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takyon writes:

Russia is reportedly developing sub-kiloton yield tactical nuclear weapons that can be shot from the upgraded guns of its future T-14 tanks. According to Defense One:

"The Russians ... maintain their tactical nuclear stockpile in ways that we have not," Hix said. Potomac Institute head Philip Karber, who helped write the Pentagon's Russia New Generation Warfare Study, offered a bit more explanation when Defense One spoke to him in January. While the United States retains just a few of its once-large arsenal of tactical nukes, Karber estimates that Russia currently has anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 of the weapons. "Look at what the Russians have been doing in low-fission, high-fusion, sub-kiloton tactical nuclear technology," he said. "It appears that they are putting a big effort...in both miniaturizing the warheads and using sub-kiloton low-yield warheads."

Why is that significant? By shrinking the warhead, you can shoot it out of a wider variety of guns, including, potentially, 152-millimeter tank cannons. "They've announced that the follow-on tank to the Armata will have a 152-millimeter gun missile launcher. They're talking about it having a nuclear capability. And you go, 'You're talking about building a nuclear tank, a tank that fires a nuke?' Well, that's the implication," said Karber.

The U.S. developed their own tactical nuclear weapons, such as 127, 155, 200, and 280 mm nuclear artillery shells, during the Cold War. The U.S. withdrew nuclear artillery from service in 1991, and Russia followed suit in 1992.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

Rat lungworm is an illness caused by the presence of the nematode Angiostrongylus cantonensis in the central nervous system. It is contracted by ingesting insufficiently cooked slugs, snails, or their mucus.

KHON-TV reports that in the U.S. state of Hawai'i, there is an unusual number of new cases of the disease that are associated with the island of Maui. Previously, its incidence in the state had been largely confined to Hawai'i Island, the chain's main or "Big" island.

The Department of Health says so far there are nine confirmed cases of the disease. Four are Maui residents, two are visitors who contracted it on Maui, and three live on Hawaii Island.

State officials are also looking into three possible cases on Maui, and one on Hawaii Island.

An earlier story by the Associated Press via the Chicago Tribune said that

Maui health officials said six cases of rat lungworm disease have been reported on the island over the past three months, while the island has seen only two cases of the disease in the past decade.

[...] State epidemiologist Dr. Sarah Park said there is an average of about 10 rat lungworm cases each year statewide and that the recent spike is concerning. A vast majority of Hawaii's cases are reported on the Big Island.

Two Soylentils "spotted" this news about a great cold spot being found on Jupiter.

Great Cold Spot Found on Jupiter

butthurt writes:

Space.com reports on the discovery, published in Geophysical Research Letters of an unusually cold area in Jupiter's atmosphere:

According to a press release,

The press release has links to videos about the phenomenon.

Jupiter's Great Cold Spot

takyon writes:

takyon writes:

Toshiba has reported another huge loss as it continues to try to recover from the bankruptcy of its Westinghouse nuclear unit:

Toshiba has filed its delayed financial results, warning that the company's survival is at risk. "There are material events and conditions that raise substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern," the company said in a statement.

The electronics-to-construction giant reported a loss of 532bn yen (£3.8bn; $4.8bn) for April to December. However, the results have not been approved by the firm's auditors. These latest financial results have already been delayed twice and raise the possibility that Toshiba could be delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Previously: Toshiba Nuked Half its Assets
Huge Nuclear Cost Overruns Push Toshiba's Westinghouse Into Bankruptcy

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takyon writes:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-vizio-m-a-leeco-idUSKBN17C2MX

LeEco has scrapped a planned $2 billion acquisition of U.S. consumer electronics company Vizio due to regulatory issues, a fresh setback to the cash-strapped Chinese conglomerate's expansion drive. The deal was first announced in July, with LeEco agreeing to acquire the Irvine-based manufacturer of LCD/LED flat panel TVs. A LeEco representative cited a "Chinese policy factor" for abandoning the proposal, but declined to provide further details.

LeEco, one of China's most ambitious companies that grew from a Netflix-like video website to a business empire spanning consumer electronics to cars within 13 years, is struggling to meet its ambitions that include beating Elon Musk's Tesla Motors (TSLA.O) in premium electric vehicle making. In recent months, LeEco has faced financial troubles which founder and chairman Jia Yueting has attributed to the rapid pace of business growth, calling it a "big company disease".

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

NPR reports

Passengers on a United Express flight from Chicago to Louisville, Ky., were horrified when a man was forcibly removed--violently wrenched from his seat and physically dragged down the aisle. [...] Videos of the scene have prompted calls to boycott United Airlines.

[...] The Chicago Department of Aviation [...] says the actions of the security officers were "not condoned by the Department" and that one individual has been placed on leave pending a review.

[...] Passengers had already boarded on Sunday evening [April 10] at O'Hare International Airport when United asked for volunteers to take another flight the next day to make room for four United staff members who needed seats.

The airline offered $400 and a free hotel, passenger Audra D. Bridges told the Louisville Courier-Journal. When no one volunteered, the offer was doubled to $800. When there were still no bites, the airline selected four passengers to leave the flight--including the man in the video and his wife.

"They told him he had been selected randomly to be taken off the flight", Bridges said.

[...] The man said he was a doctor and that he "needed to work at the hospital the next day", passenger Jayse D. Anspach said.

[...] Both Bridges and Anspach posted videos of three security officers, who appear to be wearing the uniforms of Chicago aviation police, wrenching the man out of his seat, prompting wails. His face appeared to strike an armrest. Then they dragged his limp body down the aisle.

Footage shows the man was bleeding from the mouth as they dragged him away. His glasses were askew and his shirt was riding up over his belly.

"It looked like he was knocked out, because he went limp and quiet and they dragged him out of the plane like a rag doll", Anspach wrote.

Previous: Days After United Settlement, Baggage Handler Locked in Cargo Hold on NC-to-DC Flight

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Last August, an unknown group called the Shadow Brokers released a bunch of NSA tools to the public. The common guesses were that the tools were discovered on an external staging server, and that the hack and release was the work of the Russians (back then, that wasn't controversial). This was me:

Okay, so let's think about the game theory here. Some group stole all of this data in 2013 and kept it secret for three years. Now they want the world to know it was stolen. Which governments might behave this way? The obvious list is short: China and Russia. Were I betting, I would bet Russia, and that it's a signal to the Obama Administration: "Before you even think of sanctioning us for the DNC hack, know where we've been and what we can do to you."

They published a second, encrypted, file. My speculation:

They claim to be auctioning off the rest of the data to the highest bidder. I think that's PR nonsense. More likely, that second file is random nonsense, and this is all we're going to get. It's a lot, though.

I was wrong. On November 1, the Shadow Brokers released some more documents, and two days ago they released the key to that original encrypted archive:

EQGRP-Auction-Files is CrDj"(;Va.*NdlnzB9M?@K2)#>deB7mN

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Alabama's Governor has resigned rather than face impeachment over campaign finance violations linked to the cover-up of an extramarital affair.

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley has resigned after pleading guilty to abusing his office, allegedly to conceal an affair with a political adviser.

[...] The Associated Press describes the scene as the plea agreement was signed:

"Bentley appeared sullen and looked down at the floor during the Monday afternoon session. ...

"The agreement specifies that Bentley must surrender campaign funds totaling $36,912 within a week and perform 100 hours of community service as a physician. He also cannot seek public office again."

The governor, a Republican, was briefly booked into Montgomery jail, according to local media reports, before heading to the state Capitol to announce his resignation.

Republican state Rep. Ed Henry, who had introduced articles of impeachment against Bentley last year, said, "I think we have a great day for Alabama, where justice was done. Corruption was spotted, recognized and dealt with. ... even though it was slower and little more painful than we had anticipated."

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

West Virginia MetroNews reported on April 5:

Legislation legalizing medical marijuana is one step closer to becoming law in West Virginia. The Senate Wednesday approved SB 386 by a vote of 28-6.[PDF]

However, the bill includes some technical changes made after the House passed the bill earlier this week. Both chambers have agreed to those "clean ups", which do not affect the substance of the bill. The House is expected to sign off on those details and the bill then goes to Governor Jim Justice.

The bill will make West Virginia the 29th state [sic] allowing the use of marijuana for the treatment of certain kinds of pain and illnesses with approval by a physician. Under the legislation, the marijuana would have to be taken in pill or liquid form. It does not allow for marijuana to be smoked or gown[sic] by the patient.

Governor Justice has said he's not opposed to medical marijuana.

NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws now adds:

West Virginia legislators on Thursday [April 7] approved a significantly amended version of Senate Bill 386, which seeks to establish a state-regulated medical cannabis program. The measure now awaits action from Democrat Gov. Jim Justice, who has previously expressed support for permitting qualified patients access cannabis therapy.

If signed into law, West Virginia will become the 30th state to authorize by statute the physicians-recommended use of cannabis or cannabis-infused products.

Under the amended measure, qualified patients will be permitted to obtain cannabis-infused oils, pills, tinctures, or creams from a limited number of state-authorized dispensaries. Cannabis-based medications will be produced by state-licensed growers and processors. Patients will not be permitted to grow their own cannabis, nor will they be able to legally access or smoke herbal formulations of the plant. Similar restrictive programs are presently in place in Minnesota and New York and are awaiting implementation in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

To participate in the proposed program, both patients and physicians would need to be registered with the state. Government officials are not mandated under the legislation to begin issuing patient identification cards until July 1, 2019.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Hard work is often touted as the key American virtue that leads to success and opportunity. And there's lots of evidence to suggest that workers buy into the belief: For example, a recent study found that Americans work 25 percent more hours than Europeans, and that U.S. workers tend to take fewer vacation days and retire later in life. But for many, simply working hard doesn't actually lead to a better life.

In the past, economists have acknowledged that citing hard work as the path to prosperity is overly simplistic and optimistic. Ultimately, whether hard work alone can lift people into better economic conditions is a more complex question. The formula only works if an individual's efforts are met with opportunities for a better life. According to research, it's getting harder and harder for Americans to move up the income ladder.

A new poll from the Strong, Prosperous and Resilient Communities Challenge (SPARCC), an initiative to bolster local economies, found that Americans are quite skeptical of the narrative connecting wealth with personal agency. SPARCC found that 74 percent of those surveyed believed that most poor people work hard, but aren't able to work their way out of poverty due to the lack of economic opportunities. In the U.S., 19 percent of income inequality is attributed to predetermined circumstances such as a person's race, gender, and parental income. The SPARCC report also points to past research showing that economic mobility and health outcomes are greatly affected by geography as evidence that individual hard work won't ensure success because opportunities aren't evenly distributed.

The hard-work argument also plays into the policy discussion around inequality. As Katharine Bradbury and Robert Triest, both economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, write:

Increased inequality may result from increased risk taking and entrepreneurship in an environment of rapid technological change, with some entrepreneurs producing better, or just luckier, innovations than others, and reaping greater rewards. It may also result from increased disparities in work effort, with more industrious individuals earning higher incomes as a result of their greater effort. In both these cases, one could argue convincingly that the increase in inequality is justified and that no remedial changes in public policy are needed. On the other hand, if the increase in inequality results mostly from factors largely beyond the ability of individuals to control or counteract, then a strong case can be made for a public policy response.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In announcing its first major patch for Mass Effect: Andromeda last week, BioWare highlighted fixes to the game's much-maligned facial animations, as well as gameplay tweaks like larger inventories and skippable cutscenes. One thing BioWare forgot to mention in its patch notes, though, is an improved version of Denuvo DRM that is forcing pirates to use an outdated version of the game... at least for now.

[...] It's unclear why Mass Effect: Andromeda didn't feature the latest version of Denuvo in its initial release. In any case, the updated DRM leaves pirates stuck with a much less polished version of the game, and it could keep them away from months of further patches that are already in the works. It's a situation that reminds us a bit of Game Dev Tycoon and other games that intentionally make pirated versions inferior to legitimately purchased copies.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Efficient drug delivery is key to fighting illness. Instead of flooding the body with medicine so that some of it will make it to the afflicted region, the goal is to deliver a cancer drug directly to the tumor. Mariana Medina-Sánchez and colleagues from the Institute for Integrative Nanosciences in Germany have come up with a novel approach to fighting gynecological cancers: have sperm cells directly deliver the drugs. This approach specifically targets diseases such as gynecological cancer, endometriosis, and pelvic inflammatory diseases.

The active ingredient in the medication is readily taken up by the sperm, so the technical challenge was to figure out how to get the sperm to deliver the medicine where it was needed. The researchers developed tiny iron harnesses that they hitch the sperm to, and they use magnetic fields to direct the sperm where to swim.

The harness also has a quick release mechanism. When the device hits a surface, the force of the collision causes the harness to release its grip on the sperm which then swim away freely. The idea is that this happens when the sperm reaches the tumor, where it can then burrow into the tissue and into the cancer cells themselves.

Details of the work can be found in their arxiv paper.

Original Submission

kazzie writes:

The way you tilt your mobile while you're using it could allow hackers to steal your pin numbers and passwords, according to new research.

Experts at Newcastle University analysed the movement of a smartphone as the keyboard was used. They say they cracked four-digit Android pins with 70% accuracy on the first guess and 100% by the fifth guess.

[...] Dr Maryam Mehrnezhad, from the university's school of computing science, said: "Most smartphones, tablets, and other wearables are now equipped with a multitude of sensors (gyroscope, rotation sensors, accelerometer, etc).

"But because mobile apps and websites don't need to ask permission to access most of them, malicious programmes can covertly 'listen in' on your sensor data." The team said it was able to identify 25 different sensors which come as standard on most devices.

[...] "And worse still, in some cases, unless you close them down completely, they can even spy on you when your phone is locked.

[...] The researchers found that everything you do - from clicking, scrolling and holding to tapping - led to people holding their phone in a unique way. So on a known webpage, the team was able to work out which part of the page the user was clicking on, and what they were typing, by the way it was tilted.

The pre-publication paper on arxiv adds examples of using iframes or additional tabs to capture sensor data when inputting passwords on webpages.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

What pushes a teenager to suddenly drop out of high school? The answer: any number of very stressful "trigger" events that occur in their final few months in class, researchers at Université de Montréal's Public Health Research Institute have found.

In fact, adolescents exposed to severe stressors are more than twice as likely to drop out in the following few months compared to similar schoolmates who are not exposed, says the study led by UdeM pyschoeducation professor Véronique Dupéré.

The stressors are not always school-related. In fact, most occur away from school and can involve family members (divorcing parents, for example), conflicts with peers, work issues (being laid off), health issues (a car accident) and legal issues.

[...] "These findings show that the risk of high school dropout is not predetermined over the long run," Dupéré said. "Rather, it fluctuates and becomes higher when adolescents have to deal with challenging situations in their lives. School personnel thus need to be aware of their students' changing needs in and out of school to provide them with the right kind of support at the right time."

What has been your experience?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170410123935.htm

[Source]: What triggers a high-school student to suddenly drop out?

[Abstract]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.12792/abstract

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Goodbye, coral reefs:

For the second year in a row, Australian marine scientists have carried out the sad task of surveying the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) to determine the impact of widespread bleaching caused by elevated sea water temperatures. And for the second year in a row, the findings are grim: Severe bleaching occurred on many of the individual reefs in the middle third of the 2300–kilometer-long system, according to the aerial survey results released today.

In 2016, severe bleaching hit the northern third of the reef. Now, surveys show a significant number of reefs in the central GBR have been hit 2 years in a row. Because it takes at least a decade for a full recovery by the fastest growing corals, there is "zero prospect of recovery" for reefs hit in successive years, says James Kerry, a marine biologist at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia.

[For folks in the USA, the length of the GBR is approximately the same as the distance from Chicago, Illinois to Houston, Texas. --Ed.]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/chemistry/search-wild-fava-bean

Like all food crops, the faba, or fava, bean -- a nutritious part of many the diet of many cultures diets -- had a wild ancestor. Wild faba is presumed to be extinct, but Weizmann Institute of Science researchers have now identified 14,000-year-old remains of seeds that offer important clues as to the time and place that this plant grew naturally. Understanding the ecology of the wild plants' environment and the evolution they underwent in the course of domestication is crucial to improving the biodiversity of the modern crop. The findings were reported in Scientific Reports.

[...] The new finding -- faba seeds from an archaeological site, el-Wad, on Mount Carmel in Northern Israel -- came from the earliest levels of an excavation that had been carried out by Profs. Mina Evron and Daniel Kaufman, and Dr. Reuven Yeshurun, all of Haifa University. The people living at that time, the Natufians, were hunter-gathers, and thus the plants there were growing wild. Boaretto and Caracuta performed radiocarbon dating and micro X-ray CT analysis on the preserved pieces of bean to pinpoint their age and identify them as the ancestors of the modern fava bean.

"Sometime between 11,000 and 14,000 years ago, people in this region domesticated faba -- around the same time that others farther north were domesticating wheat and barley," says Boaretto. Faba, a nutritious legume, is eaten around the world; in some places it is used for animal feed; and it fixes nitrogen in the soil. "Understanding how this plant was adapted to the habitat of the Carmel 14,000 years ago can help us understand how to create new modern varieties that will better be able to withstand pests and tolerate environmental stress," she says.

Vicia faba.

14,000-year-old seeds indicate the Levantine origin of the lost progenitor of faba bean (open, DOI: 10.1038/srep37399) (DX)

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

According to Technology Review, some business leaders have decided that cyber attacks are just another fact of life and they might as well give up on fixing the problem through IT. And buy insurance instead.

Of course, now the insurance companies have the problem of calculating risk and accompanying premiums.

The article covers other cases including losses from a really major attack.

Your PHB said that your security requests were too expensive. And now he (or his bosses) have decided that it's not even possible to be secure. Time to throw in the towel?

Original Submission