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fliptop writes:

At phys.org:

Prosecutors in the Netherlands are seeking prison sentences for two brothers who they say used stolen electricity to power computers they used to mine bitcoins worth an estimated 200,000 euros ($223,500).

Prosecutors said in a statement Wednesday that powerful computers used to "mine" the electronic currency were found in a building in the port city of Rotterdam that belonged to one of the brothers and also was used as a cannabis nursery.

Equipment in the nursery and the computers were running on illegally tapped electricity when they were discovered in 2014.

Also at AP.org.

Original Submission

pjbgravely writes:

I found this article that explains CBS's real reason for the Star Trek fan film crack down. They say they are trying to stop huge money making productions full of ex-Trek actors (Renegades probably) and they will ignore any small productions now and in the future.

Quoted from the article:

Van Citters stressed that the guidelines were not designed to quash fan films... "That's not what we're trying to do here," Responding to compiled fan questions, Van Citters explained that CBS won't be going after pre-existing Star Trek fan films which don't adhere to the new guidelines, nor will it be actively reviewing and policing new ones for compliance.

The question is, can they be trusted not to sue any group making a fan film after the new rules came out?

Previous SoylentNews Coverage on the topic:

• Paramount's Lawsuit Against Star Trek Fan Film is "Going Away"
• Axanar Files Countersuit Against Paramount Pictures and CBS Corp
• CBS and Paramount Issue New Guideline for Star Trek Fan Films

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/cops-record-themselves-allegedly-fabricating-charges-with-suspects-camera/

In a US federal civil rights lawsuit, a Connecticut man has shared footage to bolster his claims that police illegally confronted the pedestrian because he was filming one of them. Authorities seized Michael Picard's camera and his permitted pistol, and the officers involved then accidentally recorded themselves allegedly fabricating charges against the man.

Picard's police encounter began as he was protesting a sobriety checkpoint while lawfully carrying a handgun in a holster. The plaintiff often protests near sobriety checkpoints in the Hartford region and is known by locals and police in the area, according to court documents. "Cops Ahead: Keep Calm and Remain Silent," read the 3-foot-by-2-foot sign Picard held up to motorists ahead of the checkpoint in West Hartford last year.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

from the more-money-well-spent dept.

El Reg reports

Weird new warship USS Zumwalt has broken down while on sea trials, three weeks ahead of her formal commissioning ceremony.

The futuristic $4.4bn vessel, which features a so-called "tumblehome" hull, suffered a seawater leak into the auxiliary lube oil system for one of her main propeller shafts, according to [U.S. Naval Institute] News.

The defect will take about two weeks to repair at US Naval Station Norfolk, it was said.

An absolute behemoth of a ship, the 16,000 ton Zumwalt--almost three times as big as the UK's already large Type 45 destroyers--was intended to be the lead ship of a new class of warships that would have cemented US naval dominance well into the 21st Century.

Instead, the entire program, supposedly for 36 vessels, was [canceled] after the third ship was laid down, thanks to some seriously eye-watering costs. The US Navy has since started buying new-build Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, the basic design of which dates back to the mid-1980s.

Previous: The Zumwalt Class Destroyer: Another Defense Department Misstep?
Captain James Kirk Takes US Navy's First Stealth Destroyer Out for Sea Trials

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Smart vehicle technology is being used on the streets of Edmonton, making it the first Canadian city to see cars "communicating" with each other and with roadside infrastructure in an effort to improve road safety.

The new technology uses a wireless device that exchanges information between connected vehicles in real time with roadside equipment, such as traffic lights or message signs. It also alerts drivers motorists to hazards, such as whether they're speeding or following too closely. It can also tell drivers if they are going to make it through a green light at an upcoming intersection or if they should prepare to stop.

[...] The technology, being tested under the ACTIVE-AURORA research initiative at the University of Alberta (U of A), was announced at the International Conference on Transportation Innovation in Edmonton Sept. 16.

"ACTIVE-AURORA will be a data-driven test bed for the whole region," said Tony Qiu, a civil engineering professor and director of the U of A's Centre for Smart Transportation. ACTIVE-AURORA is a partnership involving all three levels of government—Transport Canada, Alberta Transportation and the City of Edmonton—as well as the U of A, the University of British Columbia and several industry partners.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

An article today on SecurityWeek details what may be the largest DDoS attack ever seen. The target? Brian Krebs' web site of course.

Quite the feather in the cap of Akamai to be able to mitigate this level of attack.

Original Submission

Tech Review reports an "impossible" development, https://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-35/2016/inventor/dinesh-bharadia/

Any bets on when this will make it to production, maybe as part of 7G(eneration) wireless? Or will the technology go black, used first by military?

And, does a person's name ever influence their career? "Bharadia" sounds awfully close to "bi-radio"...

Original Submission

Joe writes:

[Continues...]

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Scientists have found a damage suppressing gene in tardigrades that they have called "Dsup". It directs the production of a protein that can protect DNA, partially explaining tardigrades' resistance to the effects of radiation. The scientists also inserted the gene into human cells and found that Dsup-treated cells suffered less damage from X-ray exposure.

Extremotolerant tardigrade genome and improved radiotolerance of human cultured cells by tardigrade-unique protein (open, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12808) (DX)

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

What if it were possible to quickly and inexpensively manufacture a part simply by using a series of close-range digital images taken of the object?

Michael Immel, instructor in the Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, originally started thinking about the technique, called photogrammetry, for a different purpose, but quickly realized its application in manufacturing.

In this technique, digital images of an object that have been taken at various angles are used to create a point cloud -- or a large collection of points used to create 3D representation of existing structures -- from which a computer-aided design (CAD) file can be generated.

The resulting CAD file and subsequent 3D model could then be used to rebuild the part, or 3D print it, to its original specifications without using traditional methods, which are both expensive and time-consuming.

Surely you'd need an X-ray of internal structures, too?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

[G]raphene's unique intrinsic properties -- supreme electrical and thermal conductivities and remarkable electron mobility, to name just a few -- can only be fully realized if it is grown free from defects that disrupt the honeycomb pattern of the bound carbon atoms.

A team led by Materials Scientist Anirudha Sumant with the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory’s Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) and Materials Science Division, along with collaborators at the University of California-Riverside, has developed a method to grow graphene that contains relatively few impurities and costs less to make, in a shorter time and at lower temperatures compared to the processes widely used to make graphene today.

[...] "I'd been dealing with all these different techniques of growing graphene, and you never see such a uniform, smooth surface."

The new technology taps ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD), a synthetic type of diamond that Argonne researchers have pioneered through years of research. UNCD serves as a physical substrate, or surface on which the graphene grows, and the source for the carbon atoms that make up a rapidly produced graphene sheet.

The first one to perfect defect-free graphene will be a trillionaire.

Diana Berman, Sanket A. Deshmukh, Badri Narayanan, Subramanian K. R. S. Sankaranarayanan, Zhong Yan, Alexander A. Balandin, Alexander Zinovev, Daniel Rosenmann, Anirudha V. Sumant. Metal-induced rapid transformation of diamond into single and multilayer graphene on wafer scale. Nature Communications, 2016; 7: 12099 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12099

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story from The New Yorker about the efforts being taken in New York to combat the risks posed by the Zika virus and other mosquito-borne diseases:

Aedes albopictus is an early riser. Of the fifty-one mosquito species in New York, albopictus—a close cousin of Aedes aegypti, the species responsible for spreading Zika—prefers to restrict its activity to power breakfasts, in the mornings, and to teatime, in the late afternoons. (The common house mosquito is active in the evenings.)

On a recent afternoon, Mario Merlino, the assistant commissioner for New York City's Bureau of Veterinary and Pest Control Services, and Zahir Shah, the director of the city's Medical Entomology Laboratory, jumped a small fence inside Bellevue South Park, in Kips Bay, and wandered into the shrubbery. Shah pointed to what appeared to be a black collapsible laundry hamper, hidden behind a bush. "There it is," he said. "Our pride and joy."

The new trap is cylindrical and shiny, with sides made of black fabric and a white plastic top. If you were a mosquito, you might find it good-looking—especially compared with regular mosquito traps, which resemble buckets. This is intentional. According to Shah, albopictus prefers "attractive visual cues."

Regular traps release small amounts of carbon dioxide, to mimic humans breathing. The albopictus lure is more sophisticated: it releases a bouquet of substances commonly found on human skin, like ammonia and lactic acid, which are present in sweat and breath. The mosquitoes come to feast, and get sucked in. Shah unscrewed the trap's bluish-white lure and took a whiff. It smelled like a hot subway car during rush hour. "Whoa," he said. "It gets me every time."

[...] Two floors down [in the laboratory], Jie Fu, a research scientist, oversees testing. First, she feeds a tube's worth of mosquitoes into a machine that grinds them into a gelatinous glop. "It's like when you make mashed potatoes," she said. A machine called the BioRobot (imagine a convection oven) separates out the RNA and dollops it onto rectangular plates, which later go into a machine called an amplifier (imagine an office printer). Two hours afterward, the results appear on a small screen. "See?" Fu said, pointing to a bunch of squiggly lines. "No Zika." She added, "Albopictus is slowing down. It doesn't like the cold."

As part of the larger effort to educate New Yorkers about Zika, the health department has been promoting a hot line that people can call to report incidents of standing water: puddles, brimming gutters, birdbaths. The police department was the first to benefit: before the hot line, people used to call 911 to complain about mosquitoes. "They'd say, 'Quick! I have mosquitoes! Do something about it!' " Shah said. "Well, we're doing something about it."

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The industrial catalysts of the future won't just speed up reactions, they'll control how chemical processes work and determine how much of a particular product is made.

A team of researchers led by Phillip Christopher, assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering at the University of California, Riverside's Bourns College of Engineering, demonstrated this—as well as how these catalysts look in action—in a paper published Monday, Sept. 19, in the journal Nature Chemistry.

Titled, "Adsorbate-mediated strong metal-support interactions in oxide-supported Rh catalysts," the paper describes a new approach to dynamically tune how a catalyst operates, enabling the researchers to control and optimize the product made in the reaction. The team, which includes scientists from the University of California, Irvine and Columbia University, also used advanced microscopy and spectroscopy approaches to view the catalyst in action on an atomic scale.

The researchers focused on an important chemical reaction that involves the conversion of carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide and synthetic natural gas. The benefits of this reaction are two-fold: it offers the potential for the removal of harmful carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and the carbon monoxide and natural gas produced can be used as a chemical precursor and fuel, respectively. The team focused on understanding how the catalyst drives the reaction at the atomic scale, which will allow researchers to modify the catalyst's properties to increase efficiency in the reaction.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

All around us, hiding just outside our range of vision, are miniscule machines. Tiny accelerometers in our cars sense a collision and tell the airbags to inflate. A Nintendo Wii controller's tiny gyroscopes translate your tennis swing into movement on the screen. An iPhone's accelerometer, gyroscope, and proximity sensor sense its location in space.

All these little machines, known collectively as microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, have something in common: they are attached to, or very close to, a power source. For broader applications, like wireless brain implants, scientists and engineers need power from a distance. But while it's easy to send information through the air—think radio waves—sending power, especially to a miniscule machine, can be a bit trickier.

But now a team of researchers, led by Boston University College of Engineering (ENG) PhD candidate Farrukh Mateen (ENG'18) and Raj Mohanty, a professor of physics at BU's College of Arts & Sciences (CAS), are closing in on a solution. They have built a tiny micromechanical device and turned it on and off with one nanowatt of power—that's a billionth of a watt—from three feet away. The device, described in the August 15, 2016, issue of Nature: Microsystems and Nanoengineering, is a miniature sandwich of gold and aluminum nitride that vibrates, or resonates, at microwave frequencies. The tiny resonator is only 100 micrometers across—a little wider than the width of a human hair.

What if you're wearing braces?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A "smart energy" revolution could help ensure that the UK does not suffer blackouts, according to National Grid's new UK chief.

Nicola Shaw, its executive director, said technological advances will reduce the need to build new conventional power stations in the UK.

An "internet of energy" will allow fridges, washers and dishwashers to help balance energy demand.

Some commentators say the UK needs more gas-fired power to prevent blackouts.

Ms Shaw agreed that more investment in gas-fired power was needed, but argued that between 30% and 50% of fluctuations on the electricity grid could be smoothed by households and businesses adjusting their demand at peak times.

The gas company executive says more gas-fired power is necessary to prevent blackouts in the future. Also, smart appliances could help balance energy demand across a smart grid.

Original Submission

Joe writes:

Eteplirsen received approval for use as a Duchenne muscular dystrophy therapy despite the FDA review team concluding that the treatment was unlikely to show any benefit for patients.

Dr. Janet Woodcock's (Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research) decision was heavily influenced by the "parading diseased children in front of the cameras" and was made before the FDA's review team completed their analysis.

Part of Dr. Woodcock's rational for approval included the stock price of Sarepta (the pharmaceutical company responsible for eteplirsen):

FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf, Acting Chief Scientist Dr. Luciana Borio, and Dr. Ellis Unger, the Director of the Office of Drug Evaluation, all opposed the approval but Dr. Califf declined to overrule Dr. Woodcock's decision.

Dr. Unger argued that the approval was unethical and counterproductive:

Dr. Borio argues:

Dr. Derek Lowe, from In The Pipeline, agrees with Dr. Unger and Dr. Borio that the drug is "unlikely to provide much benefit, and is reasonably likely to provide none at all" and that the drug "may well be [$300,000 per year] worth of placebo".

Note: Bold was added by the submitter.

http://endpts.com/senior-fda-officials-warned-that-eteplirsen-ok-would-lower-fda-standards/
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/09/20/sarepta-gets-an-approval-unfortunately
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eteplirsen

Original Submission