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Fnord666 writes:

Home retail chain Brookstone has filed for bankruptcy for the second time since 2014 after more than four decades of business. Barring 35 airport locations, all of its US outlets will be shut down.

For many, Brookstone's exit from the shopping scene may be as bittersweet as when The Sharper Image closed its doors in 2008, or SkyMall's demise seven years later. Its quirky assemblage of non-essentials -- 3D printing pens, Parrot AR Drones and gigantic Dance Dance Revolution remote controls -- offered customers a welcome escape from the throes of everyday life, and a chance to buy obscure gifts.

[...] Brookstone's CEO Piau Phang Foo said it was a 'difficult' decision to shut down mall stores, but is still keen to continue operations "with a smaller physical footprint". So Brookstone hasn't been completely extinguished from the retail map -- you'll just need to seek out its novelty products online from now on.

Source: Engadget

Original Submission

NASA Announces Astronauts for First Commercial Crew Missions

Fnord666 writes:

Today, NASA announced the astronaut selection for the first Commercial Crew flights, which will finally restore the ability to launch astronauts from American soil. Boeing's first test flight, which is scheduled for mid-2019, will have Eric Boe, social media-savvy astronaut Chris Ferguson and rookie Nicole Aunapu Mann on board. SpaceX's inaugural Crew Dragon voyage, targeting April 2019, will have Victor Glover and Mike Hopkins as crew.

NASA also announced the astronauts for the first missions, which will be long-duration and dock with the International Space Station. Suni Williams, who is best known for running the Boston Marathon on an ISS treadmill, will be joined by rookie astronaut Josh Cassada. And finally, the second SpaceX demo flight will be crewed by Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.

Source: Engadget

NASA Names First Astronauts to Fly on American Spacecraft; SpaceX Poised to Fly Crew Before Boeing

takyon writes:

NASA has selected nine American astronauts who will fly on SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Boeing's CST-100 Starliner:

Fnord666 writes:

A school board in South Carolina has launched a pilot program to get rid of snow days and instead have students work from home when the weather turns treacherous. Beyond depriving schoolkids of the joys of weather-enforced truancy, the plan will exacerbate the region's digital divide for student who don't have internet access at home.

Anderson County School District Five will be the first region to participate in the pilot program this upcoming school year. In the past, Anderson County had makeup days tacked on to the end of the school year in lieu of days missed due to bad weather, but most kids ended up just skipping them, according to a local news report.

Students from grades 3 through 12 in the school board are already given Chromebooks to use at home, so in the event of a snow day or other inclement weather that causes a shutdown, kids will be expected to log on from home, communicate with teachers, and complete assignments.

Source: MotherBoard

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google Maps now zooms out to a globe instead of a flat Earth

Google is finished thinking two-dimensionally with Maps and now shows the Earth as a globe rather than a flat "Mercator" projection as before. You won't notice the change when you first open the app, but if you zoom out far enough, you'll eventually get a moon's-eye view of our world. That means you'll see the world in a more realistic way: "With 3D Globe Mode on Google Maps desktop, Greenland's projection is no longer the size of Africa," Google Maps said on Twitter.

Also at TechCrunch.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey

Society has an insatiable desire for data. In fact, it is rather astonishing to think that average Internet traffic is several hundred terabits per second and consumes about eight percent of our electricity production. All of that for instant cat videos—and our desire for new cat videos is apparently insatiable, driving the need for more capacity and even more energy.

[...] The fiber that transported the signal consists of 30 light-guiding cores, surrounded by a single cladding. That means that each core is capable of transporting data at a rate of 25Tbps, bringing us to a grand total of 768Tbps. That, however, is the raw data rate. Data is always transmitted with some redundancy to allow for errors to be corrected, called forward error correction. Once redundancy is accounted for, the net data transfer rate is 661Tbps.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/08/661tbits-through-a-single-optical-fiber-the-mind-boggles/

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Mark Polizzotti, author of "Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto" writes an Opinion column in The New York Times entitled Why Mistranslation Matters:

Translation is the silent waiter of linguistic performance: It often gets noticed only when it knocks over the serving cart. Sometimes these are relatively minor errors — a ham-handed rendering of an author's prose, the sort of thing a book reviewer might skewer with an acid pen.

But history is littered with more consequential mistranslations — erroneous, intentional or simply misunderstood. For a job that often involves endless hours poring over books or laptop screens, translation can prove surprisingly hazardous.

Nikita Khrushchev's infamous statement in 1956 — "We will bury you" — ushered in one of the Cold War's most dangerous phases, one rife with paranoia and conviction that both sides were out to destroy the other. But it turns out that's not what he said, not in Russian, anyway. Khrushchev's actual declaration was "We will outlast you" — prematurely boastful, perhaps, but not quite the declaration of hostilities most Americans heard, thanks to his interpreter's mistake.

The response of Kantaro Suzuki, prime minister of Japan, to an Allied ultimatum in July 1945 — just days before Hiroshima — was conveyed to Harry Truman as "silent contempt" ("mokusatsu"), when it was actually intended as "No comment. We need more time." Japan was not given any.

[...] Lately, the perils of mistranslation have taken on renewed currency. How to convey Donald Trump's free-form declarations to a global audience? The president's capricious employ of his native idiom, his fractured syntax and streaming non sequiturs are challenging enough for Anglophones, so imagine the difficulties they pose to foreigners: How, exactly, do you translate "braggadocious"?

The speed and frequency of Mr. Trump's tweets have spawned an explosion of equally fast, equally viral amateur renditions, with little thought as to how they might be interpreted worldwide. The incendiary nature of many of his statements about other political leaders only exacerbates the problem.

When words collide?

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Complex organisms have complex genomes. While bacteria and archaea keep all of their genes on a single loop of DNA, humans scatter them across 23 large DNA molecules called chromosomes; chromosome counts range from a single chromosome in males of an ant species to more than 400 in a butterfly.

There have been indications that chromosomes matter for an organism's underlying biology. Specialized structures within them influence the activity of nearby genes. And studies show that areas on different chromosomes will consistently be found next to each other in the cell, suggesting their interactions are significant.

So how do we square these two facts? Chromosome counts vary wildly and sometimes differ between closely related species, suggesting the actual number of chromosomes doesn't matter much. Yet the chromosomes themselves seem to be critical for an organism's genome to function as expected. To explore this issue, two different groups tried an audacious experiment: using genome editing, they gradually merged a yeast's 16 chromosomes down to just one giant molecule. And, unexpectedly, the yeast were mostly fine.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/08/gene-editing-crunches-an-organisms-genome-into-single-giant-dna-molecule/

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

New research aims to cut down on waste -- and consumer frustration -- with a novel approach to creating super slippery industrial packaging. The study establishes a method for wicking chemically compatible vegetable oils into the surfaces of common extruded plastics, like those used for ketchup packets and other condiments.

Source: ScienceDaily

Related: LiquiGlide Slippery Coating Coming Inside Norwegian Mayo Bottles
New "Omniphobic" Coating Created by University of Michigan Researcher

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google Glass could help children with autism socialize with others

Google Glass may have failed as a high-tech fashion trend, but it's showing promise as a tool to help children with autism better navigate social situations.

A new smartphone app that pairs with a Google Glass headset uses facial recognition software to give the wearer real-time updates on which emotions people are expressing. In a pilot trial, described online August 2 in npj Digital Medicine, 14 children with autism spectrum disorder used this program at home for an average of just over 10 weeks. After treatment, the kids showed improved social skills [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41746-018-0035-3], including increased eye contact and ability to decode facial expressions.

After her 9-year-old son, Alex, participated in the study, Donji Cullenbine described the Google Glass therapy as "remarkable." She noticed within a few weeks that Alex was meeting her eyes more often — a behavior change that's stuck since treatment ended, she says. And Alex enjoyed using the Google Glass app. Cullenbine recalls her son telling her excitedly, "Mommy, I can read minds."

Q: What does the scouter say about his emotional state? A: He is confused... Now he has recognized this device as Google Glass and has become enraged.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

A clinical trial recently showed that nearly half of individuals with type 2 diabetes achieved remission to a non-diabetic state after a weight-loss intervention delivered within 6 years of diagnosis. Now a study published August 2nd in the journal Cell Metabolism reveals that this successful response to weight loss is associated with the early and sustained improvement in the functioning of pancreatic beta cells. This finding challenges the previous paradigm that beta-cell function is irreversibly lost in patients with type 2 diabetes.

Roy Taylor, Ahmad Al-Mrabeh, Sviatlana Zhyzhneuskaya, Carl Peters, Alison C. Barnes, Benjamin S. Aribisala, Kieren G. Hollingsworth, John C. Mathers, Naveed Sattar, Michael E.J. Lean. Remission of Human Type 2 Diabetes Requires Decrease in Liver and Pancreas Fat Content but Is Dependent upon Capacity for β Cell Recovery. Cell Metabolism, 2018; DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2018.07.003

Source: Science Daily

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Access to cheap electricity can make or break a cryptocurrency mining operation, and firms angling to strike it rich in an industry where delays can and will cost digital money will do just about anything to get it, as soon as they can.

The latest move in the quest for bargain-basement kilowatt hours, as quickly as possible: building out local power grids with bespoke electrical substations.

Canadian company DMG Blockchain is building what it hopes will be a fully-functioning substation near the Southern British Columbia town of Castlegar, which is electrified by hydro power. When I spoke to Steven Eliscu, who leads corporate development for DMG, over the phone, he told me that building the substation costs millions of dollars and required the company to build its own access road to haul equipment to the site. The goal: to plug it into the local grid and have it power DMG's expanded mining operations by September.

"At the end of August we'll go through a commissioning process where the utility will test everything as a completed substation and make sure that the town doesn't blow up when we flip the switch," Eliscu told me over the phone.

Source: MotherBoard

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Federal Communications Commission today approved new rules that could let Google Fiber and other new Internet service providers gain faster access to utility poles.

The FCC's One Touch Make Ready (OTMR) rules will let companies attach wires to utility poles without waiting for the other users of the pole to move their own wires. Google Fiber says its deployment has stalled in multiple cities because Comcast and AT&T take a long time to get poles ready for new attachers. One Touch Make Ready rules let new attachers make all of the necessary wire adjustments themselves.

Comcast urged the FCC to "reject 'one-touch make-ready' proposals, which inure solely to the benefit of new entrants while unnecessarily risking harm to existing attachers and their customers."

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai rejected this argument, saying that startups are unnecessarily delayed when they have to wait for incumbent ISPs before hanging wires.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

"Popcorn-Driven Robotic Actuators," a recent paper co-authored by Steven Ceron, mechanical engineering doctoral student, and Kirstin H. Petersen, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, examines how popcorn's unique qualities can power inexpensive robotic devices that grip, expand or change rigidity.

"The goal of our lab is to try to make very minimalistic robots which, when deployed in high numbers, can still accomplish great things," said Petersen, who runs Cornell's Collective Embodied Intelligence Lab. "Simple robots are cheap and less prone to failures and wear, so we can have many operating autonomously over a long time. So we are always looking for new and innovative ideas that will permit us to have more functionalities for less, and popcorn is one of those."

[...] Since kernels can't shrink once they've popped, a popcorn-powered mechanism can generally be used only once, though multiple uses are conceivable because popped kernels can dissolve in water, Ceron said.

The paper was presented at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Petersen said she hopes it inspires researchers to explore the possibilities of other nontraditional materials.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The House of Representatives has combined the largely good Music Modernization Act with the CLASSICS Act, which would add new royalties and penalties to recordings made before 1972, without giving anything back to the public. That same mistake was replicated in the Senate with S. 2823.

The CLASSICS Act would extend federal copyright restrictions and penalties to sound recordings made between 1923 and 1972, making it so that songs recorded in that era would, for the first time, not be able to be streamed online without a license. Currently, various state laws govern this relationship, and those laws don't give record labels control over streaming.

The CLASSICS Act gives nothing back to the public. It doesn't increase access to pre-1972 recordings, which are already played regularly on Internet radio. And it doesn't let the public use these recordings without permission any sooner. While some recording artists and their heirs will receive money under the act, the main beneficiaries will be recording companies, who will control the use of classic recordings for another fifty years. Important recordings from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s won't enter the public domain until 2067. And users of recordings that are already over 90 years old will face the risk of federal copyright's massive, unpredictable penalties.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Researchers Claim Great Pyramid can Focus Electromagnetic Waves:

"Egyptian pyramids have always attracted great attention," said Andrey Evlyukhin, coauthor of the paper and an egghead at the ITMO University, Russia, earlier this week. "We as scientists were interested in them as well, so we decided to look at the Great Pyramid as a particle dissipating radio waves resonantly."

Computational models revealed that the pyramid's internal chambers and base were shaped in a way that can potentially concentrate radio waves using the phenomenon of resonance. Specifically, Evlyukhin asserted, the structure's inner spaces and foundation resonate when hit by external radio waves with a wavelength of 200 to 600 metres, and can control the propagation, scattering, and concentration of this electromagnetic energy.

[...] according to the paper:

It is revealed that the Pyramid's chambers can collect and concentrate electromagnetic energy ... At the shorter wavelengths, the electromagnetic energy accumulates in the chambers providing local spectral maxima for electric and magnetic fields. It is shown that basically the Pyramid scatters the electromagnetic waves and focuses them into the substrate region.

The full journal article is freely available:

"Electromagnetic properties of the Great Pyramid: First multipole resonances and energy concentration" Journal of Applied Physics 124, 034903 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5026556

Did the researchers really find something here, or is this just a light-hearted jab at new-age crystal woo-woo?

Original Submission