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Phoenix666 writes:

Inspired by Marty McFly's self-lacing Nikes, Associate Professor Jayan Thomas, a nanotechnology scientist at the University of Central Florida's NanoScience Technology Center, developed solar-powered filaments that also store energy and can be woven into textiles.

"That movie was the motivation," Thomas said. "If you can develop self-charging clothes or textiles, you can realize those cinematic fantasies – that's the cool thing."

The smart textiles would act as wearable solar-powered batteries that could charge our devices and carry out different functions themselves thanks to the renewable power source.

The filaments are made from thin copper ribbon with solar cells on one side and an energy storing layer on the other. Using a table top loom, Thomas and his team were able to weave the filaments into a square of yarn. The ease with which they were able to produce a textile with these filaments prove that the smart textile could either be used as a part or make up the entirety of outer layer clothing like jackets to power personal health tracking devices, smartphones and more.

Original Submission

Gaaark writes:

Washington state-based Alaska Airlines today made history flying the first commercial flight using the world's first renewable, alternative jet fuel made from forest residuals, the limbs and branches that remain after the harvesting of managed forests.

The fuel used a 20 percent blend of sustainable aviation biofuel.

While 20% doesn't seem like much (it's still 80% aviation fuel), if the airline were able to replace 20 percent of its entire fuel supply at Sea-Tac Airport (from which it took off), it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 142,000 metric tons of CO2. This is equivalent to taking approximately 30,000 passenger vehicles off the road for one year.

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takyon writes:

Bloomberg's unnamed sources say that Apple is working on augmented reality eyewear similar to Google Glass:

Apple Inc. is weighing an expansion into digital glasses, a risky but potentially lucrative area of wearable computing, according to people familiar with the matter. While still in an exploration phase, the device would connect wirelessly to iPhones, show images and other information in the wearer's field of vision, and may use augmented reality, the people said. They asked not to be identified speaking about a secret project.

Apple has talked about its glasses project with potential suppliers, according to people familiar with those discussions. The company has ordered small quantities of near-eye displays from one supplier for testing, the people said. Apple hasn't ordered enough components so far to indicate imminent mass-production, one of the people added. Should Apple ultimately decide to proceed with the device, it would be introduced in 2018 at the earliest, another person said. The Cupertino, California-based company tests many different products and is known to pivot, pause, or cancel projects without disclosing them. Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller declined to comment.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Your career is now a game of musical chairs: you need to be ready when the song stops

...

Although sixty years old, artificial intelligence remained mostly a curiosity until half a decade ago, when IBM's Watson trounced the world's best Jeopardy! players in a televised match. At the time, you might have thought nothing of that - what does a game show matter in the scheme of things?

It didn't stop there. IBM sent Watson to train with oncologists and lawyers and financial advisers. Quite suddenly, three very established professions, just the sort of thing you'd tell your kids to pursue as a ticket to prosperity, seemed a lot less certain of their futures in a world where intelligence, like computing before it, becomes pervasive, then commoditised.

These top-of-their-profession projects show that the driver to bring artificial intelligence into any field isn't the amount of labor, but rather the cost of that labor. A lawyer costs fifty times more per hour than a retail worker and so is that many times more likely to find themselves with an AI competitor.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Virtual reality or VR headsets are one of the biggest tech trends of the year, and could soon be part of our daily lives.

The first VR headsets were released earlier this year, and have already been selling in their thousands.

The PS VR even outsold every other console on the market, during its first week of release in Japan.

Tech expert Mark Zuckerberg, who created the social media site Facebook and owns a VR company, thinks that Virtual Reality is: "going to change the way we live and work and communicate in the future."

So, we asked four tech fans to put some of the best VR headsets through their paces, and find out what they think...

Headsets reviewed were the PlayStation VR, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Microsoft HoloLens.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The subject of psychopaths comes up frequently on Soylent in many contexts, so this story caught my eye:

How do you think a psychopath can be affected despite all that has been written about the psychopath being so devious etc.? I am sure there are weaknesses which one can dig into to break him 'psychologically'. I read somewhere that they are basically people who are very insecure and they love to control people so that they feel they have a power within themselves.
I know of a psychopath who insists on people doing what he wants and anyone defying him will see his vengeful self lashing out. But I am sure there must be something that can break such a psychopath. How about belittling or bring him to shame?

The first part of the answer is to be able to distinguish a narcissist from a psychopath:

I agree with the other post that points out that the person described is a narcissist, not a psychopath. Psychopaths are very secure and they to not seek control for the sake of feeling powerful, nor are they vengeful or spiteful. You could say that psychopaths are very practical, they want pure gain for the sake of the gain (e.g. money, a sexual favor, special access to something such as convince) rather than the ego stroke or prestige. A smart psychopath would probably keep things as low key as possible, as to maximize potential gain and minimize the danger of being caught. They are cool and calm, unlike the person described who lashes out for personal reasons.

Read the rest of the article for the takeaway.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

As the numbers of smartphones and other personal electronic devices have risen, so has the prevalence of insomnia and sleep deprivation. And though these two things generally correlate, there hasn't been good data on how often these devices are being used, by whom, and the relationship between their use and the incidence of sleep disorders. A group of researchers from the University of California San Francisco set out to collect this data with the help of people enrolled in the Health eHeart Study. Their results are presented in a paper published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Total screen-time over 30 days was a median 38.4 hours (IQR 21.4 to 61.3) and average screen-time over 30 days was a median 3.7 minutes per hour (IQR 2.2 to 5.5). Younger age, self-reported race/ethnicity of Black and "Other" were associated with longer average screen-time after adjustment for potential confounders. Longer average screen-time was associated with shorter sleep duration and worse sleep-efficiency. Longer average screen-times during bedtime and the sleeping period were associated with poor sleep quality, decreased sleep efficiency, and longer sleep onset latency.

A total of 653 participants ran a smartphone app that monitored the number of minutes in each hour the screen was on. The total and average screentime were computed, as well as the average screen-time during self-reported bedtime hours and sleeping periods. Participant demographics, medical information, and sleep habits were obtained using a survey. What is notable about this work is that this is the first large study that directly measured screentime usage and compared it to demographics and medical information; however, sleep habits were measured only once using a survey.

Their conclusions, as summed up in the paper:

These findings on actual smartphone screen-time build upon prior work based on self-report and confirm that adults spend a substantial amount of time using their smartphones. Screen-time differs across age and race, but is similar across socio-economic strata suggesting that cultural factors may drive smartphone use. Screen-time is associated with poor sleep. These findings cannot support conclusions on causation. Effect-cause remains a possibility: poor sleep may lead to increased screen-time. However, exposure to smartphone screens, particularly around bedtime, may negatively impact sleep.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

An ambitious global initiative to create a Human Cell Atlas - a description of every cell in the human body as a reference map to accelerate progress in biomedical science - was discussed at an International meeting in London on 13-14 October. Ultimately, the Human Cell Atlas would revolutionise how doctors and researchers understand, diagnose and treat disease.
...
The first project of its kind, and as ambitious in scope as the Human Genome Project - which catalogued the first full human DNA sequence - the Human Cell Atlas aims to chart the types and properties of all human cells, across all tissues and organs, to build a reference map of the healthy human body.

The meeting, convened by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Wellcome Trust, brings international experts together to decide on the elements of the first phase of the Human Cell Atlas initiative.

By making the Atlas freely available to scientists all over the world, scientists hope to transform research into our understanding of human development and the progression of diseases such as asthma, Alzheimer's disease and cancer. In the future, the reference map could also point the way to new diagnostic tools and treatments.

Such an undertaking would have been difficult previously, but advances in single cell genomics have made it possible.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

In October 2016, the ASTRI telescope prototype, (Image 1) a novel, dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder telescope design proposed for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), passed its biggest test yet by demonstrating a constant point-spread function of a few arc minutes over a large field of view of 10 degrees.

Three classes of telescope types are required to cover the full CTA very-high energy range (20 GeV to 300 TeV): Medium-size telescopes will cover CTA's core energy range (100 GeV to 10 TeV) while the large-size telescopes and small-size telescopes (SSTs) will extend the energy range below 100 GeV and above a few TeV, respectively.

The ASTRI telescope is one of three proposed SST designs being prototyped and tested for CTA's southern hemisphere array. The ASTRI telescope uses an innovative dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder configuration with a 4.3m diameter primary mirror and a 1.8 m monolithic secondary mirror. In 1905, the German physicist and astronomer Karl Schwarzschild proposed a design for a two-mirror telescope intended to eliminate much of the optical aberration across the field of view. This idea, elaborated in 1926 by André Couder, lay dormant for almost a century because it was considered too difficult and expensive to build. In 2007, a study by Vladimir Vassiliev and colleagues at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) demonstrated the design's usefulness for atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes.

The design is meant to correct optical aberration.

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

Legislators have drafted a bill [PDF in Russian] that will boost Free Software on multiple levels within the Russian Federation's public sector.

The draft, approved by the Russian Federation's Duma (lower chamber) in mid-October, requires the public sector to prioritise Free Software over proprietary alternatives, gives precedence to local IT businesses that offer Free Software for public tenders, and recognises the need to encourage collaboration with the global network of Free Software organisations and communities.

[...] Another interesting aspect of the law is how the authors of the bill have made an extra effort to ensure the language used in the draft are correct. For one, only software carrying licenses that allow the four freedoms may be legally labelled as "Free Software":

Source: Free Software Foundation Europe

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Controlling the flow of heat through semiconductor materials is an important challenge in developing smaller and faster computer chips, high-performance solar panels, and better lasers and biomedical devices.

For the first time, an international team of scientists led by a researcher at the University of California, Riverside has modified the energy spectrum of acoustic phonons— elemental excitations, also referred to as quasi-particles, that spread heat through crystalline materials like a wave—by confining them to nanometer-scale semiconductor structures. The results have important implications in the thermal management of electronic devices.
...
The team used semiconductor nanowires from Gallium Arsenide (GaAs), synthesized by researchers in Finland, and an imaging technique called Brillouin-Mandelstam light scattering spectroscopy (BMS) to study the movement of phonons through the crystalline nanostructures. By changing the size and the shape of the GaAs nanostructures, the researchers were able to alter the energy spectrum, or dispersion, of acoustic phonons. The BMS instrument used for this study was built at UCR's Phonon Optimized Engineered Materials (POEM) Center, which is directed by Balandin.

Controlling phonon dispersion is crucial for improving heat removal from nanoscale electronic devices, which has become the major roadblock in allowing engineers to continue to reduce their size. It can also be used to improve the efficiency of thermoelectric energy generation, Balandin said. In that case, decreasing thermal conductivity by phonons is beneficial for thermoelectric devices that generate energy by applying a temperature gradient to semiconductors.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Satellite service provider Globalstar has dropped its controversial plan to launch a wireless network in the U.S. in part of an unlicensed band that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth use.

The plan had alarmed supporters of those technologies who feared the network would interfere with them and effectively privatize unlicensed spectrum. Globalstar's TLPS (Terrestrial Low-Power Service) proposal was one of several ideas introduced in recent years to mix licensed and unlicensed uses of spectrum. While some have been ruled out, others, such as LTE-Unlicensed, are moving forward.

Globalstar has licensed spectrum in a band next to the 2.4GHz block of frequencies shared by Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microwave ovens and many other technologies. It's so close that in the U.S., part of the unlicensed band is set aside as a guard band to prevent interference. In most other countries, networks like Wi-Fi get all the spectrum because they don't have to make room for Globalstar.

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

ProtonMail suggests fear of the Donald prompting lockdown

"ProtonMail follows the Swiss policy of neutrality. We do not take any position for or against Trump," the Swiss company's CEO stated on Monday, before revealing that new user sign-ups immediately doubled following Trump's election victory.

ProtonMail has published figures showing that as soon as the election results rolled in, the public began to seek out privacy-focused services such as its own.

CEO Andy Yen said that, in communicating with these new users, the company found people apprehensive about the decisions that President Trump might take and what they would mean considering the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency.

"Given Trump's campaign rhetoric against journalists, political enemies, immigrants, and Muslims, there is concern that Trump could use the new tools at his disposal to target certain groups," Yen said. "As the NSA currently operates completely out of the public eye with very little legal oversight, all of this could be done in secret."

ProtonMail was launched back in May 2014 by scientists who had met at CERN and MIT. In response to the Snowden revelations regarding collusion between the NSA and other email providers such as Google, they created a government-resistant, end-to-end encrypted email service.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/14/protonmail_subs_double_after_trump_victory/

Original Submission

I will put this to you, the community, in a very straight, simple (hopefully understandable) way.

The editorial staff is a small, hardworking group. There are currently about 5 of us that are actively pushing stories out on a regular basis, and we need help.

We humbly come to you, the community, to solicit for a volunteer or two. We will provide all the necessary training, at a cost of just 3 easy payments of $999.99US, or entirely free if you apply before 1 Apr 2099.

For that pittance, you can expect to learn:

• The editing process
• How to get onto the bouncer for IRC
• The best ways to abuse The Mighty Buzzard
• The secret staff handshake
• How to be abused, and learn to like it
• How to deal with having your name in lights
• and much much more!

In all seriousness, we all are busy and have lives. So do you, and we get that, but for this community to continue to thrive, we need a little fresh blood on the editorial staff. Some of us have been at this since the site went live almost 3 years ago (janrinok and martyb have posted over 3000 articles EACH). To put it in perspective, the site has only run about 14,500. Some of us came on almost a year later, but like any organization, there has been attrition, and we need to replenish.

We are starting to see some of the tell-tale signs of burnout, and to avoid that, we need your help.

If you are interested, please feel free to reach out in the comments below, via email ([nick] at soylentnews dot org), or hit us on IRC. If we aren't there (we all LOOK like we are logged in all the time due to the bouncer, but we may not actually be there), /join #editorial and leave a message — we will get back to you.

Remember, it isn't all doom and gloom! Working on staff, you will be on a team with a fantastic group of REALLY smart (myself excluded) people. I can honestly say I have made some really good friends from this experience, and I've even gotten to meet one of the guys in meat space. It is something that I am truly glad I took advantage of when the opportunity came around.

Thanks for listening, and with a little luck, we will see one or two of you pretty soon.

Live Long and Prosper,

-cmn32480

[TMB Note: Seriously. You really don't want me having to pick stories.]

[Update: see this comment below if you've expressed interest in volunteering.

Phoenix666 writes:

A code artefact in a number of popular firewalls means they can be crashed by a mere crafted ping.

The low-rate "Ping of death" attack, dubbed BlackNurse, affects firewalls from Cisco, SonicWall, Zyxel, and possibly Palo Alto.

Since we don't imagine Switchzilla has started giving away the version of IOS running in its ASA firewalls, Vulture South suspects it arises from a popular open source library. Which means other vulnerable devices could be out there.

Unlike the old-fashioned ping-flood, the attack in question uses ICMP "Type 3, Code 3" (destination unreachable, port unreachable) packets.

In the normal course of events, a host would receive that packet in response to a message it had initiated – but of course, it's trivial to craft that packet and send it to a target.

In devices susceptible to BlackNurse, the operating system gets indigestion trying to process even a relatively low rate of these messages – in the original report from Denmark's TF-CSIRT, gigabit-capable routers could be borked by just 18 Mbps of BlackNurse traffic on their WAN interfaces.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is finally being questioned by prosecutors more than six years after he was first accused of rape in Sweden.

Ingrid Isgren, Sweden's deputy chief prosecutor, arrived at the Ecuadorian Embassy this morning, according to The Guardian, ending a stalemate which began in 2012 when the South American nation offered Assange political asylum on the grounds that he faced political persecution from the United States.

Assange claims that the rape accusations, which he denies, are part of a plot to extradite him to the United States that would swing into action were he to answer prosecutors' questions in the Scandinavian country.

The interview suggests some forward movement is being made in the diplomatic deadlock between Ecuador and Sweden regarding the arrangements for Swedish prosecutors to talk to Assange in the embassy.

Original Submission