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Phoenix666 writes:

Increasing the prices and adding tax measures on tobacco products has been used to decrease the demand of cigarettes.

Many countries have successfully used tax policies to regulate the price of cigarette products. In Australia, a pack of cigarattes can cost up to $18, making it the most expensive country to buy cigarettes.

A report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) in 2016, found that the smoking rate in the country was at an all time low. In the last 20 years, smoking had decreased by almost 50 percent.

The study showed that less than 13 percent of Australians are daily smokers and fewer people are starting to smoke.

The report cites Australia as having one of the lowest smoking rates in the world, contributed in part by their implementation of increased taxes on tobacco products, plain packaging, and more restrictive smoke free environment laws.

Have the pictures of diseased lungs Australia puts on packs of cigarettes helped?

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Fnord666 writes:

11 years after its release, Sony has finally stopped shipping the PlayStation 3 to retailers in Japan. We all knew this day was coming, with the country ceasing production on the 500 GB standard model in December last year. Now, however, a recent update on PlayStation Japan's website suggests that the final lingering units have all been shipped. For those who somehow still haven't bought one, Sony's long-standing game machine is still being produced in other parts of the world.

Selling over 70 million units in just seven years, the PlayStation 3 was certainly a console to be reckoned with. Yet, for all its achievements, the long-surviving gaming machine initially made a name for itself for all the wrong reasons. With Sony riding high on the PlayStation 2's market-leading sales numbers, its successor launched at the eye-watering price of $499 -- and consumers weren't too happy about it. Luckily for Sony, publishers stuck with the pricey console, and exclusive games like Uncharted, Heavy Rain, The Last Of Us and Metal Gear Solid 4 helped to right the course of Sony's initially water-riddled ship.

Source: engadget

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Dr. Lowe, from In the Pipeline, writes about new discoveries in the field of antibiotics:

Anyone who's done antibiotic research can tell you about what a slog it is. Just looking at the rate of approval of new ones will tell you that, too – it really is like breaking rocks, except breaking rocks is a lot more straightforward and rewarding most of the time. As I've said before, when I look back at all the mammalian cells that I've killed with my molecules over the years, and compare that to the experience I had working against gram-negative bacteria, it's pretty sobering. Killing gram-negative pathogens is hard. And killing them with a compound that (A) hasn't already been discovered, in one form or another and (B) doesn't kill everything else it touches is a challenge indeed.

There are two new papers, though, that give a person some hope. And we need some, because resistant bacteria, as everyone has been saying for years now, could really give our industrial civilization fits. Here's some work by the Hergenrother group at Illinois, though, that sheds light on one of the biggest problems in antibiotic drug discovery: what kinds of structures should we be looking at?

That's a real puzzle, because antibiotic compounds in general tend to have pretty wooly structures, especially the ones derived from natural products. They tend to be outliers in most any rule-of-thumb property screen, and often break several of them simultaneously. Yet they work, and that's impressive, since to "work" in this context means to penetrate a lipopolysaccharide outer membrane, survive on the other side of it without being pumped right back out of the bacterial cell entirely, and penetrate that a second inner membrane in quantities sufficient to serve as a drug.

This paper looks through a set of compounds, carefully measuring the degree to which each accumulate in E. coli, and tried to draw some general structural lessons.

After identifying properties that allow compounds to penetrate Gram-negative bacteria, the research group demonstrates that they can convert an antibiotic that was limited to Gram-positive bacteria to have activity in Gram-negative bacteria.

The second discovery involves greatly improving the potency of a specific antibiotic:

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

A drug discovered more than 100 years ago may hold the key to combating autism symptoms, according to a study.

Researcher Dr Robert Naviaux of the San Diego School of Medicine gave suramin, a drug first developed in 1916, to 10 autistic boys between the ages of five and 14, and noted transformative results.

"After the single dose, it was almost like a roadblock had been released," he said. "If the future studies show that there's continued health benefits, this could be a game-changer for families with autism."

The study, which has been published in the Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, saw five of the participants receive suramin, while the remainder were given placebos. Included in the group were four non-verbal children – two six year olds and two 14 year olds.

"The six year old and the 14 year old who received suramin said the first sentences of their lives about one week after the single suramin infusion," Naviaux told the UC San Diego Health website. "This did not happen in any of the children given the placebo."

Source: https://www.rt.com/usa/390222-autism-research-suramin-symptoms/

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Phoenix666 writes:

The human ear is an intricate mechanism full of delicate moving parts, which makes it a fiddly thing to fix if something goes wrong. Chronic middle ear disease can lead to infection, pain, hearing loss and perforated eardrums, and patients may need several rounds of surgery to address the problems. Now an Australian team of researchers has developed the ClearDrum, a silk implant that can repair a damaged eardrum with just one procedure.

Currently, the standard procedure for repairing eardrums is a delicate affair. Grafts are made from a patient's own tissue, and then attached to the sensitive membrane through some very precise surgery. Even then, it often requires the patient to come back a few times for additional procedures.

But the ClearDrum could change that. Eight years in development, the implant is made of silk, is about the size of a contact lens and, as its name suggests, it's transparent. On the other hand, maybe the ClearDrum gets its name from the improvements it makes to a patient's hearing, since it can apparently transmit sound even better than the real thing.

They can rebuild us. They have the technology.

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butthurt writes:

The MS-21, a new single aisle airliner produced by Russia's United Aircraft Corporation, is the first passenger plane borne aloft by lightweight carbon-composite wings built without a costly pressurized oven called an autoclave.

[...] Under the new technology, instead of using fiber that is pre-impregnated with resin, parts are made from a dry-fiber engineered textile which is placed in a mould and then infused with resin under a vacuum.

The parts can then be cured in an oven without pressure, a process estimated to cost 25 percent more than metal. Ultimately, that gap needs to narrow significantly or disappear.

Boatbuilders and windfarm makers have used this method for years. Secondary airplane parts have also been made that way.

But although Canada's Bombardier partly used the technique for its CSeries, it was rare for flight-critical parts before the designers of the new Russian plane chose it for the wing.

—Reuters

previous stories:
Irkut Shows New MC-21 Airliner
The Little Gear That Could Reshape the Jet Engine

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NASA will discuss its plans for the Solar Probe Plus soon (11 AM EDT, 3 PM UTC):

NASA will make an announcement about the agency's first mission to fly directly into our sun's atmosphere during an event at 11 a.m. EDT Wednesday, May 31, from the University of Chicago's William Eckhardt Research Center Auditorium. The event will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website.

Both the Solar Probe Plus and ESA's Solar Orbiter are planned to launch in 2018.

Update: They renamed Solar Probe Plus to "Parker Solar Probe" after Eugene Parker, a living scientist who developed the theory of solar wind.

takyon writes:

The Russian Quantum Center today announced it has overcome the threat of quantum cryptography by creating the first quantum-safe blockchain, securing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, along with classified government communications and other sensitive digital transfers.

The center said the technology has been successfully tested by one of Russia's largest banks, Gazprombankm, and that the center is now working to expand the capability to other Russian and international financial services organizations.

The announcement was greeted with a wait-and-see attitude by industry observers, including HPC analyst Steve Conway, of Hyperion (formerly IDC), who noted that, given the complexity of the use case, neither the press release nor the white paper issued by the Russian Quantum Center provided enough technical detail to validate its announcement.

"As far as the use case goes," Conway said, "it's pretty universally acknowledged that one of the key early uses for quantum computing is going to be for cyber defense, so that's no surprise. Efforts like that are underway around the world. It's difficult to assess this one in comparison with any other without having any technical details about what they're doing."

Source:

https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/05/25/russian-researchers-claim-first-quantum-safe-blockchain/

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

The labor shortage in Japan is at its highest in more than four decades, according to new government data. Low birth rates and an aging population have resulted in a shrinking workforce.

There are currently 1.48 jobs for every applicant, the highest figure since 1974 when fast growth drove the ratio to 1.53. The data outpaces the labor shortage peak in the early 1990s, during the country's period of economic stagnation.

[...] The analyst said the number of women and older people who have been joining the labor force has increased, as "the labor shortage is forcing companies to hire people who previously weren't looking for work."

Source: RT

[T]he number of families living on an income lower than the public welfare assistance level more than doubled in the 20 years after the asset price bubble popped in 1992, according to a study by Kensaku Tomuro of Yamagata University.

Now 16 percent of Japanese children live below the poverty line, according to Health Ministry statistics, but among single-parent families, the rate hits 55 percent. Poverty rates in Osaka are among the worst.

[...] Children of single or poor parents often are ostracized in their communities, Tokumaru said, noting that other parents do not want their children playing with children from a "bad house."

Source: The Washington Post

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Phoenix666 writes:

Lebanon's economy ministry says it has asked the country's security agency to ban the 2017 Wonder Woman movie because its lead actress, Gal Gadot, is an Israeli.

A senior security official says no formal request has been received yet, and that the ban would require a recommendation from a six-ministry-member committee.

[...] Lebanon is officially at war with Israel and has a decades-old law that boycotts Israeli products and bars Lebanese citizens from traveling or having contacts with Israelis.

Supporters of the boycott took to social media to campaign against the movie.

        @TimesofIsrael Please don't watch the movie wonder woman, boycott.
        The star gal gadot is a pro-IDF Zionist who herself served in the terrorist organization pic.twitter.com/fvWSHRIx2w
        — Tee (@boyzinthehoood) May 29, 2017

        @GalGadot you showing your support just shows you are as evil as the Israel army baby killers # boycott #WonderWoman
        — Zam m (@zam18028526) May 30, 2017

        Israel is sick..and the new Wonder Woman supports it! Boycott Israel! https://t.co/QJ1FCGzfkh
        — Nick Littlejohn💿 (@nickmlittlejohn) April 10, 2016

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Phoenix666 writes:

We're not going to lie, an extra pair of hands would be pretty useful sometimes (dare we say, handy). Imagine you're typing out an email while a third hand is bringing a coffee cup up to your lips, or reading a book while chowing down on some potato chips and petting the dog. A team of Japanese engineers has come up with a solution dubbed MetaLimbs – a set of robotic arms that are controlled with your feet and knees.

Based at the University of Tokyo, researchers at the Inami Laboratory saw our limited number of limbs as a problem they could engineer a solution to. MetaLimbs, or Multiple Arts Interaction Metamorphism, is a set of robotic arms that reach around under your human arms and are controlled by sensors attached to your legs.

Positional tracking balls on the knees and feet direct the arm movement, while a sock device allows the movement of your toes to control the grasp of the robot hands. There are even haptic sensors on the robot hands that generate force feedback on your feet. The arms are intended to be worn while sitting, but can be used while standing depending on the task at hand.

At last!

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Bing.com OCSP certificate expires: how pathetic is that?

lgsoynews writes:

For over 8 hours now, when trying to access Bing.com, you'll get a warning about their OCSP certificate (message from Firefox):

An error occurred during a connection to www.bing.com. Invalid OCSP signing certificate in OCSP response. Error code: SEC_ERROR_OCSP_INVALID_SIGNING_CERT

How pathetic is that? I mean, companies such as Microsoft are so big; don't tell me they don't have the human & technical knowledge to manage their certificates. Even an intern could write some kind of tool to ensure a warning is sent beforehand!

It's embarrassing that something that simple (cert & domain expiration) is still a frequent problem, and for BIG tech companies too!

Palemoon: Hotmail, Live, Outlook and Bing connection errors, and our security.

An Anonymous Coward writes with an update from the Pale Moon dev team:

Today, our users started seeing connectivity errors when trying to connect to most Microsoft on-line services like Hotmail, Onedrive, Outlook, Microsoft Live, and even the https version of the Bing search engine. The culprit? misconfigured servers on Microsoft's side, specifically their so-called "stapled OCSP responses".

Now, this gets technical rather quickly, so a quick summary of what this is all about:
[...]
What happened is that servers for the domains mentioned did not use the correct certificate chain to sign their stapled OCSP responses. As a result, connections to the related https servers started to fail. But, notably, only from browsers using NSS (like Pale Moon and Firefox). Chrome didn't complain (more on that later). Edge was apparently also fine, but I haven't looked into why that is, myself.

From a browser's point of view, this should be considered (very) bad, because it looks like some other party (not being the authority that issued the certificate) is trying to tell the browser that a certificate isn't revoked. This party could be an attacker that is trying to use a revoked (mis-issued) certificate, for example.

Now, considering all browsers can be expected to support stapled responses, this highlighted a rather disturbing security issue with mainstream browsers: Apparently, only Pale Moon and Firefox (and rebuilds) are doing the correct thing.

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15823

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Phoenix666 writes:

The toy-like drones destroyed during an Army field exercise at Fort Sill, Okla., last month weren't anything special; however, the way they were brought down -- zapped out of the sky by lasers mounted on a Stryker armored vehicle -- might grab people's attention.

The first soldier to try out the lasers was Spc. Brandon Sallaway, a forward observer with the 4th Infantry Division. He used a Mobile Expeditionary High Energy Laser to shoot down an 18-by-10-inch drone at 650 yards, an Army statement said.

"It's nothing too complicated but you have to learn how to operate each system and get used to the controls which is exactly like a video game controller," said Sallaway, who hadn't fired a laser before the exercise.

The drone-killing laser was relatively low energy -- only 5 kilowatts -- but the Army has tested much more powerful weapons. A 30-kilowatt truck-mounted High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator shot down dozens of mortar rounds and several drones in November 2013 at White Sands Missile Range, N.M.

Since then, researchers have made rapid advances in laser weapons, said Bob Ruszkowski, who works on air dominance projects and unmanned systems in Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works facility.

"We're really on the cusp of seeing the introduction of lasers in future systems," he said.

Which do you prefer, lasers or plasma weapons?

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n1 writes:

Burger King is in trouble with Belgium's monarchy over an advertising campaign asking Belgians to vote online to "crown" the global fast-food giant the true ruler of the country where the U.S. brand will launch next month.

Representatives of Belgium's King Philippe on Monday asked the local unit of Burger King, owned by Restaurant Brands International (QSR.TO)(QSR.N), to explain itself.

"We told them that we were not happy with them using an image of the king in their campaign," palace spokesman Pierre-Emmanuel De Bauw told Reuters, adding that the monarch's image -- he appears in cartoon form -- could not be used for commerce.

[...] The spoof poll may have touched a nerve in Brussels. In 1950 Belgians held a real referendum on a proposal to abolish the monarchy in light of the role of King Philippe's grandfather, Leopold III, during Nazi occupation. Leopold was forced to abdicate in favor of his son, Philippe's uncle.

Source: Reuters

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

After taking a lengthy absence from sci-fi, South African film director Neill Blomkamp has decided to pit the human race against extraterrestrial forces once again. Created by his new science fiction studio, Oats Studios, his latest project is a short film called Volume 1 -- and surprisingly, it could make its debut on PC gaming platform, Steam.

With Hollywood currently afflicted by franchise fever, Blomkamp's latest project aims to let viewers test out an experimental series of entirely new sci-fi movie concepts over the internet. While the famous director is still yet to confirm which streaming platforms he'll be using, a recent tweet suggests that he could stream these movies over Steam.

Source: Engadget

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Fnord666 writes:

To say that AlphaGo had a great run in the competitive Go scene would be an understatement: it has just defeated the world's number 1 Go player, Ke Jie, in a three-part match. Now that it has nothing left to prove, the AI is hanging up its boots and leaving the world of competitive Go behind. AlphaGo's developers from Google-owned DeepMind will now focus on creating advanced general algorithms to help scientists find elusive cures for diseases, conjure up a way to dramatically reduce energy consumption and invent new revolutionary materials.

Before they leave Go behind completely, though, they plan to publish one more paper later this year to reveal how they tweaked the AI to prepare it for the matches against Ke Jie. They're also developing a tool that would show how AlphaGo would respond to a particular situation on the Go board with help from the world's number one player.

Source: ArsTechnica

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