SoylentNews

takyon writes:

According to a new study, the fossil fuel industry's natural gas leakage rate has declined, but that has been counteracted by increases in production:

Yesterday, a study led by Stefan Schwietzke, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., said that a detailed study of atmospheric samples, some taken from ancient ice cores and others taken recently, shows that the leakage rate from natural gas production has declined in recent decades, despite a sharp increase in natural gas production and distribution.

While accountants and engineers in the oil and gas industry may take some comfort in the finding, the net effect is that the atmosphere still sustained damage, according to the author of the study. "All the efficiency gains have been almost 100 percent counterbalanced by increased production," Schwietzke explained in an interview, referring to recent company efforts to find and minimize leaks. The study used carbon isotopes, a kind of chemical fingerprint, to identify sources of methane leaks and found that fossil fuel industry emissions plus natural geological methane seepage have not increased over time. However, it also concluded that measurements used by previous studies appear to have underestimated the size of these emissions. They are "60 to 110% greater than current estimates," the study said.

Upward revision of global fossil fuel methane emissions based on isotope database (DOI: 10.1038/nature19797) (DX)

Here we re-evaluate the global methane budget and the contribution of the fossil fuel industry to methane emissions based on long-term global methane and methane carbon isotope records. We compile the largest isotopic methane source signature database so far, including fossil fuel, microbial and biomass-burning methane emission sources. We find that total fossil fuel methane emissions (fossil fuel industry plus natural geological seepage) are not increasing over time, but are 60 to 110 per cent greater than current estimates owing to large revisions in isotope source signatures. We show that this is consistent with the observed global latitudinal methane gradient. After accounting for natural geological methane seepage, we find that methane emissions from natural gas, oil and coal production and their usage are 20 to 60 per cent greater than inventories. Our findings imply a greater potential for the fossil fuel industry to mitigate anthropogenic climate forcing, but we also find that methane emissions from natural gas as a fraction of production have declined from approximately 8 per cent to approximately 2 per cent over the past three decades.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

By combining traditional archaeology with 3D technology, researchers at Lund University in Sweden have managed to reconstruct a house in Pompeii to its original state before the volcano eruption of Mount Vesuvius thousands of years ago. Unique video material has now been produced, showing their creation of a 3D model of an entire block of houses.

After the catastrophic earthquake in Italy in 1980, the Pompeii city curator invited the international research community to help document the ruin city, before the state of the finds from the volcano eruption in AD 79 would deteriorate even further. The Swedish Pompeii Project was therefore started at the Swedish Institute in Rome in 2000. The researcher in charge of the rescue operation was Anne-Marie Leander Touati, at the time director of the institute in Rome, now Professor of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Lund University.
...
Among other things, the researchers have uncovered floor surfaces from AD 79, performed detailed studies of the building development through history, cleaned and documented three large wealthy estates, a tavern, a laundry, a bakery and several gardens. In one garden, they discovered that some of the taps to a stunning fountain were on at the time of eruption -- the water was still gushing when the rain of ash and pumice fell over Pompeii.

The researchers occasionally also found completely untouched layers. In a shop were three, amazingly enough, intact windows (made out of translucent crystalline gypsum) from Ancient Rome, stacked against each other. By studying the water and sewer systems they were able to interpret the social hierarchies at the time, and see how retailers and restaurants were dependent on large wealthy families for water, and how the conditions improved towards the end, before the eruption.

The 3D reconstruction has been helping the researchers understand more about life in ancient Pompeii.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Researchers have calculated that Proxima b may have liquid water oceans on its surface, or even be an "ocean planet" based on larger estimates of its radius:

A rocky planet discovered in the "habitable" zone of the star nearest our Sun may be covered with oceans, researchers at France's CNRS research institute said Thursday. A team including CNRS astrophysicists have calculated the size and surface properties of the planet dubbed Proxima b, and concluded it may be an "ocean planet" similar to Earth.

[...] They calculated the radius was between 0.94 and 1.4 times that of Earth, which is 6,371 kilometres on average. Assuming a minimum radius of 5,990 km, the planet would be very dense, with a metallic core making up two-thirds of the entire planet's mass, surrounded by a rocky mantle. If there is surface water, it would not contribute more than 0.05 percent to the planet's total mass, the team said—similar to Earth, where it is about 0.02 percent.

In the larger planet scenario, with a radius of 8,920 km, Proxima b's mass would be split 50-50 between a rocky centre and surrounding water. "In this case, Proxima b would be covered by a single, liquid ocean 200 km deep," said the CNRS. "In both cases, a thin, gassy atmosphere could surround the planet, like on Earth, rendering Proxima b potentially habitable," it concluded.

The exoplanet has not been seen transiting Proxima Centauri, so further data about its size and composition will require the James Webb Space Telescope or other observatories to directly observe it.

Original article in French.

Previously: "Earth-Like" Exoplanet Found in Habitable Zone of Proxima Centauri
ESO Confirms Reports of Proxima Centauri Exoplanet

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

This is a new one ...

Another former Yahoo employee has filed a lawsuit claiming that management running the company's "Media Org" was biased against men.

The complaint (PDF) filed by Scott Ard says that Yahoo's "stack ranking" system was "without oversight or accountability" and was "more arbitrary and discriminatory" than stack ranking used by other companies.

The lawsuit claims that Yahoo's Media Org employees were ranked from 0.0 to 5.0 before being subject to a "calibration" process by higher-level management. Ard claims employees weren't told their numeric ranking but were only informed of their "Bucket" ranking, labeled "Greatly Exceeds, "Exceeds," "Achieves," "Occasionally Misses," or "Misses."

[...] The lawsuit's allegations closely mirror those of Gregory Anderson, another male ex-Media Org worker who sued Yahoo in February. Anderson and Ard have the same lawyer, Palo Alto-based Jon Parsons. Discovery is ongoing in the Anderson case, which is currently scheduled for a trial in May.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/yahoo-hit-with-another-lawsuit-claiming-anti-male-discrimination/

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

IEEE has a story about how former Dartmouth students (including a former Dartmouth football player) have created a Robot Football player that may help prevent concussions. It works by having the robot tackled during practice instead of a person getting hit.

The current version is like a giant Weeble controlled by a coach. The Pittsburg Steelers like them and have bought two so far.

As summarized on the Mobile Virtual Player web site:

Buddy Teevens, head football coach at Dartmouth College, was tired of his players injuring one another during practice. So, he banned live tackling in practice. From that day forward, Dartmouth football decided to focus on fundamental tackling drills to improve performance.

By introducing these new technique-specific tackling drill circuits, his players not only became better tacklers, but also remained healthier throughout the season. To simulate live tackling in the most effective and realistic way, Coach Teevens introduced the Mobile Virtual Player (MVP) – the world's first and only motorized, self-righting, mobile training dummy.

Ultimately, the modifications made to practice along with the use of high-tech solutions like the MVP helped Dartmouth to its 18th Ivy League Championship this past season.

The MVP helped increase performance and reduce injuries for the Dartmouth defense, playing a big role in its finish as the No. 1 ranked scoring defense in the country!

The IEEE story logs the long hard slog from conception to product — with multiple re-conceptions and re-implementations through trial-and-error along the way — and provides a very readable example of the challenges involved in bringing an idea to market.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

News Corp. reports on a story in the Times of London (paywalled) about an experimental therapy for HIV. One of the 50 test subjects has completed the course of treatment and has no detectable HIV in his blood. As part of the procedure "a new drug called Vorinostat turns the dormant T-cells active so that they can be spotted and then targeted by the immune system." The intention appears to be to kill cells that have been infected, in order to effect a cure.

further information:

• Wikipedia article on Vorinostat (also known as SAHA or Zolinza)
• Expression of Latent HIV Induced by the Potent HDAC Inhibitor Suberoylanilide Hydroxamic Acid
• Suberoylanilide Hydroxamic Acid Reactivates HIV from Latently Infected Cells

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The Qt toolkit is used to develop popular cross-platform software such as the K Desktop Environment (KDE) and VideoLAN Client (VLC).

SiliconANGLE reports

The Qt Company, which offers a cross-platform development framework for enterprises to build their applications once and run them anywhere on any device, is launching a new project that aims to make software development faster and more lightweight.

The provider of open-source development tools has just launched its new Qt Lite Project. It's a major expansion of the existing framework that should make development easier and faster than before, the company says.

The Qt Lite Project is built into Qt's existing framework, but offers a wide range of enhancements that allow developers to streamline the creation and delivery of software and devices for all relevant platforms, regardless of its size.

[...] The company realized it would need a more targeted framework that's able to facilitate the entire development cycle as well as the lifetime for products for embedded devices.

Hackerboards (formerly Linux Gizmos) adds

New "Qt Lite" adds 2D renderer; targets 16MB RAM Linux systems

The [...] Qt Lite project [...] aims to extend the Qt development framework to smaller-footprint Internet of Things devices with as little as 16MB RAM and [NAND Flash storage]. [It will include] a more flexible configuration system for the cross-platform development framework, as well as a new 2D renderer for devices that can't run OpenGL. Qt Lite also provides a more accessible, lightweight set of development tools.

"It has sometimes been challenging and time consuming to configure Qt to efficiently use the different hardware components, available libraries, and strip out the parts of Qt and the OS that are not needed", wrote [Qt product manager Nils Christian] Roscher-Nielsen. He added that Qt Lite will let you "strip Qt down and bring in exactly what you need".

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A new seismic fault has been discovered in southern California:

A swarm of nearly 200 small earthquakes that shook Southern California residents in the Salton Sea area last week raised concerns they might trigger a larger earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault. At the same time, scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and the Nevada Seismological Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno published their recent discovery of a potentially significant fault that lies along the eastern edge of the Salton Sea.

The presence of the newly mapped Salton Trough Fault, which runs parallel to the San Andreas Fault, could impact current seismic hazard models in the earthquake-prone region that includes the greater Los Angeles area. Mapping of earthquake faults provides important information for earthquake rupture and ground-shaking models, which helps protect lives and reduce property loss from these natural hazards.

Geophysical Evidence for a San Andreas Subparallel Transtensional Fault along the Northeastern Shore of the Salton Sea (DOI: 10.1785/0120150350) (DX) [Paywalled]

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

TechCrunch reports on a new bicycle path built in the Polish city of Pruszków. The surface of the path is phosphorescent: after a sunny day, it will glow through the nightime.

According to BBC News, there was a similar project in the Netherlands in 2014: phosphorescent paint was applied to 500 m (547 yards) of a highway. The hope was that the markings could replace electric lights.

Original Submission

AndyTheAbsurd writes in with news about a recent development in EME standards:

This week, the chief arbiter of Web standards, Tim Berners-Lee, decided not to exercise his power to extend the development timeline for the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) Web technology standard. The EME standardization effort, sponsored by streaming giants like Google and Netflix, aims to make it cheaper and more efficient to impose Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) systems on Web users. The streaming companies' representatives within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) were unable to finish EME within the time allotted by the W3C, and had asked Berners-Lee for an extension through next year.

Berners-Lee made his surprising decision on Tuesday, as explained in an email announcement by W3C representative Philippe Le Hégaret. Instead of granting a time extension — as he has already done once — Berners-Lee delegated the decision to the W3C's general decision-making body, the Advisory Committee. The Advisory Committee includes diverse entities from universities to companies to nonprofits, and it is divided as to whether EME should be part of Web standards. It is entirely possible that the Advisory Committee will reject the time extension and terminate EME development, marking an important victory for the free Web.

So it's not dead yet, despite Berners-Lee's decision. Let's not celebrate prematurely and keep up the fight to keep DRM out of the web!

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

To simulate a gardening experience on the Red Planet, researchers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and the Florida Tech Buzz Aldrin Space Institute have begun to experiment with "Martian gardens," using soil from Hawaii similar to the type of soil found on Mars. Martian soil is made up of crushed volcanic rock and contains no organic material, making plant survival significantly more difficult.

To gauge how much soil should be used and which nutrients should be added, researchers grew lettuce in three different types of soil: virtual Martian soil with no nutrients added, virtual Martian soil with nutrients added, and regular potting soil. They reported that the lettuce grown in the Mars-like soil with no nutrients added tasted the same, but had weaker roots and took longer to grow.

Next, they plan to conduct similar experiments with radishes, Swiss chard, kale, Chinese cabbage, snow peas, dwarf peppers and tomatoes.

Potatoes, guys, potatoes.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

When University of Cincinnati researchers uncovered the tomb of a Bronze Age warrior —left untouched for more than 3,500 years and packed with a spectacular array of precious jewelry, weapons and riches—the discovery was hailed by experts as "the find of a lifetime."

Now, only a year after archaeologists completed the excavation [near the city of Pylos, an ancient city on the southwest coast of Greece], new understandings of the artifacts—particularly the discovery of four golden rings—and the insights they provide to the origins of Greek civilization may prove to be the team's next big discovery.

http://phys.org/news/2016-10-lord-rare-discovery-bronze-age.html

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The "quiet catastrophe" is particularly dismaying because it is so quiet, without social turmoil or even debate. It is this: After 88 consecutive months of the economic expansion that began in June 2009, a smaller percentage of American males in the prime working years (ages 25 to 54) are working than were working near the end of the Great Depression in 1940, when the unemployment rate was above 14 percent. If the labor-force participation rate were as high today as it was as recently as 2000, nearly 10 million more Americans would have jobs.

The work rate for adult men has plunged 13 percentage points in a half-century. This "work deficit" of "Great Depression-scale underutilization" of male potential workers is the subject of Nicholas Eberstadt's new monograph "Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis," which explores the economic and moral causes and consequences of this:

Is it an aberration, or a harbinger of things to come?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Backpage, an online classified advertising website, has had its offices in Dallas, Texas raided. The CEO was arrested in Texas on a California warrant, and two others have also been charged with crimes related to the operation of the website:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and California Attorney General Kamala Harris said that a three-year-long joint investigation revealed that adult and child sex trafficking victims were forced into prostitution through escort ads that appear on the web site. They also alleged that Ferrer and shareholders Michael Lacey and James Larkin made millions of dollars from illegal sex trade.

Ferrer faces charges of pimping a minor, pimping, and conspiracy to commit pimping, while Lacey and Larkin face conspiracy to commit pimping charges. Lacey and Larkin were not in custody on Thursday, and it was not immediately clear when Ferrer would make his first court appearance. Undercover officers in California posted escort ads online that led them to johns who used Backpage, and authorities interviewed more than a half dozen sex trafficking victims who confirmed they paid Backpage to post ads on the web site promoting prostitution.

[...] In addition to its adult services ads, Backpage also publishes advertising from people renting apartments, selling a car or advertising a job opening. But the company's internal revenue reports show that from January 2013 to March 2015, nearly 99% of Backpage's worldwide income was generated from the web site's "adult" section, according to charging documents filed in California. The company collected over $51 million revenue in California during that period.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from a Chicago-area Sheriff who was ordered by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop threatening credit card companies that do business with Backpage. A month ago, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked a Congressional subpoena into the site's operations on First Amendment grounds.

Law enforcement officials around the country have complained about prostitution (especially that of children) facilitated by Backpage for years. Now California and Texas officials will have to prove that Backpage's seemingly hands-off approach is illegal. Reason's blog notes that Carl Ferrer is not accused of performing the crimes he has been charged with, but is accused of running a website that others used to facilitate crimes. Backpage also reports ads suspected of containing under-18s to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). NCMEC's President says the organization applauds the charges and that "the criminal action initiated today will lead to new hope for children who are sold for sex online."

Also at NYT, Dallas News, NBC, CNN, Reuters, and Ars Technica. Redacted California criminal complaint.

The first result in a Google News search for "backpage" is sometimes a randomly placed text ad for their site: "Free classified ads with photos. Find houses and apts for rent, personals, jobs, cats and dogs for sale."

Original Submission   Alternate Submission #1   Alternate Submission #2

Phoenix666 writes:

Relentless cybersecurity warnings have given people "security fatigue" that stops them keeping themselves safe, suggests a study.

Many ignored warnings they received, found the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Others were worn out by software updates and by the number of passwords they had to remember, NIST found.

This "risky behaviour" might make people more susceptible to attack, it warned.

Biometrics will save us, won't they?

Original Submission