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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

UC Berkeley engineers have built a bright-light emitting device that is millimeters wide and fully transparent when turned off. The light emitting material in this device is a monolayer semiconductor, which is just three atoms thick.

The device opens the door to invisible displays on walls and windows – displays that would be bright when turned on but see-through when turned off — or in futuristic applications such as light-emitting tattoos, according to the researchers.

“The materials are so thin and flexible that the device can be made transparent and can conform to curved surfaces,” said Der-Hsien Lien, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and a co-first author along with Matin Amani and Sujay Desai, both doctoral students in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at Berkeley.

Their study was published March 26 in the journal Nature Communications. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

[...] This device is a proof-of-concept, and much research still remains, primarily to improve efficiency. Measuring this device’s efficiency is not straightforward, but the researchers think it’s about 1 percent efficient. Commercial LEDs have efficiencies of around 25 to 30 percent.

The concept may be applicable to other devices and other kinds of materials, the device could one day have applications in a number of fields where having invisible displays are warranted. That could be an atomically thin display that’s imprinted on a wall or even on human skin.

“A lot of work remains to be done and a number of challenges need to be overcome to further advance the technology for practical applications,” Javey said. “However, this is one step forward by presenting a device architecture for easy injection of both charges into monolayer semiconductors.”

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

One of the key steps in developing new drugs is determining the atomic structure of its biologically active substances. This generally involves performing X-ray analyses of single crystal structures to determine the ingredient's detailed three-dimensional set-up. However, growing suitable single crystals is often a complex and time-consuming process.

A research group headed up by Bernhard Spingler, professor at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Zurich, has now modified a method that had previously been used exclusively for the crystallization of proteins, and successfully applied it to organic salts. The team was able to determine the crystal structures of several organic salts with significantly less time and effort. "As organic salts make up about 40 percent of all active pharmaceutical ingredients, this new method can greatly speed up the development of drugs," says Spingler.

[...] The breakthrough in developing the novel method was achieved by Philipp Nievergelt, a trainee who had spent 10 months in Bernhard Spingler's lab after graduating from Gymnasium. The successful junior researcher is listed as first author of the study and is now four semesters into his business chemistry studies at UZH. "The traineeship got me excited about lab work and encouraged me to continue doing research," explains Nievergelt.

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canopic jug writes:

Companies learning to flip elections perfected their tactics in smaller or emerging countries, such as Latvia, Trinidad, or Nigeria, before turning to markets involving elections in developed nations. Paul Mason suggests that while at the moment there is a lot of angst from people being reminded of how their harvested data is used, it is really the union of private espionage, cracking, and "black ops" capabilities that should be setting off alarms.

Disturbingly, both CA and SCL have high-level contracts with governments, giving them access to secret intelligence both in the US and the UK. SCL is on List X, which allows it to hold British secret intelligence at its facilities.

It now appears that techniques they used in Ukraine and Eastern Europe to counteract Russian influence, and against Islamist terrorism in the Middle East, were then used to influence elections in the heart of Western democracy itself.

Let's be clear about what we're facing. A mixture of free market dogmatism plus constraints imposed by the rule of law has led, over the past decades, to the creation of an alternative, private, secret state.

When it was only focused on the enemies and rivals of the West, or hapless politicians in the global south, nobody minded. Now it is being used as a weapon to tear apart democracy in Britain and the US we care — and rightly so.

From New Statesman: We need to destroy the election-rigging industry before it destroys us

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Humane Society International announces:

Humane Society International [HSI] in Brazil has teamed up with four cities in the northeastern state of Bahia--Serrinha, Barroca, Teofilandia, and Biritinga--and the local Public Prosecutor Office, to transition all of the meals served at its public school cafeterias to 100 percent plant-based by the end of 2019, reducing meat, dairy, and egg consumption by 25 percent per semester. This marks the first time in history that any school districts have committed to having exclusively plant-based cafeterias. The change will impact over 23 million meals a year [covering 30,000 students].

The launch of the project, called "Escola Sustentável" (Sustainable School), took place on Monday, March 19th, and was followed by four days of plant-based culinary trainings for the cities' school cooks, led by HSI's Chef André Vieland. Chef André taught cooks how to prepare cost-effective, nutritious recipes, using accessible local ingredients. Escola Sustentável's mission is to improve student health, reduce the cities' environmental footprint (especially water consumption), and empower local farmers who will be able to supply the school districts with plant-based foods. Leticia Baird, Brazilian Public Prosecutor for the Environment in the State of Bahia, who led the creation of this program, stated: "Providing our school districts with plant-based meals will help save environmental and public financial resources, allow for a future of healthy adults, and build a fair world for the animals."

Sandra Lopes, food policy manager for HSI in Brazil, stated: "We applaud the cities of Serrinha, Barroca, Teofilandia, and Biritinga for becoming the world's first school districts to commit to going 100 percent plant-based. It's an honor to have worked with city authorities, nutritionists, and school cooks on the adoption and implementation of this initiative, and we're excited to continue working closely with them to ensure the success of this program."

AlterNet adds:

School meals in those cities typically feature animal proteins such as beef, lamb, poultry, fish, eggs, milk, and butter, Brazilian publication Correio reported.[pt-br] Under the new, two-year experimental program, lunches will consist of soy, rice milk, peanut butter (instead of butter), vegetables, root vegetables, grains, and whole-wheat bread.

Definitive implementation of the program will depend on health outcomes of the students after the trial period, according to Correio. Students will undergo periodic tests that count blood, ferritin, vitamin B12, total cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood glucose levels. Weight, height, and body composition will also be measured.

Families who do not agree with the newly imposed diet can send their students to school with packed lunches from home, [Ms.] Baird [...] said.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Researchers have developed an endoscope as thin as a human hair that can image the activity of neurons in the brains of living mice. Because it is so thin, the endoscope can reach deep into the brain, giving researchers access to areas that cannot be seen with microscopes or other types of endoscopes.

"In addition to being used in animal studies to help us understand how the brain works, this new endoscope might one day be useful for certain applications in people," said Shay Ohayon, who developed the device as a postdoctoral researcher in James DiCarlo's lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It could offer a smaller, and thus more comfortable, instrument for imaging within the nasal cavity, for example."

The new endoscope is based on an optical fiber just 125 microns thick. Because the device is five to ten times thinner than the smallest commercially available microendoscopes, it can be pushed deeper into the brain tissue without causing significant damage.

In The Optical Society (OSA) journal Biomedical Optics Express, the researchers report that the endoscope can capture micron-scale resolution images of neurons firing. This is the first time that imaging with such a thin endoscope has been demonstrated in a living animal.

"With further development, the new microendoscope could be used to image neuron activity in previously inaccessible parts of the brain such as the visual cortex of primate animal models," said Ohayon. "It might also be used to study how neurons from different regions of the brain communicate with each other."

takyon writes:

Astronomers have spotted a relatively small gas giant that may have formed in a protoplanetary disk around a brown dwarf:

A team of researchers from two collaborations, KMTNet and the OGLE, or Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, announced their new planet-brown dwarf pair, calling it the "OGLE-2017-BLG-1522 microlensing event." Brown dwarfs are either the lightest, dimmest stars or the heaviest, hottest planets. They have been spotted with companions before, but this would be largest mass difference between a brown dwarf and its companion yet, with the brown dwarf being perhaps over 60 times the size of the orbiting planet.

"OGLE-2017-BLG-1522Lb could be the first giant planet orbiting around a brown-dwarf host having a planetary mass ratio," the authors write in the paper published on the arXiv preprint server.

That means that the planet could have formed from a ring of dust around the brown dwarf, rather than the two objects forming together as a sort of binary. "That's the fundamental question," Jennifer Yee, astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Gizmodo. "That's why it's important. We don't know how you would form these things," she said, referring to planets orbiting brown dwarfs.

The presumed brown dwarf, or host object, has an estimated mass of 46 Jupiter masses with a range of 21 to 125 Jupiter masses. The authors estimate that the probability of the object being a brown dwarf is 76%. The planetary-sized companion has an estimated mass of 0.75 Jupiter masses with a range of 0.35 to 2.01 Jupiter masses.

From the abstract (arXiv:1803.05095):

Planet formation scenarios combined with the small companion-host mass ratio q ∼ 0.016 and separation suggest that the companion could be the first discovery of a giant planet that formed in a protoplanetary disk around a brown dwarf host.

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takyon writes:

Foxconn is attempting to acquire the consumer electronics and networking manufacturer Belkin International, which owns the Linksys and Wemo brands. However, the deal could be rejected by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment:

The Taiwanese company known best for manufacturing iPhones, Foxconn, will soon be the company behind some of the best known routers and other computer accessories. A subsidiary of Foxconn, Foxconn Interconnect Technology, announced today that it would acquire Belkin, which also owns the brands Linksys and Wemo.

[...] Foxconn will pay $866 million in cash to acquire Belkin. The Financial Times notes that the purchase should be subject to approval from the US Committee on Foreign Investment, meaning it isn't a done deal just yet. Given that there have been other high profile foreign acquisitions shut down under the Trump administration, one shouldn't consider this purchase safe — especially since it involves networking equipment. That said, Foxconn has pledged to build a $10 billion factory in Wisconsin, which could help it stay on the administration's good side.

Also at Bloomberg and 9to5Mac.

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takyon writes:

Japan Becomes Latest Country to Consider Pirate Site Blocking

Following comments this week from Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary, blocking pirate sites could soon be on the country's anti-piracy agenda. Yoshihide Suga says that the government is considering "all measures" to reduce piracy of manga and anime while supporting the "Cool Japan" initiative designed to promote the country locally and overseas.

[...] Speaking at a news conference, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that the Japanese government is considering taking measures to prohibit access to pirate sites, largely to protect the country's manga and anime industries. "The damage is getting worse. We are considering the possibilities of all measures including site blocking," he said. "Manga and anime are important types of content that represent the 'Cool Japan' initiative. I would like to take countermeasures as soon as possible under the cooperation of the relevant ministries and agencies."

[...] According to a lawyer cited by the Sankei news outlet, piracy in Japan is largely facilitated by roughly two kinds of sites – hosting and linking. While the former can be anywhere but can be dealt with locally, Japan has an estimated 200 sites that link to pirated content. Their legal status doesn't appear to be as clear as many would like. "In the conventional theory the link itself is not illegal," the lawyer notes. "There is no legal basis to declare the act of facilitating piracy of other sites as 'illegal'. Without a [linking] site, many users can not reach pirated versions, [so the government] needs to define malicious [linking] sites properly and regulate them."

Also mentioned in the article is a recent incident of mass copyright infringement in which local governments in South America facilitated unlicensed public screenings of an episode of Dragon Ball Super.

See also:

Russia Blocked 8,000 Pirate Sites in 2017, "Visits to Cinemas Up 11%"

Key Internet Players Excoriate Canadian Pirate Site Blocking Plan

Google Should Begin Delisting Pirate Sites, Aussie Rightsholders Say

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/625022

Researchers have produced a "human scale" demonstration of a new phase of matter called quadrupole topological insulators that was recently predicted using theoretical physics. These are the first experimental findings to validate this theory.

The researchers report their findings in the journal Nature.

The team's work with QTIs was born out of the decade-old understanding of the properties of a class of materials called topological insulators. "TIs are electrical insulators on the inside and conductors along their boundaries, and may hold great potential for helping build low-power, robust computers and devices, all defined at the atomic scale," said mechanical science and engineering professor and senior investigator Gaurav Bahl.

The uncommon properties of TIs make them a special form of electronic matter. "Collections of electrons can form their own phases within materials. These can be familiar solid, liquid and gas phases like water, but they can also sometimes form more unusual phases like a TI," said co-author and physics professor Taylor Hughes.

Christopher W. Peterson, Wladimir A. Benalcazar, Taylor L. Hughes & Gaurav Bahl. A quantized microwave quadrupole insulator with topologically protected corner states. Nature, 2018 DOI: 10.1038/nature25777

Original Submission

Jack Torrance writes:

The NSA Worked to "Track Down" Bitcoin Users, Snowden Documents Reveal

Internet paranoiacs drawn to Bitcoin have long indulged fantasies of American spies subverting the booming, controversial digital currency. Increasingly popular among get-rich-quick speculators, Bitcoin started out as a high-minded project to make financial transactions public and mathematically verifiable - while also offering discretion. Governments, with a vested interest in controlling how money moves, would, some of Bitcoin's fierce advocates believed, naturally try and thwart the coming techno-libertarian financial order.

It turns out the conspiracy theorists were onto something.

Archived: https://archive.fo/z5zzo

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

GA SB 315 (LC 29 8107S) (PDF) just passed the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee and will be voted on this week. While significantly improved through the committee process, it still creates a dangerously broad definition of Criminal Unauthorized Computer Access that is so sweeping, people will need permission before visiting any website.

This bill was drafted because Georgia law enforcement and the U.S. FBI could not find any law broken by a professional security researcher. This researcher tried to alert Georgia election officials of voter data inappropriately published publicly on the Internet by Kennesaw State University, a contractor for the Georgia Secretary of State's Office. What he discovered through ordinary Google searching was that voters' names, addresses, and other private information was indexed by Google and accessible by anyone. After months, he and another researcher discovered that the data was still available on the public Internet and brought it to the attention of the media. Only under the daylight of public attention was the data removed from the Internet in an embarrassing scandal.

We must protect the status quo at all costs! /s

Source: https://rietta.com/blog/2018/03/26/georgia-sb-315-anti-hacking-bill/

From IEEE Spectrum:

SB315 as currently written states that any person who accesses a computer or computer network with knowledge that such access is without authority (such as unauthorized password disclosure) will be guilty of the crime of unauthorized computer access. Exceptions are for parents of children under the age of 18 or for persons conducting legitimate business activity. The penalty for a conviction is a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated manner, which can net a person a US $5,000 fine and a year in jail.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Apple is ready to fight Google's Chromebooks with cheaper iPads

Apple has a big problem. Just five years ago, its iPads and Mac laptops reigned supreme in US classrooms, accounting for half of all mobile devices shipped to schools in 2013. Apple has now slipped behind both Google and Microsoft in US schools with Google's Chromebooks leading the way in classrooms, securing nearly 60 percent of shipments in the US as overall iPad sales declined for three straight years. Apple is now ready to strike back against Chromebooks with some cheaper iPads.

Apple is holding a special education-focused event on Tuesday that promises "creative new ideas for teachers and students." Rumors suggest Apple is preparing to launch a $259 budget iPad model this year, while Bloomberg reports that a "low-cost iPad" will be announced alongside new education software. The new iPad could even support a stylus, like the Apple Pencil found on the more expensive iPad Pro models.

The article notes a cancelled $1 billion program to give iPads to students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Administering the iPads back then wasn't easy, but Chromebooks store their data in the cloud. If a student forgets their Chromebook at home, they can log in to another device using their Google account. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has criticized Google's G Suite for Education for storing students' personal information in the cloud without their knowledge or consent.

Related: L.A.'s iPad-Friendly School Superintendent Resigns Under a Cloud
Los Angeles Schools Halve Email Retention after Scandal
Los Angeles Schools iPad Program Target of Federal Criminal Probe
NH School District: One Chromebook Per Student by 2018; Paper Textbooks Going

Original Submission

takyon writes:

In response to the passage of the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), Craigslist has removed Personals sections for U.S. users:

Classified advertising website Craigslist has closed its dating ads section in the US, in response to a new bill against sex trafficking.

The bill states that websites can now be punished for "facilitating" prostitution and sex trafficking.

Ads promoting prostitution and child sexual abuse have previously been posted in the "personals" section of Craigslist.

The company said keeping the section open in the US was too much of a risk.

In a statement, Craigslist said the new law would "subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully".

Reddit also took the opportunity to ban a number of subreddits (list not exhaustive), including some like /r/escorts, but many more broadly related to "transactions for goods and services".

Also at Ars Technica and The Verge.

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takyon writes:

Beyond Dungeons and Dragons: can role play save the world?

Live action role play, or larp, is a combination of re-enactment, storytelling and gaming – players are given a role and act out their character's actions within an overarching story. These interactive games can last a few hours or spin out over months and years, with players adopting familiar characters time and time again.

If you've come across larping before, you might associate it with orcs, elves and swordplay – a dynamic offshoot of tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons. But although mythical creatures can be involved, a growing number of larp games explore situations, stories and characters as a form of activism.

The creators of a new experience, The Quota, decided to use larp to tackle one of the most fraught issues facing the world today: the refugee crisis. Halat Hisar, a Palestinian-Finnish larp, explores life under occupation. Other larps include the seminal Just a Little Lovin', set in a fictionalised New York in the early years of the Aids crisis. Even a recent Jane Austen-inspired larp had lessons to teach on social inequality – alongside dancing and witty conversation, of course.

One worry is that these larps involve people of comparative privilege "playing" at being refugees or people with Aids. Helly Dabill, one of The Quota's creators, understands the concern. "We acknowledge that people who are not familiar with larping, or whose idea of it remains firmly entrenched in fantasy games with orcs and goblins, are often shocked at the topics that larp is willing to explore." But, she adds, people also write novels about difficult subjects, or plays, or make feature films. "All of these things can be harrowing, powerful and informative. They make people think. Most importantly, they start a dialogue about difficult subjects."

Unrelated: Dungeons and Dragons creatures, generated by neural network

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Appalbarry writes:

An apparently obnoxious restaurant employee in Vancouver BC has filed a human rights complaint claiming that he has been discriminated against because he's "too French." CBC News reports that Guillaume Rey has filed a complaint at the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal against Milestones Restaurant and its parent company, Cara Operations, where he worked as a waiter from October 2015 to August 2016. Rey says his co-workers misinterpreted his "direct, honest and professional" French personality.

Although Rey was reportedly well-liked by customers, on several occasions he was disciplined and warned about how he treated his colleagues, which the restaurant described as "combative and aggressive." Rey was fired for violating the company's Respect in the Workplace policy.

Rey might want to look closely at another recent decision, in which the Human Rights Tribunal decided that a local "'Brash, loud and obnoxious gay male' doesn't have right to (send) rude emails" to his local city council.

Original Submission