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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:45 | Votes:98

posted by martyb on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:40PM   Printer-friendly
from the when-food-becomes-a-pain dept.

Good germs to fight bad germs.

Penn Medicine researchers have singled out a bacterial enzyme behind an imbalance in the gut microbiome linked to Crohn's disease. The new study, published online this week in Science Translational Medicine, suggests that wiping out a significant portion of the bacteria in the gut microbiome, and then re-introducing a certain type of "good" bacteria that lacks this enzyme, known as urease, may be an effective approach to better treat these diseases.

"Because it's a single enzyme that is involved in this process, it might be a targetable solution," said the study's senior author, Gary D. Wu, MD, associate chief for research in the division of Gastroenterology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "The idea would be that we could 'engineer' the composition of the microbiota in some way that lacks this particular one."

[...] In a series of human and mouse studies, the researchers discovered that a type of "bad" bacteria known as Proteobacteria feeding on urea, a waste product that can end up back in the colon, played an important role in the development of dysbiosis.

The "bad" bacteria, which harbor the urease enzyme, convert urea into ammonia (nitrogen metabolism), which is then reabsorbed by bacteria to make amino acids that are associated with dysbiosis in Crohn's disease. "Good" bacteria may not respond in a similar manner, and thus may serve as a potential therapeutic approach to engineer the microbiome into a healthier state and treat disease.

If the technique works, it could open the door to treating other conditions like obesity.

Josephine Ni, et al A role for bacterial urease in gut dysbiosis and Crohn's disease. Science Translational Medicine, 2017; 9 (416): eaah6888 DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aah6888


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday November 16 2017, @10:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the aren't-you-a-little-short... dept.

A princely escort:

The princes' highly recognizable faces (and Harry's iconic red hair) are hidden by their costumes, but in-the-know fans can be on the lookout for one specific scene. Boyega, who plays the former stormtrooper now known as Finn, says they appear guarding him in an elevator along with two other famous stormtroopers -- actor Tom Hardy and Gary Barlow from British pop group Take That.

  "It was a great experience," Boyega said of the scene with the princes, who are second- and fifth-in-line for the British throne. The London-born actor also called the elevator moment "the best of both worlds for me."


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posted by janrinok on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the side-order-of-Emelia-Earhart-please dept.

Coconut Crab Filmed Hunting a Seabird

Giant coconut crab sneaks up on a sleeping bird and kills it

A giant coconut crab has been filmed stalking, killing and devouring a seabird. It is the first time these whopping crustaceans have been seen actively hunting large, back-boned animals, and suggests they might dominate their island ecosystems.

Coconut crabs (Birgus latro), also known as robber crabs, are an imposing sight. They can weigh up to 4 kilograms, as much as a house cat, and sport legs that span almost a metre. This makes them the largest invertebrates – animals without backbones – on land. The crabs live on coral atolls in the tropical Indian and Pacific oceans.

They are renowned for their tree-climbing abilities and taste for coconuts, which they crack open with their powerful claws. They do sometimes eat meat, but until now it was thought that they only obtained it by opportunistic scavenging.

[...] Breaking a bird's wing would be easy for a coconut crab, says Shin-ichiro Oka at the Okinawa Churashima Foundation Research Center in Japan. In 2016, he showed that the crabs' claws pinch with a force of up to 3300 newtons [open, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0166108] [DX], stronger than any other crustacean and comparable to the bite force of a big predator like a lion. "The claws of coconut crabs can generate a force 80 to 100 times the mass of their body," says Oka. "The crab in the video seems to be about 2 kilograms, so it would be able to easily break the bird's bones."

Video (34s) featuring the killer coconut crab. Also at Newsweek.

Coconut Crab 2: Amelia Earhart Eaten?

Amelia Earhart Mystery: Was the Lost Pilot Eaten by Giant Coconut Crabs?

On a summer day in 1937, pilot Amelia Earhart took off with her navigator to fly around the globe, and—according to one theory—eventually crash-landed on a remote island in the Pacific where she was eaten by crabs the size of dogs.

[...] Some have called the Amelia Earhart theory total nonsense. As one skeptical commenter on an iO9 report put it: "Every credible historian says Earhart's Lockheed Electra ran out of fuel and sank in almost 20,000 feet of water. It's expensive and difficult to look in the deep ocean, but I promise you that's where she'll ultimately be found." She also notes that most of the work investigating this theory comes from the organization TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery), which has been the target of some skepticism.

The next time you eat a crab, you could be eating a piece of history.


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posted by janrinok on Thursday November 16 2017, @07:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the so-long,-interwebs,-it-was-nice-knowing-you dept.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission next month is planning a vote to kill Obama-era rules demanding fair treatment of web traffic and may decide to vacate the regulations altogether, according to people familiar with the plans.

The move would reignite a years-long debate that has seen Republicans and broadband providers seeking to eliminate the rules, while Democrats and technology companies support them. The regulations passed in 2015 bar broadband providers such as AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp. from interfering with web traffic sent by Google, Facebook Inc. and others.

[...] Pai plans to seek a vote in December, said two people who asked not to be identified because the matter hasn't been made public. As the head of a Republican majority, he is likely to win a vote on whatever he proposes.

[...] The agency declined to comment on the timing of a vote. "We don't have anything to report at this point," said Tina Pelkey, a spokeswoman for the commission.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-15/killing-net-neutrality-rules-is-said-readied-for-december-vote


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posted by janrinok on Thursday November 16 2017, @06:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the its-the-way-that-you-do-it dept.

Questionable herpes vaccine research backed by tech heavyweight Peter Thiel may have jeopardized $15 million in federal research funding to Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. That's according to documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request by The State Journal Register.

In August, Kaiser Health News reported that Thiel and other conservative investors had contributed $7 million for the live-but-weakened herpes virus vaccine, developed by the late SIU researcher William Halford. The investments came after Halford and his private company, Rational Vaccines, had begun conducting small clinical trials in the Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. With the off-shore location, Rational Vaccines' trial skirted federal regulations and standard safety protocols for human trials, including having approval and oversight from an institutional review board (IRB).

Experts were quick to call the unapproved trial "patently unethical," and researchers rejected the data from publication, calling the handling of safety issues "reckless." The government of St. Kitts opened an investigation into the trial and reported that health authorities there had been kept in the dark.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/university-could-lose-millions-from-unethical-research-backed-by-peter-thiel/


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday November 16 2017, @04:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the forget-about-sunbathing dept.

Pluto is much colder than what would normally be expected due to a haze of hydrocarbon particles suspended in Pluto's tenuous atmosphere:

One of the more bizarre things [New Horizons] found was that the haze in Pluto's atmosphere was much thicker than our previous peeks indicated. The icy hunk of rock also had an atmosphere much cooler than earlier estimates, topping out at -333.4 ºF (more than 50 degrees colder than expected, even for something about 40 times further from the Sun than Earth is).

Now, a study [DOI: 10.1038/nature24465] [DX] published in Nature links those two atmospheric observations. A computer model developed by University of California Santa Cruz planetary scientist Xi Zhang and colleagues shows the haze of tiny droplets in the upper atmosphere is likely scattering light from the Sun, preventing heat from reaching the planet below.

"It's been a mystery since we first got the temperature data from New Horizons," Zhang, said in a statement. "Pluto is the first planetary body we know of where the atmospheric energy budget is dominated by solid-phase haze particles instead of by gases."

[...] This haze appears to be made up of large hydrocarbon droplets, created high in the atmosphere when ultraviolet light from the Sun strips electrons from particles of methane and nitrogen gas. The reaction helps form solid bits of hydrocarbon. But what gets created up there must still come down. Pulled back to the surface by gravity, the hydrocarbons start to bond together, eventually creating a thick haze. It doesn't completely block sunlight, but rather absorbs and re-scatters it, theoretically warming up part of the atmosphere while keeping most of Pluto frigid below.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday November 16 2017, @02:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the Rudolph-getting-pre-Christmas-exercise dept.

Fireball that streaked across Phoenix sky was a meteor, astronomers say

Astronomers say the bright light that streaked across the night sky Tuesday was "almost certainly" a meteor. The city of Phoenix captured the illumination on one of its observation cameras and posted it to Twitter. In the video, a large, glowing bulb appears in the top-right frame and then fades out in three seconds. A smaller light can be seen in the lower portion of the frame, off in the horizon. It happened around 8:30 p.m.

[...] "Given the speed and everything, this was almost certainly a meteor rather than a piece of space junk," said Laurence Garvie, curator of Arizona State University's Center for Meteorite Studies. Specifically, the meteor was a "bolide" — a type of fireball that explodes in a bright terminal flash, according to the American Meteor Society. "This thing wasn't huge. I'm going to guess about 5 feet across. It broke up quite quickly," Garvie said.

Four fireball meteors flashed across the sky over the U.S. and Europe on Tuesday night (archive)

Three other meteors kept the American Meteor Society and the International Meteor Organization very busy on Tuesday night. At 8:40 p.m., a fireball lit up the sky over southern Ohio. Later in the night, two meteors zoomed over Europe — one over Germany and the other over France. More than 1,300 people sent reports to the organizations, making last night the busiest night they've ever had since the online reporting forms were launched.

It looks like the fireballs were at least somewhat related — the Taurid meteor shower peaked on Saturday, and Taurid meteors are still shooting across the sky. "Associated with the comet Encke, the Taurids are actually two separate showers, with a Southern and a Northern component," the American Meteor Society wrote on Wednesday morning. "Both branches of the Taurids are most notable for colorful fireballs and are often responsible for an increased number of fireball reports from September through November."


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday November 16 2017, @01:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the speaking-of-bill-gates dept.

Retired judge Justice Patrick Tabaro writes of a proposed law in Uganda that looks to adversely affect its independence and, specifically, what is starting to be called these days "food security".

[...] science is not a magic wand for solving man's food security concerns, but must be applied in accordance with Ubuntu (humaneness).

[...] Since the advent of civilization, peasants have had capacity to plant their own seeds. With the advent of GMO farming, the peasants who constitute 70 per cent of the population have their fate sealed; they may fall into the debt trap, fail to service bank loans and will be in danger of losing their cherished land holdings to financial institutions – and this may entail food insecurity for everyone.

[...] God forbid that anyone should be targeting our scientists to make us vulnerable for easy domination.

He concludes that [w]ith GMOs, there is no Ubuntu, (human nature, humanness, humanity, virtue, goodness, and kindness).


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday November 16 2017, @11:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the ethereal-ethereum dept.

Vinay Gupta, one of the main figures behind Ethereum, is having a meltdown. Someone he doesn't like (Gab.ai) was apparently considering using Ethereum for something. Gupta has posted some...interesting tweets. Key quotes:

"[Don't use] Ethereum. We are all communists"

"We will collude against you"

"We do infrastruture. You depend on us. We will find ways. Count on it".

Are these the kinds of things one wants to hear from the people behind a digital currency (and platform) that one is supposed to trust? They will "find ways" to "collude" against anyone they dislike?

Seriously, the more I learn about Ethereum, the less I like it. Full disclosure: I sold what few ETH I owned several months ago, for reasons related to "The DAO" mess.


Original Submission

posted by mrpg on Thursday November 16 2017, @09:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the my-extensions-dont-work dept.

From Firefox's faster, slicker, slimmer Quantum edition now out

[...] Collectively, the performance work being done to modernize Firefox is called Project Quantum. We took a closer look at Quantum back when Firefox 57 hit the developer channel in September, but the short version is, Mozilla is rebuilding core parts of the browser, such as how it handles CSS stylesheets, how it draws pages on-screen, and how it uses the GPU.

This work is being motivated by a few things. First, the Web has changed since many parts of Firefox were initially designed and developed; pages are more dynamic in structure and applications are richer and more graphically intensive. JavaScript is also more complex and difficult to debug. Second, computers now have many cores and simultaneous threads, giving them much greater scope to work in parallel. And security remains a pressing concern, prompting the use of new techniques to protect against exploitation. Some of the rebuilt portions are even using Mozilla's new Rust programming language, which is designed to offer improved security compared to C++.

Also at: Firefox aims to win back Chrome users with its souped up Quantum browser

The fastest version of Firefox yet is now live


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday November 16 2017, @07:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the Ross-128?-When-did-Harry-Mudd-join-"Friends"? dept.

Astronomers using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) at the La Silla Observatory in Chile have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf in its "habitable zone". The star, Ross 128, is about 10.89 light years away and is less active than Proxima Centauri, possibly boosting the chances of its exoplanet being habitable. Ross 128b has a minimum mass of about 1.35 Earth masses, and is considered by its discoverers to be "the best temperate [exo]planet known to date". The next step will be to determine the atmospheric composition of Ross 128b:

There's still uncertainty about whether Ross 128 b is within its star's habitable zone, but scientists say that with temperatures of between -60 and +20°C, it can be considered temperate.

Next, astronomers want to study the atmospheric composition and chemistry of suitable, nearby worlds like Ross 128 b. The detection of gases such as oxygen could potentially point to biological processes on planets orbiting other stars.

Several gases have already been detected in the atmospheres of exoplanets, but this line of enquiry is expected to be boosted immeasurably when observatories such as the European Southern Observatory's Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) and Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) come online in the next few years.

Although currently 11 light-years from Earth, the new planet's parent star Ross 128 is moving towards us and is expected to overtake Proxima Centauri as our nearest stellar neighbour in just 79,000 years - a heartbeat on cosmic timescales.

A temperate exo-Earth around a quiet M dwarf at 3.4 parsecs (open, DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201731973) (DX)


Original Submission

posted by mrpg on Thursday November 16 2017, @06:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the cui-bono dept.

Opioid commission's anti-marijuana argument stirs anger

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, head of the presidential commission on opioids, warned of the dangers of marijuana in a letter to President Donald Trump earlier this month about the panel's findings, saying the current push for marijuana legalization could further fuel the opioid epidemic.

"There is a lack of sophisticated outcome data on dose, potency, and abuse potential for marijuana. This mirrors the lack of data in the 1990s and early 2000s when opioid prescribing multiplied across health care settings and led to the current epidemic of abuse, misuse and addiction," Christie wrote in the letter, which was released with the commission's final report.

"The Commission urges that the same mistake is not made with the uninformed rush to put another drug legally on the market in the midst of an overdose epidemic."

[...] But some experts say the commission's fixation on marijuana was bizarre and troubling, lending credence to outdated views of marijuana as a gateway drug. And these experts want to nip such thinking in the bud.

They emphasized that they support efforts to curb the nation's opioid epidemic, but not the demonization of marijuana in the process.

"I was surprised to see negative language about marijuana in the opioid report," said Dr. Chinazo Cunningham, a professor of medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. "Research that examines pain and marijuana shows that marijuana use significantly reduces pain. In addition, the majority of studies examining marijuana and opioids show that marijuana use is associated with less opioid use and less opioid-related deaths."

You had one job.

Previously:


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday November 16 2017, @04:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the clever-naming dept.

"A gas supplier company in the Netherlands has effectively doubled the range of the Tesla Model S by adding hydrogen power to the electric luxury sedan. Dubbed the "Hesla," the modification adds a second charging supply to the existing electrical system, using a tank of hydrogen as an alternative fuel source.

Last week, the Holthausen Group announced that it had begun testing the prototype vehicle. With a fully charged battery and a tank of hydrogen, the Helsa can travel close to 620 miles — nearly twice the range of the stock Model S P100D." http://www.foxnews.com/auto/2017/11/13/meet-hesla-modded-tesla-model-s-that-runs-on-hydrogen-fuel.html


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday November 16 2017, @02:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the reload-quickly dept.

Drug-Shooting 'Bazooka' Seized In Mexico As Smugglers Aim Skyward

As Mexican authorities continue to crack down on drug smugglers, criminals continue to aim high in a bid to evade them. Last week, Mexican authorities seized a jury-rigged bazooka and nearly one ton of marijuana in the border town of Agua Prieta in Sonora state, the Mexican Attorney General said in a statement.

The bazooka had been "adapted" to use a compressor for launching drugs into the United States. The Mexican daily El Universal reports the device was inside a van with a sliding roof, allowing the bazooka to shoot the drugs from the cover of the vehicle.

Agua Prieta lies directly across the border from Douglas, Ariz. Last year, Mexican federal authorities found yet another "homemade bazooka" in the town, this one measuring nearly 10 feet long, alongside an air compressor inside a modified panel van with no license plate. Officials say it was apparently used for launching projectiles, possibly drugs, across the border.

If "legal" retail prices for cannabis drop, maybe these will be packed with heroin or cocaine instead.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday November 16 2017, @01:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the core-value dept.

Qualcomm Launches 48-core Centriq for $1995: Arm Servers for Cloud Native Applications

Following on from the SoC disclosure at Hot Chips, Qualcomm has this week announced the formal launch of its new Centriq 2400 family of Arm-based SoCs for cloud applications. The top processor is a 48-core, Arm v8-compliant design made using Samsung's 10LPE FinFET process, with 18 billion transistors in a 398mm2 design. The cores are 64-bit only, and are grouped into duplexes – pairs of cores with a shared 512KB of L2 cache, and the top end design will also have 60 MB of L3 cache. The full design has 6 channels of DDR4 (Supporting up to 768 GB) with 32 PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes, support for Arm Trustzone, and all within a TDP of 120W and for $1995.

We covered the design of Centriq extensively in our Hot Chips overview, including the microarchitecture, security and new power features. What we didn't know were the exact configurations, L3 cache sizes, and a few other minor details. One key metric that semiconductor professionals are interested in is the confirmation of using Samsung's 10LPE process, which Qualcomm states gave them 18 billion transistors in a 398mm2 die (45.2MTr/mm2). This was compared to Intel's Skylake XCC chip on 14nm (37.5MTr/mm2, from an Intel talk), but we should also add in Huawei's Kirin 970 on TSMC 10nm (55MTr/mm2).

Previously: Qualcomm's Centriq 2400 Demoed: A 48-Core ARM SoC for Servers


Original Submission