SoylentNews

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

The meal-replacement maker said that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency [CFIA] is blocking sales of Soylent in the country.

"Our products do not meet a select few of the CFIA requirements for a 'meal replacement,'" Rob Rhinehart, Founder and CEO of Soylent-maker Rosa Foods, said in a letter to Canadian customers.

"Although we feel strongly that these requirements do not reflect the current understanding of human nutritional needs, we respect the CFIA's regulations and will fully comply with any regulatory action they deem appropriate," he said.

In a statement, Rosa Foods said it "is working hard to resolve the categorization issue with the CFIA as quickly as possible so we can continue to provide complete, quality nutrition to our community in Canada." Until then, the company cannot ship any product to Canadian warehouses or sell Soylent to Canadian customers.

PSA: SoylentNews is not an important part of your balanced breakfast.

Source: http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/24/news/soylent-canada-ban/index.html

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) may have some of its capabilities scaled back due to overspending on the James Webb Space Telescope and the added cost of a coronagraph that was demanded by exoplanet researchers:

NASA will have to scale back its next big orbiting observatory to avoid busting its budget and affecting other missions, an independent panel says. The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is due for launch in the mid-2020s. But 1 year after NASA gave the greenlight its projected cost is $3.6 billion, roughly 12% overbudget. "I believe reductions in scope and complexity are needed," Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C., wrote in a memo that NASA released last Thursday.

Designed to investigate the nature of dark energy and study exoplanets, WFIRST was chosen by the astronomy community as its top space-based mission priority in the 2010 decadal survey entitled New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics. But the start of the project was initially delayed by the huge overspend on its predecessor, the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be launched in 2019. Then last year, a midterm review of the 2010 decadal survey warned that WFIRST could go the same way and advised NASA to form a panel of independent experts to review the project.

[...] Zurbuchen's memo to Scolese directs the lab to retain the basic elements of the mission—the 2.4-meter mirror, widefield camera, and coronagraph—but to seek cost-saving "reductions." Hertz says this will require reducing the capabilities of instruments but ensuring they remain "above the science floor laid down by the decadal survey." The coronagraph will be recategorized as a "technology demonstration instrument," removing the burden of achieving a scientific target. The change will also save money, Hertz explains. Hertz says exoplanet researchers shouldn't worry about the proposed changes. "We know we'll get good science out of the coronagraph. We'll be able to see debris disks, zodiacal dust, and exoplanets in wide orbits," he says. Astronomers wanting to see Earth twins in the habitable zone may be disappointed, however.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Navy plans to fire 5-inch diameter non-explosive projectiles from deck-mounted railguns:

The Navy plans to fire a high-speed, long-range rail-gun Hypervelocity Projectile from its deck-mounted 5-inch guns to destroy enemy drones, ships, incoming missiles and even submarines, service officials said.

The effort is led by a special Future Naval Capability program.

Navy officials say the program is leveraging commercial electronics miniaturization and computational performance increases to develop a common guided projectile for use in current 5 inch guns and future high velocity gun systems. The HVP effort will seek to increase range and accuracy of the 5-Inch Gun Weapon System in support of multiple mission areas, service developers told Warrior.

Developed initially for an Electromagnetic Rail Gun next-generation weapon, The Hyper Velocity Projectile, or HVP, can travel at speeds up to 2,000 meters per second when fired from a Rail Gun, a speed which is about three times that of most existing weapons.

BAE Systems Hyper Velocity Projectile. 5-inch gun. Found at NBF.

Related: U.S. Military Increasing Development of Directed Energy Weapons
U.S. Navy's New Mach 6 Electro-Magnetic Railgun Almost Ready for Prime Time

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Honolulu, Hawaii police will begin to write tickets for people caught using their phones or other electronic devices while crossing at a crosswalk:

Police in Honolulu will begin writing tickets for people who get distracted by their cellphones while walking in a cross walk Wednesday. Honolulu is the first major city in the country to pass such a law, citing a high rate of pedestrians being hit in crosswalks.

"Starting today, texting while walking in a cross walk can get you a ticket," Hawaii Public Radio's Bill Dorman reports for our Newscast unit. "In fact, a downward glance at a screen of any kind will cost you—a phone, a tablet, a video game."

Under the new law, the only legal reason for a pedestrian to use a cellphone while crossing a street or highway would be to call 911 to report an emergency.

Minimum fines for breaking the new law start at $15; for repeat offenders, the penalty ranges from $75 to $99. Higher rates — up to $100 for a first offense, $200 for a second, and $500 for a third — had been considered earlier this year.

Also at the City and County of Honolulu. Bill 6 (2017).

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyGuest31999

In an October 19 letter to corn-belt lawmakers, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt said that he won't seek any rollback to biofuel blending rules, according to Reuters.

The agency had been considering some changes to rules set by the Obama administration that ratchet up the amount of renewable biofuel that refineries must blend into the gas and diesel they sell. According to Bloomberg, the EPA had specifically been considering "a possible reduction in biodiesel requirements" as well as "a proposal to allow exported renewable fuel to count toward domestic quotas." In early October, the EPA asked for public comment on cutting biodiesel quotas.

The Bloomberg story cited unnamed sources who said President Trump personally directed Pruitt to back off any proposals that would relax biofuel quotas after pressure from lawmakers from corn-producing states like Iowa, Nebraska, and Illinois. Trump, who courted both fossil fuel interests and corn-belt states in his campaign, has had pressure from each side on this debate. Uncertainty surrounding the future of biofuel use during Trump's administration has caused volatility in biofuels markets for months, Reuters notes.

(The Bloomberg story also cites one unnamed "top EPA official" who said that Trump's directive to Pruitt didn't matter because Pruitt wasn't going to alter renewable fuel standards anyway.)

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/epa-says-it-wont-cut-biofuel-quotas-after-corn-states-push-back/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scientists have used the tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope to manipulate electrons in graphene, potentially making the material usable for more applications:

Graphene – a one-atom-thick layer of the stuff in pencils – is a better conductor than copper and is very promising for electronic devices, but with one catch: Electrons that move through it can't be stopped.

Until now, that is. Scientists at Rutgers University-New Brunswick have learned how to tame the unruly electrons in graphene, paving the way for the ultra-fast transport of electrons with low loss of energy in novel systems. Their study was published online in Nature Nanotechnology [DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2017.181] [DX].

[...] [Eva Y. Andrei's] team managed to tame these wild electrons by sending voltage through a high-tech microscope with an extremely sharp tip, also the size of one atom. They created what resembles an optical system by sending voltage through a scanning tunneling microscope, which offers 3-D views of surfaces at the atomic scale. The microscope's sharp tip creates a force field that traps electrons in graphene or modifies their trajectories, similar to the effect a lens has on light rays. Electrons can easily be trapped and released, providing an efficient on-off switching mechanism, according to Andrei.

Related: Electrons Controlled in Graphene on a Sub-Femtosecond Scale Using Lasers

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

ZDNet reports:

An Australian-made 3D-printed sternum and rib cage has successfully been implanted into a 20-year-old New York patient who had been diagnosed with a rare bone cancer, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) announced on Thursday.[that's a week ago]

The 3D-printed titanium and polymer sternum and rib cage was produced by the CSIRO in partnership with Melbourne-based medical device company Anatomics.

The patient, Penelope Heller, had to have her sternum removed after being diagnosed with chondrosarcoma in 2014. While the cancer was successfully removed, Heller's replacement sternum and rib cage that was developed using off-the-shelf solutions made post-operation life painful.

[...] The organisation claims it is the first time this technology has been used in the United States.

[...] The CSIRO and Anatomics had previously partnered to produce sternum and rib cage prosthetics for a 54-year-old sarcoma patient in Spain in 2015...Once the prosthetics were made, it was sent to Spain and implanted into the patient. 12 days after the surgery, the patient was discharged and recovered well, the CSIRO then said.

[...] That operation followed on from the production of a 3D-printed titanium heel bone that prevented an Australian cancer patient from having his leg amputated in 2014.

[...] A 61-year-old British man received 3D-printed titanium and polymer sternum in 2016 after his sternum was removed due to a rare infection. The CSIRO said it was the first time a titanium sternum combined with a synthetic polymer has been used to replace bone, cartilage, and tissue in a patient.

Original Submission

Snow writes:

As someone that follows the developments in Bitcoinland closely, it has been difficult to find an article that does a good job of summarizing the drama surrounding the community. This Forbes article (Google Cache) only scratches the surface, but does a good job doing so:

On or around November 16, Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency created by a novel technology called blockchain — a masterpiece of game theory, cryptography and, of all things, the age-old ledger — will split into two chains, each with its own set of coins. Hodlers [Note: 'hodl' - is a meme that started here] should be happy about suddenly owning double the number of Bitcoins except for the fact that the question of which of these will be called the true Bitcoin is, for now, up in the air — and that could create turmoil in the market. Anyone willing to bet their money by selling one set of coins for another stands to take a financial hit — either because they've picked the wrong side, or, for technical reasons, because selling one set may actually cause a sale on both sides of the chain.

[...] How the first cryptocurrency reached this cliffhanger in its journey is a story that has been many years in the making and finally pits against each other what were strange bedfellows anyway: the cypherpunks who, years before Bitcoin even existed, developed the various technologies that finally resulted in the first true digital asset and the Silicon Valley types who popularized the cryptocurrency that now has at least tens of millions of users and a $100 billion market cap. Whether one side will prevail or their death match will destroy Bitcoin is anyone's guess.

Is this how Bitcoin finally dies? (This bitcoiner thinks bitcoin will be wounded, but will live on.)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

India plans to put another orbiter around the Moon and land a rover for just $93 million (including launch costs):

In a large shed near the headquarters of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Bangalore, a six-wheeled rover rumbles over dark grey rubble in a landscape designed to mimic the Moon's rocky surface. This test and others scheduled for the next few weeks are crucial steps in India's quest to launch a second mission to the Moon next March.

The country's much anticipated Chandrayaan-2 comes almost a decade after India began its first journey to the Moon, in 2008. "It is logically an extension of the Chandrayaan-1 mission," says Mylswamy Annadurai, director of the project at ISRO. The spacecraft comprises an orbiter that will travel around the Moon, a lander that will touch down in a as-yet undecided location near the Moon's south pole and a rover.

India's maiden Moon trip was a significant achievement for its space programme, but ended prematurely when ISRO lost contact with the orbiter ten months into the planned two-year mission. However, an instrument on a probe that reached the Moon's surface did gather enough data for scientists to confirm the presence of traces of water.

[...] ISRO plans to execute its mission on shoestring budget of just 6.03 billion rupees (US$93 million), including the cost of the rocket and launch. Chandrayaan-2 will be carried into space on one of the agency's three-stage rockets, a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark II, taking off from a spaceport on the island of Sriharikota in the Bay of Bengal. "A nice part of the Indian space programme is that they manage to do things so cheaply," says ANU astrobiologist Charles Lineweaver. "If it succeeds, maybe everyone else will see that their mission didn't really need that extra bell or whistle."

The launch is scheduled for the first quarter of 2018.

Chandrayaan program.

Previously: Moon Wetter Than Previously Thought

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Saudi Arabia is planning to build a new $500+ billion city on the coast of the Red Sea. The zone will be connected to Jordan by land and Egypt by a bridge across the Red Sea. SoftBank's Vision Fund will buy a stake in the state-owned Saudi Electricity Co., which will power the city using clean energy. The project is called NEOM:

Saudi Arabia has unveiled plans to build a new city and business zone - a project that will be backed up by more than $500bn (£381bn) in investment.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman says the 26,500 sq km (10,232 sq mile) NEOM zone will be developed in the north-west, extending to Egypt and Jordan.

It will focus on nine sectors including food technology and, energy and water.

The crown prince has been leading a drive to move Saudi Arabia away from its dependence on oil revenues.

In August, the Gulf kingdom launched a massive tourism development project to turn 50 islands and other sites on the Red Sea into luxury resorts.

However, the extremely ambitious nature of Mohammed bin Salman's vision is sure to raise questions about how realistic it is, the BBC's economics correspondent Andrew Walker says.

What is "NEOM"? "Neo" (Latin for "new") + "Mostaqbal" (Arabic for "future").

Also at Bloomberg (alternate editorial) and Reuters.

Related: SoftBank's $80-100 Billion "Vision Fund" Takes Shape
SoftBank May Sell 25% of ARM to Vision Fund; Chairman Meets With Saudi King

Original Submission

takyon writes:

McDonald's is changing up its dollar menus:

The world's largest restaurant chain, facing heavy competition in the U.S., will launch a new value-priced menu nationally next year. The lineup will offer items for $1, $2 and $3, the company said on Tuesday.

[...] But McDonald's is adding the new menu from a position of strength. It has seen U.S. restaurant traffic grow for two consecutive quarters, following years of declines. With the new value lineup, the company is trying to lock in those gains, said Michael Halen, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

All-day breakfast, "premium" burger options, McCafes, dollar soft drinks, 2-for-$5 deals, and UberEATS delivery seem to have kept McDonald's strong amid changing consumer attitudes about fast food:

Aggressive U.S. promotions included $1 any-size soft drinks, $2 McCafe smoothies and espresso drinks and McPick 2 offers of two items for $5. The changes, part of a turnaround plan under CEO Easterbrook, came as McDonald's catches up with Chipotle, Wendy's Co and other chains that raised the bar for what consumers can expect from quick-serve restaurants.

McDonald's shares have climbed 65 percent since Easterbrook was named CEO in March 2015, well ahead of Wendy's 37 percent gain and nearly triple the S&P 500's rise over the same period.

Also at NYT.

Previously: All-Day Breakfast Boosts McDonald's Profits
America Gets Even Fatter From 2015-2016

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Microsoft has dropped its lawsuit against the Department of Justice now that the DoJ has ended its policy of sending "gag orders" to companies that receive legal demands for user data:

"This new policy limits the overused practice of requiring providers to stay silent when the government accesses personal data stored in the cloud," explains Brad Smith, Microsoft's chief legal officer. "It helps ensure that secrecy orders are used only when necessary and for defined periods of time. This is an important step for both privacy and free expression. It is an unequivocal win for our customers, and we're pleased the DOJ has taken these steps to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans."

The new policy will limit the use of secrecy orders, and set defined periods for them. Microsoft says the new policy will "make sure that every application for a secrecy order is carefully and specifically tailored to the facts in the case." While Microsoft has convinced the DOJ to change its policy, it's now putting the pressure on Congress to act. "Today's policy doesn't address all of the problems with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA)," says Smith. "We renew our call on Congress to amend it."

Also at Ars Technica, Bloomberg, and TechCrunch.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 submitted:

Snoyberg's The Do's and Don't's of Running an Open Source Project:

Real title should be: how to get members of any open source community to be interested in helping you. But the given title is catchier.

There's an old "ha ha, only serious" joke. If you go to a Linux forum and ask for help fixing your WiFi driver, everyone will ignore you. If, instead, you say "Linux sucks, you can't even get a f*&$ing WiFi driver working!" thousands of people will solve the problem for you.

This story is a great example of manipulating people, but it's obviously a negative take on it. I'd like to share some thoughts on this from a much more positive standpoint, which will help you get people to pay more attention, be more helpful, and—perhaps most importantly—create a healthier open source community over all.

These items will appear in no particular order, and will almost all fall into either the attractor or obstacle category. An attractor is something you can do to make people want to participate with you. An obstacle is something you should not do, which would prevent people from interacting with you.

Phoenix666 writes:

University of Tübingen archaeologists headed by Professor Peter Pfälzner have made sensational finds in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. The researchers from the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies found a cuneiform archive of 93 clay tablets dating from 1250 BCE -- the period of the Middle Assyrian Empire. What the tablets record remains a mystery for the time being. The researchers will have to decipher them -- a long and difficult task.

The tablets were found at the Bronze Age city site of Bassetki, which was only discovered in 2013 by archaeologists from the Tübingen collaborative research center 1070, ResourceCultures. The Tübingen archaeologists continued their work undisturbed even in September and October of this year -- despite the turbulence caused by the Kurdish independence referendum and the sharp responses of governments in the region. In recent months, the researchers excavated layers of settlement dating from the Early, Middle, and Late Bronze Age, as well as from the subsequent Assyrian period. "Our finds provide evidence that this early urban center in northern Mesopotamia was settled almost continuously from approximately 3000 to 600 BCE. That indicates that Bassetki was of key significance on important trade routes," Pfälzner says.

Year 2350, archaeologists have uncovered a trove of information on an ancient format: zip disk. After many arduous months, they have managed to decipher the content...

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://jhuapl.edu/newscenter/pressreleases/2017/171019.asp

Narrow dense rings of comets are coming together to form planets on the outskirts of at least three distant solar systems, astronomers have found in data from a pair of NASA telescopes.

Estimating the mass of these rings from the amount of light they reflect shows that each of these developing planets is at least the size of a few Earths, according to Carey Lisse, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

Over the past few decades, using powerful NASA observatories such as the Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii and the Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists have found a number of young debris disk systems with thin but bright outer rings composed of comet-like bodies at 75 to 200 astronomical units from their parent stars — about two to seven times the distance of Pluto from our own Sun. The composition of the material in these rings varies from ice-rich (seen in the Fomalhaut and HD 32297 systems) to ice-depleted but carbon rich (the HR 4796A system).

[...] In Fomalhaut and HD 32297, researchers expect that millions of comets are contributing to form the cores of ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune — although without the thick atmospheres enveloping the cores of Uranus and Neptune, since the primordial gas disks that would form such atmospheres are gone. In HR 4796A, with its warmer dust ring, even the ices normally found in the rings' comets evaporated over the last million years or so, leaving behind core building blocks that are rich only in leftover carbon and rocky materials. "These systems appear to be building planets we don't see in our solar system — large multi-Earth mass ones with variable amounts of ice, rock and refractory organics," Lisse said. "This is very much like the predicted recipe for the super-Earths seen in abundance in the Kepler planet survey."

The supposed exoplanets could also be called "massive solid planets" or "mega-Earths".

Accretion of Uranus and Neptune from inward-migrating planetary embryos blocked by Jupiter and Saturn

Infrared Spectroscopy of HR 4796A's Bright Outer Cometary Ring + Tenuous Inner Hot Dust Cloud

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Singapore, among the world's most expensive places to own a vehicle, will stop increasing the total number of cars on its roads next year.

The government will cut the annual growth rate for cars and motorcycles to zero from 0.25 percent starting in February, the transport regulator said on Monday.

"In view of land constraints and competing needs, there is limited scope for further expansion of the road network," the Land Transport Authority said in a statement on its website. Roads already account for 12 percent of the city-state's total land area, it said.

Smaller than New York City, land in Singapore is a precious commodity and officials want to ensure the most productive use of the remaining space. Its infrastructure is among the world's most efficient and the government is investing S$28 billion ($21 billion) more on rail and bus transportation over the next five years, the regulator said.

Does Singapore's transportation future lie with Segways?

Original Submission