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takyon writes:

KTVA reports:

The Alaska Marijuana Control Board (MCB) members approved the first licenses for marijuana manufacturing facilities and retail stores at their Sept. 8 meeting. Destiny Neade, owner of Frozen Budz in Fairbanks, got one of each.

The approval of her licenses was met with applause by dozens of other industry hopefuls in attendance. "Everything seems really real right now. I'm opening this door and I'm really going to be infusing marijuana and making edibles," Neade said. "All the plans we've made are going to happen now that we've been approved."

There are four manufacturing facilities and 17 retails stores up for review during the MCB's two-day meeting.

Also at Alaska Dispatch News.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A panel of experts working on the Obama administration's "cancer moonshot" (announced during the President's State of the Union address) recommend a greater focus on immunotherapy. Their report includes these ten summarized recommendations (bonus videos at link):

• Network for direct patient engagement
• Cancer immunotherapy clinical trials network
• Therapeutic target identification to overcome drug resistance
• A national cancer data ecosystem for sharing and analysis
• Fusion oncoproteins in pediatric cancer
• Symptom management research
• Prevention and early detection: implementation of evidence-based approaches
• Retrospective analysis of biospecimens from patients treated with standard of care
• Generation of human tumor atlases
• Development of new enabling cancer technologies

"The goal is to focus investigators into these areas because this is where we feel we can make huge progress in the next five years as opposed to the next 10 years," Berger said. In addition to the 10 scientific approaches that the Blue Ribbon Panel recommended, there are additional special projects. These include a demonstration project to test for Lynch syndrome, a heritable genetic condition that increases risk of several types of cancer, to improve early detection and prevention; the establishment of a nationwide pediatric immunotherapy clinical trials network to enhance the speed with which new immunotherapies can be tested in children; exploring patient-derived organoids; and "microdosing" devices to test drug responses in living tumors.

"It feels like exactly the right time to be launching a big new push against cancer," said Alan Ashworth, PhD, FRS, president of UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. "The report of the Blue Ribbon Panel is bold and imaginative and, if properly funded and implemented, will allow major progress in a considerably accelerated time frame."

Also at The Washington Post and NBC.

Cancer Moonshot Blue Ribbon Panel Report 2016 Draft (72 page PDF)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Airbnb has tweaked its rules and reservation system to lessen discrimination:

Online rental marketplace Airbnb will address reports of widespread racial discrimination against non-white guests by displaying photos less prominently on its website, promoting instant bookings and changing some of its technology, according to a report commissioned by the company. The report, released on Thursday, followed months of criticism of Airbnb, sparked partly by comments under Twitter hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack about discrimination against black people. "Bias and discrimination have no place on Airbnb, and we have zero tolerance for them," Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky wrote in an email to users. "Unfortunately, we have been slow to address these problems, and for this I am sorry."

Before the end of the year, Airbnb will roll out changes to its reservation request system that emphasize trip details, reviews and verified IDs while testing various formats that downplay users' photos, said the report from Laura Murphy & Associates. San Francisco-based Airbnb will also expand its instant book program, which allows guests who meet preferences preset by hosts to make reservations without prior approval, to 1 million of its 2 million listings by January. Under that program, hosts can require guests to provide Airbnb with government issued ID or have or a 4.5 out of 5 star rating to be approved for booking. Hosts can also cancel bookings without paying a fee if they have issues with guests' behavior. The company will also implement technology that prevents hosts from booking new guests if they tell another guest their listing is unavailable for the same time frame.

Also at The New York Times , which notes that the company had hired former Attorney General Eric Holder and other advisers such as the former head of the ACLU's D.C. Legislative Office Laura Murphy and civil rights attorney John Relman to help design the new policies.

Here is the report Laura Murphy submitted to Airbnb, entitled Airbnb's Work to Fight Discrimination and Build Inclusion (32 page PDF).

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6614

New scenes from a frigid alien landscape are coming to light in recent radar images of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Cassini obtained the views during a close flyby of Titan on July 25, when the spacecraft came as close as 607 miles (976 kilometers) from the giant moon. The spacecraft's radar instrument is able to penetrate the dense, global haze that surrounds Titan, to reveal fine details on the surface. One of the new views shows long, linear dunes, thought to be comprised of grains derived from hydrocarbons that have settled out of Titan's atmosphere. Cassini has shown that dunes of this sort encircle most of Titan's equator. Scientists can use the dunes to learn about winds, the sands they're composed of, and highs and lows in the landscape.

[...] Another new image shows an area nicknamed the "Xanadu annex" earlier in the mission by members of the Cassini radar team. Cassini's radar had not previously obtained images of this area, but earlier measurements by the spacecraft suggested the terrain might be quite similar to the large region on Titan named Xanadu. First imaged in 1994 by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, Xanadu was the first surface feature to be recognized on Titan. While Hubble was able to see Xanadu's outline, the annex area went unnoticed. The new Cassini image reveals that the Xanadu annex is, indeed, made up of the same type of mountainous terrains observed in Xanadu and scattered across other parts of Titan.

[...] The July 25 flyby was Cassini's 122nd encounter with Titan since the spacecraft's arrival in the Saturn system in mid-2004. It was also the last time Cassini's radar will image terrain in the far southern latitudes of Titan. [...] Cassini's four remaining Titan flybys will focus primarily on the liquid-filled lakes and seas in Titan's far north. The mission will begin its finale in April 2017, with a series of 22 orbits that plunge between the planet and its icy rings.

Wikipedia has a summary which notes many interesting properties of Titan:

[Continues...]

takyon writes:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that a Court of Justice of the European Union ruling could threaten hyperlinking as we know it:

In a case which threatens to cause turmoil for thousands if not millions of websites, the Court of Justice of the European Union decided today that a website that merely links to material that infringes copyright, can itself be found guilty of copyright infringement, provided only that the operator knew or could reasonably have known that the material was infringing. Worse, they will be presumed to know of this if the links are provided for "the pursuit of financial gain".

The case, GS Media BV v. Sanoma, concerned a Dutch news website, GeenStijl, that linked to leaked pre-publication photos from Playboy magazine, as well as publishing a thumbnail of one of them. The photos were hosted not by GeenStijl itself but at first by an Australian image hosting website, then later by Imageshack, and subsequently still other web hosts, with GeenStijl updating the links as the copyright owner had the photos taken down from one image host after another.

The court's press release [PDF] spins this decision in such a positive light that much reporting on the case, including that by Reuters, gets it wrong, and assumes that only for-profit websites are affected by the decision. To be clear, that's not the case. Even a non-profit website or individual who links to infringing content can be liable for infringing copyright if they knew that the material was infringing, for example after receiving notice of this from the copyright holder. And anyway, the definition of "financial gain" is broad enough to encompass any website, like GeenStijl, that runs ads.

GS Media BV v Sanoma Media Netherlands BV and Others (C-160/15)

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

US president Barack Obama has named the nation's first ever Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).

Brigadier General (retired) Gregory J. Touhill has accepted the gig. He previously served as deputy assistant secretary for Cybersecurity and Communications in the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications at the Department of Homeland Security, where it was his job to work on "development and implementation of operational programs designed to protect our government networks and critical infrastructure." Along the way he opined that cybergeddon scenarios might be a bit overblown.

Tick the boxes for "relevant experience" and "doesn't fall for hype"!

The White House TEXT announcement of Touhill's appointment, penned by US CIO Tony Scott and cybersecurity coordinator J. Michael Daniel has the usual nice things to say about the new hire and say the job's goal is "to drive cybersecurity policy, planning, and implementation across the Federal Government."

Will the new CISO take immediate steps to shut down Diebold voting machines to safeguard the integrity of the upcoming American Presidential election?

Original Submission

MichaelDavidCrawford writes:

Dan Luu demonstrates that even when optimizing, compilers often produce very slow code as compared to very basic source that is easily accessible to every assembly code programmer: Hand coded assembly beats intrinsics in speed and simplicity:

Every once in a while, I hear how intrinsics have improved enough that it's safe to use them for high performance code. That would be nice. The promise of intrinsics is that you can write optimized code by calling out to functions (intrinsics) that correspond to particular assembly instructions. Since intrinsics act like normal functions, they can be cross platform. And since your compiler has access to more computational power than your brain, as well as a detailed model of every CPU, the compiler should be able to do a better job of micro-optimizations. Despite decade old claims that intrinsics can make your life easier, it never seems to work out.

The last time I tried intrinsics was around 2007; for more on why they were hopeless then (see this exploration by the author of VirtualDub). I gave them another shot recently, and while they've improved, they're still not worth the effort. The problem is that intrinsics are so unreliable that you have to manually check the result on every platform and every compiler you expect your code to be run on, and then tweak the intrinsics until you get a reasonable result. That's more work than just writing the assembly by hand. If you don't check the results by hand, it's easy to get bad results.

For example, as of this writing, the first two Google hits for popcnt benchmark (and 2 out of the top 3 bing hits) claim that Intel's hardware popcnt instruction is slower than a software implementation that counts the number of bits set in a buffer, via a table lookup using the SSSE3 pshufb instruction. This turns out to be untrue, but it must not be obvious, or this claim wouldn't be so persistent. Let's see why someone might have come to the conclusion that the popcnt instruction is slow if they coded up a solution using intrinsics.

In my own experience, I have yet to find an optimizing compiler that generates code as fast or as compact as I am able to with hand-optimized code.

Dan Luu's entire website is a treasure trove of education for experienced and novice coders alike. I look forward to studying the whole thing. His refreshingly simple HTML 1.0 design is obviously intended to educate, and is an example of my assertion that the true experts all have austere websites.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Volunteers who started an experiment feeling neutral about certain faces they saw ended up unknowingly adopting the feelings that scientists induced via an MRI feedback technique, according to newly published research.

The study in PLOS Biology

therefore suggests that there is a single region of the brain where both positive and negative feelings for faces take shape and provides the second demonstration this year that the MRI technique can be used to train a mental process in an unknowing subject. This spring, the team used the same method to associate the perception of color with the context of a pattern so strongly that volunteers saw the color when cued by the pattern, even if the color wasn't really there.

In the new study, the researchers sought to determine whether they could direct feelings about faces -- a more sophisticated brain function that is closer to their eventual goal, which is to develop the technique to the point where it could become a tool for psychological therapy, for instance for anxiety.

It is not yet known whether the technique, dubbed "DecNef" for "Decoded Neurofeedback," persists for a long time after a procedure. The researchers acknowledged the potential misuse of DecNef for brainwashing.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

If you've ever heard your engine rev through your radio while listening to an AM station in your car, or had your television make a buzzing sound when your cell phone is near it, then you've experienced electromagnetic interference. This phenomenon, caused by radio waves, can originate from anything that creates, carries or uses an electric current, including television and internet cables, and, of course cell phones and computers. A group of researchers at Drexel University and the Korea Institute of Science & Technology is working on cleaning up this electromagnetic pollution by containing the emissions with a thin coating of a nanomaterial called MXene.

[...] Their findings suggest that a few-atoms thin titanium carbide, one of about 20 two-dimensional materials in the MXene family discovered by Drexel University scientists, can be more effective at blocking and containing electromagnetic interference, with the added benefit of being extremely thin and easily applied in a coating just by spraying it onto any surface -- like paint.

An abstract is available.

Good news! Your next smartphone will be able to be thinner than ever.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Federal authorities have arrested two men on charges they were part of a group that broke into the private e-mail accounts of high-ranking US government officials and a Justice Department computer system.

Andrew Otto Boggs, 22, of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, and Justin Gray Liverman, 24, of Morehead City, North Carolina, were part of a group calling itself "Crackas with Attitude," federal prosecutors alleged. Although an FBI affidavit filed in the case didn't identify the targeted government officials by name, The Washington Post and other news organizations, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, said they included CIA Director John Brennan, then-Deputy FBI Director Mark Giuliano, National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper, and other high-ranking officials. The group also used its unauthorized access to a Justice Department management system to obtain and later publish the names, phone numbers, and other personal details of more than 29,000 FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials.

According to the affidavit, the group didn't rely on computer hacking to break into restricted accounts. Instead, they used social engineering in which they impersonated their targets and various IT support personnel purporting to help the victims. On October 11, 2015, one of the suspects allegedly accessed the account of one target, identified by the Post as Brennan, by posing as a technician from Verizon. The suspect then tricked another Verizon employee into resetting the password for Brennan's Internet service. Prosecutors said the suspects went on to take over a Brennan AOL account.

Are they criminals, or patriots, for having invaded the lives of those at the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Homeland Security who have built total surveillance systems?

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

This November, several US states will vote whether to legalize marijuana use, joining more than 20 states that already allow some form of cannabis use. This has prompted a need for effective tools for police to determine on the spot whether people are driving under the influence. Stanford researchers have devised a potential solution, applying magnetic nanotechnology, previously used as a cancer screen, to create what could be the first practical roadside test for marijuana intoxication.

While police are trying out potential tools, no device currently on the market has been shown to quickly provide a precise measurement of a driver's marijuana intoxication as effectively as a breathalyzer gauges alcohol intoxication. THC, the drug's most potent psychoactive agent, is commonly screened for in laboratory blood or urine tests – not very helpful for an officer in the field. The Stanford device might function as a practical "potalyzer" because it can quickly detect not just the presence of THC in a person's saliva, but also measure its concentration.

http://phys.org/news/2016-09-potalyzer-roadside-saliva-marijuana-intoxication.html

[Source]: Stanford University

[Abstract]: Small Molecule Detection in Saliva Facilitates Portable Tests of Marijuana Abuse

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2104864-bacteria-lurking-in-blood-could-be-culprit-in-countless-diseases/

I've similarly been suspicious of claims that urine is sterile. After learning about microbes — I've long assumed very few places in our bodies are free from microbes and it was a continuous war with different battles going on at different places. Something like WW1 trench warfare — having to wait for the bacteria or virus (e.g. herpes zoster) to "stick its head up". You'd have to be extremely lucky (or dead) to have a complete ceasefire.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers of Aalto University have made a breakthrough in controlling the motion of multiple objects on a vibrating plate with a single acoustic source. By playing carefully constructed melodies, the scientists can simultaneously and independently move multiple objects on the plate toward desired targets. This has enabled the scientists to do things like compose words consisting of separate letters with loose metal pieces on the plate by playing a melody.

In 1878, the first studies of sand moving on a vibrating plate were conducted by Ernst Chladni, known as the father of acoustics. Chladni discovered that when a plate is vibrating at a frequency, objects move towards a few positions, called the nodal lines, specific to that frequency. Since then, the prevailing view has been that the particle motion is random on the plate before they reached the nodal line. "We have shown that the motion is also predictable away from the nodal lines. Now that the object does not have to be at a nodal line, we have much more freedom in controlling its motion and have achieved independent control of up to six objects simultaneously using just one single actuator. We are very excited about the results, because this is probably a new world record of how many independent motions can be controlled by a single acoustic actuator," says Professor Quan Zhou.

The objects to be controlled were placed on top of a manipulation plate, and imaged by a tracking camera. Based on the detected positions, the computer goes through a list of music notes to find a note that is most likely to move the objects toward the desired directions. After playing the note, the new positions of the objects are detected, and the control cycle is restarted. This cycle is repeated until the objects have reached their desired target locations. The notes played during the control cycles form a sequence, a bit like music.

It's an extrapolation of that staple of exploratoria/science museums, where you rub the violin bow on the edge of a metal plate dusted with sand and watch the grains cluster into waves. The short video in the article illustrates the concept well.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The Sion has seating for 6, a range of 150+ miles, 7.5 square meters of solar cells, an air filtration system that uses moss, and a price of less than $18,000.

A German startup, Sono Motors, has just finished a successful crowdfunding campaign to take its Sion electric car prototype to the next step, and if all goes well over the next year or so, it could go into production as early as 2018. At a time when many auto companies are quickly trying to catch up to the electric car trend with their own electric models (thanks, Tesla), the Sion is one of the only examples of an electric vehicle that includes a self-charging aspect, which could make it the perfect vehicle for enabling free 'fuel' for those with short commutes.

Although the Sion can be charged via a plug like other electric vehicles (EVs), this car also has solar cells integrated into its body, which the developers say are capable of delivering a charge to the vehicle's battery that can power it up to 30 km (18.6 miles) every day. With a top speed of 140 kmh (86 mph), it's not designed to be an electric sports car, by any means, but with seating for 6 and a 250 km range (155 miles), at a price of under $18,000, it just might be the affordable solar electric car we've been waiting for.

It's a product promo but it shows the inevitable evolution of the electric car concept. It seems they're also missing the opportunity to generate power with Stirling engines that exploit the temperature differential between the inside of the hot car and the outside.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Quantum data locking could provide an efficient and secure alternative to one-time pad encryption (which requires a key at least as long as the message), according to two new papers:

Researchers at the University of Rochester have moved beyond the theoretical in demonstrating that an unbreakable encrypted message can be sent with a key that's far shorter than the message—the first time that has ever been done. Until now, unbreakable encrypted messages were transmitted via a system envisioned by American mathematician Claude Shannon, considered the "father of information theory." Shannon combined his knowledge of algebra and electrical circuitry to come up with a binary system of transmitting messages that are secure, under three conditions: the key is random, used only once, and is at least as long as the message itself. The findings by Daniel Lum, a graduate student in physics, and John Howell, a professor of physics, have been published in the journal Physical Review A.

[...] Let's assume that Alice wants to send an encrypted message to Bob. She uses the machine to generate photons that travel through free space and into a spatial light modulator (SLM) that alters the properties of the individual photons (e.g. amplitude, tilt) to properly encode the message into flat but tilted wavefronts that can be focused to unique points dictated by the tilt. But the SLM does one more thing: it distorts the shapes of the photons into random patterns, such that the wavefront is no longer flat which means it no longer has a well-defined focus. Alice and Bob both know the keys which identify the implemented scrambling operations, so Bob is able to use his own SLM to flatten the wavefront, re-focus the photons, and translate the altered properties into the distinct elements of the message.

Along with modifying the shape of the photons, Lum and the team made use of the uncertainty principle, which states that the more we know about one property of a particle, the less we know about another of its properties. Because of that, the researchers were able to securely lock in six bits of classical information using only one bit of an encryption key—an operation called data locking. "While our device is not 100 percent secure, due to photon loss," said Lum, "it does show that data locking in message encryption is far more than a theory."

2013 paper by Seth Lloyd: Quantum enigma machines

Quantum enigma machine: Experimentally demonstrating quantum data locking (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.94.022315) (DX)

Experimental quantum data locking

Classical correlation can be locked via quantum means--quantum data locking. With a short secret key, one can lock an exponentially large amount of information, in order to make it inaccessible to unauthorized users without the key. Quantum data locking presents a resource-efficient alternative to one-time pad encryption which requires a key no shorter than the message.

Original Submission