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HughPickens.com writes:

Matt Richtel writes in the NYT that roadway fatalities are soaring at a rate not seen in 50 years, resulting from crashes, collisions and other incidents caused by drivers. But don't call them accidents as a growing number of safety advocates campaign to change a 100-year-old mentality that they say trivializes the single most common cause of traffic incidents: human error. "When you use the word 'accident,' it's like, 'God made it happen,' " says Mark Rosekind. "In our society, language can be everything." Rosekind says that the persistence of crashes — driving is the most dangerous activity for most people — can be explained in part by widespread apathy toward the issue. Changing semantics is meant to shake people, particularly policy makers, out of the implicit nobody's-fault attitude that the word "accident" conveys. The state of Nevada just enacted a law to change "accident" to "crash" in dozens of instances where the word is mentioned in state laws, like those covering police and insurance reports and at least 28 state departments of transportation have moved away from the term "accident" when referring to roadway incidents.

The word 'accident' was introduced into the lexicon of manufacturing and other industries in the early 1900s, when companies were looking to protect themselves from the costs of caring for workers who were injured on the job, says historian Peter Norton. "Relentless safety campaigns started calling these events 'accidents,' which excused the employer of responsibility," says Norton. When traffic deaths spiked in the 1920s, a consortium of auto-industry interests, including insurers, borrowed the wording to shift the focus away from the cars themselves. "Automakers were very interested in blaming reckless drivers," says Norton. But over time the word has come to exonerate the driver, too, with "accident" seeming like a lightning strike, beyond anyone's control. "Labeling most of the motor vehicle collision cases that I see as an attorney as an 'accident' has always been troubling to me," says Steven Gursten. "The word 'accident' implies there's no responsibility for it."

Original Submission

tonyPick writes:

Strange Remains has an article on the history of Optography; the attempt to retrieve the last image seen by the eyes before death, and the 19th century experiments of Wilhelm Friedrich Kühne.

He believed it was possible to develop images, like photographs, from the eyes of the dead. Kühne called the image fixed on the corpse's retina an optogram, and the process of developing this image optography
...
Kühne's research was inspired by the work of physiologist Franz Christian Boll. In 1876, Boll discovered a pigment in the rods of the human retina that bleaches in the light and is restored in the dark. Kühne took this observation a step further by demonstrating that retinal pigment, which he called "visual purple" (also known as rhodopsin), remains after death unless the retinas are exposed to light.

A fascinating, and slightly macabre look at an early piece of the history of forensic science.

Link Spotted at Cocktail Party Physics Week in Review

Original Submission

tonyPick writes:

According to io9 J.J. Abrams announced that Paramount Pictures' lawsuit against Axanar Productions was "going away.".

The report comes from a Star Trek event in Los Angeles, at which the trailer for Justin Lin's new film Star Trek Beyond debuted:

io9 was at the fan event, where Abrams noted that Star Trek Beyond's director, Justin Lin, was outraged at the legal situation that had arisen.

Axanar is a kickstarter-funded fan film covering events preceding the original Star Trek, and the team responded to the io9 article with cautious optimism

While we're grateful to receive the public support of JJ Abrams and Justin Lin, as the lawsuit remains pending, we want to make sure we go through all the proper steps to make sure all matters are settled with CBS and Paramount.

Paramount's legal manoeuvrings, and IPR claims, have been covered previously on Soylent.

Original Submission

tonyPick writes:

IEEE Spectrum has an in-depth article on the effectiveness of police body cameras in reducing the use of force by police officers.

The article is written by Dr Barak Ariel of the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University:

Sometimes police body cameras accomplish their intended purpose, but other times they backfire. And nobody knows why

[...] There have been nearly 40 studies on the use of body cameras, including a dozen randomized controlled trials on the magnitude of their effect on policing. Despite all this work, it's still not entirely apparent why these cameras are helpful, under what conditions, or for whom.

Here I'd like to offer my interpretation of all that research and to delve into what sets police body cameras apart from other video-recording equipment, such as closed-circuit television, dashcams, and everyday smartphone cameras.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Eric Hameleers announces

[May 18,] on the final day of my short holiday (of sorts), I prepped and released version 1.0.0 of my liveslak project. It is stable and the bugs that were reported (plus some more) have been taken care of.

The "1.0.0" marker is not the end of its development, of course. It means that I consider the project production-ready. It will be used to create Live Editions of Slackware 14.2 (64bit and 32bit) when that is released. There's still some more ideas for liveslak that I want to implement and those will become available as 1.x releases.

For demonstration purposes, I have generated a new set of ISO images using liveslak version 1.0.0. There are ISO images for a full Slackware (64bit and 32bit versions), 64bit Plasma5 and MATE variants, and the 700MB small XFCE variant (also 64bit). They are based on Slackware-current dated "Thu May 12 01:50:21 UTC 2016".

[...] I will re-write [the original blog post] into a landing page for anyone who is interested in a Live Edition of Slackware. [...] All previous articles about the liveslak project aka Slackware Live Edition are accessible through this shortcut link, by the way [links to changelogs].

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/18/google-patents-sticky-layer-self-driving-car-accidents

Google has patented a new "sticky" technology to protect pedestrians if – or when – they get struck by the company's self-driving cars.

The patent, which was granted on 17 May, is for a sticky adhesive layer on the front end of a vehicle, which would aim to reduce the damage caused when a pedestrian hit by a car is flung into other vehicles or scenery.

"Ideally, the adhesive coating on the front portion of the vehicle may be activated on contact and will be able to adhere to the pedestrian nearly instantaneously," according to the patent description.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

World Socialist Web Site reports

The major retail company Sports Authority announced [May 19] the closing and liquidation of all of its more than 460 stores. All employees, who according to Forbes currently total 16,000, are expected to be laid off. The shuttering of Sports Authority comes about after store closings and job cuts by other retail giants such as Kmart and Sears and is a further indication of a deepening social crisis facing the working class.

[...] Its first store opened in November 1987 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. [...] Its history is littered with mergers and acquisitions, fueled by financial speculation.

[...] SA's yearly profit hit $3.5 billion in 2006. The same year, affiliates of the private equity investment firm Leonard Green & Partners agreed to leverage a buyout worth $1.4 billion. Since then, Sports Authority has been plagued with stagnant profits and heavy competition from rival sports realtor Dick's Sporting Goods.

[...] Going-out-of-business sales are expected to begin [Wednesday, May 25] at all stores and will continue until Aug. 3. Stores previously slated to close have already begun the process of emptying their inventory.

[...] As 16,000 workers will soon be left jobless, the small staff of 45 at Leonard Green & Partners, which is leading the liquidation and selling of SA, will no doubt rake in a heavy profit for itself.

Like many private equity firms, Leonard Green & Partners has overseen acquisitions, mergers, and the selling off of numerous companies, including those of Petco, Whole Foods Market, and Lucky Brand Jeans. It is the product of an economic system that places the interest of profit [for the few] above that of the vast majority of people.

Previous: Wal-Mart to Close 269 Stores Worldwide; Other Closings

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

On 30 April, the English chemist Sir Harold Walter Krotoschiner, better known as Harry Kroto, died at age 76 from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig's disease.

He was a member of the Rice University research group which discovered buckminsterfullerenes (spherical molecules of carbon, colloquially called buckyballs), for which he shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

links:

• BBC News
• Tallahassee Democrat
• Royal Society of Chemistry
• NPR
• The Guardian, letter to the editor
• The Guardian
• Times Higher Education blog
• New York Times
• biography at Wikipedia
• autobiography at nobelprize.org

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

A light rail line which connected downtown Los Angeles to Culver City has now been extended to the seaside community of Santa Monica. The Santa Monica terminus (end) is the only station in the Los Angeles light rail system that is adjacent to a beach.

The Expo Line follows a route that had been used for the same purpose from 1908 to 1953, when the Pacific Electric system was decommissioned. The Los Angeles Railway, another passenger rail network, was closed around the same time.

The 6.6-mile (10.6 km) Phase 2 extension, built at a cost of $1.5 billion, opened on 20 May.

links:

• LA Weekly
• Los Angeles Times editorial
• Los Angeles Times
• Telegraph
• CNS and Fox (KTTV-TV)
• Santa Monica Daily News
• Time Out Los Angeles
• KTLA-TV
• KPCC-FM
• KPCC-FM
• The San Gabriel Valley Tribune
• Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority brochure

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

The Hill reports on an announcement on Microsoft Corp.'s blog in which the company announced a prohibition of what it calls "terrorist content." The posting also said

[...] we can help users make informed choices when they may be exposed to information that may cause them significant harm, including terrorist content. Therefore, we are exploring new partnerships with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to display public service announcements with links to positive messaging and alternative narratives for some search queries for terrorist material.

Earlier in May, Steven A. Crown, who is a vice president and deputy general counsel at Microsoft, spoke to the UN Security Council. He said that governments, NGOs and businesses ought to collaborate to "address terrorist use of the internet, including creation and use of counter-narratives." He likened the Internet to earlier technologies, (non-Cloudflare link) including the printing press, saying "any technology can be used for good or for evil."

Original Submission

HughPickens.com writes:

When Newsweek asked a thousand voters to take the official citizenship test a few years back, nearly 30 percent couldn't name the vice president, more than 60 percent did not know the length of U.S. senators' terms in office, 43 percent couldn't say that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights, and only 30 percent knew that the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Now David Harsanyi writes at the Washington Post that if voting is a consecrated rite of democracy, as liberals often argue, surely society can have certain minimal expectations for those participating. And if citizenship itself is as hallowed as Republicans argue, then surely the prospective voter can be asked to know just as much as the prospective citizen. Let's give voters a test. The citizenship civics test will do just fine and here are some of its questions, which run from easy to preposterously easy: "If both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President?" "There were 13 original states. Name three." "What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment?" "What is freedom of religion?

According to Harsanyi, if you have no clue what the hell is going on, you also have a civic duty to avoid subjecting the rest of us to your ignorance. To be fair, the contemporary electorate is probably no less ignorant today than it was 50 or 100 years ago. The difference is that now we have unlimited access to information. Of course, we also must remember the ugly history of poll taxes and other prejudicial methods that Americans used to deny black citizens their equal right to vote. Any effort to improve the quality of the voting public should ensure that all races, creeds, genders and sexual orientations and people of every socioeconomic background are similarly inhibited from voting when ignorant. As James Madison wrote, "A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both." "If you forsake the power of information," concludes Harsanyi, "you have no standing to tell the rest of us how to live our lives."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

IBM's job cuts are now expected to affect at least 14,000 employees:

International Business Machines Corp. this week quietly laid off employees, continuing a wave of job cuts the company announced in April. IBM declined to say how many jobs would be cut overall. The total layoffs could affect more than 14,000 jobs, according to an estimate by Stanford Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi.

[...] The company said on Friday it had more than 20,000 open positions. Two employees reached Friday said that IBM's internal job-search tool listed between 7,000 and 8,000 open positions.

Also at WRAL TechWire, The Register , and InformationWeek .

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is monitoring 157 pregnant women in the United States who may be infected with the Zika virus. It is also monitoring 122 such pregnant women in Puerto Rico. The new federal guidelines and counts include women who may not show symptoms of the virus. For example, of the 157 women in the U.S. and D.C., 88% reported rash, 49% arthralgia, 51% fever, and just 23% reported conjunctivitis. Zika virus nucleic acid detection was only reported in 25%.

From the report:

Case reports indicate that fetuses and infants of pregnant women with asymptomatic Zika virus infection might be at risk for microcephaly and other severe brain defects. Following pregnant women with laboratory evidence of possible Zika virus infection in the surveillance system, regardless of symptoms, allows better characterization of the full impact and consequences of infection to the mother and her offspring, and might allow for better stratification of risk for adverse congenital outcomes.

[...] The findings in this report are subject to at least three limitations. First, data provided to the jurisdictions and CDC regarding symptoms and symptom onset might not be accurate or complete because of variability in recall by patients or data available to jurisdictions. Second, only pregnant women who are tested for Zika virus infection are included, thereby potentially underestimating the prevalence of infection and outcomes among all pregnant women. Finally, all states are not included in the [U.S. Zika Pregnancy Registry (USZPR)], possibly affecting the representativeness of these data with regard to all pregnant women identified with a possible Zika virus infection.

The Miami Herald notes that 36 of the 157 are in Florida, quadruple the number under the old guidelines.

Future reports will include details about the outcomes of these pregnancies. The CDC will also begin posting weekly updates on the number of Zika-related pregnancy cases it is monitoring.

Previous coverage:
Why Concerns for Global Spread of Zika Means Rio de Janeiro’s 2016 Olympics Must Not Proceed

Original Submission

bitstream writes:

Two reports from a global collaborative study involving hundreds of investigators from 18 countries published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2014 and The Lancet 2016 (today) are shaking up conventional wisdom around salt consumption. the conventional guideline recommends that the entire population lower its sodium intake below 2.3 grams per day, a level that fewer than 5% of Canadians and people around the world now consume. The PURE study found that the lowest risk of death and cardiovascular events happened to those who consumed moderate amounts of sodium at a level of 3 - 6 grams per day. (The Lancet is owned by Elsevier.)

According to Professor Francesco Cappuccio, head of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Nutrition, there are several reasons for dismissing it. It was done by testing urine samples given in the morning and then “extrapolated to 24-hour excretion” using an “inadequate” equation. Also, the participants were “almost exclusively from clinical trials of sick people that have a very high risk of dying and are taking several medications”. Further, he claims the researchers have committed a “statistical sin” and used “biologically meaningless” classification.

Perhaps time to question conventional wisdom and adjust the dose to 3-6 grams per day?

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Misaligned mirrors are being blamed for a fire that broke out at the world's largest solar power plant, leaving the high-tech facility crippled for the time being. It sounds like the plant's workers suffered through a real hellscape, too.

A small fire was reported yesterday morning at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) in California, forcing a temporary shutdown of the facility. It's now running at a third of its capacity (a second tower is down due to scheduled maintenance), and it's not immediately clear when the damaged tower will restart. It's also unclear how the incident will impact California's electricity supply.

-- submitted from IRC

The plant was previously implicated for Setting Birds On Fire In Mid-Flight.

Coverage: AP.

Original Submission