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takyon writes:

Why some fracking wells are prone to triggering earthquakes

Some of the biggest fracking-induced earthquakes in the world — including three higher than magnitude 4.0 that could be felt by humans — have taken place in the Kaybob Duvernay Formation near Fox Creek, [Alberta]. But they've happened only in certain areas and only since 2013, even though fracking began there in 2010. Why?

A study led by Ryan Schultz, a seismologist with the Alberta Energy Regulator and a geophysical research scientist at the University of Alberta, shows that the underlying geology determines whether earthquakes can be induced at all by a particular well. But if an earthquake can be induced, then the number of earthquakes increased with the amount of fluid pumped into the well, reports the study published Thursday in the journal Science [DOI: 10.1126/science.aao0159] [DX].

The authors of the study, which also involved researchers at Western University, the University of Calgary, the University of Alberta and Natural Resources Canada, came to that conclusion after analyzing drilling records for around 300 wells in the region submitted to the Alberta Energy Regulator. They found that the reason earthquakes didn't start there until 2013 was because companies didn't start drilling earthquake-prone wells until then.

So what makes a well earthquake prone? Earthquakes happen at faults, where two of the Earth's tectonic plates come together. Earthquakes occur when the two plates slip or slide relative to one another. In order to cause an earthquake, a fracking well needs to have a physical connection via the underlying rock to a fault that is oriented so that the pressure of fluid from the well can change the stress on that fault and increase the chance of it slipping.

Also at the University of Alberta.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

It looked like just another conference call. A panel of suited men sat at a table, large white name tags and water bottles before them. The man in the center, illuminated by fluorescent lights, spoke to a camera in front of him.

[...] The mics, cameras, and screens made for a seemingly ordinary—maybe even boring—meeting-by-telepresence. But behind the scenes, physicists were encrypting the videostream using arguably the most secure technology in existence. Bai and his colleagues were participating on the first-ever intercontinental, quantum-encrypted video conference.

And on Friday, the Chinese and Austrian researchers who engineered the call published how they did it in Physical Review Letters. Led by physicist Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China, the team relied on networks of optical fiber, a handful of encryption algorithms, and a $100 million satellite that China launched in 2016—the only one specifically designed for quantum cryptography. "They've demonstrated a full infrastructure," says Caleb Christensen, the chief scientist at MagiQ Technologies, which makes quantum cryptography systems that connect a small number of users. "They've connected all the links. Nobody's done that with [quantum encryption] ever."

Story at: Wired

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

n February 2013, Eric Loomis was found driving a car that had been used in a shooting. He was arrested, and pleaded guilty to eluding an officer. In determining his sentence, a judge looked not just to his criminal record, but also to a score assigned by a tool called COMPAS.

Developed by a private company called Equivant (formerly Northpointe), COMPAS—or the Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions—purports to predict a defendant's risk of committing another crime. It works through a proprietary algorithm that considers some of the answers to a 137-item questionnaire.

COMPAS is one of several such risk-assessment algorithms being used around the country to predict hot spots of violent crime, determine the types of supervision that inmates might need, or—as in Loomis's case—provide information that might be useful in sentencing. COMPAS classified him as high-risk of re-offending, and Loomis was sentenced to six years.

He appealed the ruling on the grounds that the judge, in considering the outcome of an algorithm whose inner workings were secretive and could not be examined, violated due process. The appeal went up to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, who ruled against Loomis, noting that the sentence would have been the same had COMPAS never been consulted. Their ruling, however, urged caution and skepticism in the algorithm's use.

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/equivant-compas-algorithm/550646/

Also at Wired and Gizmodo

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Plants react sensitively to changes in their surroundings and possess the ability to adapt to them. They use the photoreceptor protein phytochrome B to see light and then regulate processes such as seed germination, seedling development, longitudinal growth and flower formation.

A team led by Prof. Dr. Andreas Hiltbrunner from the Institute of Biology II at the University of Freiburg has recently conducted a study that shows that both proteins PCH1 and PCHL influence this receptors' photosensitivity. The researchers recently published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

[...] In their study, the scientists have now found out that there are two proteins in the thale cress plant, PCH1 and PCHL, which bind to phytochrome B and influence the activity of the receptor. Using a special method of spectroscopy, the researchers showed that the dark reversion of phytochrome B is almost completely suppressed when the amount of PCH1 or PCHL is increased, while the process is accelerated when PCH1 and PCHL are missing. By allowing the plants to regulate the change from the active to the inactive state, they can adapt the photosensitivity of the phytochrome B photoreceptor to different conditions.

Enderle, B., Sheerin, D.J., Paik, I., Kathare, P.K., Schwenk, P., Klose, C., Ulbrich, M.H., Huq, E., and Hiltbrunner, A. (2017). PCH1 and PCHL promote photomorphogenesis in plants by controlling phytochrome B dark reversion. Nature Communications 8: 2221. PubMed: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29263319

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Here is an excellent collection of 45 free books in PDF format which I found here — "Programming Notes for Professionals" books.

The PDFs contain this on one of their very first pages:

Please feel free to share this PDF with anyone for free

This ${insert title here} Notes for Professionals book is compiled from Stack
Overflow Documentation, the content is written by the beautiful people at Stack
Overflow. Text content is released under Creative Commons BY-SA, see credits at
the end of this book whom contributed to the various chapters. Images may be
copyright of their respective owners unless otherwise specified.

Because of the range of software development related topics covered, I thought this might be of interest to a large fraction of people on SN.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Researchers developed a new mathematical tool to validate and improve methods used by medical professionals to interpret results from clinical genetic tests. The work was published this month in Genetics in Medicine.

The research was led by Sean Tavtigian, PhD, a cancer researcher at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) and professor of oncological sciences at the University of Utah, in collaboration with genetics experts from around the United States.

Tavtigian utilized Bayes' Theorem, a math equation first published in 1763, as the basis of a computational tool he and the team developed to assess the rigor of the current, widely-used approach to evaluate the results of a clinical genetic test.

Clinical genetic testing is used in a variety of medical fields, including cancer care, obstetrics, and neurosciences, among others. Results of a genetic test may help to provide a definitive medical diagnosis, or assess the likelihood of a person to develop a particular disease before symptoms appear. The range of approaches employed to provide health care based on the results of the test can vary significantly. Patients may be at negligible risk for disease with no medical management required, or they may pursue costly, invasive medical treatment in an effort to stave off disease or manage and minimize symptoms.

With millions and millions of changes possible in genes that control health in any given person, the challenge of discerning which gene changes are likely to cause disease is vast. In the past few years, human genetic researchers have identified thousands of Variants of Uncertain Significance (VUS), that is, genetic changes without a known understanding of how they may impact a person's health. "A large fraction of VUS are believed to be generally harmless," describes Tavtigian. "One only wants to change the medical management of patients when the genetic testing identifies a variant that is likely to be disease-causing. Against a huge population of harmless VUS, how do you identify the small subset that are likely to require medical management?"

Source: https://huntsmancancer.org/newsroom/2018/01/centuries-old-math-equation.php

Sean V Tavtigian, Marc S Greenblatt, Steven M Harrison, Robert L Nussbaum, Snehit A Prabhu, Kenneth M Boucher, Leslie G Biesecker. Modeling the ACMG/AMP variant classification guidelines as a Bayesian classification framework. FENETICS in MEDICINE, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/gim.2017.210

Bayes Theorem

Original Submission

takyon writes:

DNA test confirms two mysterious 'brother mummies' had different fathers

A long-believed speculation turned out false after a recent DNA test that revealed the 4000-year-old mummies from Egypt were actually related on the mother side with two different fathers. These popular mummies were nicknamed as "Two Brothers" by the officials at the museum in which they were kept.

The DNA test revealed that the mummies belonged to two men from the elite class of Egypt who was named "Khnum-Nakht" and "Nakht-Ankh". They were actually born of the same mother but had a different father which makes them half-brothers. The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Manchester by the use of DNA sequencing.

Konstantina Drosou, a researcher from the University of Manchester said that the journey to obtain the results of this test was very exhausting but it finally delivered the accurate result. A small but highly significant piece of ancient history was added to the puzzle behind Egypt's ancestry. Ancient DNA tracing has numerous implications while enabling the study of our past and ancestors.

Also at Science News and Newsweek.

The kinship of two 12th Dynasty mummies revealed by ancient DNA sequencing (DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.12.025) (DX)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbrackethas found the following story:

Coding is a vital component of tech education, but it won't be enough to sustain the next generation of workers.

[...] Pichai notes that workers today are required to have skills that scarcely existed five years ago, such as an administrative assistant needing to use online programs to run budgets, scheduling and accounting, among other tasks.

And he says these skills are much easier to learn than coding, pointing to $1 billion in new initiatives Google unveiled last year aimed at training and educating workers to help them find jobs and grow their businesses.

"Through these trainings, people learn about using technology to research, to plan events, analyze data and more," Pichai wrote. "They don't require a formal degree or certificate."

[...] "We should make sure that the next generation of jobs are good jobs, in every sense," Pichai wrote. "Rather than thinking of education as the opening act, we need to make sure it's a constant, natural and simple act across life -- with lightweight, flexible courses, skills and programs available to everyone."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Tom Petty, the singer and guitarist whose influential music spanned four decades, died in October from an accidental drug overdose as a result of mixing medications involving opioids, his family announced Friday.

Source: Washington Post

Previously: US Rock Star Tom Petty Dies Aged 66

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

OpenSSL has made some policy changes regarding use of e-mail lists, cryptographic policies, patch releases, and github use.

The OpenSSL OMC met last month for a two-day face-to-face meeting in London, and like previous F2F meetings, most of the team was present and we addressed a great many issues. This blog posts talks about some of them, and most of the others will get their own blog posts, or notices, later. Red Hat graciously hosted us for the two days, and both Red Hat and Cryptsoft covered the costs of their employees who attended.

One of the overall threads of the meeting was about increasing the transparency of the project. By default, everything should be done in public. We decided to try some major changes to email and such.

Source: https://www.openssl.org/blog/blog/2018/01/18/f2f-london/

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Tiny nano-scale machines formed from DNA could be the future of manufacturing things at small scale but great volume: drugs, tiny chip components, and of course more nanomachines. But moving simple, reusable machines like a little arm half a micrometer long is more difficult than at human scale. Wires for signals aren't possible at that scale, and if you want to move it with a second arm, how do you move that arm?

For a while chemical signals have been used; wash a certain solution over a nanobot and it changes its orientation, closes its grasping tip, or what have you. But that's slow and inexact.

Researchers at the Technical University of Munich were looking at ways to improve this situation of controlling machines at the molecular scale. They were working with "nano-cranes," which are essentially a custom 400-nanometer strand of DNA sticking up out of a substrate, with a flexible base (literally — it's made of unpaired bases) that lets it rotate in any direction. It's more like a tiny robotic finger, but let's not split hairs (or base pairs).

What Friedrich Simmel and his team found, or rather realized the potential of, was that DNA molecules and therefore these nano-cranes have a negative charge. So theoretically, they should move in response to electric fields. And that's just what they did.

[...] The team's work, which like most great research seems obvious in retrospect, earned them the coveted cover story in Science.

Source: TechCrunch

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Donald Trump and Angela Merkel will join 2,500 world leaders, business executives and charity bosses at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland which kicks off on 23 January. High on the agenda once again will be the topic of inequality, and how to reduce the widening gap between the rich and the rest around the world.

The WEF recently warned that the global economy is at risk of another crisis, and that automation and digitalisation are likely to suppress employment and wages for most while boosting wealth at the very top.

But what ideas should the great and good gathered in the Swiss Alps be putting into action? We'd like to know what single step you think governments should prioritise in order to best address the problem of rising inequality. Below we've outlined seven proposals that are most often championed as necessary to tackle the issue – but which of them is most important to you?

• Provide free and high quality education
• Raise the minimum wage
• Raise taxes on the rich
• Fight corruption
• Provide more social protection for the poor
• Stop the influence of the rich on politicians
• Provide jobs for the unemployed

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2018/jan/19/project-davos-whats-the-single-best-way-to-close-the-worlds-wealth-gap

Do you think these ideas are enough, or are there any better ideas to close this wealth gap ? You too can participate and vote for the idea that, you think, works best.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

While there are still lessons to be learned from how the Russians used the social platform to sow discord ahead of America's 2016 presidential election, critics say Facebook — and Zuckerberg — aren't acting quickly enough to prevent meddling in the upcoming midterm elections.

"Facebook is a living, breathing crime scene for what happened in the 2016 election — and only they have full access to what happened," said Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google. His work centers on how technology can ethically steer the thoughts and actions of the masses on social media and he's been called "the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience" by The Atlantic magazine.

Source : Facebook is a 'living, breathing crime scene,' says one former tech insider

Original Submission

Sulla writes:

So one of my three year old kids smashed my 65" LED flatscreen with a die-cast model of the Atlantis shuttle. I was fine with this and was not planning on buying a replacement in any haste but my wife keeps complaining. Would prefer at least 65"+ and absolutely not a smart tv. What suggestions do you have, companies to avoid, etc. Help me SN, you are probably my only hope of not just buying another spysung.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

A film crew linked to cable business news channel CNBC was arrested at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey on Thursday after attempting to sneak a fake bomb through airport security.

Seven members of a cable TV crew working for the Endemol Shine Group, which contracts with CNBC, were arrested for the attempt, which the Transportation Security Administration determined was not a threat. According to CBS's New York City local affiliate, the seven suspects told investigators they were part of the "Staten Island Hustle" show.

The prop "had all the markings of an improvised explosive device," according to a TSA spokeswoman.

"At the same time, others in the group covertly filmed the encounter," she added.

Port Authority police said it has charged the seven crew members with conspiracy to create a public alarm, among other charges.

Source: TheHill

Original Submission