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takyon writes:

Physicists have observed relatively stable "macrodimers" made from two cesium atoms and used their predictive model to refine the binding energy and distance required to create macrodimers:

Experiments confirm the existence of 1-micrometer-sized molecules made of two cesium atoms by showing that their binding energies agree with predictions. Strongly bound diatomic molecules such as H₂ or O₂ are less than a nanometer across. Surprisingly, scientists have been able to create two-atom molecules more than a thousand times larger by using exotic atoms that attract one another only very weakly. Now, a pair of physicists have calculated what makes these "macrodimers" stable, and they have verified their predictions by creating micrometer-sized molecules containing two cesium atoms. The macrodimers could have applications in quantum computing.

Interest in these macromolecules stems from the challenges they pose to conventional understanding of molecules and bonds. More than a decade ago, physicists predicted that molecules with interatomic distances as large as 1 micrometer might be created by using a pair of atoms in so-called Rydberg states. These are atoms in which a single outer-shell electron has been excited to a high quantum state so that it orbits far away from the nucleus. Although Rydberg atoms are unstable, they can live as long as tens of microseconds, and experimenters have succeeded in creating macrodimers from them, confirming their existence indirectly by destroying them and detecting specific spectroscopic signatures.

However, physicists Heiner Saßmannshausen and Johannes Deiglmayr of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, say that the earlier theoretical argument for the existence of macrodimers included some significant assumptions. To examine the argument more rigorously, they developed a sophisticated model of the interaction of Rydberg atoms and used it to predict in more detail the properties of stable macrodimers, such as the amount of energy binding them together. They then tested their model by creating the predicted molecules.

Observation of Rydberg-Atom Macrodimers: Micrometer-Sized Diatomic Molecules (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.083401) (DX)

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ticho writes:

The security blog of Opera browser has an interesting short write-up about a security breach that happened to them:

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Clinical trials and translational medicine have certainly given people hope and rapid pathways to cures for some of humankind's most troublesome diseases, but now is not the time to overlook the power of basic research, says UC Santa Barbara neuroscientist Kenneth S. Kosik.

In fact, as he points out in an article published in the journal Science -- along with coauthors Terry Sejnowski, Marcus Raichle, Aaron Ciechanover and David Baltimore -- supporting fundamental cell biology research into neurodegeneration may be the key to accelerating understanding of neurodegenerative and so-called "incurable" diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

"My point here is that what we really have to do is take the longer view and get a very fundamental understanding of these diseases to make inroads in treatment," said Kosik, who is UCSB's Harriman Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and also the director of the campus's Neuroscience Research Institute.

[Continues...]

takyon writes:

Alphabet/Google's spending on Google Fiber will be scaled back dramatically, due to high costs and the company falling far short of its 5 million subscriber target (there are around 200,000 customers instead):

[The Information] also reports that CEO Larry Page has demanded that Fiber "reduce the current cost of bringing Google Fiber to customers' homes to one-tenth the current level" That should be interesting. Google Fiber will be scaled back to just 500 employees, half its current staffing.

But wait. Wasn't Google "killing any doubts about its national ISP intentions" just two months ago? Sort of. From now on, Google will focus on selective wireless, rather than wireline infrastructure. It's a lot cheaper. The San Jose Mercury was the first to report the scale-back a fortnight ago.

Also at The Information (paywalled), USA Today, eWeek, and Salon. Ars Technica also has an article about Google Fiber doing battle with AT&T over access to utility poles.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

By fine-tuning the chemical composition of nanoparticles, A*STAR researchers have developed a coating that is promising for fabricating smart windows suitable for tropical countries. Such windows block almost all the infrared heat from sun rays, while admitting most of the visible light.

The transparency of glass to visible light makes it the most common way to let light into a building. But because glass is also transparent to near-infrared radiation—windows also let in heat, giving rise to the well-known greenhouse effect. While this heating is welcomed in colder climates, it means that air conditioning has to work harder to maintain a comfortable temperature in in tropical climes.

Developing smart windows that allow most of the sun's light in, while blocking near-infrared radiation, would cut energy costs and reduce carbon emissions.

"In tropical Singapore, where air conditioning is the largest component of a building's energy requirements, even a small reduction in heat intake can translate into significant savings," notes Hui Huang of the A*STAR Singapore Institute of Manufacturing and Technology.

Huang and his co-workers have developed such windows by coating glass with tin oxide nanoparticles doped with small amounts of the element antimony. By varying the nanoparticles' antimony concentration, they could optimize their ability to absorb near-infrared radiation.

"Our infrared shielding coating, with 10-nanometer antimony-doped tin oxide nanoparticles, blocks more than 90 per cent of near-infrared radiation, while transmitting more than 80 per cent of visible light," says Huang. "These figures are much better than those of coatings obtained using commercial antimony-doped tin oxide nanopowders. In particular, the infrared shielding performance of our small antimony-doped tin oxide nanocrystals is twice that of larger commercial antimony-doped tin oxide powders."

Original Submission

opinionated_science writes:

For those not following this project it is a FOSS reimplementation of the Win32 interface, which supports a great deal of humanity's historical computational effort. The new ReactOS release has reached 0.42 and the filesystems ext, btrfs are apparently RW, though Reiserfs and UFS are readonly mounts, successful systems have been shown running.

A nice gallery of some successfully run high profile applications is here (e.g. SimCity and PhotoshopCS2 !!), although interesting, not why I am reporting this.
There are an *enormous* number of scientific instruments (not just microscopes, but various scanners, PCR decks , robots) which originally came with a Win32 driver disk, and have since gone out of business or stopped support. There might only be a single run instance on a crusty old i386 (yes, I've seen that!!).

This is an ambitious project and of course depends on the effective WINE project. It deserves some specific credit and visibility, for providing a possible threshold in the future that sufficient OLD applications can be run independent of the new Microsoft "One OS to rule them All", that it may be possible to construct hybrid machines running Linux, and sufficient driver support from ReactOS to manage the old device drivers that WINE may find difficult to reverse engineer.

But in general, more OS choice's are a good thing!

Original Submission

takyon writes:

https://theintercept.com/2016/08/26/sheriffs-raid-to-find-blogger-who-criticized-him-was-unconstitutional-court-rules/

An appellate court in Baton Rouge ruled Thursday that a raid on a police officer's house in search of the blogger who had accused the sheriff of corruption was unconstitutional. The Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeals argued that Sheriff Jerry Larpenter's investigation into the blog ExposeDAT had flawed rationale: the alleged defamation was not actually a crime as applied to a public official.

The unanimous ruling from the three-judge panel comes after police officer Wayne Anderson and his wife Jennifer Anderson were denied assistance in local and federal court. "I love it when justice is tangible," Jerri Smitko, one of the Andersons' laywers, told The Intercept. "With that piece of paper it says that what they did was unconstitutional — that's a great feeling because you're holding it in your hand and it's vindication for people that they intended to oppress," she added.

The raid was sparked by the sheriff's investigation into who was behind the anonymous blog that accused local officials, including him, of corruption and fraud. Through a blog and a Facebook page called "John Turner," ExposeDAT used public records to show conflicts of interest. The sheriff sought warrants when Tony Alford, a local business owner, filed a criminal complaint about the blog. On August 2, Larpenter and his deputies raided the Andersons' house after they traced the IP address of the John Turner Facebook page through a warrant to AT&T. The information AT&T provided, according to an affidavit, gave the sheriff an address and a name: Wayne Anderson. The court found that the raid on the Andersons' house was unjustified.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

The Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant chain, now a division of Yum! Brands and rebranded KFC, has long used the proprietary nature of its seasoning blend, purportedly containing "eleven herbs and spices," as a selling point.

A Chicago Tribune travel reporter was assigned to visit and write about the Harland Sanders Cafe and Museum. A member of the family of the founder of the chain showed the reporter a deceased aunt's photo album and her will, on the back of which the following recipe had been written:

Reporters prepared some chicken using breading made with the recipe. However, the flavour differed from that of the chicken served at KFC. When MSG was sprinkled on the chicken, the flavour became similar to KFC's chicken. A KFC spokesperson confirmed to the Tribune that the company uses MSG.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37177575

Seismologists in Japan have tracked, for the first time, a particular type of tiny vibration that wobbled through the Earth from the Atlantic seafloor. It was started by a "weather bomb": the same low-pressure storm, off Greenland, which made UK headlines in late 2014.

Tiny tremors, of two types, constantly criss-cross the deep Earth from storms. The slowest of these, the "S" wave, has never been traced to its source before and researchers say it opens up a new way to study the Earth's hidden depths. The findings appear in the journal Science [DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf7573] [DX].

According to Wikipedia, "weather bomb" is more formally known as explosive cyclogenesis:

Explosive cyclogenesis refers in a strict sense to a rapidly deepening extratropical cyclonic low-pressure area. To enter this category, the central pressure of a depression at 60˚ latitude is required to decrease by 24 mb (hPa) or more in 24 hours.

This is a predominantly maritime, cold-season (winter) event, but also occurs in continental settings. They are the extra-tropical equivalent of the tropical rapid deepening.

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butthurt writes:

BBC News and CNN (disable CSS if page appears blank) report that the Council of State, a French administrative court, has suspended the ban on "burkini" swimsuits enacted in the town of Villeneuve-Loubet. The court has not yet decided whether the ban is legal or not. In the ruling, the court said that the ban "seriously and clearly illegally breached fundamental freedoms." Several other towns have recently enacted similar bans.

The Guardian (safe for work) reported on an incident in Nice in which the ban was enforced: police appeared to make a sunbather remove part of her suit.

previously:
The French Solution - or How I Learned to Laugh More (subtitle: Cannes Bans "Burkinis" Over Suspected Link to Radical Islamism)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

When you meet an assassin who has killed six people, you don't expect to encounter a diminutive, nervous young woman carrying a baby. "My first job was two years ago in this province nearby. I felt really scared and nervous because it was my first time." Maria, not her real name, now carries out contract killings as part of the government-sanctioned war on drugs. She is part of a hit team that includes three women, who are valued because they can get close to their victims without arousing the same suspicion a man would.

Since President Duterte was elected, and urged citizens and police to kill drug dealers who resisted arrest, Maria has killed five more people, shooting them all in the head. I asked her who gave the orders for these assassinations: "Our boss, the police officer," she said.

[Continues...]

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A lot has been written on Uber's disastrous failure in Japan. Most authors point to the fact that taxies in Japan are abundant, clean, safe and affordable. While that's all true, it misses a more important truth.

The success of any market entry depends only partially on things like product-market-fit, sufficient capitalization and local competition. Sometimes the secret to success lies simply in not doing what Uber did

You see, Uber represents a new kind of startup. The very thing that makes them so successful in America dooms them to failure in Japan, and watching how this has played out illustrates an important difference in how disruption takes place in America and in Japan.

For any of this to make sense, we will need to put aside the feel-good fluff of the absurdly named "sharing economy" and understand that both Uber's business model, and Airbnb's as well, revolves around a kind of legal arbitrage. Their significant price advantage comes from the fact that they choose to ignore a great many laws and regulations that their competition must follow.

Airbnb hosts routinely ignore zoning laws, hotel taxes, safety regulations and insurance requirements. Most Uber drivers do not have taxi or chauffeur licenses, obtain commercial insurance, pass safely inspections or comply with ADA regulations.

The exceptionally clever part of the model is that the bulk of the rule breaking is not done by the companies, but by the drivers and the hosts. These people are not employees, so Uber and Airbnb can't be held responsible for their actions. Legally speaking, Uber and Airbnb are just platforms, and the hosts and drivers are operating independently and of their own volition.

Obviously, that's nonsense, but this legal fiction provides both businesses with a powerful legal shield.

[Continues...]

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for cmn32480

[Valve w]ill allow anyone to build trackable sensors into hardware meant for VR experiences.

If a hardware maker wants to create physical objects that will interface with SteamVR—like a pair of gloves, a two-handed shotgun, a piece of fake medical equipment, or whatever else you can imagine—the object in question needs to be tracked by the system's "room-scale" pair of infrared boxes. The HTC Vive's headset and wands play nicely in VR mostly because they're each covered by dozens of IR receiver dots. The headset and wands are spread out in such a way that, no matter how you hold or use them, one of the Vive's two tracking boxes can be seen by enough of the IR dots.

Third-party hardware makers have flooded recent gaming expos with their own hacked-together attempts at this sort of thing, usually by attaching extra hardware to existing HTC Vive wands. Now, they can reach out directly to Steam and request a trackable-peripheral dev kit, which includes EVM circuit boards, Vive tracking boxes, and 40 individual sensors, to create their own working hardware prototype. This kit will be made available for free to approved licensees, and it will include documentation and information that hardware manufacturers can use to eventually mass-produce any finished product.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/08/valve-will-grant-royalty-free-licenses-to-anybody-making-steamvr-peripherals/

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Unlike the system of using H1B visas as the first step in outsourcing jobs over-seas, the white house is planning to allow immigrants who work at a funded startup where they have at least a 15% ownership stake to stay in the US for up to 5 years.

http://www.recode.net/2016/8/26/12652892/white-house-startup-visa

Already speaking out in favor of the new rules is PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, who moved to the U.S. from the Soviet Union in 1991.

"I believe that the most promising entrepreneurs from around the world should have the same opportunity I had — the chance to deliver on their potential, here in America," Levchin said in an email released by the White House.

To be eligible to work in the U.S. under the new rule, the foreigner would have to own at least 15 percent of a U.S.-based startup, have a central role in its operations and have "potential for rapid business growth and job creation."

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

Tech Times reports (alternate link) that Facebook has sacked the editors responsible for the site's "Trending Topics." According to the Facebook blog, the section is to be produced by "[a] more algorithmically driven process."

alternate coverage:

• Engadget
• Recode
• veooz.com

related stories:

Facebook is Keeping its Employees' Politics in Check With Bias Training
US Senate Launches Inquiry Over Facebook's Alleged Political Bias in Trending News List

Original Submission