SoylentNews

kazzie writes:

The BBC reports:

A UK-based team of researchers has created a graphene-based sieve capable of removing salt from seawater.

Manufacturing graphene-based barriers on an industrial scale has been a problem in the past, but this new sieve promises to be more affordable, yet still effective in filtering salts, and will now be tested against existing desalination membranes.

Reporting their results in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, scientists from the University of Manchester, led by Dr Rahul Nair, shows how they solved some of the challenges by using a chemical derivative called graphene oxide.

Isolated and characterised by a University of Manchester-led team in 2004, graphene comprises a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. Its unusual properties, such as extraordinary tensile strength and electrical conductivity, have earmarked it as one of the most promising materials for future applications.

[...] Previous work had shown that graphene oxide membranes became slightly swollen when immersed in water, allowing smaller salts to flow through the pores along with water molecules.

Now, Dr Nair and colleagues demonstrated that placing walls made of epoxy resin (a substance used in coatings and glues) on either side of the graphene oxide membrane was sufficient to stop the expansion.

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Phoenix666 writes:

researchers have developed a rubber-like fiber that can flex and stretch while simultaneously delivering both optical impulses, for optoelectronic stimulation, and electrical connections, for stimulation and monitoring. The new fibers are described in a paper in the journal Science Advances, by MIT graduate students Chi (Alice) Lu and Seongjun Park, Professor Polina Anikeeva, and eight others at MIT, the University of Washington, and Oxford University.

"I wanted to create a multimodal interface with mechanical properties compatible with tissues, for neural stimulation and recording," as a tool for better understanding spinal cord functions, says Lu. But it was essential for the device to be stretchable, because "the spinal cord is not only bending but also stretching during movement." The obvious choice would be some kind of elastomer, a rubber-like compound, but most of these materials are not adaptable to the process of fiber drawing, which turns a relatively large bundle of materials into a thread that can be narrower than a hair.

[...]The team combined a newly developed transparent elastomer, which could act as a waveguide for optical signals, and a coating formed of a mesh of silver nanowires, producing a conductive layer for the electrical signals. To process the transparent elastomer, the material was embedded in a polymer cladding that enabled it to be drawn into a fiber that proved to be highly stretchable as well as flexible, Lu says. The cladding is dissolved away after the drawing process.

After the entire fabrication process, what's left is the transparent fiber with electrically conductive, stretchy nanowire coatings. "It's really just a piece of rubber, but conductive," Anikeeva says. The fiber can stretch by at least 20 to 30 percent without affecting its properties, she says.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Camden, New Jersey is a very low income neighborhood. According to this NY Times article, until recently it had typical low income policing--heavy on corruption and violence and low on compassion.

But now they have a new chief and things have changed --

While not out of the woods yet, it sounds like there is hope for Camden and maybe it won't just continue to be written off as a war zone.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

It turns out that Earth is not a planet. Asteroid 2016 H03, first spotted on April 27, 2016, by the Pan-STARRS 1 asteroid survey telescope on Haleakala, Hawaii, is a companion of Earth, too distant to be considered a true satellite.

"Since 2016 HO3 loops around our planet, but never ventures very far away as we both go around the sun, we refer to it as a quasi-satellite of Earth," said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Asteroid 2016 H03 is proof that Earth has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. Therefore, under the definition of a planet vigorously defended by the IAU [International Astronomical Union] since the adoption of Resolution 5A on August 24, 2006, Earth is a 'dwarf planet' because it has not cleared its orbit, which is the only criteria of their definition that Pluto fails. (I think we'll eventually discover that very few of the 'planets' have cleared their orbits).

Most of us who were baffled by the IAUs declaration and outraged at the obvious discrimination of Pluto knew there was something wrong, even if we couldn't put our finger on it — we just 'knew' Pluto was a planet, right?

[...] Here's what all of us non-scientists intuitively understood all along: "A planet is defined as an astronomical body that "has not undergone nuclear fusion, and having sufficient self-gravitation to assume a spheroidal shape" — in other words, it's round and not on fire.

How could the distinguished scientists be so wrong?

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Rigetti Computing, a leading quantum computing start-up, announced it has raised $64 million in Series A and B funding.

[...] The latest round brings the total amount of venture funding raised by Rigetti to $69.2 million.

"Quantum computing will enable people to tackle a whole new set of problems that were previously unsolvable," said Chad Rigetti, founder and chief executive officer of Rigetti Computing. "This is the next generation of advanced computing technology. The potential to make a positive impact on humanity is enormous."

"We will use the funding to expand our business and engineering teams and continue to invest in infrastructure to manufacture and deploy our quantum integrated circuits," Rigetti added.

Source: http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/03/quantum-computer-startup-rigetti.html

Previously mentioned here: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/02/10/181240

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martyb writes:

You may (or may not) have heard about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle:

In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle, also known as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle, known as complementary variables, such as position x and momentum p, can be known.

According to a report in ChemistryWorld, a new technique allows atomic spin properties to be measured simultaneously with greater accuracy — Atomic Spins Evade Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle:

Many seemingly unrelated scientific techniques, from NMR spectroscopy to medical MRI and timekeeping using atomic clocks, rely on measuring atomic spin – the way an atom's nucleus and electrons rotate around each other. The limit on how accurate these measurements can be is set by the inherent fuzziness of quantum mechanics. However, physicists in Spain have demonstrated that this limit is much less severe than previously believed, measuring two crucial quantities simultaneously with unprecedented precision.

Central to the limits of quantum mechanics is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states that it is not possible to know a particle's position and momentum with absolute accuracy, and the more precisely you measure one quantity, the less you know about the other. This is because to measure its position you have to disturb its momentum by hitting it with another particle and observing how the momentum of this second particle changes. A similar principle applies to measuring a particle's spin angular momentum, which involves observing how the polarisation of incident light is changed by the interaction with the particle – every measurement disturbs the atom's spin slightly. To infer the spin precession rate, you need to measure the spin angle, as well as its overall amplitude, repeatedly. However, every measurement disturbs the spin slightly, creating a minimum possible uncertainty.

The alternative approach suggested by Morgan Mitchell's group at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona, could circumvent this problem. The spin angle, they say, is in fact two angles: the azimuthal angle (like longitude on the Earth's surface) and the polar angle (like latitude). To measure the precession rate, you need only the azimuthal angle. Therefore, by loading as much uncertainty as possible into the polar angle, you can measure the two quantities you need – the azimuthal angle and amplitude of the spin – and therefore measure the spin precession rate much more accurately than previously thought possible.

Is this the harbinger of finer-grained and/or quicker MRIs?

References: G Colangelo et al, Nature, 2017, DOI: 10.1038/nature21434

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

NOAA, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, reports [*] on the discovery, published in Nature Climate Change (full article is pay-walled):

[...] that between the 1990s and 2010, acidified waters expanded northward approximately 300 nautical miles from the Chukchi Sea slope off the coast of northwestern Alaska to just below the North Pole. Also, the depth of acidified waters increased from approximately 325 feet below the surface to more than 800 feet.

The United Nations Development Programme explains that

[...] since gases such as CO₂ dissolve more readily in colder water, ocean acidification will progress – already is progressing – much more rapidly in the Arctic and Antarctic, where a number of species are already facing challenges in fixing their shells. Under a lower pH ocean future, increasing numbers of calcium carbonate fixing organisms could face dramatic losses or even extinction.

[*] (archive link 1, archive link 2)

Additional coverage:

• The Canadian Press via the Toronto Star
• The Canadian Press via the Chronicle Herald (identical to story in Toronto Star)
• Eurekalert
• University of Delaware UDaily
• Tech Times

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The book that helped to launch the adult coloring book craze is being reprinted:

In 1955, Harold and the Purple Crayon, a children's book about a four-year-old and his titular instrument, promised kids a world of unbridled creative potential, an infinitely flexible reality produced from their imaginations. Six years later, three ad executives in Chicago offered a counterpoint with The Executive Coloring Book, a dispatch from the adult world that offered bleak instructions like, "This is my suit. Color it gray or I will lose my job." This was a coloring book, but one that eschewed innocence for the corporate hamster wheel and landscapes of elevators, sales charts, and company cars. Even the odd dash of color was grim: pink for the pill that "makes me not care," and mahogany deskware ("I wish I were mahogany").

Written by—and dedicated to—Marcia Hans, Martin A. Cohen, and Dennis Altman, The Executive Coloring Book is an artifact from the Mad Men era that also has the distinction of being the first adult coloring book. Since then, coloring books for grown-ups have become a fad—over 24 million of these books were sold in the last two years alone. Titles have included Die Hard: The Authorized Color and Activity Book, Color Your Own Dutch Masters, and the Cunt Coloring Book from houses as prestigious as HarperCollins and artists like Tony Millionaire (David Bowie: Color the Starman). These books mostly have a twee, feel-good Punky Brewster sort of vibe. A cult of the eternal child, in other words.

Previously: Adult Coloring Books are Big Business

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scientists at the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory have devised an unconventional plan for accelerating the development of a small, safe, cheap nuclear reactor: they want to build a prototype that piggybacks on their existing facility.

Since the planned one-megawatt demonstration reactor would be incapable of sustaining a fission reaction on its own, the researchers believe they could avoid building a standalone experimental prototype, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission generally requires. That site selection and licensing process can take a decade or longer, so the hope is that this approach could cost hundreds of millions of dollars less and take half as much time to build.

[...] The researchers specifically want to test designs for a small, transportable molten-salt-cooled reactor, intended for off-grid purposes such as generating electricity for remote villages or worksites. Molten-salt reactors, first researched in the 1950s, are a subject of growing interest in the field because of the potential they offer for greater safety and lower costs compared with traditional nuclear power plants.

http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/03/mit-wants-to-build-add-on-1-mw-sub.html

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603963/mits-nuclear-lab-has-an-unusual-plan-to-jump-start-advanced-reactor-research/

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takyon writes:

Will law enforcement gain the power to search laptops at any time by declaring them potential bombs?

US intelligence and law enforcement agencies believe that ISIS and other terrorist organizations have developed innovative ways to plant explosives in electronic devices that FBI testing shows can evade some commonly used airport security screening methods, CNN has learned. Heightening the concern is US intelligence suggesting that terrorists have obtained sophisticated airport security equipment to test how to effectively conceal explosives in laptops and other electronic devices.

The intelligence, gathered in the last several months, played a significant role in the Trump administration's decision to prohibit travelers flying out of 10 airports in eight countries in the Middle East and Africa from carrying laptops and other large electronic devices aboard planes. The findings may raise questions about whether the ban is broad enough. CNN has learned that, through a series of tests conducted late last year, the FBI determined the laptop bombs would be far more difficult for airport screeners to detect than previous versions terrorist groups have produced. The FBI testing focused on specific models of screening machines that are approved by the Transportation Security Administration and are used in the US and around the world.

Also at USA Today and The Washington Examiner.

Original Submission

Demose writes:

Release 2.3.1 of the QT-based video editor brings various improvements such as a new transform tool, new preview window, and the return of the razor tool as well as various bug fixes and performance improvements. More on this release can be found in this release announcement.

Original Submission

n1 writes:

Connecticut lawmakers are considering whether the state should become the first in the country to allow police to use drones outfitted with deadly weapons, a proposal immediately met with concern by civil rights and liberties advocates.

The bill would ban the use of weaponized drones, but exempt police. Details on how law enforcement could use drones with weapons would be spelled out in new rules to be developed by the state Police Officer Standards and Training Council. Officers also would have to receive training before being allowed to use drones with weapons.

[...] North Dakota is the only state that allows police to use weaponized drones, but limits the use to "less lethal" weapons, including stun guns, rubber bullets and tear gas.

Five states - Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont and Wisconsin - prohibit anyone from using a weaponized drone, while Maine and Virginia ban police from using armed drones, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Several other states have restricted drone use in general.

Source: Associated Press via Fox5NY.com

Original Submission

Appalbarry writes:

The CBC reports on research published at Plos One: Prof. Jörg Bohlmann and a team of researchers at the University of British Columbia have found 30 genes within the cannabis genome that determine the aroma and flavour of the plant.

The findings are the first step toward creating flavour standards that can be replicated. With Canada on the cusp of legalizing pot, Bohlmann said "standards could be created that follow the wine industry, where the types of grapes and effects of climate and terrain on the crop's flavour produce specific and replicable varieties of wine."

Of course this now opens the door to multinationals taking control of the pot industry, introducing GMO strains, and driving the craft industry out of business.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 submitted:

ArsTechnica's reviewer, Sam Machkovech, opines:

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

The producers of this week's new Ghost in the Shell film must really believe nobody has seen its source material. That's the only way to enjoy this live-action reboot: oblivious to 1995's original anime film or its manga comic-book precursor. Scarlett Johansson runs around futuristic, CGI-filled worlds in a skin-tight outfit. She shoots guns, kicks faces, and beats the bad guys. Not bad.

But this pedestrian action movie looks nigh unbearable through the lens of the original series. Every bit of social commentary and science-fiction mystique that made the Japanese film and books so stunning has been wrung dry. Respect for the viewer goes into the garbage, replaced by an obnoxious, paint-by-numbers plot of good versus evil. And while I went into my screening ready to laugh off rumors of cast white-washing, I left the theater aghast at how blatantly that issue figured in the final product.

[...] The original film isn't an untouchable anime opus. Its sleepily slow pacing could have been tightened, and the script has its potholes. A live-action reboot may never have lived up to some of the original film's concepts, such as the maelstrom that is East Asian politics, but it could have kicked a lot of ass by at least retreading the basic plot details. Even today, the original feels like a topical, modern commentary on an Internet-of-things world—and that could have been easily reheated. Plus, this reboot deserves credit for a few cool CGI and action moments, along with perfectly solid action-movie acting performances. Johansson makes the most of the script and motivations she's given, and Pilou Asbæk (Johannson's co-star in Lucy) is a pitch-perfect choice to play her police sidekick Batou. (Plus, that character's implanted, robotic eyes look killer in this live-action version.)

But in this reboot, new, compelling plot threads are left to languish, and the original, genre-defining plot is carved up in the service of one of the more fine-but-forgettable action films in recent memory. It's like someone turned Gone with the Wind into a buddy-cop comedy starring Scarlett and Mammy. This reboot couldn't have missed the point harder.

What say you Soylentils? Worth seeing? If you are familiar with the originals, how did this version measure up for you? Is it worth watching as just a summer shoot-em-up action flick?

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

"Site will go read-only in October and will be turned into static archive by year end."

Microsoft announced Friday that CodePlex, the company's open source project-hosting service, will be closed down.

Started in 2006, the service offered an alternative to SourceForge. It was based initially on Microsoft's Team Foundation Server source control and later added options to use Subversion, Mercurial, and Git.

At the time, there weren't a tremendous number of good options for hosting projects. SourceForge was the big one, but it always seemed light on feature development and heavy on advertising. CodePlex on the Web was much more attractive and less cluttered. The use of TFS for source control meant it also had strong integration in Visual Studio.

But these days, GitHub is the default choice for most open source projects. This applies to Microsoft, too; the company is using GitHub to host projects such as .NET and its Chakra JavaScript engine. Activity on CodePlex has declined, with fewer than 350 projects seeing code commits over the last 30 days.

Source: ArsTechnica

Original Submission

takyon writes:

JEDEC has announced that it expects to finalize the DDR5 standard by next year. It says that DDR5 will double bandwidth and density, and increase power efficiency, presumably by lowering the operating voltages again (perhaps to 1.1 V). Availability of DDR5 modules is expected by 2020:

You may have just upgraded your computer to use DDR4 recently or you may still be using DDR3, but in either case, nothing stays new forever. JEDEC, the organization in charge of defining new standards for computer memory, says that it will be demoing the next-generation DDR5 standard in June of this year and finalizing the standard sometime in 2018. DDR5 promises double the memory bandwidth and density of DDR4, and JEDEC says it will also be more power-efficient, though the organization didn't release any specific numbers or targets.

The DDR4 SDRAM specification was finalized in 2012, and DDR3 in 2007, so DDR5's arrival is to be expected (cue the Soylentils still using DDR2). One way to double the memory bandwidth of DDR5 is to double the DRAM prefetch to 16n, matching GDDR5X.

Graphics cards are beginning to ship with GDDR5X. Some graphics cards and Knights Landing Xeon Phi chips include High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). A third generation of HBM will offer increased memory bandwidth, density, and more than 8 dies in a stack. Samsung has also talked about a cheaper version of HBM for consumers with a lower total bandwidth. SPARC64 XIfx chips include Hybrid Memory Cube. GDDR6 SDRAM could raise per-pin bandwidth to 14 Gbps, from the 10-14 Gbps of GDDR5X, while lowering power consumption.

Original Submission