SoylentNews

Phoenix666 writes:

In a cramped Harvard University sub-basement, a team of women is working to document the rich history of women astronomers.

More than 40 years before women gained the right to vote, female "computers" at Harvard College Observatory were making major astronomical discoveries.

Between 1885 and 1927, the observatory employed about 80 women who studied glass plate photographs of the stars. They found galaxies and nebulas and created methods to measure distance in space.

They were famous - newspapers wrote about them, they published scientific papers under their own names. But they were virtually forgotten during the next century.

But a recent discovery of thousands of pages of their calculations by a modern group of women has spurred new interest in their legacy.

A worthy effort, though the correct term for "female 'computer'" is "femputer", at least according to Futurama.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

https://www.azonano.com/news.aspx?newsID=35778

An international team of scientists headed by researchers from The University of Texas at Dallas and Hanyang University in South Korea have created high-tech yarns with the ability to produce electricity upon being twisted or stretched. The scientists have reported on these "twistron" yarns and their prospective uses (e.g. tapping energy from temperature fluctuations as well as from oceanic wave motion) in an article published in the Science journal on 25 August 2017. The yarns, upon being sewn into clothing, functioned as a self-powered breathing monitor.

[...] For producing electricity, the yarns have to be immersed in or coated with an ionically conducting material (i.e. electrolyte) which can simply be a blend of common table salt and water. According to Haines, upon stretching or twisting a carbon nanotube harvester yarn, its volume gets reduced, thereby causing the electric charges on the yarn to be closer together and increasing their energy. This in turn increases the voltage intrinsic to the charge deposited in the yarn, thus allowing the electricity to be tapped.

[...] Laboratory experiments performed by the scientists demonstrated that a twistron yarn with weight less than that of a housefly can be used to power up a small LED which was lit up every time the yarn was stretched. In order to demonstrate that the twistrons have the ability to tap waste thermal energy from the environment, Li connected the twistron yarn to an artificial muscle made of polymer with the ability to contract and expand upon being heated and cooled. The twistron harvester transformed the mechanical energy produced by the polymer muscle into electrical energy.

Also at IEEE and UT Dallas.

Harvesting electrical energy from carbon nanotube yarn twist (DOI: 10.1126/science.aam8771) (DX)

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A good watch can take a beating and keep on ticking. With the right parts, can a rover do the same on a planet like Venus?

A concept inspired by clockwork computers and World War I tanks could one day help us find out.

[...] AREE was first proposed in 2015 by Jonathan Sauder, a mechatronics engineer at JPL. He was inspired by mechanical computers, which use levers and gears to make calculations rather than electronics.

By avoiding electronics, a rover might be able to better explore Venus. The planet's hellish atmosphere creates pressures that would crush most submarines. Its average surface temperature is 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius), high enough to melt lead.

[...] Another problem will be communications. Without electronics, how would you transmit science data? Current plans are inspired by another age-old technology: Morse code.

An orbiting spacecraft could ping the rover using radar. The rover would have a radar target, which if shaped correctly, would act like "stealth technology in reverse," Sauder said. Stealth planes have special shapes that disperse radar signals; Sauder is exploring how to shape these targets to brightly reflect signals instead. Adding a rotating shutter in front of the radar target would allow the rover to turn the bright, reflected spot on and off, communicating much like signal lamps on Navy ships.

Mechanical computers and Morse code. The future of Venusian exploration is steampunk.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

President Trump will sign an executive order to allow local police departments to receive or purchase military surplus equipment:

Police departments will now have access to military surplus equipment typically used in warfare, including grenade launchers, armored vehicles and bayonets, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Monday, describing it as "lifesaving gear."

The move rescinds limits on the Pentagon handouts that were put in place by President Barack Obama in 2015 amid a national debate over policing touched off by a spate of high-profile deaths of black men at the hands of the police, including the shooting death in 2014 of 18-year-old Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo., by a white officer. Some local residents viewed police use of military equipment during the ensuing protests as an unnecessary show of force and intimidation.

In a speech to the Fraternal Order of Police in Nashville, Mr. Sessions said Mr. Obama had made it harder for the police to protect themselves and their neighborhoods. "Those restrictions went too far," Mr. Sessions said. "We will not put superficial concerns above public safety."

Mr. Sessions said that President Trump would sign an executive order on Monday fully restoring the military program, called 1033, and that the president was doing "all he can to restore law and order and support our police across the country." [...] The program was started in the 1990s as a way for the military to transfer surplus equipment to federal, state and local police agencies fighting the drug war. More than $5 billion in surplus gear has been funneled to law enforcement agencies.

Organized gangs get to play soldier.

1033 Program.

Also at The Hill and USA Today.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

U.S. citizens and residents have one day left to comment on the FCC's plan to kill net neutrality. Final comments are due tomorrow Wednesday, August 30th, by end-of-day Eastern time (UTC -5).

Once the comment period closes, the FCC is supposed to review the feedback and use it as guidance to revise its proposal. However, it probably won't hurt to also contact your congressional representatives, given the antagonism of the FCC's current leadership towards both the public input and net neutrality itself.

Original Submission

driven writes:

In an effort to reduce plastic bag pollution, Kenya has introduced tough laws that will result in a prison term of up to 4 years or a maximum of $40,000 for any Kenyan producing, selling or even using plastic bags, although initial enforcement will target manufacturers and suppliers.

"The East African nation joins more than 40 other countries that have banned, partly banned or taxed single use plastic bags, including China, France, Rwanda and Italy."

Bags can take 500-1000 years to decompose, in the mean time killing or harming wildlife and entering the human food chain.
What is being done about plastic bag pollution where you live?

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

The board of Uber Technologies Inc., after meeting throughout the weekend, has chosen Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi as its new chief executive.

Khosrowshahi's name wasn't even on the public list of contenders for the job, but after today's vote, he has been picked as the new boss, reports The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Reuters. HP Enterprises CEO Meg Whitman and former GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt were thought to be the top contenders.

Immelt withdrew earlier today when it became clear he didn't have enough votes, according to the NYT. The board was leaning toward Whitman, "but matters changed over the course of Sunday afternoon," the newspaper reported.

Uber isn't commenting publicly on the selection at this point and told Reuters it "will announce the decision to the employees first."

Khosrowshahi has been the CEO of Expedia since 2005. Before that, he was an executive and then CEO at IAC/InterActiveCorp. He's also a director at BET and The New York Times.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/uber-board-picks-expedias-dara-khosrowshahi-as-new-ceo/

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Despite innovations that make it easier for seniors to keep living on their own rather than moving into special facilities, most elderly people eventually need a hand with chores and other everyday activities.

Friends and relatives often can't do all the work. Growing evidence indicates it's neither sustainable nor healthy for seniors or their loved ones. Yet demand for professional caregivers already far outstrips supply, and experts say this workforce shortage will only get worse.

So how will our society bridge this elder-care gap? In a word, robots.

Just as automation has begun to do jobs previously seen as uniquely suited for humans, like retrieving goods from warehouses, robots will assist your elderly relatives.

Would you entrust grandma to Johnny 5?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

In 1979, there was a partial meltdown at a nuclear plant on Three Mile Island, in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. I was a young newspaper editor at the time, and I was caught up in coverage of the resulting debate about whether nuclear power could ever be safe. I have long forgotten the details of that episode, except for one troubling thought that occurred to me in the middle of it: The experts we relied on to tell us whether a given design was safe, or indeed whether nuclear power generally was safe, were people with advanced degrees in nuclear engineering and experience running nuclear plants. That is, we were relying on people who made their living from nuclear power to tell us if nuclear power was safe. If they started saying out loud that anything about the nuclear enterprise was iffy, they risked putting themselves out of business.

I mention this not because I think the engineers lied to the public. I don't. Nor do I think nuclear power is so dangerous it should be rejected as an energy source. I mention it because it shows how hard it can be to make sense of information from experts.

Trust in institutions and expertise has taken a lot of knocks in the last decade. Can society recover it? Are we all called to a higher effort to vet the information we are given, or is there another, better remedy?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The early diners are dawdling, so your 7:30 p.m. reservation looks more like 8. While you wait, the last order of the duck you wanted passes by. Tonight, you'll be eating something else — without a second bottle of wine, because you can't find your server in the busy dining room. This is not your favorite night out.

The right data could have fixed it, according to the tech wizards who are determined to jolt the restaurant industry out of its current slump. Information culled and crunched from a wide array of sources can identify customers who like to linger, based on data about their dining histories, so the manager can anticipate your wait, buy you a drink and make the delay less painful.

It can track the restaurant's duck sales by day, week and season, and flag you as a regular who likes duck. It can identify a server whose customers have spent a less-than-average amount on alcohol, to see if he needs to sharpen his second-round skills.

So Big Data is staging an intervention.

Both start-ups and established companies are scrambling to deliver up-to-the-minute data on sales, customers, staff performance or competitors by merging the information that restaurants already have with all sorts of data from outside sources: social media, tracking apps, reservation systems, review sites, even weather reports.

Because most restaurant goers eat at the same place often enough to generate data sets with statistically reliable predictions.

Original Submission

Houston and Hurricane Harvey - Overview and On-Line Resources

Houston, Texas (the 4th most populous city in the USA) is located in Harris County (the 3rd most populous in the country) and has been under the onslaught of Hurricane Harvey which was later downgraded to a tropical storm. Current rain totals over the course of the storm have exceeded 40 inches in some locations — additional rain of up to 10 more inches is predicted. Flooding is rampant and the damage to property is immense. So far, 5 people have been reported dead as a result of the storm. Gathered here are a number of on-line resources followed by a story questioning why mandatory evacuations were not called for earlier. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) reports the failure of a large number of cell towers, cable and phone lines.

Online Resources:

• Houston Chronicle — largest local newspaper.
• Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service: Houston/Galveston — river, stream, and lake water levels... and forecasts.
• Harris County Flood Control District - Storm Center
• Harris County Flood Warning System — interactive map with water gauges
• NWS - Current Conditions and 7-Day Forecast
• NWS - Weather observations for the last three days — temperature, barometric pressure, wind, and rain amounts over the last 3 days.
• NWS - Graphical Forecast
• click2houston — collection of news and links (From local TV station?).
• How Harvey went from a little-noticed storm to a behemoth — appears in the Tampa Bay Times but originally appeared in The Washington Post
• US National Hurricane Center — part of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
• FCC - Hurricane Harvey — scroll down to "Communications Status Reports"

Why Wasn't an Official Evacuation Order Issued?

fliptop writes:

As I type this, a historic weather event is crushing south Texas with enormous amounts of rain and massive flooding leaving thousands of people in need of rescue.

"exec" writes:

For years, gunshot detection has been bought, and criticized, by cities nationwide.

With the president at Camp David for most of the weekend, the United States Secret Service decided that now would be a good time to fire off a few live rounds on the grounds of the White House—so it can evaluate a gunshot-detection technology known as ShotSpotter.

The mounted microphone and computer system is designed to detect gunshots via their audio signature and send prompt alerts to local authorities.

In a series of tweets on Saturday morning, the CEO of ShotSpotter, Ralph Clark, said that 90 cities and 10 university campuses currently use it, including recent additions in Louisville, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio. The system has been in use by the Metropolitan Police Department—which serves the city of Washington, DC—for many years.

However, the company has sometimes been criticized for being overly expensive, not particularly effective, and potentially invasive of people’s privacy.

Recently, San Antonio, Texas, decided that, after using the service for a year, ShotSpotter was no longer worth the price tag—over $500,000, which includes the cost of the service plus officer overtime. During the year that it was in use, the city only arrested four people as a result of the gunshot detection setup, or $136,500 per arrest, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/secret-service-conducts-live-test-of-shotspotter-system-at-white-house/

-- submitted from IRC

[How many shots could a ShotSpotter spot, if a ShotSpotter could spot shots? source --Ed.]

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Last weekend, we strapped on our most comfortable walking shoes, checked our gaming wishlist twice, and jumped headlong into the self-proclaimed "best four days of gaming"—the annual Gen Con tabletop gaming convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. This year's 50th-anniversary show was extra special: turnstile attendance for an estimated 60,000 con-goers reached a record-breaking 209,000, and for the first year ever, the con sold out well before the doors opened on Thursday.

With approximately 500 exhibitors, over 19,000 ticketed events, and entire convention halls and stadiums filled to capacity with board games, roleplaying games, miniatures games, and everything in between, Gen Con is a lot to take in. We couldn't get to all of it, but we skipped sleep, meals, and general mental well-being to bring you what we see as the best of the show.

Below are the 20 board games we think you should be paying attention to going into the last few months of the year (cube-pushing Eurogame fans will want to tune in again in late October when we hit the giant Spieltage fair in Essen, Germany). Most of the games below will be coming out over the next several weeks and months, but because of the vagaries inherent in board game releases, exact dates are hard to pin down. Your best bet is to head to your local retailer, boardgameprices.com, or Amazon and put in a preorder for anything that catches your eye. And if you missed it, be sure to check out our massive photo gallery of the show.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/08/the-best-new-board-games-from-gen-con-2017/

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

This interview suggests that GM is really working on security, http://articles.sae.org/15549/

Personally, I'd like to see every automotive engineer and programmer thinking like a black hat, to incorporate that knowledge in all their work, but this is probably impossible in the near term.

Jeff Massimilla, who has been chief product cybersecurity officer at GM since the company initiated his unit in 2014, conceded in a recent interview with Automotive Engineering that although "you never want to go out there and say you have this all figured out," he is convinced that GM—and the broad industry—has learned enough through an intensive few years of research and a variety of collaborations to feel as confident as is reasonable when your world is an ever-changing threat environment.

And here's one you don't hear much from big-company managers in the post-Recession era: "We're very well-resourced and well-funded," he added. "We have the right people and personalities on the board of directors to understand the importance of this." The company's investment in cybersecurity is deep and serious he said, because "you can't separate cyber and safety."

And further down the same interview:

takyon writes:

The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) has captured the best ever image of another star. The VLTI was used to image the surface of Antares, a red supergiant star about 550 light years away in the heart of the constellation Scorpius (The Scorpion):

The VLTI is a unique facility that can combine the light from up to four telescopes, either the 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes, or the smaller Auxiliary Telescopes, to create a virtual telescope equivalent to a single mirror up to 200 metres across. This allows it to resolve fine details far beyond what can be seen with a single telescope alone.

[...] Using the new results the team has created the first two-dimensional velocity map of the atmosphere of a star other than the Sun. They did this using the VLTI with three of the Auxiliary Telescopes and an instrument called AMBER to make separate images of the surface of Antares over a small range of infrared wavelengths. The team then used these data to calculate the difference between the speed of the atmospheric gas at different positions on the star and the average speed over the entire star. This resulted in a map of the relative speed of the atmospheric gas across the entire disc of Antares — the first ever created for a star other than the Sun..

The astronomers found turbulent, low-density gas much further from the star than predicted, and concluded that the movement could not result from convection, that is, from large-scale movement of matter which transfers energy from the core to the outer atmosphere of many stars. They reason that a new, currently unknown, process may be needed to explain these movements in the extended atmospheres of red supergiants like Antares.

Vigorous atmospheric motion in the red supergiant star Antares (DOI: 10.1038/nature23445) (DX)

Original Submission