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tonyPick writes:

Atlas Obscura has an article on a robot programmed to perform Buddhist funeral rites.

What's the hottest new trend in robotics? It might be religion. Hot on the heels of Germany's Protestant-inspired automated blessing machine, BlessU-2, a Japanese company has unveiled a smiling automaton programmed to conduct Buddhist funerals.

Unveiled during the annual Life Ending Industry Expo in Tokyo, a funeral industry trade show, the little robot was presented by Nissei Eco Co. as an inexpensive alternative to hiring a flesh-and-blood monk. According to Reuters, the robot, a reprogrammed version of SoftBank Robotics' "Pepper" model of interactive humanoid automaton, can chant Buddhist sutras and beat a little drum to honor the dead. It can even livestream the service if needed.

Also at Reuters and The Guardian.

Youtube has a clip with the robot in action, which may give you nightmares. The robot in question is a reprogrammed SoftBank Robotics Pepper model. In related news it turns out Japan has a Life Ending Industry EXPO.

Once again Philip K Dick is proven right.

[Additional video clip by the New York Post. - Ed]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

China's first exascale supercomputer, estimated to cost $150-300 million, could be used for marine science research with an eye for turning China into a maritime superpower:

News out of China today indicates the nation could stand up a peak exaflop supercomputer even sooner [than 2020]. The South China Morning Post reported that China will build its first exascale machine in Shandong province as soon as 2019 to support ocean research in the South China Sea and boost China's maritime expansion.

[...] The project reflects the mission of Chinese Communist Party leader President Xi Jinping to turn China into a "hai shang qiang guo," or maritime superpower. "It will help, for instance, the simulation of the oceans on our planet with unprecedented resolution. The higher the resolution, the more reliable the forecast on important issues such as El Nino and climate change," Feng Liqiang, operational director of the Marine Science Data Centre in Qingdao, Shandong, told the South China Morning Post. "It will give China a bigger say in international affairs."

Not everyone agrees that the project will catapult China to maritime preeminence. Chinese ocean scientists pointed out that the US holds significant advantages in terms of having decades of historical data, sophisticated HPC software and algorithms, as well as a culture of open access to scientific data. "The State Ocean Administration runs and hoards its own data sets, as do the PLA Navy, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and many universities. Every institute is treating data as private asset for the interests of their own research," Lu Xianqing, professor at the Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography under the Ministry of Education in Qingdao, told the South China Morning Post.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

ASUS will sell a motherboard that can support 19 GPUs. The product is intended for cryptocurrency mining:

ASUS this week teased the new "B250 Mining Expert" which boasts all those slots because – as the name implies – its role in life is mining cryptocurrency.

The board can't do it all itself, of course. ASUS' preferred GPU is the P106, a variant of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1060), 1,280-CUDA-core, 1,506MHz affair that can surge to 1,708 MHz when required and boasts 6GB of RAM. ASUS' version is shorn of anything to do with displaying video so that it can smoke hashes to cook cryptocurrency.

Do the math: 19 GPUS, 1,280 cores apiece ... this motherboard could end up hosting 24,320 cores before you fill the Intel LGA 1511 socket with a Skylake, Kaby Lake or Coffee Lake CPU. That chip's half-dozen or so cores are hardly worth counting!

The board is also equipped to slurp three power supplies, because all those GPUs are thirsty. There's also a capacitor dedicated to each PCIe slot to make sure the juice doesn't fluctuate and upset the precious mining machines. A mining-specific BIOS that lets you manage all those GPUs rounds things out.

What do you do with this after cryptocurrency mining is dead?

Original Submission

stormwyrm writes:

LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory made physics history by managing to detect the previously elusive gravitational waves predicted by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity for the first time. They have, since they began operation, thrice observed the gravitational wave signatures emitted by the mergers of what are believed to be massive binary black hole systems. However, there is no confirmation of these events beyond the gravitational wave detection since black hole mergers may not emit anything else besides the gravitational waves. However, the merger of two neutron stars such as what is predicted to eventually happen to the Hulse–Taylor binary (which provided the first indirect confirmation of gravitational waves in the 1970s) will not only produce copious gravitational waves but possibly also a gamma ray burst or some other associated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The gravitational waves emitted by such an event would be weaker and harder for LIGO to detect, but on August 18th, noted astrophysicist J. Craig Wheeler tweeted a tantalising hint that they might actually have seen just such a thing happen:

New LIGO. Source with optical counterpart. Blow your sox off!

New Scientist reports that LIGO spokesperson David Shoemaker has not denied the rumour, and it seemed that four days after Wheeler's tweet the Hubble Space Telescope had been observing a neutron star binary candidate in the galaxy NGC 4993, which has since been deleted. From the article:

LIGO spokesperson David Shoemaker dodged confirming or denying the rumours, saying only "A very exciting O2 Observing run is drawing to a close August 25. We look forward to posting a top-level update at that time."

Speculation is focused on NGC 4993, a galaxy about 130 million light years away in the Hydra constellation. Within it, a pair of neutron stars are entwined in a deadly dance. While astronomers are staying silent on whether they are engaged in optical follow-ups to a potential gravitational wave detection, last night the Hubble Space Telescope turned its focus to a binary neutron star merger within the galaxy. A publicly available image of this merger was later deleted.

Further coverage and commentary from astrophysicist Ethan Siegel at Starts With A Bang.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Mosquitoes aren't just blood thirsty. They also have a sweet tooth, relying on plant nectar to get the sugar they need to survive. Exploiting this weakness, scientists have developed an environmentally friendly eradication method. The new, inexpensive technique tricks these annoying pests into gorging themselves on insecticides laced with a concoction that mimics the sweet-smelling scents and aromas that they find irresistible. It could bolster efforts to suppress malaria, Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases worldwide.

The researchers are presenting their work today at the 254th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

"The blend of chemicals that we use to attract mosquitoes is so powerful that they will ignore natural plant odors and attractants in order to get to our formulation," says Agenor Mafra-Neto, Ph.D. "From a mosquito's point of view, it's like having an irresistible chocolate shop on every corner. The product is so seductive that they will feed on it almost exclusively, even when it contains lethal doses of insecticide."

Conventional chemical insecticides used to control mosquitoes are used as cover sprays, frequently dispersed over wide areas. But this blanket spray approach exposes people and animals to potentially harmful compounds and can kill bees and other beneficial insects. In addition, residues of these sprays can contaminate soils and streams, as well as promote increased pesticide resistance. To overcome these issues, Mafra-Neto of ISCA Technologies and colleagues at several universities sought to create a more targeted approach using an insecticide potion spiked with a blend of semiochemicals, or chemical signals, that mosquitoes can't resist.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Neowin has a brief warning that Mozilla plans to collect anonymized user data. The given reason is to better understand how people use Firefox. Perhaps the most alarming aspect of this plan is that it is opt-out rather than opt-in. This is very far from the early days of Firefox when it had previously touted privacy as one of its main advantages.

As stated in the Google Groups announcement thread, they intend to use RAPPOR:

RAPPOR is a novel privacy technology that allows inferring statistics about populations while preserving the privacy of individual users.

This repository contains simulation and analysis code in Python and R.

[...] Publications

• RAPPOR: Randomized Aggregatable Privacy-Preserving Ordinal Response
• Building a RAPPOR with the Unknown: Privacy-Preserving Learning of Associations and Data Dictionaries

Links

• Google Blog Post about RAPPOR
• RAPPOR implementation in Chrome
• Mailing list: rappor-discuss@googlegroups.com

[Update @ 20170824_152224 UTC: fixed bad link to Google Groups thread.]

Original Submission

martyb writes:

What if you could interactively design a robot, print it, and then fold it into shape in a matter of a few hours? Interactive Robogami is just the thing:

Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) [...] present a system called "Interactive Robogami" that lets you design a robot in minutes, and then 3D-print and assemble it in as little as four hours.

One of the key features of the system is that it allows designers to determine both the robot's movement ("gait") and shape ("geometry"), a capability that's often separated in design systems.

"Designing robots usually requires expertise that only mechanical engineers and roboticists have," says PhD student and co-lead author Adriana Schulz. "What's exciting here is that we've created a tool that allows a casual user to design their own robot by giving them this expert knowledge."

[...] Importantly, the system is able to guarantee that a design is actually possible, analyzing factors such as speed and stability to make suggestions and ensure that, for example, the user doesn't create a robot so top-heavy that it can't move without tipping over.

Once designed, the robot is then fabricated. The team's origami-inspired "3-D print and fold" technique involves printing the design as flat faces connected at joints, and then folding the design into the final shape, combining the most effective parts of 2D and 3D printing.

[...] The team found that their 3D print-and-fold method reduced printing time by 73 percent and the amount of material used by 70 percent. The robots also demonstrated a wide range of movement, like using single legs to walk, using different step sequences, and using legs and wheels simultaneously.

Designing a robot that can walk is one thing, but the researchers are hoping to develop a system to design robots that can fly.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Mechanical loading, or forces that stimulate cellular growth for development, is required for creating cartilage that is then turned to bone; however, little is known about cartilage development in the absence of gravity or mechanical loads. Now, in a study led by the University of Missouri, bioengineers have determined that microgravity may inhibit cartilage formation. Findings reveal that fracture healing for astronauts in space, as well as patients on bed rest here on Earth, could be compromised in the absence of mechanical loading.

"Cartilage tissue engineering is a growing field because cartilage does not regenerate," said Elizabeth Loboa, dean of the MU College of Engineering and a professor of bioengineering. "Because these tissues cannot renew themselves, bioreactors, or devices that support tissue and cell development, are used in many cartilage tissue engineering applications. Some studies suggest that microgravity bioreactors are ideal for the process to take place, while others show that bioreactors that mimic the hydrostatic pressure needed to produce cartilage might be more ideal. Our first-of-its-kind study was designed to test both theories."

Chondrogenic differentiation is the process by which cartilage is developed and cartilage is the basis for bone formation in the body. Additionally, cartilage does not renew itself once it breaks down or fails in the body, making it a target for bioengineers who wish to help patients regenerate cartilage from other cells.

Journal Reference: Liliana F. Mellor, Andrew J. Steward, Rachel C. Nordberg, Michael A. Taylor, Elizabeth G. Loboa. Comparison of Simulated Microgravity and Hydrostatic Pressure for Chondrogenesis of hASC. Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance, 2017; 88 (4): 377 DOI: 10.3357/AMHP.4743.2017

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Observations of "Jellyfish galaxies" with ESO's Very Large Telescope have revealed a previously unknown way to fuel supermassive black holes. It seems the mechanism that produces the tentacles of gas and newborn stars that give these galaxies their nickname also makes it possible for the gas to reach the central regions of the galaxies, feeding the black hole that lurks in each of them and causing it to shine brilliantly. The results appeared today in the journal Nature.

An Italian-led team of astronomers used the MUSE (Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile to study how gas can be stripped from galaxies. They focused on extreme examples of jellyfish galaxies in nearby galaxy clusters, named after the remarkable long "tentacles" of material that extend for tens of thousands of light-years beyond their galactic discs [1][2].

The tentacles of jellyfish galaxies are produced in galaxy clusters by a process called ram pressure stripping. Their mutual gravitational attraction causes galaxies to fall at high speed into galaxy clusters, where they encounter a hot, dense gas which acts like a powerful wind, forcing tails of gas out of the galaxy's disc and triggering starbursts within it.

Six out of the seven jellyfish galaxies in the study were found to host a supermassive black hole at the centre, feeding on the surrounding gas [3]. This fraction is unexpectedly high — among galaxies in general the fraction is less than one in ten.

Source: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1725/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Elon Musk has unveiled the spacesuit (or flight suit) that will be used by astronauts aboard crewed Dragon flights:

In his Instagram post, Musk added that this suit was not a mock-up but rather a fully functional unit. "Already tested to double vacuum pressure," he wrote. "Was incredibly hard to balance aesthetics and function. Easy to do either separately." (Double vacuum pressure simply means the suit was probably inflated to twice the pressure of sea level and then put into a vacuum chamber.)

Musk gave no other technical information about the suit. Most strikingly, it is white, in contrast to the very blue spacesuits unveiled by Boeing in January.

These are not, strictly speaking, "space suits." Rather, they are more properly flight suits designed to be worn during the ride to space and again on the ride back down to Earth. They have a limited time in which they can operate in a full vacuum and are not intended for spacewalks.

Related: Boeing Unveils New Spacesuits for Starliner Astronaut Taxi

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

It has been accepted wisdom for many years that the more good cholesterol people have in their blood, the better. But the good cholesterol, also known as HDL, might not be as good as we think.

In any case, the results of a new study from the University of Copenhagen seriously contradict the assumption that high levels of HDL in the blood are only a good thing. The researchers have shown that people with extremely high levels of good cholesterol have a higher mortality rate than people with normal levels. For men with extremely high levels, the mortality rate was 106 per cent higher than for the normal group. For women with extremely high levels, the mortality rate was 68 per cent higher.

"These results radically change the way we understand 'good' cholesterol. Doctors like myself have been used to congratulating patients who had a very high level of HDL in their blood. But we should no longer do so, as this study shows a dramatically higher mortality rate," says Børge Nordestgaard, Professor at the Department of Clinical Medicine and one of the authors of the study.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Walmart has partnered with Google, allowing items to be bought online through Google Express. Google has also gotten rid of the annual membership fee for the service, instead offering free shipping for orders above a minimum amount (dependent on the store):

With an eye on the future of online retailing, Walmart and Google are teaming up to go after rival Amazon in a play that also targets the growing market for voice-activated shopping. Starting next month, Walmart customers will be able to access hundreds of thousands of products from the company's shelves — everything from dish washing soap to dining tables — via the online retailing service Google Express. Until now, Walmart's enormous inventory was available online only through the company's own website.

Walmart customers will be able to place an order by simply saying it out loud, using either the Google Assistant app or the voice-activated speaker Google Home. Voice-enabled shopping is still in its infancy, but analysts say it is a rapidly growing piece of the pie. "When it comes to voice shopping, we want to make it as easy as possible for our customers. That's why it makes sense for us to team up with Google," Marc Lore, the president and CEO of Walmart U.S. eCommerce, writes in a blog post today.

Also on Wednesday, Google announced that it was getting rid of a $95 annual membership fee for Express and would offer free delivery on orders above a minimum.

The move is seen as a response to Amazon and Alexa voice ordering.

Google Express was launched in 2013.

Previously: Walmart Kills Amazon Prime-like Service, Expands Free Shipping

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Meaningless tasks and faux-business strategies prioritised by British universities have skewed their real roles of teachinig and research. Looking at decades of university growth, most expansion has been by university administration, not faculty. On the other side of the pond, one US study found that between 1975 and 2008 while the number of faculty had grown about 10% the number of administrators had grown 221% during the same period. In the UK, the large majority of universities have more administrators than they do faculty members. We are on the way to realizing an “all-administrative university” if nothing is done. André Spicer at The Guardian comments that since universities are broke, we should cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching.

Original Submission

FakeBeldin writes:

I came across a wooden word watch on kickstarter. I like the concept and the approach this chap took (see also Imgur post on building this watch).

I have little more to add except that it felt like the kind of thing I'd love to see on SN, so here you go. I am not involved with this in any way and am (currently) not even backing this. But I just thought it was a cool story about engineering, and I figured it'd be appreciated. I am also kind of hoping some of the reactions will point out similarly cool small tech projects, so please do respond in the comments with your own SoyVertisements of cool, independent projects!

[Ed Note: We occasionally receive self-promoting story submissions. These are quickly noted as 'bin spam' and unceremoniously passed over for use on the site. (You can well imagine what would happen to the submissions queue were we to do otherwise!) This submission does not seem to fall into that category, but it does nudge up against it. The tipping point for my accepting this story is based on three factors. The submitter has been with the site since nearly its inception. (Submissions from ACs and newly-created-accounts just for submitting a self-promoting story will continue to be looked at very askance.) Another factor is the submitter receives no remuneration or benefit from the submission. Lastly, the item in question does look interesting to me and I think it would be of interest to the community. So, if you do [not] want to see more stories like this, on occasion, please indicate so in the comments. Also, any suggestions as to factors to use to assess these kinds of submissions for acceptance are also appreciated. --martyb]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Mars is extremely dry and cold, but may still experience snowfall under certain conditions:

Mars is dry compared to Earth: Its cold nature makes it unlikely that any of the ice on the Red Planet's surface would melt, and its extremely thin atmosphere would cause any liquid water on the surface to vaporize nearly immediately. Still, Mars' atmosphere does possess clouds of frozen water.

Previous research suggested that if snow did fall from those clouds, it would waft down very slowly. "We thought that snow on Mars fell very gently, taking hours or days to fall 1 or 2 kilometers [0.6 to 1.2 miles]," said study lead author Aymeric Spiga, a planetary scientist at the University of Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris.

Now, Spiga and his colleagues have found that snow can rapidly descend on Mars in storms. "Snow could take something like just 5 or 10 minutes to fall 1 to 2 km [0.6 to 1.2 miles]," Spiga told Space.com.

The researchers were analyzing data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft when they noticed a strong mixing of heat in the Martian atmosphere at night "about 5 km [3 miles] from the surface," Spiga said. "This was never seen before."

Also at The Conversation and New Scientist.

Snow precipitation on Mars driven by cloud-induced night-time convection (DOI: 10.1038/ngeo3008) (DX)

Previously: NASA Observations Point to 'Dry Ice' Snowfall on Mars

Original Submission