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Phoenix666 writes:

A large, nationally representative survey in 2013 of adults in China finds that the estimated overall prevalence of diabetes was about 11 percent and that of prediabetes was nearly 36 percent, according to a study published by JAMA.

Previous studies have shown increasing prevalence of diabetes in China, which now has the world's largest diabetes epidemic. To provide more recent estimates of the prevalence of diabetes and prediabetes, Linhong Wang, Ph.D., of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, and Yonghua Hu, M.D., of Peking University, Beijing, and colleagues analyzed data from a nationally representative survey conducted in 2013 in mainland China, which included 170,287 participants. Fasting plasma glucose and hemoglobin A1c levels were measured for all participants. Diabetes and prediabetes were defined according to the 2010 American Diabetes Association criteria.

[...] The authors write that the prevalence of diabetes of 10.9 percent was only slightly lower than the prevalence of total diabetes in the U.S. population (12-14 percent) in 2011-2012. The estimated prevalence of prediabetes in China (35.7 percent) was similar to the U.S. (36.5 percent in 2011-2012). Overall, 47 percent of the Chinese adult population was estimated to have either diabetes or prediabetes, slightly lower than the 49 percent to 52 percent estimate in the U.S. population.

Journal Reference:
Limin Wang, et. al., Prevalence and Ethnic Pattern of Diabetes and Prediabetes in China in 2013. JAMA, 2017; 317 (24): 2515 DOI: 10.1001/jama.2017.7596

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DeathMonkey writes:

Time magazine has asked the Trump organisation to remove fake Time Magazine covers bearing his image that were on display at his golf clubs.

[...] The cover was reportedly on display at four other golf clubs owned by the US president.

The image, dated 1 March 2009, had never run in the magazine in any format, a Time spokeswoman said. The real March edition featured actor Kate Winslet.

"I can confirm that this is not a real Time cover," Kerri Chyka wrote to the Post. The paper said Time had asked the Trump organisation to remove the covers from display.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/28/time-magazinetrump-fake-covers-golf-clubs

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Phoenix666 writes:

Until now, LiDAR measurements of surfaces hidden behind foliage have been difficult to acquire. A majority of the original light in these cases gets thrown away, as far as the camera detecting light from the ground is concerned, since the light hitting the leaves never reaches the ground in the first place. Moreover, the light blocked, and therefore reflected, before getting to the ground often overpowers the signal hitting the camera and hides the fainter signal that does make it to the ground and back.

"We have been working with a process called optical phase conjugation for quite some time and it dawned on us that we might be able to use that process to essentially project a laser beam through the openings of the leaves and be able to see through a partial obscuration," Lebow said. "It was something that until maybe the last five years was not viable just because the technology wasn't really there. The stuff we had done about 20 years ago involved using a nonlinear optical material and was a difficult process. Now everything can be done using digital holography and computer generated holograms, which is what we do."

This new system uses a specially designed laser that alone took a year and a half to develop, but was a necessary component according to Lebow and his colleague, Abbie Watnik, who is also at the Naval Research Laboratory and another of the work's authors.

"The real key to making our system work is the interference between two laser beams on the sensor. We send one laser beam out to the target and then it returns, and at the exact same time that return [beam] hits the detector, we interfere it locally with another laser beam," Watnik said. "We need complete coherence between those beams such that they interfere with one another, so we had to have a specially designed laser system to ensure that we would get that coherence when they interfere on the camera."

Using a pulsed laser with pulse widths of several nanoseconds, and gated measurements with similar time resolution, the holographic system selectively blocks the earliest-to-arrive light reflecting off obscurations. The camera then only measures light coming back from the partially hidden surface below.

Seems a much better way than using large quantities of Agent Orange.

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Phoenix666 writes:

America has more than 6 million vacant jobs, yet the country is "facing a serious skills gap," Labor Secretary R. Alexander Acosta recently said. And last week his boss, President Donald Trump, said he wants to close this gap by directing $100 million of federal money into apprenticeship programs. Apprenticeships in the U.S. are generally known for training workers for blue collar jobs like plumbers or electricians, but with a little tweak, they could be the path to lucrative, white collar tech jobs across the country. Not just in coastal cities, but also in the Midwest, South, and across the Great Plains.

But to get there we need to erase the notion that highly paid jobs require a college degree. It's not always true. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, among others, has called for a shift in focus: "skills, not degrees. It's not skills at the exclusion of degrees. It's just expanding our perspective to go beyond degrees."

An academic degree signals to employers that a person has successfully completed a course of study, but it does not provide a clear assessment of someone's skills. Companies, especially in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) industries, are shifting their recruiting process from "where did you study?" to "what can you do?".

Germans have long cited their apprenticeship system as a factor in their economic success. Would it help America and elsewhere, too?

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takyon writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40403351

"We've created the world's first bus that runs on formic acid, which is a much cheaper solution than hydrogen, yet it delivers the same environmental benefits," says Lucas van Cappellen from Team Fast, a spin-off company from Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. [...] Formic acid is found in nature, delivered in the stings and bites of ants and other insects - the Latin word for ant is formica. And this simple carboxylic acid (chemical formula HCOOH) is already used in textiles and leather processing, as a livestock feed preservative, and is also found in some household limescale removers.

[...] But Team Fast has found a way the acid can efficiently carry the ingredients needed for hydrogen fuel cells, used to power electric vehicles. The fuel, which the team has dubbed hydrozine (not to be confused with hydrazine), is a liquid, which means you can transport it easily and refill vehicles quickly, as with conventional fuels. The difference is that it is much cleaner. "The tailpipe emissions are only CO2 and water," explains Mr van Cappellen. "No other harmful gases like nitric oxides, soot or sulphuric oxides are emitted."

To prove the concept in the real world, an electric bus is set to hit the road in the Netherlands later this year, where it will shuttle between running on conventional bus routes and appearing at promotional events and industry fairs. The bus has an electric drive system, developed by bus builder VDL, that receives additional power from the formic acid fuel cell system mounted in a range-extender trailer, towed behind. "Our tank is around 300 litres, so we will extend the range of the bus by 200km (180 miles). However, we could of course make the tank bigger very easily," says Mr van Cappellen.

[...] "In a reactor, water and CO2 are bonded using sustainable electricity. This is a direct, sustainable electrochemical process," explains Mr van Cappellen. The hydrozine is then broken down by a catalyst into hydrogen and carbon dioxide inside a piece of kit called a reformer that Team Fast is attempting to patent. Its newly designed reformer is a tenth of the size of reformers of the past, which is why "it is now applicable in transport applications for the first time". The hydrogen is then added to a fuel cell where it reacts with oxygen to generate the electricity that powers the electric motor.

[...] "It costs about 35,000 euros (£30,000) to convert a conventional petrol filling station to a hydrozine filling station, a process that essentially involves replacing the pipes and coating the tanks," says Mr van Cappellen. As such, it is "100 times cheaper" to roll out a fuelling network for hydrozine than for gaseous hydrogen, he maintains.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Guardian was wrong to report in January that the popular messaging service WhatsApp had a security flaw so serious that it was a huge threat to freedom of speech.

But it was right to bring to wide public notice an aspect of WhatsApp that had the potential to make some messages vulnerable to being read by an unintended recipient.

The Guardian did not test with an appropriate range of experts a claim that had implications for the more than one billion people who use the Facebook-owned WhatsApp.

In a detailed review I found that misinterpretations, mistakes and misunderstandings happened at several stages of the reporting and editing process. Cumulatively they produced an article that overstated its case.

The Guardian ought to have responded more effectively to the strong criticism the article generated from well-credentialled experts in the arcane field of developing and adapting end-to-end encryption for a large-scale messaging service.

The original article – now amended and associated with the conclusions of this review – led to follow-up coverage, some of which sustained the wrong impression given at the outset. The most serious inaccuracy was a claim that WhatsApp had a "backdoor", an intentional, secret way for third parties to read supposedly private messages. This claim was withdrawn within eight hours of initial publication online, but withdrawn incompletely. The story retained material predicated on the existence of a backdoor, including strongly expressed concerns about threats to freedom, betrayal of trust and benefits for governments which surveil. In effect, having dialled back the cause for alarm, the Guardian failed to dial back expressions of alarm.

This made a relatively small, expert, vocal and persistent audience very angry. Guardian editors did not react to an open letter co-signed by 72 experts in a way commensurate with the combined stature of the critics and the huge number of people potentially affected by the story. The essence of the open letter and a hyperlink to it were added to the article, but wider consultation and a fundamental reconsideration of the story were needed.

-- submitted from IRC

Previously: WhatsApp Vulnerability Allows Snooping on Encrypted Messages -- Or Does it?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2017/06/commercial-crew-providers-significant-progress-flights/

As the mid-way point of 2017 arrives, both of NASA's Commercial Crew Program service providers are making significant progress toward the first uncrewed test flights of their Dragon and Starliner capsules. At their second quarter 2017 meeting, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel [ASAP] noted this progress while also discussing outstanding concerns regarding the program and vehicles as well as the positive steps being taken to address these matters.

[...] Currently, SpaceX is on track to be the first to perform their uncrewed flight, known as SpX Demo-1, with Dr. Donald McErlean reporting to the ASAP that the flight continues to target a launch later this year.

Currently, both NASA and SpaceX hold that SpX Demo-1 will fly by the end of the year – though L2 level KSC scheduling claims the mission has potentially slipped to March 2018.

Regardless, SpX Demo-1 will be followed – under the current plan – by Boeing's uncrewed OFT (Orbital Flight Test) in mid-2018.

[Any guesses on when the first commercial crew flight with actual human passengers will lift off? --martyb]

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McGruber writes:

An interesting follow-up on the SN story "CEO of Computer Management Services Inc. Murdered During Home Invasion":

After the fleeing suspects crashed and ran into the woods, police set up a perimeter with road checkpoints.

Soon, a Lyft driver approached a checkpoint and told police she was picking up a passenger nearby.

"This may be one of our suspects trying to leave the scene," Fayette County Sheriff Barry Babb thought of the person being picked up. So Babb and three officers got into his car, which happened to be identical to the Lyft driver's. They got the location of the suspect from the Lyft driver and simply drove to the suspect, posing as his ride.

"The subject walked all the way up, was about to open the door and get in our vehicle, when we exited and identified ourself" said Sheriff Babb. The suspect fled and got about 100 yards into the woods before being taken into custody. "That was something that was unique for us," Babb said, "a first time for us."

Link: http://www.myajc.com/news/police-use-lyft-trojan-horse-find-murder-suspect/vyciTzxxuGxsOhsWgDzcEI/

Note: Link is paywalled, but allows four articles to be read before paying.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The future of sex could be pretty interactive, but it's starting with men.

Top porn streaming company Pornhub announced a new channel of interactive videos that will work with the latest generation of connected male sex toys. The videos, according Pornhub, will work with the Fleshlight Launch and Kiiroo Onyx, featuring "an eclectic mix of content, offering an assortment of themes and appealing to various target audiences."

Sex toys and content geared to women are arriving later on, working with OhMiBod, We-Vibe, Lovense Lush and Kiiroo Pearl, but Pornhub didn't confirm when.

The new interactive channel will also work with VR eventually, combining the synced content with immersive video.

Thank goodness. I'm fresh out of latinum for Quark's holosuites.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

India's Mars Orbiter Mission – aka MOM – has celebrated its 1,000th Earth day in orbit around the red planet.

The probe arrived on November 5, 2013 and last week ticked over into four figures. The mission cost a pittance or, as the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) puts it, MOM "is credited with many laurels like cost-effectiveness, short period of realisation, economical mass-budget, miniaturisation of five heterogeneous science payloads etc."

But the agency has detailed that recent efforts to keep MOM circling Mars have come at a cost. AS ISRO explains, MOM is periodically eclipsed and cannot see the sun during those times. As the craft's batteries are designed to survive only a 100-minute eclipse, a pending eight-hour eclipse presented a problem.

MOM solved it by burning its engines for 431 seconds to reach a new orbit in which it won't be eclipsed again until September 2017. But in so doing it burned 20 kilograms of propellant, leaving just 13kg in the tank.

That's not an immediate problem, because the craft only used about 7kg between its orbital insertion in late 2013 and the January 2017 eclipse-avoidance manoeuvres. But just 13kg left, the craft has scant resources if it needs to avoid another long eclipse, or conduct a long burn for some other reason.

Congratulations to the India space program on the achievement!

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

US lawmakers have drafted legislation proposing the formation of a new branch of the military called the Space Corps. This new space-orientated military service would join the five other branches of the United States Armed Forces and is intended to manage national security in space.

Last week, the House Armed Service Committee, led by Republican Chairman Mike Rogers and Ranking Member Democrat Jim Cooper, introduced the new legislation claiming that the current national security space systems in the United States are not capable of protecting the country's space assets.

"Not only are there developments by adversaries," says Mr Rogers and Mr Cooper in the committee release, "but we are imposing upon the national security space enterprise a crippling organizational and management structure and an acquisition system that has led to delays and cost-overruns."

Although the proposal establishes the US Space Corps as its own separate military service, it would still be operated from within the Department of the Air Force, in much the same way the US Marine Corps operates from within the Department of the Navy.

Will the space lasers make a 'pew, pew!' sound?

Also: Congressman Proposes A Military 'Space Corps'

Phoenix666 writes:

One of the challenges to aquaculture is that reproduction, as an energy intensive endeavor, makes fish grow more slowly. To solve this problem, Prof. Berta Levavi-Sivan at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem identified tiny molecules named Neurokinin B (NKB) and Neurokinin F (NKF) that are secreted by the brains of fish and play a crucial role in their reproduction. Prof. Levavi-Sivan, a specialist in aquaculture at the Hebrew University's Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, then developed molecules that neutralize the effect of NKB and NKF. The molecules inhibited fish reproduction and consequently led to increased growth rates.

These inhibitors can now be included in fish feed to ensure better growth rates. For example, young tilapia fed the inhibitors in their food supply for two months gained 25% more weight versus fish that did not receive the supplement. So far, NKB has been found in 20 different species of fish, indicating that this discovery could be effective in a wide variety of species.

Piscine growth hormone.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

India launched a communication satellite using its most powerful rocket on Monday, improving its prospects of winning a bigger share of the more than $300 billion global space industry and its hopes of a manned mission.

The 13-story high rocket, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mk III, or "Fat Boy," lifted off from the Sriharikota space center in southern India at 5:28 p.m. in clear blue skies.

At 6,914 lbs. the GSAT-19 satellite is the heaviest India has attempted to put in orbit, the space agency said.

The United States, Russia, China, Japan, and European Space Agency have the capability to launch satellites weighing more than three tonnes.

The launch was a couple weeks ago now, but it's welcome news. Perhaps a second iteration of the Space Race would get humanity into the wider solar system to stay.

Also: GLSV Mark III rocket conducts 'all-up' launch with GSAT-19 satellite

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Today, private spaceflight venture Blue Origin announced its plans to manufacture the company's new rocket engine, the BE-4, at a state-of-the-art facility in Huntsville, Alabama. It's an interesting move for the company, which has been mostly developing the engine at its headquarters in Kent, Washington, and testing the hardware in Texas. But the benefits for Blue Origin are both practical and political.

On the surface, it's a seemingly innocuous decision meant to capitalize on Huntsville's decades-long history of rocket development. The city is home to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, where the Saturn V rocket was developed and where NASA's future massive deep-space rocket, the Space Launch System, will also be worked on. Plus, many private space contractors are based in Huntsville, making spaceflight a key part of the city's economy and a huge jobs creator. It's why Huntsville has been nicknamed Rocket City.

"Alabama is a great state for aerospace manufacturing and we are proud to produce America's next rocket engine right here in Rocket City," Robert Meyerson, president of Blue Origin, said in a statement.

[...] Of course, Blue Origin probably also had some nice economic incentives to move to the state that factored into the decision. And the company will definitely have a good support system there. Blue Origin's move to Huntsville is supposed to generate 342 jobs at the new facility, located in Cummings Research Park, with salaries averaging $75,000. And given the city's history, Blue Origin should have no problem finding aerospace experts in the area. Phil Larson, a former science advisor to the Obama administration and a former SpaceX spokesperson, pointed out that SpaceX, in part, moved to Los Angeles because it had the largest concentration of aerospace engineers in the country at the time. "Alabama has that same sort of strong technical work force," he tells The Verge.

Source: The Verge

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Nokia 6 will be available in early July:

HMD Global — the Finnish company that owns the rights to manufacture Nokia-branded smartphones — announced earlier this year that it would be releasing new midrange Nokia Android phones in the United States. We now have more information on the first Nokia phone to hit Stateside: the Nokia 6, which will be available in early July for $229.

The Nokia 6 is the largest of the three Android phones HMD Global announced at Mobile World Congress, featuring a 5.5-inch, 1920 x 1080 display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of internal storage (expandable by microSD). On the software side of things, the 6 runs Android Nougat in its purest, unadulterated form — that means no bundled apps or overlaid skins. Plus, while the specs are decidedly average, the Nokia 6 does stand out with a metal unibody design built out of a single block of aluminum, which adds a premium touch to the otherwise midrange device.

Amazon is subsidizing the Nokia 6 by slapping ads on the lock screen.

Also at Engadget and CNET.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

[Update: It looks like the slashd daemon which was scheduled for 2017-06-29_00:10:00 failed to run again. We are investigating.]

We ran into a problem with the process which hands out moderation points each night.

We received a couple reports that people had no mod points. A query of our DB showed that fully 80% of our users had the full complement of 5 mod points. That seemed strange — we have a daemon that runs every night and that, among many other things, replenishes your supply each morning at 00:10 UTC. Apparently that process fell over and went toes up. Complicating matters, if you had mod points left over from the prior day, those were still available to you.

I put out the call to the devs as I tried to sleuth out what was going on. Many thanks to mrpg who played guinea pig and offered a fresh perspective as we tried to isolate the issue. With the information that was gathered, TheMightyBuzzard and paulej72 quickly figured out what happened. Further, rather than wait for tonight's process to run, TheMightyBuzzard manually updated the DB and handed out mod points to everyone.

(Debugging was complicated by the fact that there was another issue that was clogging up the logs which made it doubly hard to determine what happened. Debugging efforts are continuing on that matter.)

We anticipate things should be back to normal tomorrow. We'll check in on this story first thing in the morning so if you run into any issues with this, please post a reply with details.

P.S. I remember in the early days of this site when more than 12 hours of continuous up-time was an accomplishment. It's a credit to the staff here that we are now at a state where a system issue is a rare event, rather than an everyday occurrence.

-- martyb

Original Submission