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takyon writes:

New NASA Mission to Detect Plant Water Use from Space

Doctors learn a lot about their patients' health by taking their temperature. An elevated temperature, or fever, can be a sign of illness. The same goes for plants, but their temperatures on a global scale are harder to measure than the temperatures of individual people.

That's about to change, thanks to a new NASA instrument that soon will be installed on the International Space Station called ECOSTRESS, or ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station. ECOSTRESS will measure the temperature of plants from space. This will enable researchers to determine plant water use and to study how drought conditions affect plant health.

[...] ECOSTRESS will hitch a ride to the space station on a NASA-contracted, SpaceX cargo resupply mission scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on June 29. Once it arrives, it will be robotically installed on the exterior of the station's Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility Unit.

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey

Time is out of joint on Venus. The planet's thick air, which spins much faster than the solid globe, may push against the flanks of mountains and change Venus' rotation rate.

Computer simulations show that the thick Venusian atmosphere, whipping around the planet at 100 meters per second, exerts enough push against a mountain on one side and suction on the other side to speed the planet's rotation rate by about two minutes each Venus day, according to a study in Nature Geoscience June 18.

That's not much, considering that the planet rotates just once every 243 Earth days. By comparison, Venus' atmosphere rotates about once every four Earth days. Precise measurements of the planet's rotation rate have varied by about seven minutes, however. The push and pull of the air over the mountains could help explain the mismatch, with some other force — possibly the gravitational influence of the sun — slowing the planet's spin back down.

Source: Venus’ Thick Atmosphere Speeds Up the Planet's Spin

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for takyon

Think medium format CMOS sensors are big? Check out[*] what Canon's largest sensor looks like when placed next to a DSLR camera (an EOS Rebel T3i/600D).

[...] Canon first unveiled its humongous, ultra-sensitive, ultra-resolution CMOS sensor back in August 2010, saying that it would open new doors in various academic and industrial fields.

"A certain level of light is required when shooting with a digital camera or camcorder, and without it, images cannot be captured due to insufficient sensitivity," Canon writes. "In the pursuit of further improving the sensitivity of imaging elements, Canon has embraced the challenge of achieving higher levels of sensitivity and larger element sizes while maintaining high-speed readout performance, and has succeeded in developing the world's largest class of CMOS image sensor measuring approximately 20 cm square."

[*] Image location: https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2018/06/sensorsizecompare-800x547.jpg

Source: https://petapixel.com/2018/06/18/this-is-what-canons-ginormous-cmos-sensor-looks-like-next-to-a-dslr/

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takyon writes:

US leaving UN Human Rights Council -- 'a cesspool of political bias'

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced the United States is withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council Tuesday, accusing the body of bias against US ally Israel and a failure to hold human rights abusers accountable. The move, which the Trump administration has threatened for months, came down one day after the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights slammed the separation of children from their parents at the US-Mexico border as "unconscionable."

Speaking from the State Department, where she was joined by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Haley defended the move to withdraw from the council, saying US calls for reform were not heeded. "Human rights abusers continue to serve on, and be elected to, the council," said Haley, listing US grievances with the body. "The world's most inhumane regimes continue to escape its scrutiny, and the council continues politicizing scapegoating of countries with positive human rights records in an attempt to distract from the abusers in its ranks."

Also at NPR and Bloomberg.

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takyon writes:

NASA Administrator expresses support for Space Policy Directive-3

With the threat of space debris destroying satellites, crewed spacecraft and even the International Space Station increasing, processes have been initiated to help alleviate and prevent this threat. NASA's new Administrator Jim Bridenstine made several statements about the new Space Policy Directive-3, which was signed by President Trump. During the June 18, 2018, meeting of the National Space Council, Trump signed SPD-3, which directs the U.S. to lead the management of space traffic and mitigate the effects of space debris.

[...] This comes less than a month after the signing of SPD-2, which called for the reform of the United States' commercial space regulatory framework. Additionally, SPD-1 was signed in December 2017, which instructed NASA to return U.S. astronauts to the Moon with the eventual goal of human flights to Mars.

[...] One of the main features of SPD-3 is the management of space debris. It calls for the U.S. to utilize government and commercial technologies to track and monitor debris and set new guidelines for satellite for satellite design and operation.

Additionally, it calls for the update of the U.S. government's Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices, which currently states that spacecraft and upper stages should be designed to eliminate or minimize debris released during normal operations. Additionally, any debris larger than five millimeters that is expected to remain in orbit for more than 25 years is to be justified on the basis of cost and mission requirements.

NASA Administrator statement.

Related: President Trump Signs Space Policy Directive 1
2020s to Become the Decade of Lunar Re-Exploration
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine Serious About Returning to the Moon
Jeff Bezos Details Moon Settlement Ambitions in Interview

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takyon writes:

Samsung Told to Pay $400 Million in FinFet Patent Dispute

Samsung Electronics Co. was told to pay $400 million after a federal jury in Texas said it infringed a patent owned by the licensing arm of a South Korean university. Samsung pledged to appeal.

Qualcomm Inc. and GlobalFoundries Inc. also were found to have infringed the patent but weren't told to pay any damages to the licensing arm of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, one of South Korea's top research universities.

The dispute centers on technology known as FinFet, a type of transistor that boosts performance and reduces power consumption for increasingly smaller chips. KAIST IP US, the university's licensing arm, claimed in its initial complaint that Samsung was dismissive of the FinFet research at first, believing it would be a fad. That all changed when rival Intel Corp. started licensing the invention and developing its own products, according to KAIST IP.

Patent: Double-gate FinFET device and fabricating method thereof.

Also at AnandTech.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Glial cells surround neurons and provide support -- not unlike hospital staff and nurses supporting doctors to keep operations running smoothly. These often-overlooked cells, which include oligodendrocytes and astrocytes, are the most abundant cell types in the central nervous system. But these cells do more than support neurons. They also actively influence them, University of California, Riverside, researchers report.

The researchers focused on astrocytes -- star-shaped cells that greatly outnumber neurons -- in mice, and found that when these cells overproduce a protein called ephrin-B1, the ability to retain memory weakens.

"We examined mouse learning behaviors and found that overproduction of this protein in astrocytes can lead to impaired retention of contextual memory and the ability to navigate in space," said Iryna Ethell, a professor of biomedical sciences in the School of Medicine, who led the research. "We think that astrocytes expressing too much of ephrin-B1 can attack neurons and remove synapses, the connections through which neurons communicate."

Such synapse loss is seen in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and multiple sclerosis.

Study results appear in the June 20 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

takyon writes:

Edible coating allows avocados to stay ripe for twice as long

Avocados that stay ripe for twice as long as usual thanks to an edible barrier made from plant materials will be sold in the US for the first time this week.

The tasteless coating, developed by Santa Barbara company Apeel Sciences, controls the two main factors that cause fresh produce to go bad: the rate at which water escapes the surface of fruit and vegetables and the rate at which oxygen enters. This allows treated produce to stay fresh for longer. "We're creating an optimised microclimate that can double the shelf life [of the fruit]," said James Rogers, CEO of Apeel Sciences. "The average avocado might be ripe for 2-3 days. Ours will stay ripe for 4-6 days."

[...] Although Apeel is starting with avocados, the coating's formulation can be modified to create optimal conditions for other items including strawberries, mangoes, apples, bananas, kumquats and asparagus. [...] From this week, the Apeel-treated avocados – grown by California-based Del Rey Avocado – will be available in Costco and Harp Foods stores across the midwest, before rolling out across the United States.

[...] The coating can also extend the life of produce in developing countries where refrigeration is not widely available across the supply chain, which explains why the company launched in 2012 with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The company has carried out pilots in Nigeria and Kenya, treating cassava root and mangoes.

Also at Fast Company, Fortune, and Delish.

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realDonaldTrump writes:

The Pentagon confirmed Monday that major U.S. military exercises this summer in South Korea would be suspended, following President Trump's decision.

'We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money, unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should,' Trump told reporters after his meeting last Tuesday with Kim in Singapore. 'But we'll be saving a tremendous amount of money. Plus, I think it's very provocative.'

foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/18/pentagon-confirms-halt-august-war-games-with-south-korea.html

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Scientists have obtained a slew of key information about proteins, the molecular workhorses of all cells, from single human cells for the first time.

The stockpile of information about proteins -- the most such data ever collected from a single mammalian cell -- gives scientists one of their clearest looks yet at the molecular happenings inside a human cell. Such data can reveal whether a cell is a rogue cancer cell, a malfunctioning pancreatic cell involved in diabetes, or a molecular player important for a preemie's survival.

These events and many more are determined by the actions of proteins in cells. Until now, detailed information on proteins inside single cells was hard to come by. The raw "data" -- the amount of each protein -- in a cell is extraordinarily scant and hard to measure. That's largely because scientists can't amplify proteins the way they can genes or other molecular messengers.

Now, in a study published in Angewandte Chemie, scientists from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, working with counterparts at the University of Rochester Medical Center, show how they were able to learn an unprecedented amount of information about the proteins within samples of single human lung cells.

The scientists analyzed single cells, first from cultured cells and then from the lungs of a human donor, and detected on average more than 650 proteins in each cell -- many times more than conventional techniques capture from single cells.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Researchers at Los Alamos and partners in France and Germany are exploring the enhanced potential of carbon nanotubes as single-photon emitters for quantum information processing. Their analysis of progress in the field is published in this week's edition of the journal Nature Materials.

"We are particularly interested in advances in nanotube integration into photonic cavities for manipulating and optimizing light-emission properties," said Stephen Doorn, one of the authors, and a scientist with the Los Alamos National Laboratory site of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT). "In addition, nanotubes integrated into electroluminescent devices can provide greater control over timing of light emission and they can be feasibly integrated into photonic structures. We are highlighting the development and photophysical probing of carbon nanotube defect states as routes to room-temperature single photon emitters at telecom wavelengths."

The team's overview was produced in collaboration with colleagues in Paris (Christophe Voisin) who are advancing the integration of nanotubes into photonic cavities for modifying their emission rates, and at Karlsruhe (Ralph Krupke) where they are integrating nanotube-based electroluminescent devices with photonic waveguide structures. The Los Alamos focus is the analysis of nanotube defects for pushing quantum emission to room temperature and telecom wavelengths, he said.

As the paper notes, "With the advent of high-speed information networks, light has become the main worldwide information carrier. . . . Single-photon sources are a key building block for a variety of technologies, in secure quantum communications metrology or quantum computing schemes."

X. He, H. Htoon, S. K. Doorn, W. H. P. Pernice, F. Pyatkov, R. Krupke, A. Jeantet, Y. Chassagneux, C. Voisin. Carbon nanotubes as emerging quantum-light sources. Nature Materials, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41563-018-0109-2

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The US Air Force has kicked off the procurement for another round of wing replacements for A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft, known affectionately by many as the Warthog. With new wings, the A-10s will help fill a gap left by the delayed volume delivery of F-35A fighters, which were intended to take over the A-10's close air support (CAS) role in "contested environments"—places where enemy aircraft or modern air defenses would pose a threat to supporting aircraft. For now, the A-10 is being used largely in uncontested environments, where the greatest danger pilots face is small arms fire or possibly a Stinger-like man-portable air defense system (MANPADS) missile. But the Warthog is also being deployed to Eastern Europe as part of the NATO show of strength in response to Russia.

While the A-10 will keep flying through 2025 under current plans, Air Force leadership has perceived (or was perhaps convinced to see) a need for an aircraft that could take over the A-10's role in low-intensity and uncontested environments—something relatively inexpensive and easy to maintain that could be flown from relatively unimproved airfields to conduct armed reconnaissance, interdiction, and close air support missions. The replacement would also double as advanced trainer aircraft for performing weapons qualifications and keeping pilots' flight-time numbers up.

So, last year the Air Force kicked off the Light Attack Experiment (OA-X), a four-aircraft competition to determine what would best fit that bill.

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Ex-CIA Employee Charged In Leak Of Classified Hacking Tools

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A former CIA employee was charged Monday with leaking information on CIA hacking tools to Wikileaks.

Joshua Adam Schulte, 29, was charged with the theft of classified national defense information in a 13-count indictment handed down by a grand jury, the Justice Department said Monday. According to the indictment, Schulte stole the classified information from a CIA network in 2016 and then transmitted it to an organization that was unidentified in the indictment.

Schulte is also accused of intentionally damaging a CIA computer system, deleting records of his activities and blocking others from accessing the system. Schulte is currently in custody on child pornography charges. He's pleaded not guilty to those charges.

The leaks, which Wikileaks called "Vault 7," revealed tools used by the CIA to hack phones, TVs and computers as part of its investigations. The disclosures showed the lengths to which government investigators go to access electronic evidence, tailoring hacks for specific smart TVs, for example.

[...] "Schulte utterly betrayed this nation and downright violated his victims. As an employee of the CIA, Schulte took an oath to protect this country, but he blatantly endangered it by the transmission of classified Information," William F. Sweeney Jr., head of the New York FBI office, said in a statement Monday.

Man who allegedly gave Vault 7 cache to WikiLeaks busted by poor opsec

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

FBI used passwords used on suspect's cellphone to also get into his computer.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/ex-cia-engineer-indicted-on-several-new-charges-connected-to-vault-7-leak/

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

As TLS 1.3 inches towards publication into the Internet Engineering Task Force's RFC series, it's a surprise to realise that there are still lingering instances of TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1.

The now-ancient versions of Transport Layer Security (dating from 1999 and 2006 respectively) are nearly gone, but stubborn enough that Dell EMC's Kathleen Moriarty and Trinity College Dublin's Stephen Farrell want it formally deprecated.

This Internet-Draft (complete with “die die die” in the URL) argues that deprecation time isn't in the future, it's now, partly because developers in recalcitrant organisations or lagging projects probably need something to convince The Boss™ it's time to move.

The last nail in the coffin would be, formally and finally, to ban application fallback to the hopelessly insecure TLS 1.0 and 1.1 standards.

Deprecation also removes any excuse for a project to demand support for all four TLS variants (up to TLS 1.3), simplifying developers' lives and reducing the risk of implementation errors.

[...] The publication of TLS 1.3 into the RFC stream is imminent – it's reached the last stage of the pre-publication process, author's final review. When it's published, it will carry the designation RFC 8446.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[...] Since the 1970s, hundreds of studies have suggested that each hemisphere of the brain is home to a specific type of emotion. Emotions linked to approaching and engaging with the world -- like happiness, pride and anger -- lives in the left side of the brain, while emotions associated with avoidance -- like disgust and fear -- are housed in the right.

But those studies were done almost exclusively on right-handed people. That simple fact has given us a skewed understanding of how emotion works in the brain, according to Daniel Casasanto, associate professor of human development and psychology at Cornell University.

That longstanding model is, in fact, reversed in left-handed people, whose emotions like alertness and determination are housed in the right side of their brains, Casasanto suggests in a new study. Even more radical: The location of a person's neural systems for emotion depends on whether they are left-handed, right-handed or somewhere in between, the research shows.

Geoffrey Brookshire, Daniel Casasanto. Approach motivation in human cerebral cortex. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2018; 373 (1752): 20170141 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2017.0141

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The United States Senate has passed an amendment that reinstates the ban on Chinese telecoms concern ZTE doing business with US-based companies.

President Trump said he’d secured a reversal of the ban as a personal favour to Chinese president Xi Jinping in the hope that the show of good faith would ease trade negotiations between the two nations. ZTE was banned from dealing with US firms for flouting laws about exporting to Iran and North Korea. The ban cut ZTE off from critical component-makers like Qualcomm and led to it shuttering production lines and resellers dumping its products.

Trump's plan to have his friendship with Xi ease tensions appears not to have worked, in the short term at least, because the Trump administration today issued a statement that said “China apparently has no intention of changing its unfair practices related to the acquisition of American intellectual property and technology” and therefore threatening tariffs on US$200bn of Chinese goods.

The threat came after Trump last week announced tariffs on $50bn of Chinese goods, sparking retaliatory tariffs on about $35bn of US-made goods from China.

All of which doesn’t look like that personal favour worked out as planned.

Back to the ZTE vote, as it saw US Senators from both sides of politics decry the removal of the ban on grounds of national security. A joint statement from senior Republican and Democratic senators read: “We're heartened that both parties made it clear that protecting American jobs and national security must come first when making deals with countries like China, which has a history of having little regard for either. It is vital that our colleagues in the House keep this bipartisan provision in the bill as it heads towards a conference.”

And there’s the rub, because the US House of Representatives has passed a version of the same bill without the ZTE ban. Reconciling the bill may yet see ZTE given a lifeline, although the Senate vote passed 85 votes to 10 so there’s clearly not much will for a reversal.

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