SoylentNews

takyon writes:

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has been sold for $4 billion to William Morris Endeavor and International Management Group, along with other owners, including Michael Dell's investment firm MSD Capital. The deal represents one of the biggest sales in sports history:

UFC has been around for 23 years, and in 2001 the current owners bought it for just $2 million.

Kenneth Shropshire, a professor at the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania who studies the business of sports, said that's "a lot of money...that was my first reaction." But he said the sale to a group of investors led by talent agency WME-IMG makes sense. "It fits with the discussion that's been going on for awhile about content is king," he said.

Investors are betting on mixed martial arts becoming really popular content. Shropshire said that right now the biggest money in sports is in producing live broadcast events — think NFL.

Original Submission

tonyPick writes:

Spotted at Hackaday is this open source solar power generator design, which is "designed to replace conventional diesel generators".

The device does use some proprietary components, but the entire design is open source. It contains solar panels, of course, as well as storage capacity and an inverter.
...
The design is modular so you can pick and choose what you want. It also is portable, stackable, and easy to transport. The team claims they generate 900W of solar power and can store 4 kWh. Because of the storage device, the peak power out is 1600W and the output is 230V 50Hz AC.

Instructables has complete build instructions, published under the CERN Open Hardware License, as well as more detailed technical specifications.

The project homepage has additional background, and summarises the objectives of the design:

It is made for off-grid energy production in remote areas, outdoor events, refugee camps or in case of emergency situations.

The SunZilla system combines four unique features: it's open source, portable, modular and easy-to-use with a plug-and-play approach.

Original Submission

fork(2) writes:

ScienceNews reports:

A Boeing satellite engineer is under arrest for selling sensitive information to what he believed to be a Russian agent.

The FBI arrested Gregory Allen Justice Thursday on charges of economic espionage and violation of the Arms Export Control Act. Justice, an engineer who worked at Boeing Satellite Systems, provided thumb drives with satellite information to an FBI agent posing as a Russian spy.

Justice claimed he needed the money from selling the information to pay for his wife's medical bills, but gave much of the money to another woman.

The story links to an LA Times story with all the juicy bits.

Original Submission

fork(2) writes:

Two weeks ago the fate of dozens of federally funded programs to improve STEM education in US schools was up in the air following the approval by the Senate appropriations committee of a 2017 spending bill. Science carried an article describing the potential impact of that bill.

Now the other branch of Congress has somewhat improved the prospects of federal support for STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math] education. Writing in Science on July 8, Devi Shastri said, "Yesterday, the equivalent subpanel in the House of Representatives approved a spending bill covering the Department of Education and several other agencies, including the National Institutes of Health. And House appropriators were much more generous to SSAEG, allocating it $1 billion."

SSAEG is the "Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grant" program. Shastri writes:

It's part of the 2015 law governing elementary and secondary education that replaced the long-reviled No Child Left Behind Act. The Every Student Succeeds Act authorizes the SSAEG program at $1.65 billion, with the money to be distributed to each state through block grants. But last month the Senate appropriations panel allocated only $300 million, less than 20% of the enacted level and $200 million below what the Obama administration had requested in its 2017 budget request to Congress.

[...] The SSAEG grants are supposed to provide students with a more well-rounded education, improve school conditions, and bring technology into the classroom. School districts can apply for the funds after qualifying for the program based on their student poverty rate and population. Educators say the $1 billion funding level, if ultimately adopted by Congress, should ease the competition among worthy proposals in the many areas supported by the grants.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Researchers have disputed the need for multivitamin supplements for pregnant women, recommending only folic acid and vitamin D supplementation:

In Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin, researchers say they looked at all evidence and found supplements did not boost the health of mothers and babies. But pregnant women should make sure they take folic acid and vitamin D, as well as eating a well-balanced diet, as per NHS guidelines, they add. Supplements-makers said some women were not getting enough nutrients. The researchers said folic acid had the strongest evidence to support its use - taking 400ug a day can protect against abnormalities called neural tube defects in the developing baby.

[...] The researchers said pregnant women might feel coerced into buying expensive multivitamins in order to give their baby the best start in life. But they would do well to resist the marketing claims, which did not seem to translate into better outcomes for mother or baby, they said. "The only supplements recommended for all women during pregnancy are folic acid and vitamin D, which are available at relatively low cost," they said.

Janet Fyle, from the Royal College of Midwives, said: "We would encourage women who are pregnant or are thinking of becoming pregnant to have a healthy, varied diet including fresh fruit and vegetables, alongside taking folic acid supplements.

(July issue of DTB not published yet) (DOI: 10.1136/dtb.2016.7.0414)

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

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

On the Linux Kernel Mailing List, Linus Torvalds has released another rant.

El Reg reports:

"Can we please get rid of the brain-damaged stupid networking comment syntax style, PLEASE?" the Linux Lord asked [July 8].

The Benevolent Dictator For Life gives 4 examples which he considers within norms and 2 more that are guaranteed to raise his wrath.

"I'm sure that looks really nice if you are out of your mind on LSD, and have nothing better to do than to worry about the right alignment of the asterisks."

Torvalds wonders if this kind of comment punctuation mess means it's time "... to start moving the whole kernel over to the C++ style, it's been many many years since we had compatibility issues and we are all used to it by now, even if we weren't all fans originally."

For now, he writes "I really don't understand why the networking people think that their particularly ugly styles are fine. They are the most visually unbalanced version of _all_ the common comment styles, and have no actual advantages."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

In a recent interview with Vox, Hillary Clinton signaled that she is not willing to give Silicon Valley a free pass on using indentured H-1B visa holders to replace qualified Americans:

Original Submission

fork(2) writes:

ScienceMag reports on soil research in the Netherlands:

Want to make your barren yard lush again? Just add a bit of soil from your local meadow. A new study reveals that the addition of foreign soil -- and more importantly, the organisms it contains -- can shape which plants will grow in the future. Such "inoculations" could even help bring back fallow farmlands and turn deserts green.

"This is a really cool and remarkable study," says Harsh Bais, a root biologist at the University of Delaware, Newark, who was not involved in the work. "Dirt matters."

[...] Small-scale studies in greenhouses have shown that adding the right soil can promote the growth of a particular plant community, and some researchers have even tried soil transplantation -- replacing one soil with another -- to get certain endangered plants to grow.

Such need is great across the globe, where many once-fertile lands are turning into desert, and a significant amount of agricultural land is lost every year. What's more, when governments and nonprofit organizations try to bring back grasslands, forests, and other ecosystems destroyed by agriculture and other human uses, they are often disappointed: Restoration can take decades. It sometimes fails altogether.

Researchers from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology experimented with "booster shots"...adding soil layers using soil from other sources. In a side-by-side comparison they spread a 1cm-thick layer of soil from a different source over plots of degraded farmland, planted seeds and waited 6 years.

The source of the added soil greatly influenced what grew where, they report today in Nature Plants . Plots with heathland soil were covered with heather and gorse, whereas plots with grasslands soil were overflowing with a variety of grasses. The added soil made the existing land richer -- as the researchers found more nematode worms, more bacteria, and more fungi in those sections of the plots. Those with heathland soil also had a greater diversity of springtails and mites.

Inspired by this research, land managers in the Netherlands are trying soil inoculation to promote restoration at 15 different sites.

Original Submission

I've gotta "hand" it to the two Soylentils who submitted this story:

Thumb-Suckers and Nail-Biters Have "Fewer Allergies"

takyon writes:

The BBC reports on a study in the journal Pediatrics that indicates that exposure to germs through thumb-sucking and nail-biting results in having less allergies:

Thumb-sucking and nail-biting appeared to prevent some allergies among the 1,000 people in New Zealand assessed periodically between ages five and 32. But the habits had no bearing on either asthma or hay-fever risk. Thumb-sucking and nail-biting was assessed and recorded at ages five, seven, nine and 11, and allergies were tested for at age 13 and 32. About a third of the children were frequent thumb-suckers or nail-biters, and these children were significantly less likely to have allergies at the age of 13.

The odds of these children developing an allergy to things such as house dust mite or a pet cat or dog was about a third lower than those of the other children who did not have these habits. And this protection appeared to last into adulthood, the University of Otago, Dunedin, team found. Co-researcher Prof Malcolm Sears, from McMaster University, in Canada, said: "While we don't recommend that these habits should be encouraged, there does appear to be a positive side to these habits."

Thumb-Sucking, Nail-Biting, and Atopic Sensitization, Asthma, and Hay Fever (DOI: 10.1542/peds.2016-0443)

[Continues...]

takyon writes:

Andrea Leadsom has withdrawn from the race to lead the Conservative Party, leaving Theresa May to become the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom sometime on Wednesday:

Andrea Leadsom announced Monday she is backing out of the contest, citing the strong support for her opponent May and saying it was in Britain's best interests for the next leader to be put in place quickly. Leadsom's announcement comes after uproar over comments she made suggesting she would be a better prime minister than May because she's a mother, while May is not.

[...] NPR's Frank Langfitt explained that Theresa May is the U.K.'s home secretary, "which means she deals with things like immigration, domestic security. She's 59 years old, seen also as steady, if unexciting kind of hand. But right now, given what's been going on in British politics, unexciting sounds very appealing to people — a little bit of certainty, not the circus that we had, certainly in the last few days."

Leadsom was a former banker, noteworthy for her passionate support for the U.K. leaving the EU, Frank explains. She's the latest in a series of Brexit supporters who have passed up or resigned prominent leadership posts. Johnson, who declined to run for prime minister, was a major Brexit campaigner. And Nigel Farage, the outspoken leader of the U.K. Independence Party, resigned from that role last week, saying "I've done my bit."

Also at the BBC. See our previous story, "Theresa May: UK's Next Prime Minister?" for links to stories about May.

Original Submission

fork(2) writes:

Al Jazeera reports:

Hong Kong is hosting the 57th International Mathematical Olympiad 2016 [6 July - 16 July] with a record number of participating countries and the addition of Nepal as an observer.

The competition for secondary school students from around the world has more than 100 teams competing.

James Hung, director and secretary of the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) committee in Hong Kong, said the record number of 111 countries and regions registered to take part in IMO 2016 is "a huge accomplishment."

"Having proven the growing popularity of the contest among students, schools and parents, we are aiming to share and exchange ideas on mathematical education and its development," he told Al Jazeera.

hometownlife [USA Today] says, "The U.S. high school students will be riding on the back of last year's team victory, the first U.S. win in 20 years. This year over 100 of the world's best teams will meet in Hong Kong July 6-16 to try their hand at some of the world's most challenging proof-style problems. The U.S. team will be accompanied again by head coach Po-Shen Loh (Carnegie Mellon University) and deputy coach Razvan Gelca (Texas Tech University)."

Related: Hong Kong hit by 10,000 Lightning Flashes Within 12 Hours (July 9-10).

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Data collected from a hotline has been combined with geographical data in order to help predict surges in dengue fever in Pakistan:

The possible predictive power of phone calls is the topic of a paper [open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1501215] published in Science Advances about a dengue epidemic that hit Lahore, Pakistan, a city of upward of 7 million. A research team out of New York University invited people to call a hotline if they had symptoms that might be consistent with dengue. By analyzing 300,000 calls, the team could not only identify outbreak areas — they could predict future surges two weeks or more in advance.

Spread by mosquitoes, dengue causes fever, vomiting and muscle and joint pain. But it's not often fatal. With proper medical care, the death rate is typically less than 1 percent. In this outbreak, more than 21,000 patients were affected and more than 350 people died. "We'd never had a dengue outbreak of this sort before," says Umar Saif, chairman of the Punjab Information Technology Board and a coauthor of the study. The number of cases was unprecedented in the area. "The government wasn't prepared, and we didn't know what to do. We were basically caught totally by surprise."

[...] As people began calling the hotline, Saif and Lakshminarayanan Subramanian, a computer scientist from NYU, began to notice a trend. If an area had a surge in calls, neighborhood hospitals would see a spike in patients in the following weeks. Not every patient had called the hotline, but the scientists could still forecast the number of cases based on those who did. Subramanian formed a team to devise a computer system that could make such predictions.

The researchers began to test their model in 2012, adding in weather conditions that were favorable to mosquitoes. The goal was to create digital maps for public officials, indicating areas at risk. It's unusual to have very specific information about geography in disease forecasts, but this model could predict not only patient numbers for Lahore but the districts where the disease was likely spreading. So officials could direct scarce resources toward areas on the verge of a dengue spike. They sprayed for mosquitoes, added hospital beds, and presented progress reports.

In 2012, the number of confirmed dengue patients in Lahore dropped to 257. The disease may have naturally been on the decline, but the scientists believe the system played a critical role by directing help to the regions where it was most needed. Since the pilot study in 2012-13, the hotline predictive system has rolled out broadly across Punjab, the province that's home to Lahore.

Original Submission

fork(2) writes:

Science reports:

For years, scientists have noticed rapidly varying electric fields inside dust storms and dust devils, the dirty whirlwinds that skitter across many desert areas. Some even wondered how those fields might alter the size of the storms, but no one had made any measurements. Now, first-of-their-kind field tests in the western Sahara reveal that the fields -- generated when windblown sand grains rub together -- loft desert dust much more effectively than previously recognized, creating larger and longer lasting storms than wind alone.

When wind begins to blow across a sandy, dusty surface, the lightest particles aren't the first to move. That's because much of the dust is either stuck to larger particles or tucked between them. But when sand grains start to bounce across the surface, they strike other grains and shake loose the dust, which then rises into the air just above the ground. All that bouncing and jostling also generates static electricity -- the geological version of shuffling your feet across the carpet.

When this happens, the larger sand grains typically lose electrons to the lighter dust particles, giving the dust a negative charge. The dust particles are blown higher into the air more readily, whereas the now positively charged sand grains usually remain closer to ground level. That separation of charges creates an electric field that may help electrify some of the dust still bound to sand grains, thus boosting even more of it into the air.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Researchers at Australian National University have accidentally boosted the performance of gallium arsenide nanolasers by adding atoms of zinc. The improvement could enable better sensors, on-chip optics, and quantum computing:

Researcher Tim Burgess added atoms of zinc to lasers one hundredth the diameter of a human hair and made of gallium arsenide - a material used extensively in smartphones and other electronic devices. The impurities led to a 100 times improvement in the amount of light from the lasers.

"Normally you wouldn't even bother looking for light from nanocrystals of gallium arsenide - we were initially adding zinc simply to improve the electrical conductivity," said Mr Burgess, a PhD student in the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering. "It was only when I happened to check for light emission that I realised we were onto something."

Doping-enhanced radiative efficiency enables lasing in unpassivated GaAs nanowires (open, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11927)

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

On July 5th , the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion which found, in part, that sharing passwords is a crime prosecutable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The decision, according to a dissenting opinion on the case, makes millions of people who share passwords for services like Netflix and HBOGo into "unwitting federal criminals."

The decision came in the case of David Nosal, an employee at the executive search (or headhunter) firm Korn/Ferry International. Nosal left the firm in 2004 after being denied a promotion. Though he stayed on for a year as a contractor, he was simultaneously preparing to launch a competing search firm, along with several co-conspirators. Though all of their computer access was revoked, they continued to access a Korn/Ferry candidate database, known as Searcher, using the login credentials of Nosal's former assistant, who was still with the firm.

Nosal was eventually charged with conspiracy, theft of trade secrets and three counts under CFAA, and was sentenced to prison time, probation, and nearly $900,000 in restitution and fines.

Nosal's conviction under CFAA hinged on a clause that criminalizes anyone who "knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization". Though CFAA is often understood to be an anti-hacking law, that clause in particular has been applied to many cases that fall far short of actual systems tampering.

What about sharing your Kickass Torrents password?

Source: http://fortune.com/2016/07/10/sharing-netflix-password-crime/

takyon: Non-Fortune link: Ever Use Someone Else's Password? Go to Jail, says the Ninth Circuit

Original Submission