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Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

Dr. Helen Harwatt, farmed animal law and policy fellow at Harvard Law School, advises that getting protein from plant sources instead of animal sources would drastically help in meeting climate targets and reduce the risk of overshooting temperature goals.

For the first time, Dr. Harwatt proposes a three-step strategy to gradually replace animal proteins with plant-sourced proteins, as part of the commitment to mitigate climate change. These are:

1) Acknowledging that current numbers of livestock are at their peak and will need to decline ('peak livestock').

2) Set targets to transition away from livestock products starting with foods linked with the highest greenhouse gas emissions such as beef, then cow's milk and pig meat ('worst-first' approach).

3) Assessing suitable replacement products against a range of criteria including greenhouse gas emission targets, land usage, and public health benefits ('best available food' approach).

Harwatt further elaborates that recent evidence shows, in comparison with the current food system, switching from animals to plants proteins, could potentially feed an additional 350 million people in the US alone.

You can eat plants or insects, but not meat.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

curl hacker Daniel Stenberg has announced that his online booklet, HTTP/3 Explained, is available for download from GitHub. The booklet will remain a work in progress as neither the protocol specifications themselves nor any working implmementation are even remotely ready at this moment.

The book describes what HTTP/3 and its underlying transport protocol QUIC are, why they exist, what features they have and how they work. The book is meant to be readable and understandable for most people with a rudimentary level of network knowledge or better.

These protocols are not done yet, there aren't even any implementation of these protocols in the main browsers yet! The book will be updated and extended along the way when things change, implementations mature and the protocols settle.

Earlier on SN:
The Next Version of HTTP Won't be Using TCP (2018)
Google Touts QUIC Protocol (2015)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Amazon opens up its internal machine learning training to everyone

Amazon announced today that it's making the machine learning courses it uses to train its engineers available to everybody for free. The coursework is tailored to four major groups -- developers, data scientists, data platform engineers and business professionals -- and it offers both foundational level lessons as well as more advanced instruction.

"Each course starts with the fundamentals, and builds on those through real-world examples and labs, allowing developers to explore machine learning through some fun problems we have had to solve at Amazon," Amazon said in the announcement. "Coursework helps consolidate best practices, and demonstrates how to get started on a range of AWS machine learning services, including Amazon SageMaker, AWS DeepLens, Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Lex, Amazon Polly and Amazon Comprehend."

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Phoenix666 writes:

The University of Nottingham:

Using a special technical approach, the team is working on plastic films derived from konjac flour and starch, cellulose or proteins that are fully edible and harmless if accidentally eaten by people or animals—unlike health issues associated with microplastics and other plastic waste that make their way into the food chain.

The researchers have found that plant carbohydrate and protein macromolecules bond together into a special network structure during the film-forming process. The network structure provides the film with a required mechanical strength and transparent appearance for the film to be used as packaging materials.

The idea is to reduce incidence of plastic in the environment.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for takyon

All I want for Christmas is a 90% efficient solar panel

The idea of collecting energy from the sky – and using it in our homes to nurture, our schools to educate, our industry to build – is really the stuff of science fiction. As Arthur C Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

NovaSolix proposes a carbon nanotube based solar module which has the theoretical potential to reach 90% efficiency. The technology is based on a 1960s invention – the rectifying antenna (rectenna) – which is today used in radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. RFID tags capture the radio waves put out by scanners and power themselves. NovaSolix aims to take that ability of converting a different portion (non-visible) of the electromagnetic spectrum, and – using carbon nanotubes tuned to the sun’s full spectrum output – collect a much broader portion of the energy in our environment.

NovaSolix isn’t first to come up with this idea. Dr. Brian Willis, of the University of Connecticut, was pushing toward this technique in 2013 when he was proclaimed for a fabrication process called selective area atomic layer deposition that could allow for the manufacturing of the carbon nanotubes. At the time, commenting on solar rectennas in general, Willis was quoted as saying, "I compare it to the days when televisions relied on rabbit ear antennas for reception. Everything was a static blur until you moved the antenna around and saw the ghost of an image. Then you kept moving it around until the image was clearer. That's what we're looking for, that ghost of an image."

When asked by pv magazine how NovaSolix was growing its carbon nanotubes (still a future idea in this author’s mind), Dr. Jyotsna Iyer first let me know that carbon nanotubes aren’t a future idea anymore They’ve been grown since the 1990s in a ‘serious fashion’. Paraphrasing a thought of hers, was that science fiction had long moved to science speculation, and under her supervision in the NovaSolix labs, into science manufacturing.

The company says they’ve demonstrated a proof of concept, in front of third parties, that has touched 43% efficiency. That’d suggest a 72 cell solar module near 860 watts, with a 90% solar cell pushing 1700 watts.

[...] NovaSolix’s path to market is much like many of the new solar technologies – start in industries that need a high efficiency product and can deal with the higher price while the company scales. Satellites and drones are two regulars on this list, and more recently cars have joined it.

Sono Motors suggests its car charge up just over 18 miles on a 24% efficient solar cell. If NovaSolix can get to that 90% number, that’s 67 miles of sunlight driving. The average daily miles driven in the USA is about 40 miles per person. Elon Musk – are you reading?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for takyon

Snap will reportedly release AR-enabled Spectacles with dual cameras

Snap is reportedly set to release a new version of Spectacles with an aluminum design that packs in two cameras. Through the Snapchat app, you may be able to add augmented reality overlay effects in videos you capture with the updated Spectacles. The $350 frames will cost more than double the first version, which arrived in 2016, and will be on sale by the end of the year, according to Cheddar.

Following a $40 million write-down on the first version after Snap overestimated demand (it ordered around 800,000 pairs), it has been more conservative with orders of the device. For the second version of Spectacles, which were released earlier this year, Snap reportedly ordered 35,000 pairs, and 52,000 of a tweaked set it released in September. This time around, it's hedging its bets further by ordering around 24,000, according to the report.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Quantum computers are not like classical computers. I don't mean that in the sense that quantum computers perform calculations in a different manner, or that they might be faster, or more clever. No, I mean that quantum computers come with a whole set of issues (read: headache-inducing problems) that normal computers don't.

To reduce these problems, researchers have taken to hiding quantum information, albeit not very successfully. It turns out that using more than one type of qubit offers a bit more camouflage to quantum information.

[...] The researchers' control system is not perfect—the information still decays away, but the decay rate is a good 20 times slower than it would be if they were just using two beryllium ions.

The best bit, though, is that there is nothing stopping the researchers scaling up to more ions. Three qubits is puny compared to other quantum computers. But hitting nine-plus qubits should be possible, which is about state of the art for ion-based quantum computers. Furthermore, the cooling and control should allow for scaling to even larger numbers of qubits. It's all pretty exciting.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/like-kids-a-little-separation-keeps-qubits-calmer-for-longer/

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Vauxhall's GTX concept teases the future of mass-market EVs

Vauxhall and Opel, the Anglo-German car maker, joins a number of companies suddenly rushing to embrace electrification. As part of a wider shift away from gas-powered vehicles, it has built the GTX, an all-electric concept that serves as a mission statement for its EVs. You won't see this car popping up in showrooms, but this is the shape, broadly, of things to come.

[...] The GTX concept is an SUV, but built on to the chassis of a compact car, so while it has a high ride profile, its footprint is tiny. Measuring in at 13.3 feet (4.06 meters) by 6 feet (1.83 meters), it's built on the same platform that will underpin the 2019 Vauxhall Corsa, coming in both ICE and EV models. Adding to the look are four custom-made 17-inch tires with hubcaps designed to make them look much bigger.

[...] In place of wing-mirrors, the GTX has two (LG-made) LCD displays connected to cameras that pop out from the edge of the hood. The displays are mounted on the edges of the dashboard to match our instinct to look over when planning a turn. Expect to see more companies adopting this technology -- Audi already has them on the E-Tron SUV -- in the near future. No wing mirrors reduces drag and, perhaps more importantly, makes it easier to park in tighter spaces.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for takyon

When graphene and seaweed combine, something amazing happens

A number of biomedical applications have begun to adopt hydrogel materials made from alginate, a natural material derived from seaweed. Yet in their current form, these hydrogels are incredibly fragile, meaning they're not very useful in the long term.

However, researchers at Brown University have found a way to drastically improve their strength – in addition to making them more intricate in shape – using graphene oxide (GO) and 3D printing.

In a paper published to Carbon, the researchers said that the addition of GO nanosheets can make any material capable of becoming stiffer or softer in response to different chemical treatments, meaning they could react to their surroundings in real time. In addition, alginate-GO retains alginate's ability to repel oils, giving the new material potential as a sturdy, antifouling coating.

[...] Some immediate uses of the material could be found in the oil-repellent properties of pure alginate, potentially keeping surfaces, such as a ship's hull, free from oil and other grime.

It could also be useful in studying how cancer cells or immune cells migrate through different organs throughout the body, due to its ability to change stiffness on command.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Forget VR treadmills—Google patents motorized, omnidirectional VR sneakers

If virtual reality is ever going to become the immersive, holodeck-style platform that we all dream of, someone is going to have to figure out locomotion. Today, you can strap on a Vive or Oculus headset and more or less be visually transported to a virtual world, but the reality of, well, reality, means you can usually only take a few steps before you bump into your coffee table.

So far, we've seen a few solutions that take aim at VR's "limited space" problem. On the simpler side of the spectrum, one option has you stick a motion tracker in your pants and jog in place. On the more complicated end, there's the "VR treadmill" solution, which has you strap into a big plastic platform that keeps you in place with slippery footwear and a waist harness. Neither option is quite the same as natural walking, but a new patent from Google puts forth an interesting idea: what about motorized VR shoes?

The Virtuix Omni VR treadmill made us all hot and sweatyGoogle's patent describes what are essentially motorized VR roller skates that will let the user walk normally while the motors and wheels work to negate your natural locomotion and keep you inside the VR safe zone. As the patent puts it, Google's new kicks will let you walk "seemingly endlessly in the virtual environment" while keeping you in one spot in real life. Google's shoe solution would track the user's feet, just like how VR controllers are tracked today. The tracking would know when you're too close to the virtual walls of your VR area, and the system would wheel you back into place.

[...] This is just a patent and not a product, but we're still curious if Google can do this without the user falling over. Walking around in VR, where you are blind to the real world, is already a strange sensation that can mess with your balance. All the VR treadmills out there have a rigid waist support, in part to keep users upright if they stumble. Adding a set of wheels to the bottom of your shoes, which could start and stop unpredictably, may make staying upright a challenge. That said, if Google gets everything right, strapping on a pair of compact VR shoes sounds a lot easier than having to store a giant treadmill somewhere.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Quantum artificial life created on the cloud - Info

A scenario of artificial intelligence could see the emergence of circumstances in which models of simple organisms could be capable of experiencing the various phases of life in a controlled virtual environment. This is what has been designed by the QUTIS research group at the UPV/EHU's Department of Physical Chemistry, but the scenario is that of quantum computers: an artificial life protocol that encodes quantum behaviours belonging to living systems, such as self-replication, mutation, interaction between individuals, birth and death, and has been executed on an IBM ibmqx4 cloud quantum computer.

This is the first experimental realization on a quantum computer of a quantum algorithm of artificial life following Darwin's laws of evolution. The algorithm follows a protocol that the researchers refer to as biomimetic and which encodes quantum behaviours adapted to the same behaviours of living systems. Quantum biomimetics involves reproducing in quantum systems certain properties exclusive to living beings, and this research group had previously managed to imitate life, natural selection, learning and memory by means of quantum systems. This research aimed, as the authors themselves describe, "to design a set of quantum algorithms based on the imitation of biological processes, which take place in complex organisms, and transfer them to a quantum scale, so we were only trying to imitate the key aspects in these processes".

In the scenario of artificial life that they designed, a set of models of simple organisms are capable of accomplishing the most common phases of life in a controlled virtual environment, and have proven that microscopic quantum systems are able to encode quantum characteristics and biological behaviours that are normally associated with living systems and natural selection.

The models of organism designed were coined as units of quantum life, each one of which is made up of two qubits that act as genotype and phenotype, respectively, and where the genotype contains the information that describes the type of living unit, and this information is transmitted from generation to generation. By contrast, the phenotype, the characteristics displayed by individuals, are determined by genetic information as well as by the interaction of the individuals themselves with the environment.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Every week there's at least one weird story to come from the gaming industry and this has to be one of the strangest at its surface level. It's hard to imagine that an entire country such as China would have a problem with a bear whose only real problem is that he has no real problems, but when you look a little deeper into Chinese President Xi Jinping and his relationship with the honey eating bear, this strange headline begins to make more sense.

Source: https://techraptor.net/content/kingdom-hearts-3s-winnie-the-pooh-might-be-censored-in-china

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scientists are considering the possibility of climate engineering via aerosol injection

In a new paper published in Environmental Research Letters [open, DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d] researchers discuss the potential to use what is known as stratospheric aerosol injection (or SAI) to help cool the Earth over a long period of time. This "solar geoengineering" effort would take a long time to plan and put into action, but the authors of the work suggest that it is indeed possible.

"While we don't make any judgement about the desirability of SAI, we do show that a hypothetical deployment program starting 15 years from now, while both highly uncertain and ambitious, would be technically possible strictly from an engineering perspective," Dr. Gernot Wagner of Harvard said in a statement. "It would also be remarkably inexpensive, at an average of around $2 to 2.5 billion per year over the first 15 years."

Original Submission

martyb writes:

145 Pilot Whales Die in Mass Stranding in New Zealand:

As many as 145 pilot whales died in a mass stranding on a remote New Zealand island, authorities said on Monday.

The Department of Conservation (DOC) said two pods of pilot whales were stranded on a beach on Stewart Island, 30km off New Zealand's South Island.

The whales were found by a hiker camping in the area who notified the authorities on Saturday night. Half the animals were already dead when they were found by conservation officers who decided to put the rest of the whales down because of their poor condition.

"Sadly, the likelihood of being able to successfully re-float the remaining whales was extremely low," said DOC Rakiura Operations Manager Ren Leppens, adding putting the whales to sleep was the most humane thing to do.

Would these have any value to Japan?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for takyon

Paving the way: an accelerator on a microchip

Particle accelerators are usually large and costly, but that will soon change if researchers have their way. The Accelerator on a Chip International Program (AChIP), funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in the U.S., aims to create an electron accelerator on a silicon chip. The fundamental idea is to replace accelerator parts made of metal with glass or silicon, and to use a laser instead of a microwave generator as an energy source. Due to glass's higher electric field load capacity, the acceleration rate can be increased and thus the same amount of energy can be transmitted to the particles within a shorter space, making the accelerator shorter by a factor of approximately 10 than traditional accelerators delivering the same energy. One of the challenges here is that the vacuum channel for the electrons on a chip has to be made very small, which requires that the electron beam is extremely focused. The magnetic focusing channels used in conventional accelerators are much too weak for this. This means that an entirely new focusing method has to be developed if the accelerator on a chip is to become reality.

As part of TU Darmstadt's Matter and Radiation Science profile area, the AChIP group in accelerator physics (Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at TU Darmstadt), led by the junior scientist Dr. Uwe Niedermayer, recently proposed a decisive solution which calls for using the laser fields themselves to focus the electrons in a channel only 420 nanometres wide. The concept is based on abrupt changes to the phase of the electrons relative to the laser, resulting in alternating focusing and de-focusing in the two directions in the plane of the chip surface. This creates stability in both directions. The concept can be compared to a ball on a saddle – the ball will fall down, regardless of the direction in which the saddle tilts. However, turning the saddle continuously means the ball will remain stable on the saddle. The electrons in the channel on the chip do the same.