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takyon writes:

Pregnant women are increasingly using cannabis, according to two studies published this year:

More pregnant women seem to be using pot -- sometimes to ease the nausea of morning sickness or heightened anxiety -- and a new study suggests that this slight rise in marijuana use is most pronounced among those younger in age. The prevalence of marijuana use among a sample of moms-to-be in California climbed from 4.2% to 7.1% from 2009 through 2016, according to a research letter published in the journal JAMA on Tuesday [DOI: 10.1001/jama.2017.17225] [DX]. Among pregnant teens younger than 18, marijuana use climbed from 12.5% to 21.8%, and among women 18 to 24, marijuana use climbed from 9.8% to 19%, the researchers found.

That research involved only certain women in California, but a separate study of pregnant women across the United States, published in JAMA [open, DOI: 10.1001/jama.2016.17383] [DX] in January, found that those who reported using marijuana in the previous month grew from 2.37% in 2002 to 3.85% in 2014. The women were 18 to 44.

Doctors caution that the health effects of marijuana on a fetus remain unclear but could include low birth weight and developmental problems [DOI: 10.1097/CHI.0b013e318160b3f0] [DX], according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many of the chemicals in marijuana, like tetrahydrocannabinol, known as THC, could pass through a mother's system to her baby. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that "women who are pregnant or contemplating pregnancy should be encouraged to discontinue marijuana use" and "to discontinue use of marijuana for medicinal purposes in favor of an alternative therapy." Additionally, "there are insufficient data to evaluate the effects of marijuana use on infants during lactation and breastfeeding, and in the absence of such data, marijuana use is discouraged," according to the recommendations.

Also at LA Times.

Related: Tennessee to Jail Women Who Use Drugs while Pregnant

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Nuclear research reactors around the country, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Reactor (MITR), could switch to a low-enriched uranium fuel:

The US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has submitted to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission a preliminary report on a new uranium fuel that will enable the conversion of six US research reactors from highly enriched uranium [HEU] to low-enriched uranium [LEU].

The preliminary report on uranium-molybdenum (U-Mo) monolithic fuel contains data about the performance of the new fuel in a reactor and how it perfoms under a variety of conditions.

The international community is working to minimise amounts of HEU material, which could potentially be used for nuclear weapons. To that end, programmes are under way to convert research reactors to the use of LEU fuel, which does not present a proliferation risk. In some cases - including six high-performance research reactors in the USA - this can mean designing a new LEU fuel.

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takyon writes:

Despite the harsh radiation released by pulsars, exoplanets orbiting them may be "habitable" if their atmospheres are thick enough:

The most exciting exoplanet finds are those that orbit within their host star's habitable zone, an area at just the right distance from the star to allow for liquid surface water and thus, potentially life. The paper's authors, two astronomers at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, suggest that pulsars have their own habitable zones — surprising, given the harsh X-rays and other radiation that such stars emit.

But, if a planet is big enough — some one to 10 times Earth's mass — and it has an atmosphere at least 1 million times as thick as Earth's, then it might just cut it as habitable even around a pulsar. The idea is that the enormous atmosphere would act as a shield for the planet's surface, absorbing the deadly radiation while still allowing for enough heat to melt water. And a bigger world, preferably with a decent magnetic field, is necessary to hold on to that atmosphere over long enough time scales.

It doesn't sound like complex life would make the cut.

Neutron star planets: Atmospheric processes and irradiation (open, DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201731102) (DX)

Of the roughly 3000 neutron stars known, only a handful have sub-stellar companions. The most famous of these are the low-mass planets around the millisecond pulsar B1257+12. New evidence indicates that observational biases could still hide a wide variety of planetary systems around most neutron stars. We consider the environment and physical processes relevant to neutron star planets, in particular the effect of X-ray irradiation and the relativistic pulsar wind on the planetary atmosphere. We discuss the survival time of planet atmospheres and the planetary surface conditions around different classes of neutron stars, and define a neutron star habitable zone based on the presence of liquid water and retention of an atmosphere. Depending on as-yet poorly constrained aspects of the pulsar wind, both Super-Earths around B1257+12 could lie within its habitable zone.

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takyon writes:

Exclusive: Federal agents found fetuses in body broker's warehouse (Warning: Graphic images)

Federal agents discovered four preserved fetuses in the Detroit warehouse of a man who sold human body parts, confidential photographs reviewed by Reuters show. The fetuses were found during a December 2013 raid of businessman Arthur Rathburn's warehouse. The fetuses, which appear to have been in their second trimester, were submerged in a liquid that included human brain tissue. Rathburn, a former body broker, is accused of defrauding customers by sending them diseased body parts. He has pleaded not guilty and his trial is set for January.

How Rathburn acquired the fetuses and what he intended to do with them is unclear. Rathburn's lawyers did not respond to requests for comment, and neither the indictment nor other documents made public in his case mention the fetuses.

"This needs to be reviewed," said U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee who recently chaired a special U.S. House committee on the use of fetal tissue. Blackburn recoiled when a Reuters reporter showed her some of the photographs, taken by government officials involved in the raid.

Reuters: The Body Trade

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takyon writes:

Technique to allow AI to learn words in the flow of dialogue developed

A group of researchers at Osaka University has developed a new method for dialogue systems. This new method, lexical acquisition through implicit confirmation, is a method for a computer to acquire the category of an unknown word over multiple dialogues by confirming whether or not its predictions are correct in the flow of conversation.

[...] The group led by Professor Komatani developed an implicit confirmation method by which the computer acquires the category of an unknown word during conversation with humans. This method aims for the system to predict the category of an unknown word from user input during conversation, to make implicit confirmation requests to the user, and to have the user respond to these requests. In this way, the system acquires knowledge about words during dialogues.

In this method, the system decides whether the prediction is correct or not by using the user response following each request, its context, by using machine learning techniques. In addition, this system's decision performance improved by taking the classification results gained from dialogues with other users into consideration.

Lexical Acquisition through Implicit Confirmations over Multiple Dialogues

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The Mighty Buzzard writes:

So, among the many nifty presents I brought back from my holidays with the family was a case of the black plague. Or possibly a cold. Either way, I don't want to be deploying new code on the production servers while my thinking's impaired*, so we're pushing the site update we'd planned for this weekend back another week**. That's all. Enjoy the last bits of 2017.

*Shut up.

**or two. [martyb here. I've not had the time to finish testing the changes and am recovering from overload-mode at work and the start of a cold, as well.]

takyon writes:

A new time-of-flight imaging system could improve computer vision for self-driving vehicles:

In a new paper appearing in IEEE Access, members of the Camera Culture group present a new approach to time-of-flight imaging that increases its depth resolution 1,000-fold. That's the type of resolution that could make self-driving cars practical.

The new approach could also enable accurate distance measurements through fog, which has proven to be a major obstacle to the development of self-driving cars.

At a range of 2 meters, existing time-of-flight systems have a depth resolution of about a centimeter. That's good enough for the assisted-parking and collision-detection systems on today's cars.

But as Achuta Kadambi, a joint PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science and media arts and sciences and first author on the paper, explains, "As you increase the range, your resolution goes down exponentially. Let's say you have a long-range scenario, and you want your car to detect an object further away so it can make a fast update decision. You may have started at 1 centimeter, but now you're back down to [a resolution of] a foot or even 5 feet. And if you make a mistake, it could lead to loss of life."

At distances of 2 meters, the MIT researchers' system, by contrast, has a depth resolution of 3 micrometers. Kadambi also conducted tests in which he sent a light signal through 500 meters of optical fiber with regularly spaced filters along its length, to simulate the power falloff incurred over longer distances, before feeding it to his system. Those tests suggest that at a range of 500 meters, the MIT system should still achieve a depth resolution of only a centimeter.

Cascaded LIDAR using Beat Notes

Rethinking Machine Vision Time of Flight with GHz Heterodyning (open, DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2017.2775138) (DX)

LIDAR at MIT Media Lab (2m48s video)

Related: MIT Researchers Improve Kinect 3D Imaging Resolution by 1,000 Times Using Polarization

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Despite risks which include permanent hearing loss, LRADs are increasingly part of police's crowd control arsenal

After a wait of nearly ten months, MuckRock has finally received documents from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department regarding their response to the protests surrounding President Donald Trump's inauguration early this year. Surprisingly, while we didn't receive any records related to the J20 protests, we did receive documents relating to January 21st's Women's March, which in Washington D.C. alone attracted by conservative estimates between 450,000 and 500,000 people. While it was the largest protest in the city since the anti-Vietnam War protests of the '60s and '70s, no arrests were made.

The After-Action Report provided by the DCMPD, under the header "Improvements," contains the information that the department utilized both a D.C. National Guard Jump Team, and a Long Range Acoustical Device, better known as an LRAD. The LRAD was used "to assist in instructing the crowd flows on continuing to flow away from the entrances of the stations."

Since the first documented use of an LRAD sound cannon on protesters by Pittsburgh Police during the 2009 G20 summit, LRAD use by police against activists appears to be on the rise. The Pittsburgh Police Bureau used it again in 2011 during the Super Bowl, the New York Police Department has used it several times including the Eric Garner protests and during Occupy, the Oakland Police Department also used it against Occupy protesters, and more recently and perhaps most prominently, an LRAD was deployed during the Ferguson unrest and the Standing Rock protests.

There are various models of LRAD, with military grade versions that can send voice communications up to 5.5 miles away, and slightly less powerful versions like the LRAD 500X or 300X which are what police departments generally use. All can produce a sound somewhat akin to a high-powered car alarm that can cause intense headaches, nausea, loss of balance, and potentially permanent hearing loss.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Four defectors from Kilju county in North Korean have shown signs of radiation exposure:

At least four defectors from North Korea have shown signs of radiation exposure, the South Korean government said on Wednesday, although researchers could not confirm if they were was related to Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.

The four are among 30 former residents of Kilju county, an area in North Korea that includes the nuclear test site Punggye-ri, who have been examined by the South Korean government since October, a month after the North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test, Unification Ministry spokesman Baik Tae-hyun told a news briefing.

They were exposed to radiation between May 2009 and January 2013, and all defected to the South before the most recent test, a researcher at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, which carried out the examinations, told reporters. [...] The researcher cautioned that there were a number of ways people may be exposed to radiation, and that none of the defectors who [...] had lived in Punggye-ri itself showed specific symptoms.

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canopic jug writes:

This is the first of a three-part series based on never-before-published training manuals for the KGB, the Soviet intelligence organization that Vladimir Putin served as an operative, and that shaped his view of the world. Its veterans still make up an important part of now-Russian President Vladimir Putin's power base. All were trained in the same dark arts, and these primers in tradecraft are essential to an understanding of the way they think and the way they operate.

Source : Revealed: The Secret KGB Manual for Recruiting Spies

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takyon writes:

Planetary Resources' Arkyd-6 ready for launch

After years of development, the Planetary Resources-built Arkyd-6 is finally on the last leg of its journey into space. It is scheduled to be launched as a secondary payload atop India's PSLV-C40 mission in January 2018.

At approximately 4 by 8 by 12 inches (10 by 20 by 30 centimeters), Arkyd-6 is about twice the size of its predecessor, Arkyd-3R, which was deployed from the International Space Station's Kibo module airlock in 2015.

The Arkyd-6 contains the technology that will be used in Planetary Resources' asteroid exploration program such as second-generation avionics, communications, and attitude control systems, as well as orientation systems to aid in attitude control. It also includes the A6 instrument, which will provide infrared images of the Earth in the midwave slice of the spectrum.

The broadband imager spans 3 to 5 microns of the infrared spectrum. This slice of the spectrum reveals the presence of water and is sensitive to heat. As such, the A6 can search for traces of water not only on Earth but elsewhere. The ultimate objective of future versions of this instrument is to find water on near-Earth asteroids.

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takyon writes:

Robot growing pains: Two U.S. factories show tensions of going digital

President Donald Trump has put bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States at the center of his economic and trade agenda. But when jobs actually come - as they have here in southern Indiana - many factory workers are not prepared for them, and employers are having trouble hiring people with the needed skills.

U.S. manufacturing job openings stand near a 15 year high and factories are hiring workers at the fastest clip since 2014, with many employers saying the hardest-to-fill jobs are those that involve technical skills that command top pay.

In 2000, over half of U.S. manufacturing workers had only high school degrees or less, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today, 57 percent of manufacturing workers have technical school training, some college or full college degrees, and nearly a third of workers have bachelors or advanced degrees, up from 22 percent in 2000.

Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the digitalization sweeping the economy is forcing employers to hunt for a different mix of workers - and pay more in some cases for workers with technical skills. A new study by Muro found those with the highest digital skills saw average wage growth of 2 percent a year since 2010, while wages for those with medium skills grew by 1.4 percent and those at the bottom by 1.6 percent.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

As of mid-December, Nintendo sold 10 million Switch consoles worldwide, after around 9 months of availability. The Switch outpaced sales of most other consoles in their initial months, except for the PS4.

Some big titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (an influence on Zelda: Breath of the Wild) have been ported to Nintendo Switch. But the ability to port certain games may be hindered by the delayed release of 64 GB "game cards" (proprietary ROM cartridges) for the system:

Those wishing for 64GB Nintendo Switch game cards will have to keep waiting. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Nintendo pushed back the rollout of 64GB game cards until 2019, citing "technical issues" as the problem. Game developers get Switch cards from Nintendo, so this means that they'll have to wait to get game cards that can support big titles.

[...] Nintendo initially attempted to alleviate the storage issue with the Switch's microSD card slot, which can hold an extra 2TB of space. However, 2TB microSD cards aren't available yet, and not every microSD card is the same. Some big titles require high-speed microSD cards to run properly.

While many mobile devices and the Nintendo Switch can support up to 2 TB of microSD storage, the largest currently in production is SanDisk's 400 GB card, which currently retails for $250.

CNET: Nintendo Switch was 2017's best gadget. What does it mean for 2018?

The Verge 2017 tech report card: Nintendo

Previously: Nintendo to More Than Double Production of Switch; Success Rooted in Wii U's Failure

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Tesla has been hyping up the prospect of an electric pickup truck for a long time (you're looking at an artist's rendering above), but when can you expect to see it? You might have a clearer idea. As part of a call for feedback, Elon Musk has promised that the pickup will be made "right after" the Model Y crossover arrives between 2019 and 2020. We'd take that commitment with a grain of salt (remember how Tesla expected widescale Model 3 deliveries to start in 2017?), but it at least gives you an idea of what the EV maker is shooting for.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/26/elon-musk-promises-to-make-tesla-pickup-truck-after-model-y/

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takyon writes:

FCC approves first wireless 'power-at-a-distance' charging system

Charging your mobile device wirelessly is certainly less of a hassle than plugging it in, but still requires the device be in physical contact with its station to actually work. That's about to change now that the Federal Communications Commission has approved the first wireless charger that works from up to three feet away.

San Jose-based startup, Energous, announced on Tuesday that it has received the first such FCC certification for power-at-a-distance wireless charging with its WattUp Mid Field transmitter. The transmitter converts electricity into radio frequencies, then beams the energy to nearby devices outfitted with a corresponding receiver. This differs from the resonant induction method that the Pi wireless charging system relies upon and offers a greater range than the Belkin and Mophie chargers that require physical contact with the device.

Also at Ubergizmo.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Redbox reached a new distribution deal with Universal Pictures to make the studio's Blu-ray Disc and DVD titles available for rental at Redbox kiosks the same day as retail sell-through dates.

The deal also makes Universal's movies available digitally through Redbox On Demand, which the company launched last week, via transactional video-on-demand rentals and electronic sell-through.

Under Redbox's previous pact with Universal, the kiosk operator had agreed to a 28-day window after home-video release to rent the studio's movies at its DVD kiosks.

The revised deal starts with January titles, which will include Tom Cruise-starrer "American Made" and comedy "Brad's Status," written and directed by Mike White and starring Ben Stiller, on Jan. 2, 2018.

Source: http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/redbox-universal-same-day-dvd-kiosk-rentals-1202647477/

Original Submission