SoylentNews

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941

Christopher Nolan wants to show me something interesting. Something beautiful and exceptional, something that changed his life when he was a boy.

It's also something that Nolan, one of the most accomplished and successful of contemporary filmmakers, has persuaded Warner Bros. to share with the world both at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival and then in theaters nationwide, but in a way that boldly deviates from standard practice.

For what is being cued up in a small, hidden-away screening room in an unmarked building in Burbank is a brand new 70-mm reel of film of one of the most significant and influential motion pictures ever made, Stanley Kubrick's 1968 science-fiction epic "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Yes, you read that right. Not a digital anything, an actual reel of film that was for all intents and purposes identical to the one Nolan saw as a child and Kubrick himself would have looked at when the film was new half a century ago.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-mn-christopher-nolan-2001-20180503-story.html

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941

"What are you looking at?" Said the wrong way, those can be fighting words. But in fields as diverse as psychological research and user experience testing, knowing what people are looking at in real-time can be invaluable. Eye-tracking software does this, but generally at a cost that keeps it out of the hands of the home gamer.

Or it used to. With hacked $20 webcams, this open source eye tracker will let you watch how someone is processing what they see. But [John Evans]' Hackaday Prize entry is more than that. Most of the detail is in the video below, a good chunk of which [John] uses to extol the virtues of the camera he uses for his eye tracker, a Logitech C270. And rightly so — the cheap and easily sourced camera has remarkable macro capabilities right out of the box, a key feature for a camera that's going to be trained on an eyeball a few millimeters away.

Source: https://hackaday.com/2018/05/05/low-cost-eye-tracking-with-webcams-and-open-source-software/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Potential new cure found for baldness

A potential new cure for baldness has been discovered using a drug originally intended to treat osteoporosis.

Enhanced hair growth is a side-effect of a different drug, cyclosporine A, used to treat autoimmune diseases. And researchers found it also inhibited a protein, SFRP1, that blocks a molecular pathway, WNT, vital for the growth of many tissues, including hair.

The new cure uses another drug, Way-316606, that was designed to inhibit SFRP1 as treatment for osteoporosis.

Project leader Dr Nathan Hawkshaw said it could "make a real difference to people who suffer from hair loss".

Also at CNBC.

Identifying novel strategies for treating human hair loss disorders: Cyclosporine A suppresses the Wnt inhibitor, SFRP1, in the dermal papilla of human scalp hair follicles (open, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2003705) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Former NASA astronaut, test pilot, and retired USAF Colonel Terry Virts is itching for a U.S. Space Force:

During my 30 plus years in the Air Force I had the privilege of serving as a pilot for my entire active duty career, with 16 of those years in Air Force Space Command as an astronaut. And I can say unequivocally that the air and space domains are completely different and independent of each other.

[...] If space is a separate domain, worthy of its own uniformed service, what exactly should it comprise, and what would it look like? Today, not only does the Air Force have its own space component, but so does the Army and Navy as well as other government agencies. I propose combining all "title 10" (i.e. combat related forces, as opposed to "title 50" intelligence gathering forces) assets that leave the atmosphere, or return from space, in a newly formed "Space Force," reporting directly to the secretary of Defense.

[...] I believe making this change will actually save money, as duplication is eliminated. It will also improve the quality of support that the joint force commander has at his disposal, as the joint-force space component commander will be entirely focused on providing space domain support to the joint fight, and not on pleasing an Air Force (or Navy or Army) chain of command that may have conflicting priorities.

[...] The time for a new uniformed service, the Space Force, is now. America deserves the most modern, efficient, and innovative military possible, and this will be a critical element in keeping us many steps ahead of our enemies.

Previously: The United States Space Corps Wants You...
Congressional Panel Puts Plans for a US Space Corps in 2018 Defense Budget

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Chrome OS is getting full-fledged Linux apps

Google Chrome is getting a big upgrade with the ability to run Linux apps, with a preview set to be released on the Google Pixelbook today before rolling out later to other models, according to a report from VentureBeat.

It's a major addition to Google's web-based operating system, which up until now has offered web-based Chrome applications and, more recently, the ability to run Android apps. But the option to run full-fledged Linux software marks the first time that real desktop applications have come to Chrome OS.

According to Chrome OS director of product management Kan Liu, users will be able to run Linux tools, editors, and integrated development environments directly on Chromebooks, installing them from their regular sources just like they would on a regular Linux machine. According to Liu, "We put the Linux app environment within a security sandbox, running inside a virtual machine," with the apps running seamlessly alongside Android and web applications on Chrome OS.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Researchers have written about some of the challenges involved in building a light sail suitable for Breakthrough Starshot, a project that would accelerate a gram-scale "chipcraft" using lasers so that it could travel interstellar distances in just decades:

A team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology has taken a hard look at the challenges facing efforts to carry out the Breakthrough Starshot project. In their Perspective piece published in the journal Nature Materials, the researchers outline the obstacles still facing project engineers and possible solutions.

The light sail would need to be made of a lightweight but reflective material able to withstand being bombarded by gigawatts of photons without melting. Graphene doesn't qualify. Many of the materials the researchers evaluated have only been studied in their bulk forms, rather than thin films, which can have different properties.

The researchers seem optimistic about the challenges. From the abstract (DOI: 10.1038/s41563-018-0075-8) (DX):

The Starshot Breakthrough Initiative established in 2016 sets an audacious goal of sending a spacecraft beyond our Solar System to a neighbouring star within the next half-century. Its vision for an ultralight spacecraft that can be accelerated by laser radiation pressure from an Earth-based source to ~20% of the speed of light demands the use of materials with extreme properties. Here we examine stringent criteria for the lightsail design and discuss fundamental materials challenges. We predict that major research advances in photonic design and materials science will enable us to define the pathways needed to realize laser-driven lightsails.

Also at Ars Technica.

Previously: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner's $100 Million Interstellar Spacecraft Plan

Related: NASA Plans to Launch an Interstellar Mission to Alpha Centauri in 2069

Original Submission

realDonaldTrump writes:

Walmart announced Monday the retail giant will begin to restrict opioid prescriptions to help stem the deadly drug epidemic.

"Walmart and Sam's Club pharmacies are set to limit customers' acute opioid prescriptions to a seven-day supply, with up to a 50 morphine milligram equivalent maximum per day, the company said in a news release.

The new rules align with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's guidelines which suggest "three days or less will often be sufficient" for those prescribed the painkillers, and "more than seven days will rarely be needed."

foxnews.com/health/2018/05/07/walmart-to-limit-opioid-prescriptions-at-pharmacies-amid-epidemic.html

[Ed Note - This is for initial acute opioid prescriptions only meaning short duration as opposed to chronic or long term prescriptions or courses of treatment.]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

All systems are go for SpaceX's BFR rocket facility at Port of Los Angeles after City Council OKs plan

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved a plan allowing SpaceX to build and operate a facility at the Port of L.A., where the Hawthorne space company will produce its next-generation BFR rockets and spacecraft.

The vote gives formal approval to a plan that got the greenlight last month from the L.A. Board of Harbor Commissioners.

During a presentation to the council, L.A. City Councilman Joe Buscaino said the project could result in up to 700 new jobs.

Under the terms of the deal, SpaceX will have an initial 10-year lease with two additional 10-year extension options. The company's initial rent will be $1.38 million a year, with annual adjustments based on the Consumer Price Index, but it can offset a total of $44.1 million in rent by making improvements to the Terminal Island site at Berth 240 in its first 20 years of tenancy.

Previously: SpaceX to Begin BFR Production at the Port of Los Angeles

Related: SpaceX to Launch Five Times in April, Test BFR by 2019
SpaceX Valued at $25 Billion... and More

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Breakthrough Listen has massively expanded its survey of stars using the CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia:

Breakthrough Listen – the initiative to find signs of intelligent life in the universe – announced today that a survey of millions of stars located in the plane of our Galaxy, using the CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope ("Parkes") in New South Wales, Australia, has commenced. Listen observations at Parkes began in November 2016¹, targeting a sample consisting mostly of stars within a few light years of Earth. Now, observations have expanded to cover a huge swath of the Milky Way visible from the site.

The expanded survey is made possible by new capabilities installed at Parkes by Breakthrough Listen: new digital instrumentation capable of recording the huge data rates from the Parkes "multibeam" receiver. The previous receivers used by Listen only observed a single point on the sky at a time, and were used to perform a detailed search of stars near to the Sun for evidence of extraterrestrial technology. In contrast, the multibeam receiver has 13 beams, enabling a fast survey of large areas of the sky, covering all of the Galactic Plane visible from the site.

Even if Breakthrough Listen doesn't find aliens, it is throwing a lot of well-deserved cash at astronomers and upgrading the capabilities of their telescopes.

Also at Space.com and USA Today.

Breakthrough Listen: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100 Million "Breakthrough Listen" SETI Project
"Breakthrough Listen" to Search for Alien Radio Transmissions Near Tabby's Star
Breakthrough Listen to Observe Interstellar Asteroid 'Oumuamua for Radio Emissions

CSIRO Parkes: Famous Australian 'Dish' Radio Telescope to be Emptied in Budget Crisis: CSIRO
Milky Way Obscures Hundreds of Previously Undiscovered Galaxies
New Fast Radio Burst Discovery Finds 'Missing Matter' in the Universe

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941

Today's choice gives us an insight into how Google measure and analyse the performance of large user-facing services such as Gmail (from which most of the data in the paper is taken). It's a paper in two halves. The first part of the paper demonstrates through an analysis of traffic and load patterns why the only real way to analyse production performance is using live production systems. The second part of the paper shares two techniques that Google use for doing so: coordinated bursty tracing and vertical context injection.

Source: https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/05/04/performance-analysis-of-cloud-applications/

Referenced Paper: Performance analysis of cloud applications Ardelean et al., NSDI'18 [pdf]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

World of Warcraft attacker jailed in US

A World of Warcraft gamer has been sentenced to jail in the US for carrying out a cyber-attack that interfered with the service in Europe. Calin Mateias had been accused of flooding Blizzard Entertainment's computer servers with traffic between February and September 2010. He was said to have carried out the distributed denial of service (DDoS) assault to prevent rivals logging in. Thousands of players were caught up in the resulting disruption.

The Romanian citizen - who had been extradited to Los Angeles to face the charges - pleaded guilty in February to one count of causing damage to a protected computer. He has also paid $29,987 (£22,176) to Blizzard to cover the costs it racked up trying to repel the data deluge.

Calin Mateias carried out the DDoS attacks in 2010. He was indicted in 2004 for attacking Ingram Micro's online ordering system. That case was dropped by prosecutors "when Mateias was sentenced to one year in prison over the World of Warcraft affair."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

All research is AI research now:

Every big tech company is an AI company these days, but none more so than Google. To underline the point ahead of its I/O developers conference, the company has rebranded its Google Research division as Google AI, reflecting the centrality of artificial intelligence to the company's future.

In a blog post announcing the news, the company said the rebrand was to "better reflect [its] commitment" to integrating AI into various services. It follows an organizational reshuffle last month which saw AI product development split up from Google's search efforts, and veteran Googler Jeff Dean taking the helm of the new division. A newly-revamped homepage for Google AI also emphasizes more than just the company's consumer products, highlighting recently-published research in topics like health and astronomy and open-source tools used by the AI community worldwide, like the machine learning framework Tensor Flow. (Important to note also: non-AI research will still be done under in the new "Google AI" division.)

Also at ZDNet and Fast Company.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941

In the zebra finch, an extra chromosome exists in the reproductive, or germline, cells. (Songbirds have 40 chromosomes and 41 with the extra chromosome.) Known as the germline-restricted chromosome, its sequence is largely unknown and none of its genes have been identified, until now. Using sophisticated genome-sequencing techniques, American University researchers have identified the first gene of the GRC. This finding could pave the way for further research into what makes a bird male or female.

"We don't know the function of this gene, and we don't know how many other organisms have genes like this," said John Bracht, assistant professor of biology at American University.

Bracht led the team of students on the genomics project. The idea originated when he started his lab at AU in 2014 and got to talking about the unusual genomics of zebra finch with Colin Saldanha, a co-author and collaborator on the study. Saldanha is an AU neurobiologist who studies how estrogen protects the brains of zebra finches from dangerous inflammation after traumatic injury. Both scientists agreed it would be worthwhile to try to sequence the mysterious extra chromosome in the germline of songbirds.

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180503142938.htm

Michelle K. Biederman, Megan M. Nelson, Kathryn C. Asalone, Alyssa L. Pedersen, Colin J. Saldanha, John R. Bracht. Discovery of the First Germline-Restricted Gene by Subtractive Transcriptomic Analysis in the Zebra Finch, Taeniopygia guttata. Current Biology, 2018; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.03.067

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Netgear Launches the Cable Orbi - A Mesh Wi-Fi System with an Integrated Cable Modem

Today, Netgear is launching the Orbi cable modem - a dual PCB solution with the same form-factor as that of the existing Orbi RBK40 kit. The dual PCB solution refers to the cable modem and the wireless routers coming on distinct boards, with separate firmware for each. ISPs can handle the firmware update for the modem segment, while the consumers can update the wireless router firmware independently. The activation process has also been simplified by Netgear, with new features in the Orbi mobile app making it a seamless process.

Netgear has been very active in releasing new firmware features for their Orbi products (tying in with their pivot to a services-based revenue model for their offerings). Features such as 'Circle with Disney' (which has a premium subscription option) are turning out to be hits based on the feedback we have received from current Orbi customers. The ability to update the Orbi router firmware independent of the cable modem firmware is a key feature of the Cable Orbi.

Addressing the two main concerns with combo devices allows Netgear to promote the advantages of an Orbi with an integrated modem:

• The modem / router device can act as the master in a mesh Wi-Fi system.
• Combining the modem and router into one device implies fewer devices to purchase for the consumer.
• Existing Orbi satellites can be repurposed for usage with the Orbi Cable master unit

Netgear has two SKUs with the Cable Orbi hardware - the Cable Orbi Router (CBR40), priced at $300, is a single device that integrates the modem and wireless router into one unit. The Cable Orbi Kit (CBK40) bundles a satellite with the Cable Orbi Router for $400.

The article mentions that the modem contains an Intel Puma chipset, which have been plagued with issues.

Press release.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A startup has become the first new company to launch autonomous car(s) (archive) following Uber's deadly accident in March:

On Monday, an orange and blue car with the words "Self-Driving Vehicle" prominently displayed on both sides drove itself through the streets of this rapidly growing city north of Dallas, navigating across four lanes of traffic and around a traffic circle.

The car, operated by the Silicon Valley start-up Drive.ai, will eventually become part of a fleet of autonomous taxis that will ferry locals along a predetermined route between the Dallas Cowboys facility in Frisco and two other office, retail and apartment complexes.

While other companies have tested self-driving cars for years and some are in the early stages of offering a taxi service, Drive.ai's autonomous vehicle debut on Monday was still notable. It was the first new rollout of autonomous cars in the United States since a pedestrian died in Arizona in March after a self-driving car operated by Uber hit her.

Original Submission