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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[Nissan]'s latest concept is called Signal Shield, and it relies on a 180-year-old creation -- the Faraday cage. A Faraday cage uses conductive material to block electromagnetic fields. Installed in a Nissan Juke's center console, it's capable of blocking all communications to the phone, whether it's Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or regular ol' phone signals.

Thanks to its conductive properties, a Faraday cage blocks electromagnetic signals, preventing them from leaving or entering the cage.

Obviously, the goal is to prevent distracted driving. And it succeeds to that end, because a phone that can't do anything isn't going to distract a driver. Owners will still be able to use the phone through the infotainment system, thanks to a wired connection inside the center console.

[...] Or you could just head over to Amazon and buy a Faraday cage for less than $10 and keep it in your glovebox. That's always an option, too, even though it's far less elegant.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Like the fiber optic cables that connect landline phones, the long branches of brain cells transmit information from one neuron to the next. Unlike phone cables that can only passively carry electrical signals, however, neuronal branches are dotted with synapses—active computational powerhouses that constantly restructure themselves to form our thoughts and memories.

For a neuroscientist eager to study neural circuits and brain function, dendrites—the input cables—are a promising place to start. But with an average width tens or hundreds of times smaller than a human hair, dendrites are hard to observe. At the nanoscale level, synapses are even further beyond reach. Sure, microscopes can help by optically enlarging the tissue, but even the most state-of-the-art equipment is limited in resolution, and CSI-style "zoom and enhance" hardly ever works.

What if, instead of optically blowing up the brain, we could make it physically larger? Sound impossible? I thought so too. But this week, a team of neuroengineers led by Dr. Edward Boyden at MIT achieved just that. By embedding the brain into a gel that swells up when pumped with water, the team blew up mouse brain tissue to roughly 20 times its original size, while preserving the normal structure and connections of neurons and their dendrites. Using this method, aptly dubbed expansion microscopy (ExM), the team reconstructed a tiny piece of the mouse brain in 3D. Normally, dendrites entangle into a jumbled mess, making it hard to tease apart individual synaptic connections with a conventional light microscope.

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The next blockbuster drug could be developed with help from machine-learning techniques that are rapidly spreading from AI research to pharmacology labs.

Deep Genomics was founded by Brendan Frey, a professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in both machine learning and genomic medicine. His company uses deep learning, or very large neural networks, to analyze genomic data. Identifying one or more genes responsible for a disease can help researchers develop a drug that addresses the behavior of the faulty genes.

Until now the company has focused on scouring the genome for hard-to-detect mutations that might have a causal relationship with a particular disease. The company will focus, at first, on early-stage development of drugs for Mendelian disorders, inherited diseases that result from a single genetic mutation. These diseases are estimated to affect 350 million people worldwide.

The rush to apply AI techniques to medicine and drug development is partly driven by the emergence of powerful new algorithms, but also by cost-effective new ways of sequencing whole genomes, the entire readout of a person's DNA. "There's an opening of a new era of data-rich, information-based medicine," Frey says. "There's a lot of different kinds of data you can obtain. And the best technology we have for dealing with large amounts of data is machine learning and artificial intelligence."

Deep learning has emerged in recent years as a very powerful way to find abstract patterns using large amounts of training data. It has proved especially valuable for speech recognition and for classification (see "10 Breakthrough Technologies 2013: Deep Learning"). The approach is now rapidly finding new uses in fields including medicine, where it offers a way to spot signs of disease in medical images and has shown potential for predicting disease from patient records.

Frey, who trained as a computer scientist and studied at the University of Toronto under Geoffrey Hinton, a key figure in the development of deep learning, says Deep Genomics will seek to partner with a pharma company on drug development. But he adds that the company offers key expertise.

"There's going to be this really massive shake-up of pharmaceuticals," Frey says. "In five years or so, the pharmaceutical companies that are going to be successful are going to have a culture of using these AI tools."

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

IBM is urging customers to destroy flash drives it shipped to storage system customers because they contain malware.

The company warned in an advisory Tuesday that an unspecified number of USB flash drives shipped with the initialization tool for Storwize systems contain malicious code. IBM instructed customers who received the V3500, V3700 and V5000 Gen 1 systems to destroy the drive to prevent the code from replicating.

"When the initialization tool is launched from the USB flash drive, the tool copies itself to a temporary folder on the hard drive of the desktop or laptop during normal operation," IBM said in its advisory.

The malicious code is part of the Reconyc Trojan malware family, which typically targets computers in Russia and India, according to data from Kaspersky Lab.

IBM said that while the malware is copied onto the victim's device, the malicious code is not executed during initialization.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

SpaceX today said its planned constellation of 4,425 broadband satellites will launch from the Falcon 9 rocket beginning in 2019 and continue launching in phases until reaching full capacity in 2024.

SpaceX gave the Senate Commerce Committee an update on its satellite plans during a broadband infrastructure hearing this morning via testimony by VP of satellite government affairs Patricia Cooper. Satellite Internet access traditionally suffers from high latency, relatively slow speeds, and strict data caps. But as we reported in November, SpaceX says it intends to solve these problems with custom-designed satellites launched into low-Earth orbits.

SpaceX mentioned 2019 as a possible launch date in an application filed with the Federal Communications Commission in November and offered a more specific launch timeline today.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Three families of victims killed in a 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California have sued Twitter, Google, and Facebook, alleging that the tech giants knowingly supported ISIS by allowing it to build an online presence and recruit new members for attacks:

Similar lawsuits against social-networking companies have been dismissed by U.S. courts because of a law which immunizes online providers from liability over user postings.

Court records show that in previous cases, Google, Facebook and Twitter have said, while they are sympathetic to victims, they are not liable for what happened.

Original Submission

http://www.motortrend.com/news/workhorse-w15-4wd-plug-electric-work-truck-prototype-first-drive-review

Workhorse isn't the first company to attempt to put an electric pickup on the road, but it is the first to build one from the ground up rather than convert an existing truck. Phoenix Motorcars has been converting Ford E-Series vans to electric drivetrains for years and attempted, briefly, to do the same to a SsangYong pickup imported from South Korea. Via Motors has been converting Chevrolet Silverados and Express vans into plug-in hybrids for a few years now, but both graft electric motors onto the existing powertrain.

Workhorse has taken the idea a step further and is poised to beat the much-hyped Tesla EV pickup to market by several years. Like Tesla, Workhorse builds its own battery pack with Panasonic 18650 lithium-ion cells and mounts it fully under the vehicle, where it doubles as the truck's frame. Front and rear subframes, each with an electric motor, single-speed reduction gearbox, and a fully independent coil-spring suspension, are mounted to the frame. Up front, a BMW-sourced three-cylinder gasoline engine acts a generator producing 50 kW of electricity to charge the battery or drive the electric motors. (It never powers the wheels mechanically.)

kaszz writes:

After years of warnings, mobile network hackers have exploited SS7 flaws to drain bank accounts. SS7 is a set of telephony signaling protocols developed in the 1980s, to handle the public switched telephone network (PSTN), SMS etc.

The hackers first spammed out malware to victims' computers, which collected the bank account balance, login details and passwords for their accounts, along with their mobile number. Then they purchased access to a rogue telecommunications provider and set up a redirect for the victim's mobile phone number to a handset controlled by the attackers.

Next, usually in the middle of the night when the mark was asleep, the attackers logged into their online bank accounts and transferred money out. When the transaction numbers were sent they were routed to the criminals, who then finalized the transaction.

So any security that depend on PSTN-SS7 security is proven to be inadequate.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey appeared before a U.S. Senate panel on May 3rd to defend his agency's conduct under his leadership during the 2016 elections:

Comey acknowledged that the realization the bureau could have affected the election's outcome left him feeling "mildly nauseous." But, he added, "honestly, it wouldn't change the decision." Comey has been transformed into an unusual kind of political celebrity over the past year, his decisions coming in for sharp criticism from almost every point of the political spectrum.

News reports have cited anonymous sources within the intelligence community casting him as too fond of the spotlight, despite his repeated insistence to the contrary. Whether he sought it or not, Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing was yet another center-stage moment for the FBI director. Cable networks carried virtually uninterrupted coverage of his testimony from the moment he took his seat before a scrum of news photographers.

Comey explained his reasoning behind the decision to inform Congress about Clinton emails discovered during an investigation into Anthony Weiner, and said that he had made the right choice. One event that factored into the decision and his earlier July 2016 announcement about the Hillary Clinton investigation was Bill Clinton's meeting with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch. At Wednesday's hearing, Comey faced criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike on topics including the FBI's delay in disclosing an investigation into the Trump campaign and the decision to not charge Huma Abedin for mishandling classified information. On the day before the hearing, Hillary Clinton blamed the FBI Director for her loss, while President Trump tweeted that "FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!"

Comey appeared to confirm that the FBI is investigating whether its agents leaked information to Rudy Giuliani, a Trump ally. He also took the time to denigrate WikiLeaks by calling it "intelligence porn", and alleging that WikiLeaks acted as a "conduit for the Russian intelligence services or some other adversary of the United States just to push out information to damage the United States". Here's what Julian Assange had to say in response. Comey did not confirm whether or not the government is planning to charge Julian Assange with crimes related to his organization's recent activities. CNN reported in April that the U.S. is preparing to charge Assange with... something, and CIA Director Mike Pompeo recently called WikiLeaks a "non-state hostile intelligence service".

Also at The Washington Post, CNN, and The New York Times (editorial).

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

When uploaded to Netflix, an episode of the educational children's show "Bill Nye the Science Guy" cut out a segment saying that chromosomes determine one's gender.

[...] While noncontroversial at the time, the 1996 segment appears to contradict Netflix's new series "Bill Nye Saves the World."

The new show endorses a socially liberal understanding of gender, under which gender is defined by self-identification rather than genetics and there are more than just the two traditional genders.

People, people, people... Say it with me: The Internet Never Forgets.

Source: http://freebeacon.com/culture/netflix-edits-bill-nye-episode-remove-segment-chromosomes-determine-gender/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Morning glory seeds could potentially survive a trip between planets:

Natural sunscreens help morning glory seeds survive doses of ultraviolet (UV) radiation that would burn most humans to a crisp, according to a new study. The hardy seeds of the common flowering plant would probably even survive a voyage between planets, say the researchers. This might help researchers decide which species to send on future missions to Mars, a place that is bombarded with UV light because of its thin atmosphere. It also validates the concept of panspermia, the idea that life might have hopscotched through our solar system—or others—by hitching a ride on asteroids or comets.

"These results add to the fast-growing body of evidence showing that panspermia is not only possible, but absolutely inevitable," says Chandra Wickramasinghe, director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the study.

The research began a decade ago, when astronauts placed about 2000 seeds from tobacco plants and a flowering plant known as Arabidopsis thaliana on the outside of the International Space Station. For 558 days, the seeds were exposed to high levels of UV light, cosmic radiation, and extreme temperature fluctuations—conditions that are lethal to most forms of life. [...] They found that only morning glory seeds germinated [open, DOI: 10.1089/ast.2015.1457] [DX] after being exposed to light roughly 6 million times the dose typically used to sterilize drinking water, conditions that killed the much smaller tobacco and A. thaliana seeds.

Did somebody say interplanetary trip?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

University of Edinburgh have used machine learning to animate human characters:

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh have developed a novel learning framework called a Phase-Functioned Neural Network (PFNN) that uses machine learning for character animation and other applications. Daniel Holden, a researcher at Ubisoft Montreal and lead researcher on this project, described PFNN as:

A learning framework that is suitable for generating cyclic behavior such as human locomotion. We also design the input and output parameters of the network for real-time data-driven character control in complex environments with detailed user interaction. Despite its compact structure, the network can learn from a large, high dimensional dataset thanks to a phase function that varies smoothly over time to produce a large variation of network configurations. We also propose a framework to produce additional data for training the PFNN where the human locomotion and the environmental geometry are coupled. Once trained our system is fast, requires little memory, and produces high quality motion without exhibiting any of the common artefacts found in existing methods.

Holden went on to say that, once trained, PFNN is extremely fast and compact, requiring only milliseconds of execution time and a few megabytes of memory, even when trained on gigabytes of motion data.

If this software can allow fewer people to create more complicated animations with less resources, it could be another step away from Hollywood. A single person with a computer could animate dead actors using software and source material (and create a soundtrack while they're at it). "Sets" can be created virtually. Personality rights laws can be circumvented by distributing amateur/fan films using the same avenues used for piracy (streaming, torrents, sneakernet, etc.), leading to a loss of control over the portrayal of living and dead actors.

Additional coverage can be found on ArsTechnica.

Related:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/computer-scientists-have-created-most-accurate-digital-model-human-face-here-s-what-it

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

We're all aware that there are stereotypes. The British are sharply sarcastic, the Americans are great at physical comedy, and the Japanese love puns. But is humour actually driven by culture to any meaningful extent? Couldn't it be more universal – or depend largely on the individual?

There are some good reasons to believe that there is such a thing as a national sense of humour. But let's start with what we actually have in common, by looking at the kinds of humour that most easily transcend borders.

Certain kinds of humour are more commonly used in circumstances that are international and multicultural in nature – such as airports. When it comes to onoard entertainment, airlines, in particular, are fond of humour that transcends cultural and linguistic boundaries for obvious reasons. Slapstick humour and the bland but almost universally tolerable social transgressions and faux pas of Mr Bean permit a safe, gentle humour that we can all relate to. Also, the silent situational dilemmas of the Canadian Just for Laughs hidden camera reality television show has been a staple option for airlines for many years.

These have a broad reach and are probably unlikely to offend most people. Of course, an important component in their broad appeal is that they are not really based on language.

Humor is no laughing matter. Levity can kill. But can it also bind us together?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Imagination Technologies will continue to make GPUs after their biggest customer, Apple, said it would phase out their use of the products. In fact, Imagination will sell its MIPS CPU business and Ensigma communications business and focus solely on GPUs. Meanwhile, Imagination is seeking an agreement with Apple to put the company on better footing:

Just over a month ago, Imagination Technologies dropped the bombshell announcement that their largest customer, Apple, would be phasing out their use of Imagination's GPU IP in their SoC GPU designs. Specifically, Apple expects that they will no longer be using Imagination's IP for new products in 15 to 24 months. This put Imagination in a significant pinch, as Apple is a full half of the company's overall revenue and 69% of their GPU revenue. As a result, Imagination stands to lose the bulk of their GPU revenue starting two years down the line.

[...] Meanwhile in Imagination's bombshell of the month, alongside today's Apple update, the company is also announcing that they are going to be refocusing the company to focus entirely on the GPU business. To that end, the company is putting their remaining non-GPU businesses – the MIPS CPU business and the Ensigma communications business – on the market. Imagination is not listing an expected price for either business at this time – or if they have already lined up any suitors – but the company believes that given the improved fiscal performance of these two divisions, that they are in a good position to sell the two divisions.

MIPS and Ensigma have been two of Imagination's major efforts to diversify the company away from their original core business of GPU IP. MIPS was acquired by Imagination for $100M in 2012 – about 4.5 years ago – while Ensigma has been part of the company since the turn of the millennium. MIPS in particular has been a long-running architecture in the embedded space, and along with x86, is the other alternative CPU architecture supported by Google's Android OS. So the news that the engineering team and product portfolio behind the #2 architecture in mobile and embedded are being sold is a major development. MIPS and Ensigma are now joining Imagination's Pure business, which is also in the process of being sold off.

Original Submission

charon writes:

Microbiologists often study microbes in isolation. In the scientific vernacular, this is called "pure culture." While this is necessary to understand how individual microbes work, the trouble with this approach is that microbes do not live by themselves in the natural environment. Instead, they live in communities with multiple other species, cooperating and competing in order to survive.

As a result, microbes can behave very differently in the environment compared to the artificial solitude of the laboratory. This insight has helped spur the field of microbial ecology, which studies microbial interactions with each other and the environment. One technique to do is "co-culture." Instead of growing microbes in isolation, they are grown in the presence of other organisms.

A team of scientists led by Andrea Stierle from the University of Montana has applied this technique to species of the fungus Penicillium, the same genus that produces the antibiotic penicillin. The researchers discovered that, when grown in co-culture, two different species of the fungus cooperate to synthesize an antibiotic that neither species produces when grown alone.

The species, called P. fuscum and P. camembertii/clavigerum, are extremophiles (i.e., microbes that love extreme environmental conditions) that the team isolated from the Berkeley Pit Lake, which is acidic and metal-rich. The fungi were grown in separate pure cultures as well as in co-culture, after which metabolites were extracted, isolated, and identified. The team noticed that unique molecules were present in co-culture that weren't found in the pure cultures.

Source: http://acsh.org/news/2017/05/01/two-fungal-species-cooperate-synthesize-antibiotic-11215

Abstract: Andrea A. Stierle, et al. "The Berkeleylactones, Antibiotic Macrolides from Fungal Coculture." J Nat Prod 80(4): 1150-1160. Published: 22-Mar-2017. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.7b00133 (Full journal article is paywalled.)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Mauritius, an island nation that is the world's second largest exporter of long-tailed macaques, has moved to allow scientific experimentation on the nonhuman primates locally:

The persistent fight by animal welfare activists to end nonhuman primate research has found its way to Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean two-thirds the size of Rhode Island. In the 1700s, Dutch and Portuguese seafarers introduced the long-tailed macaque to the island, where the animals thrived and, in recent decades, formed the basis of an export industry supplying biomedical labs in the developed world. Now, Mauritius has decided to get into the business of nonhuman primate experimentation itself even as such work is becoming increasingly constrained in North America and Europe. Last month the move touched off a heated debate in Mauritius's National Assembly about whether the government could adequately protect the macaques used in research and whether the new industry might endanger a far bigger lifeline for the island—tourism.

The debate is reverberating overseas. Activists, led by London-based Cruelty Free International, see the influence of Mauritius's five monkey breeding companies behind the government's February step allowing licenses to be issued for local research on island-bred macaques. (The new regulations also allow rabbit and rodent studies.) They contend that the companies are alarmed by a successful, high-pressure campaign to discourage commercial airlines from flying nonhuman primates from source countries such as Mauritius to research centers—and are trying to hedge their bets. The London group also argues that the new regulations, which amend the country's Animal Welfare Act, are invalid because they don't further the purpose of the original legislation.