SoylentNews

takyon writes:

Sidewalk Labs is under pressure to explain its smart city dream

Sidewalk Labs, the part of Alphabet focused on smart cities, is behind schedule. The company had planned to publish its grand vision for Quayside, a 12-acre site on Toronto's industrial waterfront, in the fall of 2018. Last June, however, the first version of its crucial Master Innovation and Development Plan (MIDP) was pushed back to early 2019. "It will be a comprehensive document, but still a work-in-progress," a press release clarified at the time. A complete MIDP would then be published in "spring 2019," the company said, following a public roundtable.

The draft version of the MIDP is yet to materialize. And for many, it's been an agonizing wait. Waterfront Toronto, a public steward created by the Canadian government, announced its search for an innovation and funding partner back in March 2017. Sidewalk Labs put its name forward with a beautiful "vision" document that suggested, among other head-turning ideas, buildings made from timber, a flexible thermal grid and subterranean tunnels for deliveries and garbage disposal. The company won the bid in October and has spent the past 18 months researching those ideas, consulting with experts and gathering public feedback.

[...] On Tuesday, a group of concerned citizens launched #BlockSidewalk, a campaign dedicated to informing the public "what the project is, and why it should be reset." Julie Beddoes, a waterfront resident and #BlockSidewalk supporter, told reporters at city hall, "In Toronto, [Sidewalk Labs] is aiming to take over the functions of government -- do we really need a coup d'état to get transit and nice paving stones?"

Previously: Google Launches "Sidewalk Labs" Spinoff Company
Toronto's Eastern Waterfront: Google's City of the Future?
Sidewalk Toronto Has Only One Beneficiary, and It Is not Toronto

Related: How Pervasive is Google in our Online Life?

Original Submission

[Update: 2019-04-11 6:50pm EDT (2250 UTC): No hold or delays for the launch. Successful launch and ascent. Both side boosters returned as planned to their respective landing zones; the center core successfully landed on the drone ship OCISLU. Second stage is currently in its coast phase and will then fire again to deliver the Arabsat-6A satellite to its intended orbit.]

martyb writes:

Yesterday's planned attempt to launch SpaceX's Falcon Heavy was scrubbed due to high-level winds. Another attempt is scheduled for today. The launch will be live-streamed on YouTube. From the description on that page:

SpaceX is targeting Thursday, April 11 for a Falcon Heavy launch of the Arabsat-6A satellite from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The primary launch window opens at 6:35 p.m. EDT, or 22:35 UTC, and closes at 8:31 p.m. EDT, or 00:31 UTC on Friday, April 12. The satellite will be deployed approximately 34 minutes after liftoff.

Following booster separation, Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters will attempt to land at SpaceX’s Landing Zones 1 and 2 (LZ-1 and LZ-2) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Falcon Heavy’s center core will attempt to land on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Falcon Heavy is the world's largest rocket that is still in production. It weighs approximately 1.4 million kg (over 3.1 million pounds) and develops nearly 23 MN (5.1 million pounds) of thrust.

The entire rocket comes to 70 m (230 ft) in height. Each of the 3 cores is 3.66 m (12.0 ft) in diameter giving a total width of 12.2 m (40 ft).

Previously: SpaceX Falcon Heavy Block 5 Launch - Postponed: 6:35pm EDT Thursday (2019-04-12 22:35 UTC).

Original Submission

takyon writes:

New breed of rocket fuel is greener and safer

Scientists at McGill University in Montreal have created a new type of solid rocket fuel that they say is safer and cleaner than existing high-energy aerospace fuels.

Rocket fuels typically need to be hypergolic, combusting instantly when they come into contact with an external oxidizer. Most of the fuels used today are derived from hydrazine, a highly toxic and unstable compound of hydrogen and nitrogen that must be handled with inordinate care. Despite this, it's estimated that around 12,000 tons of carcinogenic hydrazine-based fuels are released into the atmosphere each year by the aerospace industry.

Described in Science Advances [open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aav9044] [DX], the McGill rocket fuel is based on zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), a type of metal organic framework (MOF) where metal ions are clustered together with an organic molecule called a linker. According to the researchers, the high latent energy of these MOFs can be unlocked using simple chemical triggers, producing a rapid hypergolic response and ignition within 2 milliseconds.

"This is a new, cleaner approach to making highly combustible fuels, that are not only significantly safer than those currently in use, but they also respond or combust very quickly, which is an essential quality in rocket fuel," said co-senior author Tomislav Friščic, a professor in McGill's Chemistry Department.

Also at Silicon Republic.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google debuts new Cloud Storage archive class for long-term data retention

Today at its annual Cloud Next conference in San Francisco, [Google] announced new storage tools, pricing, and products for customers of all sizes.

First on the agenda was a new archive class designed for long-term data retention that eliminates the need for a separate retrieval process, Google says, while providing "immediate" and low-latency access to content. Both access and management are performed via a familiar set of Google Cloud Storage APIs through which objects can be tiered down to save on costs, and data is redundantly stored geo-redundantly across multi-regional availability zones.

Pricing will start at $0.0012 per GB per month ($1.23 per TB per month) when it launches later this year. That's significantly cheaper than Microsoft's Azure Cool Blob Storage, which costs $0.002 per GB per month, and competitive with Amazon S3 Glacier, which is priced at $0.004 per GB per month.

Related: Should you Upload or Ship Big Data to the Cloud? -- The Accepted Wisdom does not Always Hold True
Google Cloud to Add Five New Regions With Three New Undersea Cables to Support It
Microsoft Exec Says Amazon's Expansion is an Opportunity as Amazon Hits $1 Trillion

Original Submission

[UPDATED. 2019-04-11 03:30pm EDT (19:05 UTC): (From what I heard translated on the live feed.) It appears there was a problem with the main engine. They tried restarting and were able to restart it at one point. They lost telemetry a couple of times. Then it was reported that they lost the lander. Said they were only the 7th country to successfully orbit the moon. --martyb]

martyb writes:

Private Spacecraft Attempts a Moon Landing Today:

It has been 48 days since the Beresheet spacecraft launched on a Falcon 9 rocket and began a spiraling series of orbits to raise itself toward the Moon. Last week, the 180kg vehicle fired its engines to enter into lunar orbit, and now the time has come for it to attempt a soft landing on the Moon.

No private company has ever achieved what SpaceIL, a private group organized in Israel to win the now defunct Google Lunar XPrize, is attempting. At 3:05pm EDT Thursday (19:05 UTC), the Beresheet vehicle will begin the landing process that will set it down at Mare Serenitatis (the "Sea of Serenity"), about 30 degrees north of the lunar equator. The actual landing should come about 20 minutes later.

Live coverage is available on YouTube.

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

As described in a report in Bejing's National Science Review journal, and covered by China Daily and MIT Technology Review, scientists have created five transgenic monkeys with extra copies of a human gene believed to play a role in human's intelligence.

“This was the first attempt to understand the evolution of human cognition using a transgenic monkey model,” says Bing Su, the geneticist at the Kunming Institute of Zoology who led the effort.

The modified rhesus macaque monkey's brains took longer to develop (similar to human children's brains) and they also score higher on memory tests although MRIs indicate their brains did not increase in size.

According to geneticist Su:

the small number of animals was a limitation. He says he has a solution, though. He is making more of the monkeys and is also testing new brain evolution genes. One that he has his eye on is SRGAP2C, a DNA variant that arose about two million years ago, just when Australopithecus was ceding the African savannah to early humans. That gene has been dubbed the “humanity switch” and the “missing genetic link” for its likely role in the emergence of human intelligence.

There are ethical and slippery slope issues to consider and the paper was apparently not able to find a publisher in the west.

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

Reuters

China’s state planner wants to eliminate bitcoin mining in the country, according to a draft list of industrial activities the agency is seeking to stop in a sign of growing government pressure on the cryptocurrency sector.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Monday it was seeking public opinions on a revised list of industries it wants to encourage, restrict or eliminate. The list was first published in 2011. The draft for a revised list added cryptocurrency mining, including that of bitcoin, to more than 450 activities the NDRC said should be phased out as they did not adhere to relevant laws and regulations, were unsafe, wasted resources or polluted the environment. It did not stipulate a target date or plan for how to eliminate bitcoin mining, meaning that such activities should be phased out immediately, the document said. The public has until May 7 to comment on the draft.

[...]The cryptocurrency sector has been under heavy scrutiny in China since 2017, when regulators started to ban initial coin offerings and shut local cryptocurrency trading exchanges. China also began to limit cryptocurrency mining, forcing many firms - among them some of the world’s largest - to find bases elsewhere.

Nearly half of bitcoin mining pools – groups of miners that team up for economies of scale - are located in the Asia-Pacific, a Cambridge University study said in December. “Half of the network is probably located in China,” said Alex de Vries, a consultant with PwC in Amsterdam who specializes on blockchain and researches cryptocurrency mining. He added that the number of mining facilities in the world is still limited to several hundred.

[...]Chinese companies are also among the biggest manufacturers of bitcoin mining gear, and last year three filed for initial public offerings in Hong Kong, looking to raise billions of dollars. However, the two largest, Bitmain Technologies, the world’s largest manufacturer of bitcoin mining gear, and Canaan Inc, have since let their applications lapse. People familiar with the deals said that Hong Kong regulators had many questions about the companies’ business models and prospects.

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

[...] In 2013, researchers at Michigan State University carried out a thankless, if mildly creepy, study. They observed how more than 3,500 residents of their college town used the sink at various restrooms after they carried out their business.

Some 10 percent of people observed chose not to wash their hands at all, which is simply not an acceptable way to end a trip to the bathroom. But even the vast majority of people who tried to wash their hands managed to totally flub the proper routine. Almost a quarter of people washed their hands without soap, for instance. And only 5 percent washed their hands for at least 15 seconds or longer, which is actually lower than the 20-second minimum of handwashing recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

https://gizmodo.com/in-a-world-of-mrsa-and-superfungi-you-need-to-start-wa-1833889953

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Breaking: Met police confirm that Julian Assange has been arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy.

Mr Assange took refuge in the embassy seven years ago to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault case that has since been dropped.

The Met Police said he was arrested for failing to surrender to the court.

Ecuador's president Lenin Moreno said it withdrew Mr Assange's asylum after his repeated violations to international conventions.

But WikiLeaks tweeted that Ecuador had acted illegally in terminating Mr Assange's political asylum "in violation of international law".

[...] Scotland Yard said it was invited into the embassy by the ambassador, following the Ecuadorian government's withdrawal of asylum.

After his arrest for failing to surrender to the court, police said he had been further arrested on behalf of US authorities under an extradition warrant.

He doesn't look happy, to say the least.

Update: As this is a breaking story, more information is coming out regularly - one source that updates their reports frequently is Zero Hedge - thanks boru!

Previously: New Analysis of Swedish Police Report Confirms Julian Assange's Version in Sweden's Case
Ecuador Reportedly Almost Ready to Hand Julian Assange Over to UK Authorities
UK Said Assange Would Not be Extradited If He Leaves Embassy Refuge
Inadvertent Court Filing Suggests that the U.S. DoJ is Preparing to Indict Julian Assange
U.S. Ramping Up Probe Against Julian Assange, WikiLeaks Says
Ecuador Denies That Julian Assange Will be Evicted From Embassy in London

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

If using the law to corral antivaxxers doesn’t work at first, try, try again. At least, that seems to be the lesson learned by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. On Tuesday, he declared a state of emergency and mandated residents of the Williamsburg neighborhood, where an outbreak of measles has been raging since last fall, get vaccinated for the viral disease. Those who choose not to will risk the penalty of a $1,000 fine.

https://gizmodo.com/new-york-city-orders-williamsburg-residents-to-get-vacc-1833917175

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

https://gizmodo.com/a-99-year-old-woman-lived-and-died-without-ever-knowing-1833908646:

A 99-year-old woman in Oregon lived a long life with one of the world’s rarest and often fatal conditions: a body in which most of her major organs were on the wrong side. Even more amazingly, the woman remained blissfully unaware of her unusual predicament. It was only after medical students and their professor got to study her body, which she donated to science, that the strange organ arrangement was uncovered.

The women’s amazing case was detailed by Cam Walker, an assistant professor of anatomy at Oregon Health & Science University, as part of a presentation at the American Association of Anatomists’ annual meeting. And though the identity of someone who has donated their organs or body is typically kept under wraps, the family agreed to disclose her name: Rose Marie Bentley.

[...]“I knew something was up, but it took us a while to figure out how she was put together,” said Walker in a statement.

Eventually, Walker determined that Bentley had a congenital condition called “situs inversus with levocardia.” This meant the placement of Bentley’s organs inside the chest or abdomen were mirrored from the average person’s, with the sole exception of her heart, which remained on the left side of her body (levo being latin for left).

[...]“Normally, what makes [situs inversus] survivable is that all the organs make the same turn. So if the organs in the abdomen are transposed right to left, and the heart follows, that’s great,” Walker told Gizmodo. “But when the heart stays pointed to the left, as with this donor, blood vessels have to change orientation, and that change in orientation commonly leads to serious heart defects.”

These defects in the heart (and oftentimes the spine, too) are usually fatal, and only around 5 to 13 percent of people born with this condition live past the age of five, according to the limited research available.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google confirms its Pixelbook group has new laptops and tablets inbound

Last month, Business Insider reported that Google might be shifting employees out of the laptop and tablet division that brought us the premium, pricey Pixelbook and Pixel Slate, citing "roadmap cutbacks." But though Google originally declined to comment, the company now tells The Verge that its hardware division actually does have new laptops and tablets on the way.

While Google wouldn't talk details or timing, it did drop a big hint earlier today — as 9to5Google reports, the company led a session at its Cloud Next 2019 conference dubbed "Introducing Google Hardware for Business," where it suggested that a new device might help on-the-go employees in ways that the Pixelbook and Pixel Slate couldn't quite accomplish.

#g rumors death

Previously: Google Hardware Makes Cuts to Laptop and Tablet Development, Cancels Products

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

Scientists are reporting the discovery of a previously unknown species of ancient human that lived in the Philippines over 50,000 years ago. Evidence suggests the new species, named Homo luzonensis, was exceptionally tiny—and possibly even smaller than the famous Hobbit species uncovered on the island of Flores in 2004.

The story of human evolution just got a hell of a lot messier—and considerably more fascinating—owing to the discovery of a previously unknown human species. Bits of teeth and bone pulled from Callao Cave on the Philippine island of Luzon point to the existence of a distinctly human species, one deserving of the Homo designation in terms of its genus. At the same time, however, the fossils found in Callao Cave exhibit features unlike anything ever seen before, thus warranting the declaration of a completely new human species, Homo luzonensis. The details of this astonishing discovery were published today in Nature.

Source: https://gizmodo.com/new-species-of-tiny-extinct-human-discovered-in-philip-1833942655

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

In a report based on testing of 101 single-use wipes, 23 of which were labeled as 'flushable', not a single wipe successfully dispersed or fell apart in the sewer system test.

Testing was performed by the Ryerson's Flushability Lab.

Products which fail the test can clog or degrade household pipes and city sewer systems.

"This research confirms conclusively what those of us in the industry already knew. That single-use wipes, including cleansing and diaper wipes, cannot be safely flushed, even those labelled as 'flushable,'" said report lead Barry Orr, masters student in Environmental Applied Science and Management, and a 25-year veteran Sewer Outreach and Control Inspector with the City of London in Ontario, Canada.

Testing on each wipe was performed by simulating a typical residence's plumbing from toilet to sewer including typical bends and slope, water pressure, and urban infrastructure.

the Municipal Enforcement Sewer Use Group has estimated that $250 million is spent annually across Canada for operations and maintenance related to the removal of blockages from equipment, due to the flushing of wipes and other non-flushable materials. Many of these wipes also contain synthetic fibres, including plastics, which can make their way into waterways, harming water systems and wildlife.

Orr called for a standard legislated industry-wide definition for the term 'flushable' so that consumers could be informed and make appropriate decisions for their health and to avoid various harms being caused by the term's misleading use today.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Major study debunks myth that moderate drinking can be healthy.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

LONDON (Reuters) - Blood pressure and stroke risk rise steadily the more alcohol people drink, and previous claims that one or two drinks a day might protect against stroke are not true, according to the results of a major genetic study.

The research, which used data from a 160,000-strong cohort of Chinese adults, many of whom are unable to drink alcohol due to genetic intolerance, found that people who drink moderately - consuming 10 to 20 grams of alcohol a day - raise their risk of stroke by 10 to 15 percent.

For heavy drinkers, consuming four or more drinks a day, blood pressure rises significantly and the risk of stroke increases by around 35 percent, the study found.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Yellowstone Scientists Find New Thermal Area:

Yellowstone National Park has a new thermal area that scientists think has been growing for the past 20 years.

The new area is deep in Yellowstone's backcountry between West Tern Lake and the previously mapped Tern Lake thermal area, the U.S. Geological Survey [(USGS)] announced earlier this month.

"This is exactly the sort of behavior we expect from Yellowstone's dynamic hydrothermal activity," R. Greg Vaughan, a research scientist with USGS, wrote in a blog post, "and it highlights that changes are always taking place, sometimes in remote and generally inaccessible areas of the park."

A thermal area is the visible result on the Earth's surface of magma activity underground. They can include geysers, like Yellowstone's Old Faithful; hot springs; and fumaroles, which are vents that allow volcanic gases to escape. They are surrounded by hydrothermal mineral deposits, geothermal gas emissions, heated ground and lack of vegetation, the USGS says.

Previously: NASA Warning: "Catastrophic" Supervolcano Eruption Could "Push Humanity to Extinction".

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

The National Geographic

Nairobi, KenyaIt didn’t take long after the recent United Nations environmental assembly in Kenya ended for environmentalists to sharply rebuke the United States for allegedly derailing global ambitions to prevent plastic debris from flowing into the oceans.

“The tyranny of the minority,” their statement declared as environmentalists denounced the Americans for what they said was slowing progress on marine plastics by diluting a resolution calling for phasing out single-use plastic by 2025 and blocking an effort to craft a legally binding treaty on plastic debris.
...
“I would not say the U.S. is making itself irrelevant,” says David Azoulay, a Geneva-based lawyer for the Center for International Environmental Law, who observed the negotiations. “But it is true that the U.S. is setting itself further apart, as it did with the withdrawal from the Paris accord, from addressing the critical challenges of our generation. The whole world is addressing the plastic challenge at its roots. The EU is doing it, India is doing it. The world is moving forward.”

The Americans sought to define marine debris as an issue solved exclusively by waste management, said Hugo-Maria Schally, the European Union’s lead negotiator on marine plastics, in an interview, while “virtually everybody else in the room was focused on the idea that there is a problem with production and the use of single-use plastic.”
...
One reason other nations are also seeking reductions in single-use plastics is the growing unease that even creation of the most comprehensive waste disposal systems may not be enough to keep up with the accelerating pace of plastics manufacturing. The plastics industry has grown so rapidly that half the plastic on Earth has been made since 2005, and production is expected to double in the next two decades. Disposable plastic products account for 40 percent of that production and are largely blamed for the plastic mess that’s been made of the seas.
...

So far, 127 countries have adopted regulations regarding plastic bags, according to UN tallies as of July 2018. Twenty-seven countries have adopted bans on other single-use products, including plates, cups, cutlery, or straws.

India, home to 1.3 billion people and the world’s second most-populated nation, continues preparations to abolish all single-use plastic by 2022 in a plan announced last year that may be the world’s most ambitious undertaking.