B12, are also potentially harmful, tripling the risk that a new mom's offspring will develop an autism spectrum disorder. If both levels are extremely high, the risk that a child develops the disorder increases 17.6 times.

There is no such thing as a home testing meter to monitor the levels of folates and B12 in your blood, the way there is for glucose. How would a mother know without running to the doctor every day?

takyon: Also at Johns Hopkins University, The Atlantic, CBS News, and the Baltimore Sun. There is no DOI, because these are preliminary findings that will be presented on May 13th at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Baltimore.

Related: Scotland to Debate Fortification of Flour With Folic Acid as UK Govt Delays
FDA Allows Fortification of Corn Masa Flour With Folic Acid

Original Submission

b0ru writes:

ESA's Swarm mission was launched in 2013 to measure and classify the magnetic signals emanating from different depths of the Earth's crust. The data collected up to the present indicates that the Earth's magnetic field is weakening more quickly than previously thought.

Chris Finlay, senior scientist at DTU Space in Denmark, states

Our planet's magnetic field is partially responsible for protecting us from high energy particles from space, for example, the solar wind, and cosmic rays. It has been known for quite some time that the Earth's magnetic poles move over time. The implications of weakening field strength, however, means more high energy radiation is reaching the Earth's surface which has been confirmed by measurements from neutron monitors in the Arctic Circle. The collected data will be invaluable in the investigation of the planet's diminishing magnetic field, and the effects of the rising levels of cosmic radiation on life on Earth.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Nissan reminds you to buy low:

Japanese car makers Mitsubishi Motors and Nissan have confirmed talks of a capital tie-up as the former struggles with a scandal over falsifying fuel efficiency. Trading in Mitsubishi Motors' shares was suspended on Thursday.

Local media reports suggest Nissan will take a one-third stake in its rival to become the single largest shareholder. In the wake of the scandal, Mitsubishi Motors had seen its market value drop by more than 40%. In April, the carmaker admitted it had used fuel consumption tests that broke Japanese rules for the past 25 years.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/machine-learning-accelerates-the-discovery-of-new-materials

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials in China have used a combination of machine learning, supercomputers, and experiments to speed up discovery of new materials with desired properties.

The idea is to replace traditional trial-and-error materials research, which is guided only by intuition (and errors). With increasing chemical complexity, the possible combinations have become too large for those trial-and-error approaches to be practical.

The scientists focused their initial research on improving nickel-titanium (nitinol) shape-memory alloys (materials that can recover their original shape at a specific temperature after being bent). But the strategy can be used for any materials class (polymers, ceramics, or nanomaterials) or target properties (e.g., dielectric response, piezoelectric coefficients, and band gaps).

Accelerated search for materials with targeted properties by adaptive design (open, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11241)

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

El Reg reports

Microsoft's MSN China portal will [say] farewell [to] the Internet in June of this year, [signaling] a further withdrawal of the country's content presence in the Middle Kingdom.

The decision was first reported in Chinese media, according to Nikkei, with Redmond to pay more attention to hosting, Windows 10, and its R&D operation.

The announcement was made on cn.msn.com, putting June 7 as the cutover for the portal to quit offering its news, lifestyle, and search services. It will redirect users to a Bing search bar (just in case users remember it) and a directory of Chinese sites.

As well as a refocus on products, Nikkei says local competition from Sina and Sohu, along with China's Great Firewall, were factors in the [decision].

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

One hundred and fifty years of mathematics will be proved wrong if a new computer program stops running. Thankfully, it's unlikely to happen, but the code behind it is testing the limits of the mathematical realm.

The program is a simulated Turing machine, a mathematical model of computation created by codebreaker Alan Turing. In 1936, he showed that the actions of any computer algorithm can be mimicked by a simple machine that reads and writes 0s and 1s on an infinitely long tape by working through a set of states, or instructions. The more complex the algorithm, the more states the machine requires.

Now Scott Aaronson and Adam Yedidia of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created three Turing machines with behaviour that is entwined in deep questions of mathematics. This includes the proof of the 150-year-old Riemann hypothesis – thought to govern the patterns of prime numbers.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2087845-this-turing-machine-should-run-forever-unless-maths-is-wrong/

[Reference]: A Relatively Small Turing Machine Whose Behaviour Is Independent of Set Theory (pdf)

Original Submission

frojack writes:

According to early reports the Hyperloop's initial tests (open air tests) were a success at their test track in North Las Vegas. Image.

It didn't go far but it did work. A metal sled accelerated from zero to 116 mph in 1.1 seconds, or about 2.4 Gs of force. It traveled little more than 100 meters, then stopped, kicking up a cloud of sand in the process.

The Verge has a couple articles Here, before the test and test pictures here.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

In February, two artists, Nora al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles – claimed to have scanned the bust of Nefertiti in a German history museum using a handheld Kinect Sensor. They then posted the digital files online.

Their goal, they said, was to free the statue from its imprisonment inside the walls of Berlin's Neues Museum by enabling anyone with access to a 3D printer to make their own near-perfect replica – a Nefertiti for all.

Al-Badri and Nelles saw their caper as an act of cultural liberation. It was a gesture against what they believe to be a legacy of colonial theft and appropriation, in which the goods of one nation or culture – in this case, Egypt – ended up in the museums and storerooms of another.

But the stunt illustrated another possibility: the indirect heist. Instead of stealing the thing itself, you can just pilfer the set of parameters – the metadata – that define it.

Why steal the actual bust of Nefertiti when you can instead easily nab the measurements to fabricate a new one? You would not have the original but you would have the peculiar wealth that comes with possessing a potentially infinite number of exact copies.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2087863-the-perfect-heists-that-involve-stealing-nothing-at-all/

[Related]: Cosmo Wenman has been scanning and releasing digital files of artefacts housed in the British Museum

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

An interesting phone interview with Carol Gluck, a professor of Japanese history at Columbia University.

"The Japanese ignore everything before Hiroshima and the Americans ignore everything after Nagasaki."

On Tuesday, President Obama announced his decision to visit Hiroshima, Japan, the site where the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb in August 1945. Obama will specifically visit Memorial Park, which commemorates the event; he will be the first sitting American president to do so, although he does not plan to offer any sort of apology. The bombing of Hiroshima killed around 100,000 people; three days later, tens of thousands more were killed after the United States bombed Nagasaki.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2016/05/the_u_s_and_japan_have_very_different_memories_of_world_war_ii.html

Original Submission

martyb writes:

The Harvard Public Health Review has posted a "Special Commentary on the Zika Virus and Public Health Concerns." Amir Attaran, DPhil, LLB, MS. Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa has submitted a thought-provoking article, Off the Podium: Why Public Health Concerns for Global Spread of Zika Virus Means That Rio de Janeiro's 2016 Olympic Games Must Not Proceed.

Brazil's Zika problem is inconveniently not ending. The outbreak that began in the country's northeast has reached Rio de Janeiro, where it is flourishing. Clinical studies are also mounting that Zika infection is associated not just with pediatric microcephaly and brain damage, but also adult conditions such as Guillain-Barré syndrome and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, which are debilitating and sometimes fatal.

Simply put, Zika infection is more dangerous, and Brazil's outbreak more extensive, than scientists reckoned a short time ago. Which leads to a bitter truth: the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games must be postponed, moved, or both, as a precautionary concession. [emphasis added] There are five reasons.

[Continues...]

takyon writes:

Samsung has announced a 256 GB MicroSD card using 3D TLC NAND:

Samsung unveiled its beefy EVO Plus 256 GB MicroSD card, which unseats SanDisk as the current MicroSD density leader. SanDisk introduced its 200 GB Ultra MicroSD card in March 2015, but it is widely believed to employ 15nm planar TLC NAND, whereas the new Samsung EVO Plus features its 48-layer 3D TLC V-NAND.

The UHS-1 Class 10 EVO Plus offers up to 95/90 MBps of sequential read/write throughput, which should satisfy the needs of most common applications, such as 4K video recording, high-resolution photography and other mobile applications. In contrast, the SanDisk Ultra 200 GB offers up to 90 MBps of sequential read speed, but no write speed is listed in its specifications.

It's a new dense SD card you can use to fill up your station wagon, but it costs $250 at launch, whereas the price of the SanDisk 200 GB MicroSD card has declined to about $80.

Related: Secure Digital 5.0 Standard: Memory Cards Intended for 8K and Virtual Reality Recording

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Mike Rowe (of "Dirty Jobs" fame) has a podcast[1] that follows in the footsteps of Paul Harvey's, "The Rest of the Story," wherein he covers little-known history about famous people or events. Episode 1 of March 1, 2016, "25 Million Dollar Kiss," covers Hedy Lamarr, a 30's and 40's era film star and brunette bombshell who was also a visionary inventor. She invented an improved traffic light and "a tablet that would dissolve in water to create a carbonated drink." Her greatest invention, though, was the radio-spectrum hopping principle at the heart of Wi-Fi, CDMA, and Bluetooth designed to help the Navy's radio-guided torpedoes defeat Nazi jamming in WWII.

The Navy, however, ignored her invention, which she patented, until the 1960's because it came from a woman and film star. In fact, when she tried to join the National Inventor's Council to bring her ideas to help with the war effort, she was told to go sell war bonds by selling kisses instead. She raised $25 million that way, and never received recognition for that either.

She died in impoverished seclusion, estranged from her children, in 2000.

It's a fascinating and sad story of unrecognized genius. Even fame and fortune aren't enough to guarantee you history's plaudits if your contemporaries aren't willing to listen to what you're trying to say because of who you are.

[1] Javascript required; scroll down to near the bottom of the page to find "Episode 1: 25 Million Dollar Kiss".

Original Submission