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takyon writes:

Trick or Treat: Don't Eat Too Much Black Licorice on Halloween, Warns FDA

It's that time of year again when ghoulish children turn up at your door, demanding payment in candy or threatening a sinister trick instead. But if you're keeping a bowl of sweets on stand-by, you might want to leave out the black licorice.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a warning ahead of Halloween—which it describes as the "biggest candy eating holiday of the year"—urging people not to overdo it on the medicinal-tasting candy or potentially face heart problems.

The problem is caused by glycyrrhizin—a sweetening compound derived from the root of licorice, a low-growing shrub that is found most in Greece, Turkey and Asia. When consumed in large amounts, glycyrrhizin can prompt potassium levels in the body to fall. Low potassium can lead to a variety of health issues, particularly abnormal heart rhythms, but also high blood pressure, swelling, lethargy, and even congestive heart failure.

The FDA warned that, for people 40 years old or over, eating two ounces of black licorice a day for two weeks can result in arrhythmia, or irregular heart rhythm. Potassium levels usually return to normal with no permanent health problems when a person stops eating it, according to the FDA's Linda Katz.

🎃💊 → 💀

Also at Business Insider.

Original Submission

Appalbarry writes:

CBC News reports that a BC man is taking the provincial government to court to force them to acknowledge that sasquatchs, also known as Bigfoot, are real animals.

Todd Standing filed a civil lawsuit in B.C. Supreme Court earlier this month, alleging the B.C. government is in "dereliction of duty" because it won't recognize his efforts and evidence, which he says prove the Sasquatch exists....Standing argues that the Sasquatch has a right to be recognized as a distinct and protected species.

Standing says, "When a judge sits down with me and realizes what I have and who's with me — this is going to happen... It's no joke, I'm coming with PhDs, professors, police officers, the best in the world ... this is the real deal, the evidence is here."

There's no word whether the sasquatch in question is named "Harry".

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-41810436

Calls have been made to ban the Coca-Cola truck from Liverpool this Christmas amid concerns about obesity levels in the city.

Liverpool's Liberal Democrat leader Richard Kemp said the city is "in the grip of an obesity epidemic". He believes Coca-Cola's popular festive vehicle promotes a product which is "grossly unhealthy", as first reported in the Liverpool Echo. A Coca-Cola spokesman said the truck also promotes sugar-free drinks.

Mr Kemp has written a letter to managers of the Liverpool One shopping district, setting out his opposition to the "cynical event" His concerns come four months after a study by Public Health Liverpool naming and shaming what it said were the most sugary breakfast cereals.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Saudi Arabia to extract uranium for 'self-sufficient' nuclear program

Saudi Arabia plans to extract uranium domestically as part of its nuclear power program and sees this as a step towards "self-sufficiency" in producing atomic fuel, a senior official said on Monday.

Extracting its own uranium also makes sense from an economic point of view, said Hashim bin Abdullah Yamani, head of the Saudi government agency tasked with the nuclear plans, the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KACARE).

In a speech at an international nuclear power conference in Abu Dhabi, he did not specify whether Saudi Arabia seeks to also enrich and reprocess uranium – steps in the fuel cycle which are especially sensitive as they can open up the possibility of military uses of the material.

The world's top oil exporter says it wants to tap atomic power for peaceful purposes only in order to diversify its energy supply and will award a construction contract for its first two nuclear reactors by the end of 2018.

Meanwhile, women will be allowed to attend sporting events at stadiums. And here's a message for the skeptics (editorial).

Also at Newsweek.

Previously: Saudi Arabia Will Lift Ban on Women Drivers Next Year
Saudi Arabia Planning $500 Billion Megacity and Business Zone
Robot Granted "Citizenship" in Saudi Arabia, Sparking Backlash

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Apple is considering completely switching away from Qualcomm components, such as modems, in future iterations of the iPhone. Intel modems have already been used in some iPhones, and MediaTek is also under consideration:

Apple Inc has designed iPhones and iPads that would drop chips supplied by Qualcomm Inc, according to two people familiar with the matter. The change would affect iPhones released in the fall of 2018, but Apple could still change course before then, these people said. They declined to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

The dispute stems from a change in supply arrangements under which Qualcomm has stopped providing some software for Apple to test its chips in its iPhone designs, one of the people told Reuters.

The two companies are locked in a multinational legal dispute over the Qualcomm's licensing terms to Apple.

Qualcomm told Reuters it is providing fully tested chips to Apple for iPhones. "We are committed to supporting Apple's new devices consistent with our support of all others in the industry," Qualcomm said in a statement.

Apple and other companies are suing Qualcomm over licensing fees. Apple has had similar hardware-level disputes with Samsung in the past. Apple designs its own ARM chips but has to have them manufactured by Samsung or TSMC.

Also at Bloomberg and 9to5Mac.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1

Consumers may have a harder time suing financial companies they feel have wronged them.

The Senate voted Tuesday night to overturn a rule the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau worked on for more than five years. The final version of the rule banned companies from putting “mandatory arbitration clauses” in their contracts, language that prohibits consumers from bringing class-action lawsuits against them. It applies to institutions that sell financial products, including bank accounts and credit cards.

[...] “By forcing consumers into secret arbitration, corporations have long enjoyed an advantage in the process, and victims have often been precluded from sharing their stories with the press or law enforcement,” said Vanita Gupta, the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a group of advocacy organizations based in Washington, D.C.

[...] Mandatory arbitration clauses typically say that companies or customers must resolve disputes through privately appointed individuals known as arbitrators, but not through the court system, allowing companies to save time and money and avoid negative publicity. When consumers sign forced arbitration clauses, which they may not realize are included in contracts, they waive their right to participate in a class-action lawsuit against companies.

[...] The Senate's vote against the CFPB’s rule “is a win for consumers,” said Rob Nichols, the president and CEO of the trade group American Bankers Association. “As we and others made clear in our multiple comments to the CFPB, the rule was always going to harm consumers and not help them.”

Source: MarketWatch

Original Submission

Uncle_Al writes:

When deadly flames incinerated hundreds of homes in Santa Rosa's Fountaingrove neighborhood earlier this month, they also destroyed irreplaceable papers and correspondence held nearby and once belonging to the founders of Silicon Valley's first technology company, Hewlett-Packard.

The Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard, the tech pioneers who in 1938 formed an electronics company in a Palo Alto garage with $538 in cash.

More than 100 boxes of the two men's writings, correspondence, speeches and other items were contained in one of two modular buildings that burned to the ground at the Fountaingrove headquarters of Keysight Technologies. Keysight, the world's largest electronics measurement company, traces its roots to HP and acquired the archives in 2014 when its business was split from Agilent Technologies — itself an HP spinoff.

Source: The Press Democrat

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for boru

The Israel Police mistakenly arrested a Palestinian worker [...] because they relied on automatic translation software to translate a post he wrote on his Facebook page. The Palestinian was arrested after writing "good morning," which was misinterpreted; no Arabic-speaking police officer read the post before the man's arrest.

[...] the man posted on his Facebook page a picture from the construction site where he works in the West Bank settlement of Beitar Ilit near Jerusalem. In the picture he is leaning against a bulldozer alongside the caption: "Good morning" in Arabic.

The automatic translation service offered by Facebook uses its own proprietary algorithms. It translated "good morning" as "attack them" in Hebrew and "hurt them" in English.

Arabic speakers explained that English transliteration used by Facebook is not an actual word in Arabic but could look like the verb "to hurt" – even though any Arabic speaker could clearly see the transliteration did not match the translation.

Source: Haaretz

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Aging is a natural part of life, but that hasn't stopped people from embarking on efforts to stop the process. Unfortunately, perhaps, those attempts are futile, according to University of Arizona researchers who have proved that it's mathematically impossible to halt aging in multicellular organisms like humans. "Aging is mathematically inevitable - like, seriously inevitable. There's logically, theoretically, mathematically no way out," said Joanna Masel, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and at the UA.

Masel and UA postdoctoral researcher Paul Nelson outline their findings on math and aging in a new study titled "Intercellular Competition and Inevitability of Multicellular Aging," published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Current understanding of the evolution of aging leaves open the possibility that aging could be stopped if only science could figure out a way to make selection between organisms perfect. One way to do that might be to use competition between cells to eliminate poorly functioning "sluggish" cells linked to aging, while keeping other cells intact. However, the solution isn't that simple, Masel and Nelson say.

Two things happen to the body on a cellular level as it ages, Nelson explains. One is that cells slow down and start to lose function, like when your hair cells, for example, stop making pigment. The other thing that happens is that some cells crank up their growth rate, which can cause cancer cells to form. As we get older, we all tend, at some point, to develop cancer cells in the body, even if they're not causing symptoms, the researchers say. Masel and Nelson found that even if natural selection were perfect, aging would still occur, since cancer cells tend to cheat when cells compete.

https://phys.org/news/2017-10-mathematically-impossible-aging-scientists.html

[Abstract]: Intercellular competition and the inevitability of multicellular aging

So, either you die of old age or you die of cancer. Choose wisely !!

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/357486-fema-has-significant-concerns-with-puerto-ricos-300m-power

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is sounding an alarm over Puerto Rico's $300 million contract with a small Montana company to restore power infrastructure, amid concerns over the firm's tiny staff and lack of competitive bidding. FEMA will be responsible for paying for the work by Whitefish Energy Holdings, but the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), the island's utility, entered into the contract. "Based on initial review and information from PREPA, FEMA has significant concerns with how PREPA procured this contract and has not confirmed whether the contract prices are reasonable," FEMA said in its statement.

[...] The Whitefish deal has raised alarm among Puerto Rico's leadership, Congress and others, and two congressional committees are investigating it. The contract was reached with no bidding. The company had two employees and little experience in utility work prior to Hurricane Maria hitting the island and is paying workers hundreds of dollars per hour.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-house-disavows-puerto-rico-contract-with-whitefish-energy-amid-investigations/

The White House said Friday the federal government had no involvement in the decision to award a $300 million contract to help restore Puerto Rico's power grid to a tiny Montana company in Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's hometown.

Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president had asked Zinke about the contract and that the cabinet secretary said he had nothing to do with it. "He had no role in that contract," Sanders said of Zinke. "This was a state and local decision made by the Puerto Rican authorities and not the federal government."

Also at NPR.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The cheese on Google's version of the cheeseburger emoji is in the WRONG PLACE and that is problematic:

Responding to criticism about the placement of cheese on Google's version of the cheeseburger emoji, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that he would take a look at the issue immediately. "Will drop everything else we are doing and address on Monday :) if folks can agree on the correct way to do this!" Pichai tweeted.

Pichai was responding to author Thomas Baekdal, who pointed out the difference in cheese placement between Apple's and Google's cheeseburger emojis. "I think we need to have a discussion about how Google's burger emoji is placing the cheese underneath the burger, which Apple puts on top," Baekdal tweeted.

The tweet ignited a debate about where the different ingredients of a cheeseburger belong. Among all the different cheeseburger emoji variants offered by various tech companies, Google's is the only version to place the cheese below the meat, according to images of cheeseburger emojis from Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook and others, as seen on Emojipedia. It's generally accepted that cheeseburger cheese should be placed directly on the meat patty for optimal melting.

🍔🍕🍖🍗🍟🍩 🏃💨 🇺🇸 💩🚽

Unicode 11 emoji candidates, scheduled for June 2018.

Also at Brisbane Times and New Zealand Herald.

Previously: Tweet Emoji 4 Pizza: #Epitome of #Convenience
38 New Emojis to be Introduced in 2016
Unicode Considering 67 New Emoji for 2016
Unicode 9.0 Serves up Bacon Emoji, 71 others, and Six New Scripts
Apple Urged to Rethink Gun Emoji Change
Unicode 10.0's New Emojis
Apple's New iPhone X will let You Control the Poo Emoji with Your Face

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Astronomers are still hoping for another mission to Pluto, or perhaps another Kuiper belt object:

A grassroots movement seeks to build momentum for a second NASA mission to the outer solar system, a generation after a similar effort helped give rise to the first one. That first mission, of course, was New Horizons, which in July 2015 performed the first-ever flyby of Pluto and is currently cruising toward a January 2019 close encounter with a small object known as 2014 MU₆₉.

[...] Nearly three dozen scientists have drafted letters in support of a potential return mission to Pluto or to another destination in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune's orbit, Singer told Space.com. These letters have been sent to NASA planetary science chief Jim Green, as well as to the chairs of several committees that advise the agency, she added. "We need the community to realize that people are interested," Singer said. "We need the community to realize that there are important, unmet goals. And we need the community to realize that this should have a spot somewhere in the Decadal Survey." That would be the Planetary Science Decadal Survey, a report published by the National Academy of Sciences that lays out the nation's top exploration priorities for the coming decade.

New Horizons 2 was already cancelled due to a shortage of plutonium-238, which still reportedly persists. One proposed target was 47171 Lempo, a trinary system. The trans-Neptunian dwarf planets Eris, Haumea, Sedna, Orcus, Salacia, Makemake, and 2007 OR₁₀ (the largest known body in the solar system without a name - with an estimated 1,535 km diameter) have all been discovered since 2002. Several of these TNOs have moons and Haumea was recently found to have a ring system.

Now that Cassini is dead, most new NASA missions are focused on Mars and Jupiter, leaving the solar system's "ice giants" relatively unstudied:

takyon writes:

Elon Musk has released an image showing a tunnel under Hawthorne, California, near SpaceX's headquarters:

Musk's LA tunnel is a pilot project designed to test the feasibility of his plan to dig tunnels at a lower cost and more efficiently than current tunnel boring companies operate, with the eventual aim of supplying cities and regions with underground tunnel networks that can transport goods and services while avoiding surface obstacles and traffic.

The Boring Co. is still a long way from achieving the grand vision of constructing inter-city underground Hyperloop tubes for high-speed travel, but it's making rapid progress on its initial test digging and tunnel construction, which should go some way to proving to its detractors that this is more than just a pipe dream.

Also at Engadget and The Verge.

Previously: Elon Musk Wants to be Boring
Tunnel to 'Underworld' Discovered Beneath Mexican Pyramid
Elon Musk Claims to Have "Verbal Approval" to Build New York to Washington, D.C. Hyperloop
NY-Philly-Baltimore-DC Hyperloop: Not Vaporware?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Danish engineer and co-founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals Peter Madsen has admitted to dismembering journalist Kim Wall, but denies murdering her:

Danish police say that inventor Peter Madsen has admitted to dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall, who was researching a story in August on board a submarine he built. He denies killing her and maintains that her death was an accident, authorities say.

Madsen was alone when he was rescued from the sinking UC3 Nautilus, which police believe he sunk deliberately. As NPR's Colin Dwyer has reported, he initially claimed that he dropped Wall off safely the same day they set out — then he changed his story, saying he "buried her at sea" after a heavy hatch fell on her head.

Divers later found Wall's severed head in Denmark's Køge Bay. As NPR's Amy Held reported, police said there were "no signs of fracture or blunt force trauma to the skull," casting doubt on Madsen's claims. The head was in a bag weighted down with metal, authorities said.

Now, according to a Copenhagen police statement, Madsen has changed his story once again. He says that Wall died from carbon monoxide poisoning inside the submarine while he was sitting on the submarine's deck. During an interrogation on Oct. 14, police say, Madsen said that after Wall died, he dismembered her body and threw the remains in the bay. "This explanation (by Madsen) naturally will lead the police into gathering additional statements from the coroner and the armed forces' submarine experts," Copenhagen police investigator Jens Møller Jensen said, according to an Associated Press translation.

Also at Ars Technica, The Register, BBC, and NYT.

Previously: Submarine Builder Charged With Manslaughter After Burying Journalist at Sea
Search of "Rocket" Madsen's Space Lab Finds Footage of Woman's Decapitation

Original Submission

takyon writes:

AMD has launched the first two of its Ryzen mobile APUs (codenamed "Raven Ridge"): the Ryzen 7 2700U and Ryzen 5 2500U. Both APUs come with "Vega" graphics cores.

These are 15 W TDP chips intended for lower-power but high performance designs (e.g. "Ultrabooks"). Chips with higher TDPs will come out later. In comparing the Ryzen 7 2700U to the AMD FX-9800P, an Excavator-based 15 W TDP chip that was released in 2015, AMD claims that CPU performance has been increased by 200% while GPU performance has increased by 128%. The 200% figure is a result of doubling the core/thread count (the Excavator chip used 2 "modules" rather than 4 real cores) and Ryzen's approximate 52% increase in instructions per clock: