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Phoenix666 writes:

When potato chips and cheese doodles lose their luster, celery and carrots don't pack enough punch, and nostalgia for SERE School grips you:

Welcome to the exciting world of entomophagy! Below you will find a list of North American companies producing edible insects in various forms - from snack bites to protein powder to roasted whole. Start wherever you're comfortable.

Are you ready to eat some insects? The facts are out and it's hard to argue with them – insects are the perfect answer to people's desire for protein without the environmental costs that go along with animal agriculture. Raising insects for human consumption uses far less water, land, and food than livestock, and insects emit almost no greenhouse gases.

From the Entomo Farms website: "These insects contain 70% protein, more calcium than milk, more iron than spinach, and almost 20 times the amount of B12 as beef."

Also, overcoming antipathy toward eating insects is a useful post-SHTF (S* Hits The Fan) skill...

Original Submission

https://sites.google.com/site/marclevoylectures/

Playlist of all lectures in order: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7ddpXYvFXspUN0N-gObF1GXoCA-DA-7i

Some of the course materials (slides etc):
http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs178/schedule.html

Original Submission

5,300 Wells Fargo Employees Fired Over 2 Million Phony Accounts

martyb writes:

You should be able to trust your bank, right? According to CNN Money, Wells Fargo employees attempted to meet sales goals and boost their income by creating unauthorized accounts and applying for credit cards on behalf of their customers — without their authorization:

"Wells Fargo employees secretly opened unauthorized accounts to hit sales targets and receive bonuses," Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said in a statement.

[...] Wells Fargo confirmed to CNNMoney that it had fired 5,300 employees over the last few years related to the shady behavior. Employees went so far as to create phony PIN numbers and fake email addresses to enroll customers in online banking services, the CFPB said.

The scope of the scandal is shocking. An analysis conducted by a consulting firm hired by Wells Fargo concluded that bank employees opened over 1.5 million deposit accounts that may not have been authorized.

The way it worked was that employees moved funds from customers' existing accounts into newly-created ones without their knowledge or consent, regulators say. The CFPB described this practice as "widespread." Customers were being charged for insufficient funds or overdraft fees -- because there wasn't enough money in their original accounts.

Additionally, Wells Fargo employees also submitted applications for 565,443 credit card accounts without their customers' knowledge or consent. Roughly 14,000 of those accounts incurred over $400,000 in fees, including annual fees, interest charges and overdraft-protection fees.

The CFPB said Wells Fargo will pay "full restitutions to all victims."

[Continues...]

SomeGuy writes:

According to a post on the Google Online Security Blog, beginning in January 2017 Google Chrome will begin flagging all sites that use traditional HTTP rather than HTTPS for passwords or other sensitive information as "insecure". It also indicates that Google plans to eventually start flagging ALL traditional HTTP-only sites as "insecure". While HTTPS has always made sense for truly sensitive information, a pure HTTPS web does have implications for legacy tools - essentially if anyone is not using the absolute latest of one of the "big three" web browsers, they will always potentially be just one security update away from being locked out of the web.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Southern California Public Radio (KPCC-FM) reports

California will now be the nation's example for reducing climate change after Governor Jerry Brown signed sweeping legislation [September 8] that will require the Golden State to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below the 1990 levels by the year 2030. The law replaces a previous bill signed by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger which required the state to be at 1990 emissions levels by the year 2020.

The law, SB 32 [1] also gives more authority to California's Air Resources Board to regulate emissions. A separate law the governor also signed yesterday gives lawmakers more power over that board.

[...] The Germans have a tougher target of 55 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. [California's is] the same level of ambition as the EU as a whole.

[...] The governor had tried to slip into this bill a late amendment authorizing the extension of cap-and-trade but that was rejected by lawmakers and instead the bill is silent. However, the bill could be an important cudgel for Brown in trying to negotiate an extension of cap-and-trade.

[...] implications of the law on employment in Southern California [...] The state, since the end of the recession, has been growing jobs at a 50 percent faster rate than the nation as a whole. There are studies showing that the renewable standards have created 30,000 jobs in some of the hardest hit rural areas of the state.

[1] Main content is behind a script. archive.li handles that.

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bradley13 writes:

I read an apocalyptic novel a few months ago. It was placed in the USA, and the core assumption of the novel was that practically every agency in the federal government had armed troops. After sufficient build-up of these forces, one day the President took advantage of some crisis or other to declare martial law. Maybe this was inspired by the fact that lots of unlikely federal agencies do, in fact, have their own armed forces. Some of the stranger ones are: Dept. of Education, Food and Drug Administration, Internal Revenue Service and Post Office.

It was just a story, of course. Though one does wonder just why the Dept. of Education needs guns.

So now comes the CDC, proposing a new regulation. For those of you who are Americans, the CDC is accepting comments until October 14th. Here are some interesting excerpts:

The CDC "may promulgate regulations that provide for the apprehension and examination of any individual reasonably believed to be infected with a quarantinable communicable disease in a qualifying stage."

Understandable, quarantine people who are infectious. By force, if necessary. Only, it continues:

"a 'qualifying stage' means that the communicable disease is in 'a precommunicable stage, if the disease would be likely to cause a public health emergency if transmitted to other individuals' or "a communicable stage."

So, non-infectious people, but still infected? Well, not exactly...

"CDC defines precommunicable stage to mean the stage beginning upon an individual's earliest opportunity for exposure to an infectious agent"

[Continues...]

takyon writes:

Burritos from the sky? College just got a little lazier:

In what's sure to be a college student's dream come true, drones will soon be delivering burritos on the campus of Virginia Tech. The experimental service, to begin this month and last just a few weeks, is a test by Project Wing, a unit of Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. and the Blacksburg, Virginia, university have agreed to participate.

The Federal Aviation Administration approved the venture, the most extensive test yet in the U.S. of what many companies -- including Amazon.com Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. -- hope will eventually become routine drone deliveries of products. Amazon has begun a round of trials at a location in the U.K. "It's the first time that we're actually out there delivering stuff to people who want that stuff," said Dave Vos, who heads Project Wing.

Project Wing will use self-guided hybrids that can fly like a plane or hover like a helicopter. They will make deliveries from a Chipotle food truck to assess the accuracy of navigation systems and how people respond. The devices will hover overhead and lower the Chipotle edibles with a winch. Part of the experiment will be to see how well the packaging protects the chow and keeps it warm. Food was selected as the demonstration cargo because it's a challenge. The company is already at work on a more sophisticated second version of the aircraft that won't be used in the tests, Vos said.

"Chipotle edibles"? I smell an entirely new business.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Stroke victims with weakened hand function can wear an electrical stimulation glove to improve dexterity:

According to new research [open, DOI: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.116.013791] [DX] published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke, researchers at the MetroHealth System, Case Western Reserve University, and the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation Center have developed a therapy whereby patients can be in control of the stimulation to their weak hand. The electrical currents are delivered using a glove with sensors. By wearing the glove on their unaffected hand and opening their fingers, the affected side receives a similar amount of stimulation to open the weakened hand. This wearable technology put the patient back in control of their hand while enabling them to participate in electrical stimulation therapy.

"Based on positive findings from our previous studies, we sought to determine if the new glove-controlled hand stimulation therapy could be more effective than the common therapy in improving hand dexterity in patients who are more than six months past their stroke," says Jayme S. Knutson, Ph.D., senior author of the study and an assistant professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio.

[...] Measurements of hand function were taken before and after therapy using a standard dexterity test that calculated the number of blocks participants could pick up from a table with their stroke-affected hand, lift over a barrier, and release to another area of the table within 60 seconds. The researchers found that participants from the group that used the electrical stimulation glove presented greater improvement on the dexterity test by 4.6 blocks on average, compared with the common therapy group, which improved by 1.8 blocks. Patients who displayed the most significant improvement on the dexterity test using the glove were less than 2 years post-stroke and had some finger movement at the start of the study. They improved by 9.6 blocks on the dexterity test, compared with 4.1 blocks in the common therapy group.

Patients with no finger movement at the beginning of the study also noted improvements in arm movement upon using the glove for the duration of the study. In total, 97 percent of participants agreed that their hand functioned better at the end of the study than at the beginning after using the new therapy.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The Detroit News reports

Federal documents unsealed Friday detail how VW engineers from the very beginning of the automaker's so-called "clean diesel" program intentionally developed and installed a "defeat device" on roughly 500,000 cars from 2009 through 2015 in the United States so that they could appear to pass U.S. emissions tests.

The details were made public as James Robert Liang, leader of diesel competence for VW from 2008 through June, appeared in U.S. District Court in Detroit. He entered a guilty plea to a grand jury indictment of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, to commit wire fraud and to violate the Clean Air Act. The maximum penalty is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

It marks the first criminal charge in the year-long scandal at the German automaker and could indicate more charges against VW officials are coming in the Department of Justice investigation into the company.

[...] Liang was also indicted for violating the Clean Air Act, which includes a two-year prison term and $250,000 fine. But under a plea agreement with the Justice Department, he did not enter a plea to that charge.

[...] Liang is not a U.S. citizen, and his conviction on the charges could affect his eligibility to remain in the United States, U.S. District Judge Sean Cox said. Liang is scheduled to be sentenced at 2 p.m. Jan. 11 before Cox.

Previous: Activist-Comedian Interrupts VW Exec's Geneva Presentation to Install "Cheat Box"

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Most basic physics textbooks describe laser light in fairly simple terms: a beam travels directly from one point to another and, unless it strikes a mirror or other reflective surface, will continue traveling along an arrow-straight path, gradually expanding in size due to the wave nature of light. But these basic rules go out the window with high-intensity laser light.

Powerful laser beams, given the right conditions, will act as their own lenses and "self-focus" into a tighter, even more intense beam. University of Maryland physicists have discovered that these self-focused laser pulses also generate violent swirls of optical energy that strongly resemble smoke rings. In these donut-shaped light structures, known as "spatiotemporal optical vortices," the light energy flows through the inside of the ring and then loops back around the outside.

The vortices travel along with the laser pulse at the speed of light and control the energy flow around it. The newly discovered optical structures are described in the September 9, 2016 issue of the journal Physical Review X.

The researchers named the laser smoke rings "spatiotemporal optical vortices," or STOVs. The light structures are ubiquitous and easily created with any powerful laser, given the right conditions. The team strongly suspects that STOVs could explain decades' worth of anomalous results and unexplained effects in the field of high-intensity laser research.
...
"The smoke ring vortices we discovered may have even broader applications than previously known optical vortices, because they are time dynamic, meaning that they move along with the beam instead of remaining stationary," Jhajj added. "This means that the rings may be useful for manipulating particles moving near the speed of light."

The article cites the ability to manipulate light with STOVs as potentially expanding the amount of bandwidth our fiber optic lines can carry.

Original Submission

e_armadillo writes:

I figured that this is a topic, while not dear to us, is relevant to this crowd -- well maybe not the public part. Italy's highest court has ruled that masturbation in public is not a crime, as long as it is not conducted in the presence of minors.

The man was convicted in May 2015 after he performed the act in front of students on the University of Catania campus, according to documents filed with Supreme Court. The man was sentenced to three months in prison and ordered to pay a fine of €3,200 (around $3,600).

However, the defendant's lawyer appealed the case to the country's highest court, which ruled on the side of the accused in June but only just made its decision public. Judges ruled that public masturbation out of the presence of minors is no longer deemed criminal conduct due to a change in the law last year, which decriminalized the act.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/08/europe/italy-supreme-court-masturbation/

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

It's long-accepted common knowledge that high-speed internet access is a key to education, economic growth and even maintaining interpersonal connections. While the internet began as a public venture, in the last 20 years the private sector has provided the public with broadband connectivity. Internet service providers like Comcast and Charter have built out networks covering large swaths of the U.S., and for years have effectively monopolized internet connections to homes and businesses.

Because they operate with little or no competition, these companies have little incentive to upgrade their networks or reduce prices. This has left the country that invented the internet ranked 30th in the world for internet speed and affordability.

Communities frustrated with their available options – or without any options at all – have taken on the challenges of delivering fast and cheap internet for themselves. Often this municipal 100 times faster than the national average internet connection speed.

For the consumer this means faster Netflix streaming, clearer Skype conversations, faster downloads, better gaming and quicker uploads for video, documents and pictures. It also means stronger health care provision, emergency preparedness and business advantages.

That's why it was disappointing to learn of last month's Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that upheld laws in North Carolina and Tennessee that discourage the growth of municipal broadband. The ruling overturned a 2015 decision by the Federal Communications Commission that voided these laws in the interest of promoting greater broadband access. How the issue gets resolved from here will affect American connectivity, competitiveness and communities. With all five members of the FCC slated to testify before Congress this month, in a general hearing about the commission's work, it's important to understand the legal and regulatory gymnastics that got us here in the first place.

By law, the FCC is charged with promoting advanced telecommunications (including Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which is vaguely worded. Through several years of court rulings, this part of the law has become both a powerful tool in the FCC's regulatory arsenal, and its Achilles' heel when interpreted by the courts.

[...] The digital divide is not shrinking as fast as it could be, and universal broadband is only becoming more of a necessity for participation in American society, culture and business. What action the FCC takes now – and how it interprets the range of its power – will send an important message to all Americans about their connected future.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37311716

It is a famous, gentle giant of the African savannah, but the giraffe's genetics have just revealed that there is not one species, but four. Giraffes have previously been recognised to be a single species divided into several sub-species. But this latest study of their DNA suggests that four groups of giraffes have not cross-bred and exchanged genetic material for millions of years. This is a clear indication that they have evolved into distinct species.

The study published in the journal Current Biology has rewritten the biology of Earth's tallest mammal. The scientists say their findings could inform the conservation efforts for all four species of giraffe. [...] In the last 15 years, the population of giraffes has declined by 40% - there are now an estimated 90,000 individuals in the wild. But, as a single species, they are classified by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as of Least Concern. Now, it is clear that each of these four newly classified species could be faring very differently.

Multi-locus Analyses Reveal Four Giraffe Species Instead of One (DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.07.036) (DX)

Original Submission

DeathMonkey writes:

A trove of hacked emails published by WikiLeaks in 2012 excludes records of a €2 billion transaction between the Syrian regime and a government-owned Russian bank, according to leaked U.S. court documents obtained by the Daily Dot.

The court records, placed under seal by a Manhattan federal court and obtained by the Daily Dot through an anonymous source, show in detail how a group of hacktivists breached the Syrian government's networks on the eve of the country's civil war and extracted emails about major bank transactions the Syrian regime was hurriedly making amid a host of economic sanctions. In the spring of 2012, most of the emails found their way into a WikiLeaks database.

But one set of emails in particular didn't make it into the cache of documents published by WikiLeaks in July 2012 as "The Syria Files," despite the fact that the hackers themselves were ecstatic at their discovery. The correspondence, which WikiLeaks has denied withholding, describes "more than" €2 billion ($2.4 billion, at current exchange rates) moving from the Central Bank of Syria to Russia's VTB Bank.

http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-russia-bank-2-billion/

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

DNA, our genetic material, normally has the structure of a twisted rope ladder. Experts call this structure a double helix. Among other things, it is stabilized by stacking forces between base pairs. Scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have succeeded at measuring these forces for the very first time on the level of single base pairs. This new knowledge could help to construct precise molecular machines out of DNA.

[...] Prof. Hendrik Dietz from the Chair of Experimental Biophysics uses DNA as construction material to create molecular structures. Hence, he is greatly interested in gaining a better understanding of this material. "There are two types of interactions which stabilize double helices," he explains. For one, DNA contains hydrogen bonds.

[...] To put it simply, the measurement system is designed hierarchically and involves microscopic beams, at the tips of which one or more double helix structures running in parallel are located. These have been modified such that each end carries one base pair. Two of these microscopic beams are connected with a flexible polymer. On the other side, the beams are coupled to microscopic spheres which can be pulled apart using optical laser tweezers. In solution, the base pairs on the end of one of the beam[s] can now interact with the base pairs on the end of the other beam. This also makes it possible to measure how long a stacking bond between them lasts before they fall apart again, as well as the force acting between the base pairs.

The forces measured by the researchers were in the range of piconewtons. "A newton is the weight of a bar of chocolate," explains Dietz. "What we have here is a thousandth of a billionth of that, which is practically nothing." Forces in the range of two piconewtons are sufficient to separate the bond created by stacking forces.

Furthermore, the scientists also observed that the bonds spontaneously broke up and formed again within just a few milliseconds. The strength and the lifetime of the interactions depends to a great extent on which base pairs are stacked on each other.

An abstract is available — full article is paywalled.

Being able to precisely measure and understand the forces within DNA is key to using organic molecules for nanometer-scale construction. The team in Munich is currently using what they've learned to construct a molecular rotational motor whose movements are controlled by chemical and thermal stimuli.

Original Submission