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butthurt writes:

Using the Very Large Array of radiotelescopes in the U.S. state of New Mexico, astronomers have mapped ammonia in the atmosphere of Jupiter. The images show structures in the atmosphere as much as 100 km beneath the tops of the clouds. At that depth, pressures are about 8 times that of the Earth's atmosphere at sea level.

coverage:

• The Guardian
• space.com
• Science (#1) (full article is pay-walled)
• Science (#2) (full article is pay-walled)
• Gizmodo
• BBC News

Original Submission

devlux writes:

Hey everyone! Sorry I've been quiet for so long.

The June 7th primary in California is rapidly approaching and I've been involved in a project to create an international standard for secure electronic voting. The design work is all done and our first application of the technology is to use it to detect and uncover fraud, specifically voting machine tampering. This project is happening in phases. The first phase happens June 7th. We will be conducting an audit of the primary, effectively a parallel election.

The main goal of phase one is actually to shake out the tech make sure it's as bug free as possible and also that the blockchain that supports this tech can scale to meet the demands of a real election.

If you're interested in novel ways of using technology to help secure elections we could really use your help, because it's crunch time now.

First of all, if you live in California, we could use boots on the ground. Some of our volunteers and probably a sizable fraction of the voters will be technically illiterate. We need people on hand who can quickly troubleshoot the hardware, reboot devices and even just demonstrate the tech and walk people through the process if needs be. We've tried to make it as simple as possible. Literally, scan a QR code and press 1 button corresponding to your choice of candidate. But as simple as we've made it the process could still be confusing to some especially in the heat of the moment. If you're interested in helping out by being boots on the ground for us go here... https://www.democracycounts.org or here https://www.facebook.com/notes/election-justice-usa/independent-citizens-election-audit-to-be-conducted-in-select-precincts-in-calif/889795561147138 You can contact Dawn on facebook to be put directly into the volunteer pipeline.

[Continues...]

takyon writes:

A PhD student who shot and killed a professor before killing himself claimed that the professor had stolen his code:

The student who shot and killed his engineering professor and then himself at a Los Angeles university had accused the professor of stealing his code.

In a blog post on March 10, Mainak Sarkar, 38, said Professor William Klug, 39, "is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy." He continued: "I was this guy's PhD student. We had personal differences. He cleverly stole all my code and gave it another student. He made me really sick. Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust. Stay away from this sick guy." The post has since been taken down.

On Wednesday, nearly three months after posting it, and seemingly upset at poor grades, Sarkar drove from his home in Minnesota to Los Angeles where he confronted and gunned down Professor Klug at the university's engineering complex. Sarkar then turned the gun on himself and killed himself. The Los Angeles Times quoted an unnamed UCLA source as saying the allegation that Klug stole his student's code was "absolutely untrue."

The professor's name was found on a "kill list" written by Sarkar, along with another professor who wasn't on campus at the time of the shooting and has been confirmed to be safe. Sarkar reportedly killed his estranged wife in Minnesota before traveling to UCLA. Also at Los Angeles Times , The New York Times , CNN.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

The Register recently ran a story about how US computer-science classes churn out cut-n-paste slackers – and yes, that's a bad thing:

Computer science (CS) students in the US aren't being taught properly, and their classes are too limited in scope, says one IT think-tank.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) says that its most recent study [PDF] of curriculum in the US has found that not enough schools are offering computer science classes, and those that do aren't going in-depth enough.

As a result, the ITIF says, many universities are failing to produce the diverse, well-trained graduates that companies seek to hire.

"There is the possibility that interest in the field could again wane like it did in 2003 following the burst of the tech bubble," ITIF warns.

"To maintain the field's current momentum, the perception of computer science needs to shift from its being considered a fringe, elective offering or a skills-based course designed to teach basic computer literacy or coding alone."

The report found that at the high school level, dedicated computer science classes are mostly limited to affluent schools, and when the courses are taught, girls and minority students are rarely enrolled.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

With one abstention and one member opposed, the German parliament has voted to declare mass killings and deportations of ethnic Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, which began in April 1915, a "genocide."

In response, the Turkish government, which opposes the use of the word "genocide" to describe the events, recalled its ambassador from Berlin for "consultations." "This decision will seriously impact Turkish-German relations," said the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. On Twitter, the Turkish foreign minister wrote:

The way to close one's own dark pages of history is not by maligning another country's history.

coverage:

• The Guardian
• International Business Times UK
• Foreign Policy
• TheVillagesSuntimes
• NPR
• CNN
• New York Times (prior to vote)

background information:

• NPR
• Wikipedia
• History Channel
• Armenian National Institute

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-a-newborn-s-helplessness-hold-the-key-to-human-smarts/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ScientificAmerican-News+%28Content%3A+News%29

Other species are capable of displaying dazzling feats of intelligence. Crows can solve multistep problems. Apes display numerical skills and empathy. Yet, neither species has the capacity to conduct scientific investigations into other species' cognitive abilities. This type of behavior provides solid evidence that humans are by far the smartest species on the planet.

Besides just elevated IQs, however, humans set themselves apart in another way: Their offspring are among the most helpless of any species. A new study, published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), draws a link between human smarts and an infant's dependency, suggesting one thing led to the other in a spiraling evolutionary feedback loop. The study, from psychologists Celeste Kidd and Steven Piantadosi at the University of Rochester, represents a new theory about how humans came to possess such extraordinary smarts.

Like a lot of evolutionary theories, this one can be couched in the form of a story—and like a lot of evolutionary stories, this one is contested by some scientists. Kidd and Piantadosi note that, according to a previous theory, early humans faced selection pressures for both large brains and the capacity to walk upright as they moved from forest to grassland. Larger brains require a wider pelvis to give birth whereas being bipedal limits the size of the pelvis. These opposing pressures—biological anthropologists call them the "obstetric dilemma"—could have led to giving birth earlier when infants' skulls were still small.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

CoolHand writes:

According to Vox.com, Elon Musk believes we're likely living in an advanced civilization's video game.

Musk's quote from the story:

The strongest argument for us being in a simulation probably is the following. Forty years ago we had pong. Like, two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were.

Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it's getting better every year. Soon we'll have virtual reality, augmented reality.

If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is now. Then you just say, okay, let's imagine it's 10,000 years in the future, which is nothing on the evolutionary scale.

So given that we're clearly on a trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality, and those games could be played on any set-top box or on a PC or whatever, and there would probably be billions of such computers or set-top boxes, it would seem to follow that the odds that we're in base reality is one in billions.

Tell me what's wrong with that argument. Is there a flaw in that argument?

Personally, I think he just finished reading HHG and is all excited about it.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund has invested $3.5 billion in Uber, in a funding round that raised $11 billion. Bloomberg reports that no IPO is within sight:

Meanwhile, Uber's biggest rivals have been stocking up. Apple invested $1 billion in Didi last month (Didi is working to close a total $3.5 billion soon), General Motors Co. backed Lyft in January, and Volkswagen AG pledged $300 million to Israel-based ride-hailing company Gett Inc. last month. There's a seemingly endless roster of investors anxious to buy into Kalanick's vision for upending the transportation sector. "Uber is in a class by itself," said Anand Sanwal, co-founder of CB Insights, a firm that tracks startup investment. "There is insatiable appetite for Uber stock," he said, referring to the company's ability to continually raise large amounts of money.

Also at:
The New York Times ,
MIT Review , and
Ars Technica .

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google is demonstrating music created using machine learning techniques. It has previously made psychedelic art:

It's a long way to Carnegie Hall, but we bet that Google researchers are already thinking of the day when they can send a robot or AI to play an interesting, improvised piano performance in a major venue.

While that's not the stated end goal of Magenta, a new project from the Google Brain team, it's certainly a possibility. The entire premise of Magenta is built around two simple questions: Can machines make art? And can machines make music? And, dare we say it, there's also an unstated third question: Can machines make either art or music that's any good?

We'll let you judge the last one. Here's the first piece of music from Google's machine-learning system. It's only 90 seconds long, but it's at least an early demonstration of Magenta's capabilities.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

A storm system over Europe has resulted in floods. They have killed at least eight people in Germany and two in France. A man in southern Poland was killed by lightning. A German girl sheltering under a bridge was killed by a train.

Of the German victims, four were in Simbach am Inn and one in Julbach. Both are towns in the Rottal-Inn district in Bavaria along the Inn River at the German-Austrian border.

In Paris, the Seine has overflowed its banks and is expected to rise 6 metres (19 feet) above its usual level. The Louvre and Orsay museums are to close temporarily so artworks may be moved.

School closures were announced in Salzburg.

Coverage:

• BBC News (newest article)
• BBC News (earlier article)
• CNN (has several photos)
• Deutsche Welle (owned by the German government; has a map)
• The Local
• Al Jazeera
• AP via WTOP-FM
• U.S. News & World Report (Tor-friendly copy)
• AP via St. Louis Post-Dispatch
• Gulf Times

Original Submission #1   Original Submission #2

takyon writes:

Astronomers at Lund University in Sweden have published results of a simulation suggesting that Planet 9 could be an exoplanet that was captured by our solar system:

"Planet 9 may very well have been 'shoved' by other planets, and when it ended up in an orbit that was too wide around its own star, our sun may have taken the opportunity to steal and capture Planet 9 from its original star. When the sun later departed from the stellar cluster in which it was born, Planet 9 was stuck in an orbit around the sun", says Alexander Mustill. "There is still no image of Planet 9, not even a point of light. We don't know if it is made up of rock, ice, or gas. All we know is that its mass is probably around ten times the mass of earth."

It requires a lot more research before it can be ascertained that Planet 9 is the first exoplanet in our solar system. If the theory is correct, Alexander Mustill believes that the study of space and the understanding of the sun and the Earth will take a giant leap forward. "This is the only exoplanet that we, realistically, would be able to reach using a space probe", he says.

Is there an exoplanet in the Solar system? (DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slw075)

Previously: Evidence of Another Planet in Our Solar System
Astrophysicists Narrow the Search for "Planet Nine"

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Chirality is the property whereby an object is not superposable with its mirror image, meaning that if you took an object and its mirror image and stacked them on top of each other, they would not match. A nice example of this are your hands; your hands are mirror images of each other, but if you turned one so that the palms pointed in the same direction, then they don't look the same (one thumb points up and the other points down). The chiral object and its mirror image, taken as a pair, are called enantiomers. In the language of organic chemistry, an enantiomeric pair is made up of one L-form and one D-form.

Whenever enantiomeric molecules are made in the lab, they are always produced in a 50/50 proportion of L- and D- forms. However, it turns out that the active organic compounds in a living being consist of only one or the other. Amino acids are only found in L-form while sugars are only found in D-form. One of the grand mysteries of life is why did this preference arise?

Some scientists at the NASA Ames Research Center analysed samples from 4.5 billion-year-old carbonaceous meteorites and found a large excess of D-form over L-form in the sugars on the meteorites. This gives credence to idea that life developed from material carried by meteorites. Their work was published (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1603030113) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science :

The kinds of molecules Cooper and Rios identified are thought to be precursors to some of the earliest forms of life. They reason that if molecules delivered to the early Earth were one particular handedness, any primitive life forms that eventually developed would favour the prevalent form. The results also fit with previous studies showing some meteorites contain excesses of the left handed version of some amino acids.

[Continues...]

hubie writes:

Erythromycin belongs to a class of antibiotics known as macrolides, which are important alternatives to penicillins for treating infection. However, eventually some bacteria build a resistance to the antibiotic and it becomes necessary to make new ones. New antibiotics are made through a process called semisynthesis where an existing macrolide is chemically modified into a new molecule. This is how derivatives of erythromycin, such as azithromycin and clarithromycin, were developed. The drawback of semisynthesis is that it is very hard to target a specific change, or the complexity of the macrolide molecules limit the kinds of changes available via chemical processes. Unfortunately, thus far the only process by which new macrolide antibiotics have been successfully made was by chemically modifying erythromycin.

Now, a group of researchers have found a way to completely synthetically construct macrolides by assembling them from simple molecular building blocks. Instead of going through the semisynthesis approach to come up with a single new candidate, they have made over 300 new antibiotic candidates using their new approach, most of which are not even possible to make otherwise, including one that is currently in clinical trials (solithromycin). What's more, the majority of the new candidates have shown some antibiotic activity, including some against bacteria strains that are currently resistant to the macrolides currently in use.

'Our goal was not to make a single molecule [as with semi-synthesis] but to develop a design strategy that by its nature would enable the preparation of thousands or even tens of thousands of clinical candidates,' explains Andrew Myers at Harvard University, US, whose group led the study. 'With a fully synthetic route we have access to orders of magnitude greater numbers of structures for study, and can effectively modify just about any position of the scaffold. That can't be said of semi-synthetic approaches.'

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/massive-bleaching-killed-35-coral-northern-end-great-barrier-reef
https://www.coralcoe.org.au/media-releases/coral-death-toll-climbs-on-great-barrier-reef

Original Submission

[UPDATE - by martyb] Several comments have, rightly, noted this story was hard to understand. The SoylentNews community holds us to a high standard— I let you down on this one. Mea culpa. I have updated the story with this preface to better explain the issues at play and the parties involved.

This is a complicated story. Richard M. Stallman (RMS) founded the Free Software Foundation... and wrote the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL guarantees that any modifications made to GPL code must also be made available under the GPL. This, in turn, ensures the recipient has access to the source. A claim has been made that grsecurity, which provides a hardened version of the Linux Kernel, is violating the GPL — source code for the commercial version is not being made available to customers. This is succinctly summarized on Wikipedia:

"On May 30, 2016, a user of grsecurity's subscription-only stable patch set raised a concern on several mailing lists about the redistribution of the commercial patch set. Richard M. Stallman responded to the discussion with his personal opinion that grsecurity is violating the GPL on Linux kernel."

One of the aforementioned mailing lists was the Linux kernel mailing list (LKML). According to Wikipedia:

The Linux kernel mailing list is the main electronic mailing list for Linux kernel development, where the majority of the announcements, discussions, debates, and flame wars over the kernel take place. Many other mailing lists exist to discuss the different subsystems and ports of the Linux kernel, but LKML is the principal communication channel among Linux kernel developers. It is a very high-volume list, usually receiving about 1,000 messages each day, most of which are kernel code patches.

According to grsecurity's commerical support page:

All commercial support contracts come with access to our stable patch series, unavailable to the general public.

As an editor, I strive to present a readable story. On the other hand, when quoting another source, I refrain from making any changes, except adding an occasional [sic] or adding a link or two to define terms that may not be clear to our community. The LKML being what it is — nerds talking to nerds — the content is the focus and formatting often gets short shrift. I am NOT going to try and clean this up and run the very real risk of inadvertently changing the contents. So, in all its obtusely non-formatted glory, that posting is presented here, unchanged.

The original story follows.[/UPDATE]

An Anonymous Coward writes:

RMS has weighed in on GRsecurity reportedly trying to prevent people from redistributing its product. [Note: original LKML formatting retained. -Ed]

Re: GRsecurity is preventing others from employing their rights under version 2 the GPL to redistribute source code
Richard Stallman (May 31 2016 10:27 PM)

[...] If I understand right, this is a matter of GPL 2 on the Linux patches.
Is that right? If so, I think GRsecurity is violating the GPL on
Linux.

--
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)

[Continues...]