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takyon writes:

Saudi Arabia, SoftBank, Apple, Qualcomm, and Larry Ellison are creating a massive investment fund, and SoftBank's CEO Masayoshi Son is sounding increasingly Kurzweilian:

[SoftBank Group Corp.'s Masayoshi] Son reiterated his belief that computers will exceed humans in intelligence in three decades, and that within this period he expects one computer chip to have the equivalent of a 10,000 IQ. "I really believe this," he said at a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday. The growth in computer ability was "why I acquired ARM," he said.

[...] SoftBank is aiming to close the first round of investment in its technology Vision Fund by the end of this month, people familiar with the matter have said. The initial investments will likely include $45 billion from Saudi Arabia and $25 billion from SoftBank, as well as $1 billion each from Apple Inc., Qualcomm Inc. and Oracle Corp. Chairman Larry Ellison, they said. The initial round is likely to exceed $80 billion and the timing of the closing may still change, said one of the people.

"We believe the singularity is inevitable and all businesses will be redefined as computers overtake humans in intelligence," Son said at an earnings briefing in November.

SoftBank recently bought U.S. private equity firm Fortress, which oversees around $70 billion of assets. It paid $3.3 billion, $1 billion more than the firm's market value. Fortress will help manage the SoftBank Vision Fund.

NBF articles one and two. Also at TechCrunch.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Humanoid robots could be used to stretch and strain bioengineered tissues, providing them a suitable environment for growth:

Right now, tissue engineering relies on bioreactors to grow sheets of cells. These machines often look like large fish tanks, filled with a rich soup of nutrients and chemicals that cells need to grow on a specialized trellis. The problem, explain Mouthuy and Carr, is that bioreactors currently "fail to mimic the real mechanical environment for cells." In other words, human cells in muscles and tendons grow while being stretched and moved around on our skeletons. Without experiencing these natural stresses, the tissue grafts produced by researchers often have a broad range of structural problems and low cell counts.

That's where robots come in. The researchers propose a "humanoid-bioreactor system" with "structures, dimensions, and mechanics similar to those of the human body." As the robot interacted with its environment, tissues growing on its body would receive the typical strains and twists that they would if they grew on an actual human. The result would be healthy tissue, grown for the exact area on the body it was destined to replace. Mouthuy and Carr note that this would be especially helpful for "bone-tendon-muscle grafts... because failure during healing often occurs at the interface between tissues."

What would this humanoid-bioreactor system look like? It could possibly be built on top of a humanoid robot with "soft robotics" muscles made from electroactive polymers, and the growing muscles could piggyback on those to get their exercise. It would also need to be covered in soft, stretchable sensors to monitor the health of the growing tissues.

Growing tissue grafts on humanoid robots: A future strategy in regenerative medicine? (open, DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.aam5666) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Volcanically-sourced hydrogen in exoplanet atmospheres could be an indication of a wider habitable zone:

Hunting for habitable exoplanets now may be easier: Cornell astronomers report that hydrogen pouring from volcanic sources on planets throughout the universe could improve the chances of locating life in the cosmos. Planets located great distances from stars freeze over. "On frozen planets, any potential life would be buried under layers of ice, which would make it really hard to spot with telescopes," said lead author Ramses Ramirez, research associate at Cornell's Carl Sagan Institute. "But if the surface is warm enough – thanks to volcanic hydrogen and atmospheric warming – you could have life on the surface, generating a slew of detectable signatures."

Combining the greenhouse warming effect from hydrogen, water and carbon dioxide on planets sprinkled throughout the cosmos, distant stars could expand their habitable zones by 30 to 60 percent, according to this new research. "Where we thought you would only find icy wastelands, planets can be nice and warm – as long as volcanoes are in view," said Lisa Kaltenegger, Cornell professor of astronomy and director of the Carl Sagan Institute. Their research, "A Volcanic Hydrogen Habitable Zone," is published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

[...] Atmospheric biosignatures, such as methane in combination with ozone – indicating life – will likely be detected by the forthcoming, next-generation James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018, or the approaching European Extremely Large Telescope, first light in 2024.

A Volcanic Hydrogen Habitable Zone (DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aa60c8) (DX)

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

BBC News reports on an article in Nature Communications. Researchers examined fossils of Anchiornis huxleyi, a paravian dinosaur. In images made with laser-stimulated fluorescence, the outlines of the soft tissues of the creature's legs, wings and tail were discernible, including scales on the feet and the follicles of feathers. Whether organic material was present was not determined.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The Center for American Progress reports

On [February 27], days after White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters to expect stricter enforcement of federal pot law, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recycled discredited drug war talking points in remarks of his own.

"I believe it's an unhealthy practice, and current levels of THC in marijuana are very high compared to what they were a few years ago, and we're seeing real violence around that", Sessions said. "Experts are telling me there's more violence around marijuana than one would think and there's big money involved."

In reality, violent crime rates tend to decrease where marijuana is legalized.

Denver saw a 2.2 percent drop in violent crime rates in the year after the first legal recreational cannabis sales in Colorado. Overall property crime dropped by 8.9 percent [PDF] in the same period there, according to figures from the Drug Policy Alliance. In Washington, violent crime rates dropped by 10 percent [PDF] from 2011 to 2014. Voters legalized recreational marijuana there in 2012.

Medical marijuana laws, which have a longer track record for academics than recreational pot legalization, are also associated with stable or falling violent crime rates. In one 2014 study of the 11 states that legalized medical pot from 1990 to 2006, there was no increase in the seven major categories of violent crime and "some evidence of decreasing rates of some types of violent crime, namely homicide and assault."

[...] Elsewhere in his remarks, Sessions unwittingly made the case against treating pot activity like serious crime. "You can't sue somebody for drug debt". he said. "The only way to get your money is through strong-arm tactics, and violence tends to follow that."

Legalizing, regulating, and taxing the sale of marijuana is the surest way to remedying that exact tendency for pot commerce to trigger violent score-settling. Legalization invites pot business into the light, granting cannabusinesses at least partial access to official modes of recourse when they are defrauded.

8 states and the District of Columbia have legalised marijuana for recreational use.
Ever see anyone use cannabis and become more aggressive rather than more mellow?

Note: ThinkProgress redirects all accesses of their pages and will attach tracking numbers. I have made sure that those are not in the URLs.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scientists have found a selective enzyme inhibitor that may be more effective than other painkillers with less side effects:

Pain and addiction have many biochemical roots, which makes it difficult to treat them without affecting other critical functions in cells. Today, the most potent painkillers are opioids, including heroin, oxycodone, and hydrocodone. In addition to interrupting pain, they inhibit enzymes known as adenylyl cyclases (ACs) that convert cells' energy currency, ATP, into a molecule involved in intracellular chemical communication known as cyclic AMP (cAMP). Chronic opioid use can make cells increase the activity of ACs to compensate, causing cAMP levels to skyrocket. When opioid users try to stop using, their cAMP levels remain high, and drugs that reduce those levels—like buprenorphine—have unwanted side effects.

A promising candidate for selectively reducing cAMP is one particular AC enzyme, known as AC1. Humans have 10 ACs, all of which convert ATP to cAMP. But they are expressed at different levels in different tissues, suggesting they serve disparate purposes. Over the last 15 years, experiments on mice without the gene for AC1 have shown they have reduced sensitivity to pain and fewer signs of opioid dependence. But the enzyme, along with its close relative AC8, also appears to be heavily involved in memory formation in a brain region known as the hippocampus. That could be bad news for a possible medicine that blocks AC1, says Val Watts, a pharmacologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. But the potential good news, he says, is that other animal studies suggest that the memory-forming work of AC1 and AC8 is redundant. So if AC1 is blocked selectively, it's likely to have only minimal effects on memory.

[...] Watts and his colleagues decided to set up a chemical test to screen a small group of compounds similar to forskolin, in search of one that inhibits AC1 but not AC8. That is just what they found [DOI: 10.1126/scisignal.aah5381] [DX], they report this month in Science Signaling. In cell-based studies, the compound, called ST034307, inhibits AC1 and reduces cAMP, while leaving AC8 unaffected. And when given to mice, it also reduces their sensitivity to pain.

Original Submission

Martyb here once again with today's update on our site's update. I apologize that this is not as well written as my prior updates as exhaustion and outside issues are demanding of my time. I ask you to please bear with me.

Quick Recap: As you may recall, our servers were getting melted trying to serve up highly-commented stories. Further, this made for an unacceptably long delay between the time one would request a story and when it would finally get returned for display. Our devs have implemented alternative display modes, "Threaded-TOS" and "Threaded-TNG" which use a much more efficient means of processing comments and getting them to you. These changes went "live" on Saturday, February 25.

Like anything new, we expected there would be issues. We very much appreciate your patience as we tried to work through these as they were reported. And did you ever let us know!

Paulej72 (aka PJ) and TheMightyBuzzard (TMB) have been laboring mightily to keep up with the issues that have been reported as well as a few they found independently. Similarly, as their fixes have gone live, our community has had to deal with a changing landscape of "what happens when I do this?" To add to this, comments being such a major part of the site's purpose, there are "knobs" in several places where users can customize which comments are presented to them and how they appear. The permutations are many and wide-raging. As bug fixes have been made, the impact of changing these has had different effects over time.

I've been astounded at how much the community has been supportive of our efforts, how well problems have been described and isolated, and how quickly the devs have been able to fix bugs as they have been noted. Even more impressive was the discussion in our last update story on possible alternative means of implementing the <spoiler> tag. I'm proud to be part of this community — you rock!

Stories: While all this activity has been happening, stories have still been posted to our site for your reading and commenting pleasure. We are working with a reduced editorial staff at the moment. Us long-timers have been posting as we can, but I would like to personally thanks our new editors fnord666 and charon for their heroic efforts getting stories posted, and takyon for his continued efforts at providing well-written stories. I have noticed submissions from new folks as well, and the heartens me immensely! (Note: I hesitate to call out people in particular for fear I will overlook someone; any omission is purely my fault and I would appreciate being called out on it if I have failed to list your contribution.)

Plans: This development blitz has, however, come at a cost. For those who were with this site at its inception, there was a "day of rest" imposed on the developers who had worked basically non-stop trying to get our site up and somewhat stable. I have suggested a similar break to our dev staff. Recall we are all volunteers doing this in our spare time. PJ has plans coming up and will be unavailable on Friday and Saturday. From what I've seen, TMB is well nigh a crispy critter at this point and most certainly needs a break. And, quite frankly, I've put a lot of personal stuff on hold while working on this update and could use a break, as well. In short, we are tired.

So, PJ is around for a bit (in his free time while at work) for today and TMB is getting a well-deserved breather. NCommander is nearing burnout has been tied up with an outside project that demands his full attention and has been unable to help much. I'll poke in from time to time, but I really need some time off, too.

What I ask from the community is that we do something similar. Step back for a moment. Look at the forest and not just the trees. Play around with the different display Modes. Try setting a different "Breakthrough" and/or "Threshold". Things should be much more stable today, so that will make it easier to gain a "mental model" of what does what.

The other thing I would ask is for the community to pull together and try to address issues together. Someone posts an issue about struggling with having to click on all the little chevrons? Inquire about their user preference settings, and suggest a different value for Threshold/Breakthrough. My sense is that some are more adept at using the new features and they can help others to get a better understanding of how things work. With those issues addressed, we can more clearly identify and isolate underlying problems and focus our energies more productively.

tl;dr We're not done yet, we truly appreciate your patience and forbearance during this transition, we need a break, and you guys rock in helping others in the community understand and use the new stuff. As always, keep our toes to the fire — we are here for you — let us catch our breath and we'll be better able to move forward.

Continuation of:
Site Update 17_2
Comments Redux
Site Update: The Next Episode
Site Update - We're Getting There!

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams noted that "on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars, and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons."

This is an interesting point, and one that's tackled in great detail in Kevin Laland's new book, Darwin's Unfinished Symphony. Other species are indisputably smart; they can learn by example, they can communicate, they can innovate to solve problems, they can use tools, they may even have distinct cultures. But humans are clearly different. Other species don't listen to Baroque concerti or read classical philosophy hundreds of years after the scores were composed or the treatises written. They just don't.

This difference really bugged Laland. He is loath to say that humans are special because that implies some vast, unbridgeable gulf between us and our closest kin. Laland is an evolutionary biologist, and he doesn't go for those sorts of claims. He knows that humans evolved from a common ancestor with other primates through natural selection and other such well-defined mechanisms.

Yet a vast, unbridgeable gulf really does, in fact, come between us and our closest kin. Something huge must have happened to explain how and why we alone have built cathedrals and telescopes and banks and submarines and smartphones and particle accelerators. This is not navel gazing; we are special.

So, with Darwin's Unfinished Symphony, Laland set out to define what that something huge was. He concluded that it was not as dramatic as one of our early ancestors getting repeatedly struck by lightning or bitten by a radioactive spider. Rather, his thesis is that humans alone evolved such a complex culture because humans alone have teachers dedicated to teaching their young. And the reason only we have teachers—people who devote the bulk of their lives to teaching the offspring of strangers not only vital life skills, like how to hunt and fish, but the entire accumulated knowledge of our species over the past few millennia—is because... we have such a complex culture.

Yes, that's circular. We generated culture, which shaped our evolution to allow us to devise language so we could generate an increasingly complex culture—well, that's how feedback loops work.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

People's Action Institute reports via Common Dreams

People's Action Institute released a report today [February 28] that details the dire need for jobs that pay a living wage, and for public investment in communities that are most neglected.

[...] The report, Prosperity, Not Poverty,[PDF][1] shows the gap between job seekers and jobs that pay a living wage. According to the report, nationally there are seven job seekers for every job opening that pays the national single adult living wage of $17.28 per hour.

[...] The odds are much worse for a single parent hoping to be paid enough to support herself and a child. Prosperity, Not Poverty includes living wage figures and job gap ratios for each state and Washington, D.C., as well as the national number.

[...] Policy Recommendations from Prosperity, Not Poverty:

If done well, public infrastructure programs and investments will benefit all, and especially marginalized communities and the places they live.

• Create high wage jobs and target hiring and training in local communities, especially marginalized communities. Wages from full-time work should be at least enough for a single adult to make ends meet.
• Increase access to affordable health coverage. Low-wage workers are less likely to have access to employer-sponsored health care than higher-wage workers.
• Strengthen Social Security so all workers can retire with dignity.
• Expand and strengthen equal opportunity statutes to apply to the LGBTQI community as well as women and people of color.

[1] I have replaced the goofy link in TFA with a direct link. Google cache text of the 40-page report.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Continuing from a recent SN article on how rapidly the hacking industry is growing, it appears that Emma Watson may be taking advice from digital security experts. According to a recent story in the EveningStandard, Ms. Watson told Harper's Bazaar that:

"For me, it's the difference between being able to have a life and not. If someone takes a photograph of me and posts it, within two seconds they've created a marker of exactly where I am within 10 metres. They can see what I'm wearing and who I'm with. I just can't give that tracking data."

Will this be the new normal?

Original Submission

DBCubix writes:

Facebook plans to use artificial intelligence and update its tools and services to help prevent suicides among its users.

The world's largest social media network said it plans to integrate its existing suicide prevention tools for Facebook posts into its live-streaming feature, Facebook Live, and its Messenger service.

Artificial intelligence will be used to help spot users with suicidal tendencies, the company said in a blogpost on Wednesday.

Facebook commented that they're updating the tools and resources offered to people who may be thinking of suicide, as well as the support to concerned friends and family members:

• Integrated suicide prevention tools to help people in real time on Facebook Live
• Live chat support from crisis support organizations through Messenger
• Streamlined reporting for suicide, assisted by artificial intelligence

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Communitarian experiments such as Tamera are nothing new, although its longevity – almost 40 years – is unusual. Generally, intentional communities fail at a rate slightly higher than that of most start-ups. Only a handful of communities founded in the US during the 19th century's 'golden age of communities' lasted beyond a century; most folded in a matter of months. This golden age birthed more than 100 experimental communities, with more than 100,000 members who, according to the historian Mark Holloway in Heavens on Earth (1951), sought to differentiate themselves from society by creating 'ideal commonwealths'. The largest surge in communitarian 'start-ups' occurred during the 1840s and 1890s, coinciding with periods of economic depression. But it would be a mistake to see intentional communities merely as a knee-jerk response to hard times.

[...] Our appetite for communitarian living might even be evolutionarily hard-wired. Some sociologists have gone as far as to suggest that we are mal-adapted in modern society, and that 'tribal' forms of life are more viable. Theories of neo-tribalism suggest that instead of mass society, human nature is best suited to small, caring groups. The anthropologist Robin Dunbar at the University of Oxford claims that humans can comfortably maintain no more than 150 stable relationships, which suggests that communitarian living might not be so much of an 'outlier' or 'experiment'. From an evolutionary perspective, modern society itself might be the anomaly. As the cultural critic Daniel Quinn writes in The Story of B (1996), for 3 million years the tribal life worked for us: 'It worked for people the way nests worked for birds, the way webs work for spiders, the way burrows work for moles ... That doesn't make it lovable, it makes it viable.'

Perhaps that plan to base a community on Video games, Mountain Dew, and Cheetos deserves a re-think.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

What does a car say about its owner? Uni researchers have managed to accurately estimate income, education, race and voting patterns for US neighborhoods by looking at cars on Google Street View.

Nationwide polls like the American Community Survey (ACS) reach out to millions of people and can cost over $1bn each year. A form is sent to each household to collect information on the "demographic, social, economic, and housing characteristics." It can be tedious to fill out, and annoying to receive the numerous follow-up phone calls.

But what if there was a way to get the information without having to deal with mountains of paperwork or bothering people at all? A paper on arXiv shows there may be a better alternative, thanks to machine learning. It involves taking snapshots, literally, of citizens' lives and automatically deducing their backgrounds.

Pickup = Republican, Subaru Wagon = Democrat?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scientists have found fossilized microbes that they have dated to between 3.77 and 4.28 billion years old:

The fossil structures were encased in quartz layers in the so-called Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt (NSB). The NSB is a chunk of ancient ocean floor. It contains some of the oldest volcanic and sedimentary rocks known to science.

The team looked at sections of rock that were likely laid down in a system of hydrothermal vents - fissures on the seabed from which heated, mineral-rich waters spew up from below. Today, such vents are known to be important habitats for microbes. And Dr Dominic Papineau, also from UCL, who discovered the fossils in Quebec, thinks this kind of setting was very probably also the cradle for lifeforms between 3.77 and 4.28 billion years ago (the upper and lower age estimates for the NSB rocks).

[...] At present, perhaps the oldest acknowledged evidence of life on the planet is found in 3.48-billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. This material is said to show remnants of stromatolites - mounds of sediment formed of mineral grains glued together by ancient bacteria. An even older claim for stromatolite traces was made in August last year. The team behind that finding said their fossil evidence was 3.70 billion years old. [...] Part of the interest in ancient life is in the implication it has for organisms elsewhere in the Solar System. "These (NTB) organisms come from a time when we believe Mars had liquid water on its surface and a similar atmosphere to Earth at that time," said Mr Dodd. "So, if we have lifeforms originating and evolving on Earth at this time then we may very well have had life beginning on Mars."

Evidence for early life in Earth's oldest hydrothermal vent precipitates (DOI: 10.1038/nature21377) (DX)

Original Submission

LTKKane writes:

Is it worse to be distracted by irrelevant ads, or to be monitored closely enough that the ads are accurate but creepy? Why choose? [...] One company called Cambridge Analytica has managed to apply what some are calling a "weaponized AI propaganda machine" in order to visit both fates upon us at once. And it's all made possible by Facebook.

Cambridge Analytica specializes in the mass manipulation of thought. One way they accomplish this is through social media, particularly by deploying "native advertising." Otherwise known as sponsored content, these are ads designed to fool you into assimilating the ad unchallenged. The company also uses Facebook as a platform to push microtargeted posts to specific audiences, looking for the tipping point where someone's political inclination can be changed, just a little bit, for the right price. Much like Facebook games designed specifically for their addictive potential, rather than for any entertainment value, these intellectual salesmen exist solely to hit every sub-perceptual lever in order to bypass our conscious barriers.

[...] Microtargeting [is] the idea that Alice the Advertiser can accurately change the mind of Bob the Buyer based on information Alice can buy. The notion of microtargeting is not itself new, but what Cambridge Analytica is doing with it is novel. They're using the Facebook ecosystem because it perfectly enables the goal of targeting individuals and using their longer-lasting personality characteristics like a psychological GPS. It all hinges on a Facebook advertising tool called "unpublished posts." Among advertisers, these are simply called dark posts.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Focused ultrasound can effectively destroy tumor cells. Until now, this method has only been used for organs such as the prostate and uterus. At the European Congress of Radiology, Fraunhofer researchers will present a method, developed as part of the TRANS-FUSIMO EU project, that enables focused ultrasound treatment of the liver, an organ that moves while breathing. In the future, this could enable treatment of certain liver tumors in a more gentle way.

Ultrasound has long served as a diagnostic method. Its application as a form of therapy treatment, however, is relatively new. In this process, ultrasound waves are highly concentrated to destroy diseased tissue, tumor cells in particular, and render them harmless. Focused ultrasound benefits patients in several ways. The therapy is completely non-invasive and can be performed without anesthesia, and there are no operation wounds.

Until now, however, the method has only been approved for a limited number of indications, such as treatment of prostate cancer, bone metastases, and uterine myoma. To treat organs that move when patients breathe, the method can only be partially applied. Doctors have to rely on patients to hold their breath or put them under anesthesia, so they can control the patient's breath.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Microsoft has added a setting to Windows 10 that will let users restrict new software installation to only those apps hosted in the Windows Store. The option debuted in the latest version of Windows 10 Insider, the preview program which gives participants an early peek at the next feature upgrade as Microsoft builds it. That version, labeled 15042, was released Friday.

With the setting at its most stringent, Windows 10 will block the installation of Win32 software -- the traditional legacy applications that continue to make up the vast bulk of the Windows ecosystem -- and allow users to install only apps from the Windows Store, Microsoft's marketplace. Other settings allow software installation from any source, or, while allowing that, put a preference on those from the Windows Store.

Unless Microsoft removes them, the options will appear in the next Windows 10 feature upgrade, dubbed "Creators Update," which is to launch in March or April.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Eolas Technologies, which has been called a "patent troll," has continued to file against big companies, even after losing a landmark 2012 trial. But following an appeals court order (PDF) last week, Eolas will have to pursue its lawsuits in California—not its preferred patent hotspot of East Texas.

As of Friday, Eolas' lawsuits against Google, Amazon, and Wal-Mart have been transferred to the Northern District of California. The move could reduce Eolas' chances of winning a settlement or verdict since East Texas courts have been viewed by some as favoring patent holders.Similar lawsuits against Amazon and Wal-Mart remain in East Texas, for now.

[...] A Google spokesperson declined to comment on the transfer order. Eolas lawyers didn't respond to a request for comment.

The appeals court order was issued on Thursday, and the docket in Schroeder's court accordingly transferred the case the following day.

The transfer is clearly a victory for Google and suggests that the end of Eolas is finally at hand. Then again, that's what onlookers thought in 2013 when Eolas lost its original appeal. Another important question remains unanswered: how can a patent-holding company like Eolas continue to acquire patents that are nearly identical to patents that have been invalidated in court?

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission