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Phoenix666 writes:

A team of surgeons and engineers of Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, and the ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research, University of Bern (Switzerland), have developed a high-precision surgical robot for cochlear implantation. In the same way that avionics allow a pilot to fly a plane by instrument solely based on read-outs from the cockpit, the surgical robot developed by the researchers for RCI has the capabilities to perform surgery that a surgeon cannot carry out manually without a robot.

To embed an electronic cochlear implant device into the ear of a deaf patient, the surgeon has to create a precise access from behind the ear, through the skull bone all the way into the inner ear. The implant electrode that bridges the damaged part of the inner ear to allow the patient to hear again is then carefully inserted into the cochlea through the access in the bone. Currently this procedure is carried out manually and the ear, nose and throat surgeon directly views the access into the cochlea through the opening in the skull bone.

The aim of the Bernese research project was to investigate robotic cochlear implantation technology that could lead to a novel implantation procedure with improved hearing outcomes for CI patients. The researchers found that the use of surgical planning software and a robotic drill process could allow access to the cochlea through a tunnel of approximately 2.5 mm in diameter in a straight line from behind the ear. However, the size and scale of such a robotic procedure mean that the robot carries out the drilling procedure without the need for direct, manual operation by the surgeon. The challenge for RCI was to design and develop a failsafe safety system that could track and control the robotic drilling activity beyond the capabilities of the human surgeon, meaning without direct visual control. In the same way that avionics allow a pilot to fly a plane by instrument solely based on read-outs from the cockpit, the surgical robot developed by the researchers for RCI has the capabilities to perform surgery that a surgeon cannot carry out manually without a robot.

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takyon writes:

Harvard University researchers propose a new hypothesis to explain the largest glaciation event in Earth's history:

What caused the largest glaciation event in Earth's history, known as 'snowball Earth'? Geologists and climate scientists have been searching for the answer for years but the root cause of the phenomenon remains elusive. Now, Harvard University researchers have a new hypothesis about what caused the runaway glaciation that covered the Earth pole-to-pole in ice. The research is published in Geophysical Research Letters [DOI: 10.1002/2016GL072335] [DX].

Researchers have pinpointed the start of what's known as the Sturtian snowball Earth event to about 717 million years ago — give or take a few 100,000 years. At around that time, a huge volcanic event devastated an area from present day Alaska to Greenland.

Sulfur dioxide from volcanic eruptions can cool the planet more effectively if it can reach past the tropopause:

The height of the tropopause barrier all depends on the background climate of the planet — the cooler the planet, the lower the tropopause. "In periods of Earth's history when it was very warm, volcanic cooling would not have been very important because the Earth would have been shielded by this warm, high tropopause," said Wordsworth. "In cooler conditions, Earth becomes uniquely vulnerable to having these kinds of volcanic perturbations to climate."

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Phoenix666 writes:

Discussion around limiting climate change primarily focusses on whether the best results can be gained by individuals changing how they act, or governments introducing new legislation.

Now though, University of Leeds academics Dr Rob Lawlor and Dr Helen Morley from the Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied Centre suggest engineering professionals could also play a pivotal role, and could provide a co-ordinated response helping to mitigate climate change.

Writing in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics, they say engineering professional institutions could take a stand in tackling climate change by developing a declaration imposing restrictions and requirements on members.

"A strong and coordinated action by the engineering profession could itself make a significant difference in how we respond to climate change," they said.

"We know many engineers and firms make great efforts to be as environmentally friendly as possible, and research is carried out and supported by the sector to help reduce its impact on the world. We're suggesting that concerted action could improve this process further."

Quoting 2014 research by Richard Heede from the Climate Accountability Institute, they say nearly two-thirds of historic carbon dioxide and methane emissions could be attributed to crude oil and natural gas producers, coal extractors, and cement producers. These are industries typically enabled by the engineering profession.

They're looking at you, VW engineers.

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takyon writes:

Google has described a projection technique called Equi-Angular Cubemaps that can improve VR/360° video quality:

The image quality issue that plagues spherical video sources is a perspective problem. A traditional 2D video records a predetermined frame and is played back on a display of the same shape and perspective. VR/360-degree video doesn't offer that luxury. Although you can choose which perspective you wish to see, your view is always a fixed resolution and shape, no matter where you look. The image is technically flat, which means the source feed must be warped to fit a flat plane. The process is comparable to what cartographers go through when trying to map the globe to a flat surface. In order to fit the spherical earth map onto a flat image, the perspective must be altered.

[...] Google's Daydream and YouTube engineers came up with a new projection technique called Equi-Angular Cubemaps (EAC) that offers less disruptive image degradation. EAC keeps the pixel count even between cubemap samples, which produces balanced image quality across the board. [...] Google is already putting Equi-Angular Cubemap projection to work. Spherical video playback from YouTube with EAC support is now available on Android devices, and Google said support for iOS and desktop is coming soon. If you want to know more about EAC, Google's blog offers a deeper explanation of the technology, and the YouTube Engineering and Developers blog has additional details.

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pkrasimirov writes:

Microsoft today initiated a new program that promises legal indemnification protections against intellectual property (IP) claims for organizations using Microsoft Azure services.

The program, called "Microsoft Azure IP Advantage", takes effect today for Azure users. However, they need to meet certain qualifications to get some of the program's protection benefits.

There are three basic elements to the program. First, Microsoft is promising to include IP protections for its patented technologies, as well as open source technologies, used in Azure. Next, Microsoft is promising to keep a pool of patents for legal defensive purposes. Organizations can pick one patent to use for countersuing purposes. Lastly, Microsoft is promising that if it transfers Azure-associated patents to "nonpracticing entities," then the arrangement will be such that the holding company can't assert IP claims against Azure customers. This latter arrangement is called a "springing license" arrangement in legal lingo.

One example of IP protections enabled by the program for open source software is the use of open source Hadoop technology, according to Microsoft's announcement. Hadoop is used in Microsoft's Azure HD Insight "Big Data" services, so the program affords indemnity protections for Azure HD Insight users.

Source: Microsoft Kicks Off Legal Indemnity Program for Azure Users

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Phoenix666 writes:

The U.S. Air Force's X-37B space plane is just eight days away from setting a record on its current clandestine mission.

If the robotic vehicle stays aloft until March 25, it will break the X-37B mission-duration mark of 674 days, which was established back in October 2014.

It's unclear whether that will actually happen, however; the Air Force is tight-lipped about most X-37B payloads and activities, including touchdown plans. [The X-37B's Fourth Mystery Mission in Photos]

"The landing date will be determined based on the completion of the program's on-orbit demonstrations and objectives for this mission," Capt. AnnMarie Annicelli, an Air Force spokeswoman, told Space.com via email when asked when the current mission might end.

Footage from the mission, dubbed "Operation Crossbow," was leaked.

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hemocyanin writes:

A company that refused to pay its delivery drivers overtime for years has lost its bid to be a cheapskate, to the tune of $10,000,000. The 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals (decision-pdf) interpreted an exception to OT laws with special care to a meaningful but missing comma. Specifically, the phrase existing in the statute is:
"..., packing for shipment or distribution of:"

The company wanted the phrase to be interpreted as:
"..., packing for shipment, or distribution of:"

Without the comma, the activity excluded from coverage is "packing". With the comma present, it would have excluded packing or distribution.

The law as it exists in all its commaless glory:

The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:

(1) Agricultural produce;

(2) Meat and fish products; and

(3) Perishable foods.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Seminal role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons looks to be going digital.

The game's publisher, Wizards of the Coast, calls its new effort "D&D Beyond", describes it as "a digital toolset for use with the Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition rules" and has given the service the tagline "Play with advantage".

Wizards' canned statement says the service will "take D&D players beyond pen and paper, providing a rules compendium, character builder, digital character sheets, and more—all populated with official D&D content." We're also told the service "aims to make game management easier for both players and Dungeon Masters by providing high-quality tools available on any device."

Details of just what's on offer are thin, but the beta signup site for the service says subscribers will get the following features:

• A "D&D Compendium with Official Content"
• The ability to "Create, Browse, & Use Homebrew Content"
• The ability to "Manage Characters - Build, Progress, & Play"
• D&D News, Articles, Forums, & More
• Anywhere, anytime, access on any device

It will never work: psionics only travel through paper. Impotent mind flayers make god cry.

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NotSanguine writes:

John Timmer authored an Ars Technica story reporting on research published on 15 March 2017, which appears to show that as we look farther back in time, galaxies had less dark matter.

From the Ars Technica article:

One of the earliest indications of the existence of dark matter came from an examination of the rotation of nearby galaxies. The study showed that stars orbit the galaxy at speeds that indicate there's more mass there than the visible matter would indicate. Now, researchers have taken this analysis back in time, to a period when the Universe was only a couple billion years old, and the ancestors of today's large galaxies were forming stars at a rapid clip.

Oddly, the researchers find no need for dark matter to explain the rotation of these early galaxies. While there are a number of plausible explanations for dark matter's absence at this early stage of galaxy formation, it does suggest our models of the early Universe could use some refining.

[...]

In fact, it's thought that dark matter catalyzed the formation of most galaxies. Simulations suggest that gravity draws dark matter into a web of filaments, and galaxy formation occurs primarily at the sites where these filaments meet. This explains why most galaxies we see today exist in clusters. Given this model, it's simple to assume that the condensation of dark matter into galactic disks preceded or ran in parallel with the production of the visible portion of the galaxies.

The new data would suggest otherwise. The authors took advantage of existing survey data to identify six large early galaxies that don't appear to have recently undergone a merger and have an abundance of stars. They are thought to be the precursors of galaxies such as our own and are already big enough to show a clean rotation curve. Their rotation was then measured using the red and blue shifts of light emitted by hydrogen, based on observations with the Very Large Telescope.

[...]

The authors of the new paper see a number of possible explanations. One is that the early galaxies are very gas-rich, and these clouds of gas can experience local instabilities or collisions. This could cause the regular matter in the inner galaxy to compact, resulting in a normal-matter-dominated portion of the galaxy. The other possibility is that rather than forming the seeds of galaxies, dark matter starts off rather diffuse and takes time to form a disk-like structure that mirrors that of the visible galaxy. Either of these would explain the apparent matter dominance.

This doesn't turn current theories of dark matter on their heads, but it may provide avenues for research in better understanding both dark matter and large-scale cosmic structures.

Referenced Paper: Strongly baryon-dominated disk galaxies at the peak of galaxyformation ten billion years ago (Nature, 2017. DOI: 10.1038/nature21685).

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takyon writes:

http://www.ns.umich.edu/new/releases/24654-ultrashort-light-pulses-for-fast-lightwave-computers

"In the past few years, we and other groups have found that the oscillating electric field of ultrashort laser pulses can actually move electrons back and forth in solids," said Rupert Huber, professor of physics at the University of Regensburg who led the experiment. "Everybody was immediately excited because one may be able to exploit this principle to build future computers that work at unprecedented clock rates—10 to a hundred thousand times faster than state-of-the-art electronics."

But first, researchers need to be able to control electrons in a semiconductor. This work takes a step toward this capability by mobilizing groups of electrons inside a semiconductor crystal using terahertz radiation—the part of the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and infrared light.

The researchers shone laser pulses into a crystal of the semiconductor gallium selenide. These pulses were very short at less than 100 femtoseconds, or 100 quadrillionths of a second. Each pulse popped electrons in the semiconductor into a higher energy level—which meant that they were free to move around—and carried them onward. The different orientations of the semiconductor crystal with respect to the pulses meant that electrons moved in different directions through the crystal—for instance, they could run along atomic bonds or in between them.

Symmetry-controlled temporal structure of high-harmonic carrier fields from a bulk crystal (DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2017.29) (DX)

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Phoenix666 writes:

The How-To has good info for coders who, for whatever reason, find themselves having to build the front-end, too.

What is this & why should I listen to you?

Hi! I'm Natalya! [natalya-profile] I'm a classically trained fine artist who spent 6 years teaching people how to paint, draw, and grow their creativity. I am now a front end developer, and I love writing code as much as I love painting.

I have a degree in Studio Art, a bachelor's in Developmental Psychology, and a master's degree in Creativity and Talent Development. But, most importantly, I have mixed gallons and gallons of paint.

I abstracted my domain knowledge as a fine artist into variables and functions in order to reveal color selection as being logical, predictable, and driven by principles anyone can learn. Sass color functions give you the same creative power as owning a set of paints, brushes, and canvas.

This is a demo of my functions for a complementary color scheme - pick any color on the color wheel and the functions will make sure that the scheme will still work! 🎨

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Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers from VIB-UGent have discovered a gene that significantly increases plant growth and seed yield in maize. Research into crop yield is crucial because of the increasing incidence of extreme weather conditions affecting agriculture. The results from laboratory research were confirmed during two-year field trials conducted in Belgium and the United States showing that this gene can increase seed yield in maize hybrids by 10 to 15%.

VIB-UGent scientists, headed by Prof. Dirk Inzé and Dr. Hilde Nelissen, are conducting research into the molecular mechanisms behind leaf growth in maize. Leaf development is a blueprint for the plant's growth processes. Indeed, knowing how leaves grow provides a great deal of information about the growth of the plant as a whole. The researchers discovered a gene in maize, named PLA1, which significantly increases plant growth and the size of plant organs such as the leaves, but also the cob. Dirk Inzé says: "We have succeeded in significantly boosting biomass and seed production by increasing PLA1 expression in the plant, which leads to a yield increase of 10 to 15% on the same agricultural area."

Dirk Inzé, Hilde Nelissen, et al. Altered expression of maize PLASTOCHRON1 enhances biomass and seed yield by extending cell division duration. Nature Communications, 2017; 8: 14752 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14752

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takyon writes:

Samsung has shipped 70,000 silicon wafers worth of "10nm Low Power Early" chips, and is planning a supposed 6 nanometer process. The company implies that it will make 8nm and 6nm chips in addition to 10nm and 7nm:

It's looking like Samsung will be the first company to manufacture 10nm chips, besting both Intel and TSMC. Samsung has also already set its eyes on the 8nm, 7nm, and 6nm process technologies. The 8nm and 6nm processes will likely be follow-up technologies to the 10nm and 7nm processes, respectively.

The company is expected to reach 7nm by 2019, a move that could be enabled by its partnership with IBM. The company may also use EUV lithography for its 7nm process, but it's not yet clear whether EUV lithography will be available for the first ever 7nm process iteration. Intel has hinted before that it may not adopt EUV lithography until the 5nm process generation. Samsung will reveal more details about its roadmap, including the 8nm and 6nm process generations, at the upcoming U.S Samsung Foundry Forum scheduled for May 24, 2017.

Samsung press release.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The unmarked 18-wheelers ply the nation's interstates and two-lane highways, logging 3 million miles a year hauling the most lethal cargo there is: nuclear bombs.

The covert fleet, which shuttles warheads from missile silos, bomber bases and submarine docks to nuclear weapons labs across the country, is operated by the Office of Secure Transportation, a troubled agency within the U.S. Department of Energy so cloaked in secrecy that few people outside the government know it exists.

The $237-million-a-year agency operates a fleet of 42 tractor-trailers, staffed by highly armed couriers, many of them veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, responsible for making sure nuclear weapons and components pass through foggy mountain passes and urban traffic jams without incident.

The transportation office is about to become more crucial than ever as the U.S. embarks on a $1-trillion upgrade of the nuclear arsenal that will require thousands of additional warhead shipments over the next 15 years.

The increased workload will hit an agency already struggling with problems of forced overtime, high driver turnover, old trucks and poor worker morale — raising questions about its ability to keep nuclear shipments safe from attack in an era of more sophisticated terrorism.

-- submitted from IRC

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Sulla writes:

https://m.phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmosphere.html

In essence, they suggested that by positioning a magnetic dipole shield at the Mars L1 Lagrange Point, an artificial magnetosphere could be formed that would encompass the entire planet, thus shielding it from solar wind and radiation.

[...] In addition, the positioning of this magnetic shield would ensure that the two regions where most of Mars' atmosphere is lost would be shielded

[...] As a result, Mars atmosphere would naturally thicken over time, which lead to many new possibilities for human exploration and colonization. According to Green and his colleagues, these would include an average increase of about 4 °C (~7 °F), which would be enough to melt the carbon dioxide ice in the northern polar ice cap. This would trigger a greenhouse effect, warming the atmosphere further and causing the water ice in the polar caps to melt.

Pretty SF but I enjoyed the article.

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