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RandomFactor writes:

Mark D. Scherz, a Ph.D. candidate at Germany’s Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich is the lead author of a study that has described five new species of frogs on Madagascar, three of which are classified as belonging to a new genus 'Mini'

The five new species range in size from 8 to 15 mm (.31 to .59 inches), allowing all of them to easily rest on your fingernail. Notably, you could line ~11,250 of them up diagonally on a standard 30x60 meter Ice Hockey rink.

o - Mini mum is from Manombo in eastern Madagascar.
        It is one of the smallest frogs in the world, reaching an adult body size of 9.7 mm in males and 11.3 mm in females.
        It could sit on a thumbtack.
o - Mini scule from Sainte Luce in southeastern Madagascar is slightly larger and has teeth in its upper jaw.
o - Mini ature from Andohahela in southeast Madagascar is larger than its relatives but is similar in build.

The two other new (also very small) species described were

o - Rhombophryne proportionalis from Tsaratanana in northern Madagascar is unique among Madagascar's miniaturised frogs
        because it's a proportional dwarf, meaning it has the proportions of a large frog, but is only about 12 mm long.
        This is very unusual among tiny frogs, which usually have large eyes,
        big heads, and other characters that are "baby-like"; so-called "paedomorphisms."
o - Anodonthyla eximia from Ranomafana in eastern Madagascar is distinctly smaller than any other Anodonthyla species.
        It lives on the ground, providing evidence that miniaturisation and terrestriality may have an evolutionary link.
        Maybe getting really small makes it hard to stay up in the trees.

Additional coverage here and here. Publication date was March 27, I suspect they rushed to make sure this did not come out on April 1st.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Gunmen have attacked a convoy of trucks carrying uranium fuel to a nuclear power plant near the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, police say.

The convoy came under attack as it drove past a community controlled by drug traffickers in Angra dos Reis, a tourist city 145km (90 miles) from Rio.

Police escorting the convoy responded and a shootout followed. No-one was injured or detained.

The convoy reached the Angra 2 plant safely 20 minutes after the attack.

The attack in the Rio-Santos highway is the latest in a series of violent incidents in an area popular with visitors.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47635706

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

In Brazil, all firearms are required to be registered with the minimum age for gun ownership being 25.[1] It is generally illegal to carry a gun outside a residence, and a special permit granting the right to do so is granted to certain groups, such as law enforcement officers.[2] To legally own a gun, an owner must hold a gun license, which costs R$1000,[2] and pay a fee every three years to register the gun, currently at R$85.[3] Registration can be done online or in person with the Federal Police.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Brazil

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

Liposomes are small spherical vesicles with walls comprising two layers of lipids and containing an aqueous core. These artificial structures have been developed for drug delivery or as carriers of active substances in cosmetic products. Another possible application involves the encapsulation of magnetic nanoparticles in liposomes to use them to transmit signals.

[...]The nanometric and giant liposomes used in the model were designed to mimic drug carriers and cells, respectively, and to fuse with each other. Instead of delivering drugs, however, the nanometric liposomes transported magnetite nanoparticles with fluorophores (fluorescent molecules) or electrically charged lipids. The fluorophores and charged lipids were used to transmit signals, while the magnetic particles were used to control transmission by means of magnets.

"In the initial situation, the giant vesicles had no fluorophores, charges or magnetite nanoparticles. Upon fusing with the nanometric liposomes, which contained luminous or electrical information, the giant vesicles incorporated this information. They also incorporated the magnetic particles and hence could be drawn by a magnet to the signal-receiving station. This created the possibility of an on/off mechanism. When the magnet moves the vesicle toward the receiving station, we have the 'on' state. When it's in the opposite direction, we have the 'off' mode, and the signal is blocked," Cardoso explained.

Good news, everyone! Someday all those extra pounds you're carrying around could mean extra computing power.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Social media has remarkably small impact on Americans’ beliefs:

Social media had only a small influence on how much people believed falsehoods about candidates and issues in the last two presidential elections, a pair of new national studies found.

And Facebook -- which came under fire for spreading misinformation in the 2016 campaign -- actually reduced misperceptions by users in that election compared to those who consumed only other social media.

The results suggest that we need to put the dangers of social media spreading misinformation in perspective, said R. Kelly Garrett, author of the study and professor of communication at The Ohio State University.

"Given the amount of attention given to the issue, it may seem surprising that social media doesn't have a larger impact on Americans' belief in falsehoods," Garrett said.

Journal Reference:
R. Kelly Garrett. Social media’s contribution to political misperceptions in U.S. Presidential elections. PLOS ONE, 2019; 14 (3): e0213500 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213500

The study lets Facebook off the hook for influencing the 2016 election. Further, the study found, "Results showed that, overall, Republicans beliefs tended to be less accurate than those of Democrats, which made sense because the falsehoods were a prominent part of the Republican campaign strategy, Garrett said."

There you have it. It's science.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Morrowind: An oral history

While hardly the first open-world game of its kind, the third numbered entry in Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series cemented a formula and a set of expectations that are still alive and well today in games like Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3. It was an artistic and technical leap forward for mainstream role-playing games in the summer of 2002, and, for many, a beautiful and novel experience. A vast ashen landscape teeming with psychedelic flora and fauna — equal parts Jim Henson and George Lucas, with a dash of Tolkien — here was a game that resembled no other.

For the people who made it, Morrowind was the product of tough crunch, a pressure-cooker basement environment, and constant uncertainty about the company they worked for — which many felt could have shut down any day. But the island of Vvardenfell, and its unique pantheon of gods and demons, seemed to exist independent of the concerns upstairs.

Whatever the company's fate, it seemed the game was destined to find an audience. In the darkest of moments, when it seemed the writing was on the wall for Bethesda, project leader Todd Howard took the team to a nearby hotel for a private meeting. There, Howard rallied the developers' spirits, handed out personalized business cards, and assured them it would all work out, as long as they were willing to keep going.

That speech, one source says, probably saved the company.

Over the last year, we tracked down 10 former Morrowind team members, including Howard, concept artist Michael Kirkbride, and lead designer Ken Rolston. We discussed the very conception of Vvardenfell, the strangest bits of Elder Scrolls lore and the "shits-and-giggles" philosophy that informed them, and what it means to build a game world that withstands the test of time.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

Related: 40 Computer Role-Playing Games That Did Their Own Thing
The OpenMW (Morrowind) Project Has Released Version 0.39.0
How 'Baldur's Gate' Saved the Computer RPG, or Did it?

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

The EU is moving forward with legislation to require ISA, Intelligent Speed Assistance, in all new cars starting in 2022. This system will use GPS, map databases, and speed limit reading cameras to limit speed. Speed limiting will be accomplished by limiting engine power. Drivers can temporarily override the system by pressing down hard on the accelerator. It seems that, at least to start, the system will have an off button. Other requirements of the legislation include a system to monitor the driver for drowsiness, and inattention, as well as standard hookups for in car breathalysers. It seems the driver monitoring systems may include in car cameras pointed at the driver.

Sources:

thisismoney.co.uk
fortune.com
euractiv.com
theengineer.co.uk
gizmodo.com

Previously on Soylent: Volvo: In-Car Cameras Will Monitor Drivers and Take Action to Prevent Distracted or Impaired Driving

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scientists construct artificial photosynthetic cells

A team led by associate professor Yutetsu Kuruma of the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Institute of Technology has constructed simple artificial cells that can produce chemical energy that helps synthesize parts of the cells themselves. This work marks an important milestone in constructing fully photosynthetic artificial cells, and may shed light on how primordial cells used sunlight as an energy source early in life's history.

Scientists build artificial cells as models of primitive cells, as well as to understand how modern cells function. Many sub-cellular systems have now been built by simply mixing cell components together. However, real living cells construct and organize their own components. It has also been a long time goal of research to build artificial cells that can also synthesize their own constituents using the energy available in the environment.

The Tokyo Tech team combined a cell-free protein synthesis system, which consisted of various biological macromolecules harvested from living cells, and small protein-lipids aggregates called proteoliposomes, which contained the proteins ATP synthase and bacteriorhodopsin, also purified from living cells, inside giant synthetic vesicles. ATP synthase is a biological protein complex that uses the potential energy difference between the liquid inside a cell and the liquid in the cell's environment to make the molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is the energy currency of the cell. Bacteriorhodopsin is a light-harvesting protein from primitive microbes that uses light energy to transport hydrogen ions outside of the cell, thus generating a potential energy difference to help ATP synthase operate. Thus, these artificial cells would be able to use light to make a hydrogen ion gradient that would help make the fuel cells use to run their sub-cellular systems, including making more protein.

Just as the scientists hoped, the photosynthesized ATP was consumed as a substrate for transcription, the process by which biology makes messenger RNA (mRNA) from DNA, and as an energy for translation, the process by which biology makes protein from mRNA. By also including the genes for parts of the ATP synthase and the light-harvesting bacteriorhodopsin, these processes also eventually drive the synthesis of more bacteriorhodopsin and the constituent proteins of ATP synthase, a few copies of which were included to "jump-start" the proteoliposome. The newly formed bacteriorhodopsin and ATP synthase parts then spontaneously integrated into the artificial photosynthetic organelles and further enhanced ATP photosynthesis activity.

Artificial photosynthetic cell producing energy for protein synthesis (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09147-4) (DX)

Original Submission

saturnalia0 writes:

Currently we can observe a general slowdown in the annual growth rate in price inflation across major countries around the world. [...] Most commentators are of the view that deflation generates expectations for a decline in prices. As a result, it is held, consumers are likely to postpone their buying of goods at present since they expect to buy these goods at lower prices in the future. This weakens the overall flow of spending and in turn weakens the economy. Hence, such commentators believe that policies that counter deflation will also counter the economic slump.

Inflation is not about general increases in prices as such, but about the increase in the money supply. [...] For instance, if the money supply increases by 5% and the quantity of goods increases by 10%, prices will fall by 5%. A fall in prices however, cannot conceal the fact that we have inflation of 5% here because of the increase in money supply. The reason why inflation is bad news is not of increases in prices as such, but because of the damage inflation inflicts to the wealth-formation process.

The economic effect of money that was created out of thin air is the same as that of counterfeit money — it impoverishes wealth generators. The money created out of thin air diverts real wealth towards the holders of new money. [...] So, countering a falling growth momentum of the CPI by means of loose monetary policy (i.e., by creating inflation) is bad news for the process of wealth generation and hence for the economy. [...] Furthermore, if a fall in the growth momentum of prices emerges on the back of the collapse of bubble activities in response to a softer monetary growth, then this should be seen as good news. The less non-productive bubble activities the better it is for the wealth generators and hence for the overall pool of real wealth.

https://mises.org/wire/central-banks-shouldnt-fight-deflation

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Bangladesh Firefighters Battle Blaze at Dhaka Skyscraper:

At least two people confirmed dead and some are believed to be trapped inside FR Tower in the Bangladeshi capital.

At least two people have been confirmed dead after fire broke out in a 19-storey commercial building in Dhaka on Thursday, officials have told Al Jazeera, weeks after a deadly fire in the Bangladeshi capital left at least 70 people dead.

"Nineteen fire-fighting units are working at the scene. Bangladesh navy and air force have also joined to fight the fire," said Duty Officer Mohammad Russel from Dhaka's central fire service control room.

Several people are believed to be trapped inside the tower in the Banani area of the Bangladeshi capital, according to The Daily Star news website.

Helicopters dropped water on the burning building while hundreds of panicked onlookers crowded the streets in the upmarket commercial district of Banani.

[...] Al Jazeera's Tanveer Chaudhry, reporting from Dhaka, said "at least six people have jumped off the building."

"There are 95 emergency services working and helicopters hovering above ... trying to rescue some people from the roof as well.

"The fire took place on the 9th floor of the building but we don't know under what circumstances."

A massive blaze in Dhaka's old quarter last month killed at least 70 people and injured 50 others.

Also at: AP, Dhaka Tribune, and The New York Times.

Had a fire in my apartment building a while back and had to evacuate. Scary.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Kids store 1.5 megabytes of information to master their native language

[...] research from UC Berkeley suggests that language acquisition between birth and 18 is a remarkable feat of cognition, rather than something humans are just hardwired to do.

Researchers calculated that, from infancy to young adulthood, learners absorb approximately 12.5 million bits of information about language — about two bits per minute — to fully acquire linguistic knowledge. If converted into binary code, the data would fill a 1.5 MB floppy disk, the study found.

The findings, published today in the Royal Society Open Science journal, challenge assumptions that human language acquisition happens effortlessly, and that robots would have an easy time mastering it.

"Ours is the first study to put a number on the amount you have to learn to acquire language," said study senior author Steven Piantadosi, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley. "It highlights that children and teens are remarkable learners, absorbing upwards of 1,000 bits of information each day."

For example, when presented with the word "turkey," a young learner typically gathers bits of information by asking, "Is a turkey a bird? Yes, or no? Does a turkey fly? Yes, or no?" and so on, until grasping the full meaning of the word "turkey."

Humans store about 1.5 megabytes of information during language acquisition (open, DOI: 10.1098/rsos.181393) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Volcanic lightning may be partially fed by Earth's natural radioactivity

Much of the lightning that flickers around and within the ash plumes of erupting volcanoes is triggered by static electricity, which builds up when ash particles scrape against each other in flight. Now, a field study suggests Earth's natural radioactivity may also help volcanic plumes get electrically charged—even when those clouds contain little or no ash.

Volcanic lightning (images).

First In Situ Observations of Gaseous Volcanic Plume Electrification (open, DOI: 10.1029/2019GL082211) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Mouse study examines the underpinnings of hallucinations

Hallucinations result in dramatic disruptions in perception and cognition, but the changes in brain activity that underlie such alterations are not well understood. In a study publishing March 26 in the journal Cell Reports, researchers looked at how a hallucinogenic drug impacts the brains of mice at the level of individual neurons. They found that visual hallucinations may be triggered by a reduction in signaling within the visual cortex, rather than an increase, and by altered timing of when the neurons fire.

In addition to helping us understand how hallucinogens affect brain function, the findings also have implications for figuring out the neurological underpinnings in disorders like schizophrenia that are characterized by hallucinations.

"You might expect visual hallucinations would result from neurons in the brain firing like crazy, or by mismatched signals. We were surprised to find that a hallucinogenic drug instead led to a reduction of activity in the visual cortex," says senior author Cris Niell, an associate professor and member of the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon.

The drug was DOI (4-iodo-2,5-dimethoxyphenylisopropylamine).

DOI is not scheduled in the United States, but it is likely that DOI would be considered an analog (of DOB), in which case, sales or possession could be prosecuted under the Federal Analogue Act. DOI is occasionally used in animal and in vitro research.[citation needed] Scheduling DOI could cause problems for medical researchers.[citation needed]

US State of Florida: DOI is a Schedule I controlled substance in the state of Florida.

A Hallucinogenic Serotonin-2A Receptor Agonist Reduces Visual Response Gain and Alters Temporal Dynamics in Mouse V1 (open, DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2019.02.104) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Alexa's chief scientist thinks the assistant needs a robot body to understand the world

Amazon's Rohit Prasad, head scientist and an instrumental member of the Alexa division, says the company's personal software assistant would be far smarter if it had a robot body and cameras to move around in the real world. Prasad, speaking at MIT Technology Review's EmTech Digital AI conference in San Francisco yesterday, said, "The only way to make smart assistants really smart is to give it eyes and let it explore the world."

Some Alexa-enabled smart devices already have cameras. But a robot body would be new. Prasad's comments suggest that work could be in service of one day giving Alexa a body — although he wouldn't confirm this directly. Prasad works on natural language processing and other machine learning capabilities for Alexa, so it's likely if he wanted to test these features out, he'd be one of the few Amazon employees who could easily go ahead and try it.

Someday, we can truly have sex with Alexa.

Related: Amazon Plans to Add Alexa Voice Support to Microwaves, Amplifiers, Subwoofers, and "In-Car Gadgets"

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

On Wednesday the EU Parliament voted to ban

single-use plastic products such as the straws, cutlery and cotton buds that are clogging the world's oceans.

The ban will take effect in 2021.

Product categories banned include: Cutlery, plates, straws, polystyrene food and drink containers, cotton swabs with plastic stems, and plastic grocery bags. Additionally,

Rules insisting that polluters pay the costs of a clean-up are strengthened, particularly for cigarette manufacturers, who will have to support the recycling of discarded filters.

According to the EU Commission, the waste caused by these products poses a threat to wildlife and fisheries.

No word on disposable diapers.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Hello, Quantum Vacuum, Nice to See You

Louisiana State University Department of Physics & Astronomy Associate Professor Thomas Corbitt and his team of researchers now present the first broadband, off-resonance measurement of quantum radiation pressure noise in the audio band, at frequencies relevant to gravitational wave detectors, as reported today in the scientific journal Nature.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, or NSF, and the results hint at methods to improve the sensitivity of gravitational-wave detectors by developing techniques to mitigate the imprecision in measurements called "back action," thus increasing the chances of detecting gravitational waves.

Corbitt and researchers have developed physical devices that make it possible to observe -- and hear -- quantum effects at room temperature. It is often easier to measure quantum effects at very cold temperatures, while this approach brings them closer to human experience. Housed in miniature models of detectors like LIGO, or the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, located in Livingston, La., and Hanford, Wash., these devices consist of low-loss, single-crystal micro-resonators -- each a tiny mirror pad the size of a pin prick, suspended from a cantilever. A laser beam is directed at one of these mirrors, and as the beam is reflected, the fluctuating radiation pressure is enough to bend the cantilever structure, causing the mirror pad to vibrate, which creates noise.

Gravitational wave interferometers use as much laser power as possible in order to minimize the uncertainty caused by the measurement of discrete photons and to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio. These higher power beams increase position accuracy but also increase back action, which is the uncertainty in the number of photons reflecting from a mirror that corresponds to a fluctuating force due to radiation pressure on the mirror, causing mechanical motion. Other types of noise, such as thermal noise, usually dominate over quantum radiation pressure noise, but Corbitt and his team, including collaborators at MIT, have sorted through them. Advanced LIGO and other second and third generation interferometers will be limited by quantum radiation pressure noise at low frequencies when running at their full laser power. Corbitt's paper in Nature offers clues as to how researchers can work around this when measuring gravitational waves.

Measurement of quantum back action in the audio band at room temperature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1051-4) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Cheollima Civil Defense: What is known about North Korean embassy group

A group calling itself the Cheollima Civil Defense (CCD) says it was behind a raid on a North Korean embassy in the Spanish capital of Madrid last month in which staff were reportedly shackled and beaten.

According to a Spanish High Court document, the group entered the building on 22 February armed with machetes, knives, metal bars and cable ties and left with two computers, hard drives, USB pen drives and a mobile phone - items said to have been handed to the FBI.

But the organisation, a self-styled human rights group, disputes reports that this was a violent attack, saying that "no weapons were used" and embassy staff were "treated with dignity and necessary caution".

Despite having a website and YouTube channel, the group has made almost no contact with the world's media, and it remains somewhat in the shadows.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Inert nitrogen forced to react with itself

Imitating nature, humans use the all-important Haber-Bosch process to break down nitrogen into ammonia, which can then be further processed to produce fertilizers and to make nitrogen available for the production of pigments, fuels, materials, pharmaceuticals and beyond. The production of compounds that contain chains of two, three or four nitrogen atoms -- which are notably of pharmaceutical importance in vaso-dilating drugs, for example -- requires the reassembly of mono-nitrogen molecules such as ammonia, because no direct reaction exists that can directly connect molecules of dinitrogen.

This week, research teams from Germany, from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) and Goethe University in Frankfurt, report a completely new chemical reaction in Science magazine. The new process uses boron-containing molecules to directly couple two molecules of N₂ into a N₄ chain. For the first time, they have succeeded in directly coupling two molecules of atmospheric nitrogen N₂ with each other without first having to split the dinitrogen into ammonia, thus bypassing the Haber-Bosch process. This new method could enable the direct generation of longer nitrogen chains.

The new synthesis pathway functions under very mild conditions: at minus 30 degrees Celsius and under a moderate pressure of nitrogen (around four atmospheres). It also does not require a transition metal catalyst, unlike almost all biological and industrial reactions of nitrogen.

"This will open the way to a chemistry with which completely new chain-form nitrogen molecules can be synthesized," says JMU chemistry Professor Holger Braunschweig. For the first time, nitrogen chains containing a special variant of nitrogen (15N isotope) can also be easily produced.

The reductive coupling of dinitrogen (DOI: 10.1126/science.aav9593) (DX)

Original Submission