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AnonTechie writes:

The number of software-related issues, according to several sources tracking vehicle recalls, has been on the rise. According to financial advisors Stout Risius Ross (SSR)[sic], in their Automotive Warranty & Recall Report 2016 (registration required), software-related recalls have gone from less than 5 percent of recalls in 2011 to 15 percent by the end of 2015.

SSR[sic] points to the sheer volume of software code that interfaces vehicle components, many of them developed to different protocols. While there are about 9 million lines of code in an F-35 fighter jet, today's cars can contain up to 100 million lines, the firm says.

http://www.popsci.com/software-rising-cause-car-recalls

Related:
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/srr-2016-automotive-warranty--recall-report-reveals-spike-in-software-related-recalls-explores-emerging-risks-such-as-hacking-data-breaches-300256836.html

Original Submission

HughPickens.com writes:

By the time sewage sludge reaches a treatment plant, it's been watered down and is useless as a sample but where it exits homes human waste can be a rich source of biological information. Now David Common writes at CBC News that robots may soon wander permanently in our sewers, just below our homes and neighborhoods, analyzing our diets and our health as they suck up what we flush down.

A team at MIT already have a project called Underworlds where they lower Luigi — a tube-like robot — to just above the sewage. Then, controlled by a smartphone app, Luigi drops tubes into the stream. A small pump sucks up the liquid and runs it through a filter. Subsequent analysis in the laboratory typically finds 50,000 different bacteria, a host of viruses and other matter that, until a short time earlier, were inside a person. Future plans include self-propelled robots with extremely long battery lives, capable of navigating among neighborhoods, analyzing sewage contents while in the sewer itself and relaying information wirelessly to a central authority. MIT's plan is to start testing the robot in the sewers in up to 10 sites throughout Cambridge. In this way, they hope to gain a sense of the geographic diversity of sewage signals across the city.

Real-time data collected from sewage could allow health officials to detect an outbreak of flu or a spreading foodborne illness, or know when a population is stressed out or becoming obese. "One of the holy grails of this project during its inception was to identify viral outbreaks," says Jessica Snyder. Long before people visit a doctor's office, they visit the toilet. So a highly contagious pathogen, such as norovirus or Ebola, could be identified soon after infection — and treatment could be targeted at that neighborhood.

Luigi could also be used to identify neighborhoods where heroin use is spiking. In Europe, a study of sewage from 42 cities revealed that cocaine and ecstasy use was greatest in large metropolises on weekends, whereas cannabis and methamphetamine use was more evenly distributed throughout the week in towns of all sizes. "The MIT project is extremely ambitious and pioneering," says Christian Daughton. "If this project proves successful in demonstrating some sort of proof of principal, it could represent a significant, seminal advancement in the prospects for quickly and inexpensively monitoring public health in real time."

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The Center for American Progress reports

Workers cannot be prohibited from bringing class-action lawsuits against their employers, an appeals court panel [The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago] ruled Thursday, even if the boss makes them sign away that right in order to keep their job.

The case involves Epic Systems, one of the largest medical software companies in America. Founded in the late 1970s, the billion-dollar business only recently began making workers agree to so-called "forced arbitration" clauses in which they forswear their rights to go to court either individually or collectively.

By doing so, the judges found, Epic violated its workers' federal labor rights[paywall] to take collective action, making the clauses unenforceable.

The decision [Redirects to a PDF] breaks a pattern of appeals courts repeatedly validating such forced arbitration clauses, bringing America closer to a reckoning over a deep and pervasive imbalance of power. Corporations of all kinds could soon lose their ability to tie the little guy's hands and effectively guarantee they'll never face serious legal challenges to potentially abusive business practices.

In addition to Thursday's rejection of arbitration clauses in the workplace, federal regulators are also working to annihilate them from all consumer finance products--the other major area of the law where they hold sway.

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tonyPick writes:

The Atlantic has a lengthy, but informative, article on the problems with DNA testing, often seen as infallible by juries:

"Ironically, you have a technology that was meant to help eliminate subjectivity in forensics," Erin Murphy, a law professor at NYU, told me recently. "But when you start to drill down deeper into the way crime laboratories operate today, you see that the subjectivity is still there: Standards vary, training levels vary, quality varies."

Last year, Murphy published a book called Inside the Cell: The Dark Side of Forensic DNA, which recounts dozens of cases of DNA typing gone terribly wrong. Some veer close to farce, such as the 15-year hunt for the Phantom of Heilbronn, whose DNA had been found at more than 40 crime scenes in Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s. The DNA in question turned out to belong not to a serial killer, but to an Austrian factory worker who made testing swabs used by police throughout the region.

The article also notes the increasing reliance on computer processing and the desire of the firms responsible to keep the details of the processing hidden, highlighting the example of DNA-testing firm Cybergenetics and their TrueAllele software:

William Thompson [attorney and a criminology professor at the University of California at Irvine] points out that Perlin [Cybergenetics CEO] has declined to make public the algorithm that drives the program. "You do have a black-box situation happening here," Thompson told me. "The data go in, and out comes the solution, and we're not fully informed of what happened in between."

Last year, at a murder trial in Pennsylvania where TrueAllele evidence had been introduced, defense attorneys demanded that Perlin turn over the source code for his software, noting that "without it, [the defendant] will be unable to determine if TrueAllele does what Dr. Perlin claims it does." The judge denied the request.
...
When I interviewed Perlin at Cybergenetics headquarters, I raised the matter of transparency. He was visibly annoyed. He noted that he'd published detailed papers on the theory behind TrueAllele, and filed patent applications, too: "We have disclosed not the trade secrets of the source code or the engineering details, but the basic math."

Originally seen at Bruce Schneier's Blog.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

NPR reports the death, on 25 May, of Charles Lindy Cavell at age 89. At the age of 19 while enrolled in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Mr. Cavell had been invited by the Navy to participate in trials of mustard gas, regarding which he was sworn to secrecy. Offered "two-weeks' vacation and an award," he let government scientists lock him up, for two hours, in a chamber containing mustard gas, after which he was asked to continue wearing his contaminated uniform. More than 60,000 other service-members volunteered for similar experiments.

Later, Cavell suffered from physical and psychological conditions that may have been related to the testing. After decades, the Veterans' Administration agreed to pay for his medical expenses.

In 1990, Cavell and other participants in the studies came forth and were relieved of their secrecy oaths; the programme was declassified.

further information:

• story about the experiments
• obituary

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

The AP via Fox News reports (Tor-friendly copy) that the world's longest and deepest rail tunnel is set to open 1 June. The Gotthard Base Tunnel is 57.1 km (35.5 miles) long and parts of it lie 2.3 km (1.4 miles) below the surface. It "cost 12.2 billion Swiss francs (about $12 billion)"; construction took 17 years. It will be used by both freight and passenger trains.

related story:
Passenger Railway to Los Angeles Is Extended

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A lot of CPU news is coming out of Computex 2016.

Intel has launched its new Broadwell-E "Extreme Edition" CPUs for "enthusiasts". The top-of-the-line model, the i7-6950X, now includes 10 cores instead of 8, but the price has increased massively to around $1,723. Compare this to a ~$999 launch price for the 8-core i7-5960X or 6-core i7-4960X flagships from previous generations.

Intel has also launched some new Skylake-based Xeons with "Iris Pro" graphics.

AMD revealed more details about the Radeon RX 480, a 14nm "Polaris" GPU that will be priced at $199 and released on June 29th. AMD intends to compete for the budget/mainstream gamer segment falling far short of the $379 launch price of a GTX 1070, while delivering around 70-75% of the performance. It also claims that the RX 480 will perform well enough to allow more gamers to use premium virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.

While 14nm AMD "Zen" desktop chips should be coming later this year, laptop/2-in-1/tablet users will have to settle for the 7th generation Bristol Ridge and Stoney Ridge APUs. They are still 28nm "Excavator" based chips with "modules" instead of cores.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Simply telling people that their opinions are based on morality will make them stronger and more resistant to counterarguments, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that people were more likely to act on an opinion - what psychologists call an attitude - if it was labeled as moral and were more resistant to attempts to change their mind on that subject.

The results show why appeals to morality by politicians and advocacy groups can be so effective, said Andrew Luttrell, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in psychology at The Ohio State University.

"The perception that an attitude we hold is based on morality is enough to strengthen it," Luttrell said.

"For many people, morality implies a universality, an ultimate truth. It is a conviction that is not easily changed."

The key finding was how easy it was to strengthen people's beliefs by using the 'moral' label, said Richard Petty, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at Ohio State.

"Morality can act as a trigger - you can attach the label to nearly any belief and instantly make that belief stronger," Petty said.

Always preface your comments with, "The Lord sayeth..."

Original Submission

Gordon Shure writes:

The highly-anticipated experiment with basic income from Silicon Valley finance firm Y Combinator appears to be making good progress. The company has chosen Elizabeth Rhodes as the project's Research Director, opting for the little-known PHD graduate over applications from tenured professors working at Oxford and Harvard universities. Oakland, California is where the basic income research will happen: the community has been chosen for its close proximity to Y Combinator's head office, and the much-reported wealth divide in the locality.

Original Submission

Nerdfest writes:

Joel Spolsky may have another hit on his hands with this.

The automation and 'magic' continues from there. It's currently only Node/JavaScript, but other languages are coming. It seems like a great idea for a quick mock-up or prototype, and for those learning to code.

Original Submission

CoolHand writes:

Hypermiling is always a geeky subject. Well, it was just done successfully at speed on the biggest racing stage in the world, the 100th running of the Indy 500. Racer.com has a great article detailing the hypermiling techniques rookie American Alexander Rossi (and the Andretti/Herta team) went through to gain the victory at Indy using a fuel saving strategy. From the article:

"We knew we had pace – we knew that if we got the track position back we had plenty to win this thing," he [Rossi] said. "It just became a race about conserving fuel. That was one of the hardest things I ever had to do in a racecar, to drive around here – on a lap where you are normally flat out, to drive [at] 30 percent [throttle] sometimes.

"It is all new to me. I was figuring it out on the fly and trying a lot of different things over a 70-, 80-lap period. And some things worked... I actually stumbled upon what worked the best and I actually almost ended up in the wall in Turn 2 and I had to bail out."

Instructed to avoid using the throttle at all costs, Rossi took to drafting behind other cars to use their tow and save fuel. And then it almost ended in disaster behind 2008 Indy 500 winner Scott Dixon.

[...] Just as Rossi was learning on the fly in the cockpit, the team responsible for coming up with the race-winning strategy and coaching were on edge. Herta and company had to come up with a plan to help their driver stretch a tank of fuel to 36 laps – four laps more and 10 full miles longer than anyone else.

[...] Imagine being on fumes and trying to make it to the gas station before running out, but also being in the closing stages of the Indy 500 and lapping at over 200mph [330kph]. The faster he went, the more he would have to save – but if he slowed too much [in order] to save, he'd lose positions to faster cars. It's also worth remembering this seemingly impossible task was being thrown onto the shoulders of rookie.

[...] Destined to run dry before the finish, Rossi got the call to try something crazy. Leaning out the fuel mixture is a common way to save fuel, which he did, but it wasn't enough. The one electronic option left was to use the fuel map designed to use little more than drops of fuel while running at reduced speeds behind the pace car. Take the tiny amount of fuel provided for puttering around at 75mph, then try holding position with it while racing well over 200mph, and you have Rossi's reality as the 500 sped toward its conclusion.

Original Submission

jmorris writes:

We have heard the rumblings, now it comes.... the Code of Conduct for social media along with the banhammer.

From Bloomberg we get this warning:

U.S. Internet giants Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc., Google and Microsoft Corp. pledged to tackle online hate speech in less than 24 hours as part of a joint commitment with the European Union to combat the use of social media by terrorists.

Of course terrorists are defined down to "unambiguous hate speech that they said promoted racism, homophobia or anti-Semitism" before the short article ends.

Buckle up folks, the ride is is about to get bumpy.

Original Submission

Opioid painkillers cause chronic pain

bitstream writes:

A Colorado University in Boulder study concludes that opioid painkillers cause chronic pain that last for months. This affects the use of morphine, oxycodone, methadone and other medications like them.

The assistant research professor says "I think the steps forward with this then is looking to inhibit this immune response as an adjuvant to pain relief. (08) So you can still take your opioids but if you block this immune response that's occurring at the same time then you can still get that pain relief but you can prevent these long term consequences from occurring."

Anyone that has delved into control theory should recognize the positive feedback loop.

Narcotic Painkillers Prolong Pain in Rats, Says Study

martyb writes:

Science Daily is reporting Narcotic painkillers prolong pain in rats, says study:

The dark side of painkillers -- their dramatic increase in use and ability to trigger abuse, addiction and thousands of fatal overdoses annually in the United States is in the news virtually every day.

Brace for another shot across the bow: Opioids like morphine have now been shown to paradoxically cause an increase in chronic pain in lab rats, findings that could have far-reaching implications for humans, says a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

Led by CU-Boulder Assistant Research Professor Peter Grace and Distinguished Professor Linda Watkins, the study showed that just a few days of morphine treatment caused chronic pain that went on for several months by exacerbating the release of pain signals from specific immune cells in the spinal cord. The results suggest that the recent escalation of opioid prescriptions in humans may be a contributor to chronic pain, said Grace.

[...]

The team discovered that the pain signals from a peripheral injury combined with subsequent morphine treatment worked together to cause a glial cell signaling cascade. The cascade produces a cell signal from a protein called interleukin-1beta (IL-1b), which increases the activity of pain-responsive nerve cells in the spinal cord and brain. That can cause increases in pain duration lasting several months.

"The implications for people taking opioids like morphine, oxycodone and methadone are great, since we show the short-term decision to take such opioids can have devastating consequences of making pain worse and longer lasting," said Watkins. "This is a very ugly side to opioids that had not been recognized before."

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takyon writes:

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0YM2E1

Islamic State on Tuesday urged Muslims to destroy their satellite TV sets to prevent hostile channels "destroying their beliefs and polluting their ethics".

[...] It singled out religious channels funded by Saudi Arabia and also showed the logos of al-Jazeera and Orient TV, a channel close to the Syrian opposition, as well as the Egyptian religious channel al-Nas.

The video ended with a scene showing people stamping on satellite dishes to destroy them.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A survey of more than 216,000 adolescents from all 50 states indicates the number of teens with marijuana-related problems is declining. Similarly, the rates of marijuana use by young people are falling despite the fact more U.S. states are legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana use and the number of adults using the drug has increased.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis examined data on drug use collected from young people, ages 12 to 17, over a 12-year span. They found that the number of adolescents who had problems related to marijuana -- such as becoming dependent on the drug or having trouble in school and in relationships -- declined by 24 percent from 2002 to 2013.

Over the same period, kids, when asked whether they had used pot in the previous 12 months, reported fewer instances of marijuana use in 2013 than their peers had reported in 2002. In all, the rate fell by 10 percent.

Those drops were accompanied by reductions in behavioral problems, including fighting, property crimes and selling drugs. The researchers found that the two trends are connected. As kids became less likely to engage in problem behaviors, they also became less likely to have problems with marijuana.

Is getting high with grandpa a buzzkill?

Original Submission