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Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

Richard Evans is on a mission to save the world with hemp.
...
Richard says hemp is "renewable, sustainable and clean" and can be used to "create foods, proteins, fibres and medicines".

If that wasn't enough, Richard also says the plant would be useful for decontaminating soil, storing carbon and could even be a contender to replace the oil industry.

The diverse potential of hemp is why Mirreco created its specialised machine—a world-first invention capable of processing hemp in a new way.

"I realised a few years ago that the bottleneck in the global hemp industry is processing," says Richard.

The machine allows for processing at farms, with rapid conversion into numerous materials that can be used for many purposes.

Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin saved cotton farming in the American South. Perhaps Mirreco's machine could do the same for hemp?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

Around 80 percent of the land area in Europe is used for settlement, agriculture and forestry. In order to increase yields even further than current levels, exploitation is being intensified. Areas are being consolidated in order to cultivate them more efficiently using larger machines. Pesticides and fertilisers are increasingly being used and a larger number of animals being kept on grazing land. "Such measures increase yield but, overall, they also have negative impacts on biodiversity," says UFZ biologist Dr. Michael Beckmann. "This is because even agricultural areas offer fauna and flora a valuable habitat—which is something that is frequently not sufficiently taken into consideration."

Betteridge's law of headlines says no, but is more intensive farming really crowding out native species more than less intensive farming?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Abnormal Levels of a Protein Linked to C.T.E.[*] Found in N.F.L Players' Brains, Study Shows

Experimental brain scans of more than two dozen former N.F.L. players found that the men had abnormal levels of the protein linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease associated with repeated hits to the head.

Using positron emission tomography, or PET, scans, the researchers found "elevated amounts of abnormal tau protein" in the parts of the brain associated with the disease, known as C.T.E., compared to men of similar age who had not played football.

The authors of the study and outside experts stressed that such tau imaging is far from a diagnostic test for C.T.E., which is likely years away and could include other markers, from blood and spinal fluid.

The results of the study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday [DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1900757] [DX], are considered preliminary, but constitute a first step toward developing a clinical test to determine the presence of C.T.E. in living players, as well as early signs and potential risk.

[*] CTE: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy

Also at NBC.

Editorial: Links in the Chain of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe1903746) (DX)

Related: NFL Acknowledges Link Between American Football and CTE
What if PTSD is More Physical Than Psychological?
Ailing NFL Players' Brains Show Signs of Neurodegenerative Disease
Former Football Star Aaron Hernandez's Brain Found to Have Severe CTE
Researchers: Aaron Hernandez Had the Worst Case of CTE Ever Seen in an Athlete So Young
CTE Can be Diagnosed in a Living Person

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Mozilla releases Firefox beta for Windows 10 ARM laptops

Mozilla is releasing an ARM version of its Firefox browser today for Windows 10. While Microsoft and Google have been working together on Chromium browsers for Windows on ARM, Mozilla has been developing its own ARM64-native build of Firefox for Snapdragon-powered Windows laptops. We got an early look at this version of Firefox late last year, and it seemed to fare well on an ARM laptop with a dozen tabs open.

This new build of Firefox is available today as part of Mozilla's beta channel for the browser for anyone with an ARM-powered Windows 10 laptop to test. That might not be a lot of people right now, but Mozilla has been working on its Firefox Quantum technology to optimize Firefox for the octa-core CPUs available from Qualcomm. This should mean the performance is relatively solid, while maintaining all of the regular web compatibility you'd expect from Firefox.

Also at AnandTech and Engadget.

Related: Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 8cx, an ARM Chip Intended for Laptops

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Cate Faehrmann: Why a lawmaker admitted to taking MDMA [*]

Australian Cate Faehrmann may be the world's first politician to admit to having used the illicit drug MDMA. The reaction in Australia, and globally, has surprised her, she tells Gary Nunn in Sydney.

Ms Faehrmann's admission, made in January, has come amid a fierce debate about introducing "pill testing" services in New South Wales (NSW). Five music festival-goers have died from suspected drug overdoses in NSW since September. It has prompted passionate calls for action - but state lawmakers are divided on what should be done.

Ms Faehrmann, 48, from the Greens party, argues that her opponents have a "limited understanding of the people they're needing to connect with". She says she has taken MDMA (known as ecstasy when in pill form) "occasionally" since her 20s. "I'm sitting here as a politician with more experience than anyone else in the building," she says, adding: "Maybe not - maybe I'm the only one being honest."

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is opposed to pill testing. She has said that "no evidence [has been] provided to the government" that it saves lives, and that testing would give drug users "a false sense of security".

[*] MDMA: 3,4-Methyl​enedioxy​methamphetamine:

3,4-Methyl​enedioxy​methamphetamine (MDMA), commonly known as ecstasy (E), is a psychoactive drug primarily used as a recreational drug. The desired effects include altered sensations and increased energy, empathy, and pleasure. When taken by mouth, effects begin after 30–45 minutes and last 3–6 hours.

Cate Faehrmann, Gladys Berejiklian. Also check out: DanceSafe.

Related: Research Into Psychedelics Continues
FDA Designates MDMA as a "Breakthrough Therapy" for PTSD; Approves Phase 3 Trials
Scientists Give MDMA to an Octopus

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Sharp Demonstrates 31.5-Inch 8K 120Hz HDR Monitor

Sharp this week demonstrated its first 31.5-inch HDR display featuring a 7680×4320 resolution and a 120 Hz refresh rate. The monitor uses the company's IGZO technology and the manufacturer evaluates plans to release this LCD commercially.

Being one of the key backers of an 8K resolution as well as the Super Hi-Vision format, Sharp was among the first to release 8K screens and 8K cameras for professionals as well as 8K UHD TVs for consumers. Several years ago, Sharp demonstrated its first 27-inch 8K IGZO monitor with a 120 Hz refresh rate and 1000 nits luminance, but the device has never been released commercially (at least, it has not been available in stores). This week the company showcased another 8Kp120 display.

Meanwhile, Sony has created a monstrous 783-inch display:

The screen is 19.2 meters (63 feet) long and 5.4 meters (17 feet) high, it features a diagonal of 783 inches and is generally larger than a bus. Sony does not disclose exact resolution of the display (other than saying that it has around 16,000 horizontal pixels), though judging by the looks of the screen we are dealing with something that has a non-standard resolution and a non-standard aspect ratio.

Sony's 16K 783-inch screen uses the company's Crystal LED technology that uses multiple Micro LED-based modules to build custom displays featuring virtually any size, any resolution, and any aspect ratio. Featuring individually-controlled Micro LEDs, the modules have no bezels and can be attached to each other seamlessly. Sony and Samsung use Micro LED/direct-lit LED-based modules to build custom screens for cinemas, airports, showrooms, and other venues that need large displays.

Related: Dell Announces First "Mass-Market" 8K Display
Philips Demos an 8K Monitor
A New Wave of 8K TVs is Coming

Original Submission

takyon writes:

NVIDIA Releases DirectX Raytracing Driver for GTX Cards; Posts Trio of DXR Demos

Last month at GDC 2019, NVIDIA revealed that they would finally be enabling public support for DirectX Raytracing on non-RTX cards. Long baked into the DXR specification itself – which is designed [to] encourage ray tracing hardware development while also allowing it to be implemented via traditional compute shaders – the addition of DXR support in cards without hardware support for it is a small but important step in the deployment of the API and its underlying technology. At the time of their announcement, NVIDIA announced that this driver would be released in April, and now this morning, NVIDIA is releasing the new driver.

As we covered in last month's initial announcement of the driver, this has been something of a long time coming for NVIDIA. The initial development of DXR and the first DXR demos (including the Star Wars Reflections demo) were all handled on cards without hardware RT acceleration; in particular NVIDIA Volta-based video cards. Microsoft used their own fallback layer for a time, but for the public release it was going to be up to GPU manufacturers to provide support, including their own fallback layer. So we have been expecting the release of this driver in some form for quite some time.

Of course, the elephant in the room in enabling DXR on cards without RT hardware is what it will do for performance – or perhaps the lack thereof.

Also at Wccftech.

See also: NVIDIA shows how much ray-tracing sucks on older GPUs

[For] stuff that really adds realism, like advanced shadows, global illumination and ambient occlusion, the RTX 2080 Ti outperforms the 1080 Ti by up to a factor of six.

To cite some specific examples, Port Royal will run on the RTX 2080 Ti at 53.3 fps at 2,560 x 1,440 with advanced reflections and shadows, along with DLSS anti-aliasing, turned on. The GTX 1080, on the other hand, will run at just 9.2 fps with those features enabled and won't give you any DLSS at all. That effectively makes the feature useless on those cards for that game. With basic reflections on Battlefield V, on the other hand, you'll see 30 fps on the 1080 Ti compared to 68.3 on the 2080 Ti.

Previously:

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

Microsoft Announces Directx 12 Raytracing API
Nvidia Announces Turing Architecture With Focus on Ray-Tracing and Lower-Precision Operations
Nvidia Announces RTX 2080 Ti, 2080, and 2070 GPUs, Claims 25x Increase in Ray-Tracing Performance
Q2VKPT: An Open Source Game Demo with Real-Time Path Tracing
AMD and Nvidia's Latest GPUs Are Expensive and Unappealing
Nvidia Ditches the Ray-Tracing Cores with Lower-Priced GTX 1660 Ti
Crytek Demos Real-Time Raytracing for AMD and Non-RTX Nvidia GPUs

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Tinder becomes the top-grossing, non-game app in Q1 2019, ending Netflix's reign

For the first time in years, Netflix is no longer the top grossing, non-game mobile app. Instead, that title now goes to dating app Tinder. The change in position is not surprising, given Netflix's decision in December to stop paying the so-called "Apple tax." That is, it no longer allows new users to sign up and subscribe to its service through its iOS application.

The change was said to cost Apple hundreds of millions in lost revenue per year, given that Netflix's app had been the world's top-earning, non-game app since Q4 2016. Now, instead of giving up its 15 to 30 percent cut of subscription revenue, new users have to sign up through Netflix's website before they can use the app on mobile devices, including both iOS and Android. (Netflix had dropped in-app subscriptions on Android earlier.)

[...] In Q1 2019, Sensor Tower estimates Netflix pulled in $216.3 million globally, across both the Apple App Store and Google Play, down 15 percent quarter-over-quarter from $255.7 million in Q4 2018.

Meanwhile, Tinder's revenue has climbed. In the first quarter, it saw revenue grow by 42 percent year-over-year, to reach $260.7 million, up from $183 million in Q1 2018. That put it at the top, according to both Sensor Tower and App Annie's estimates.

Netflix and chill Tinder and bang.

Previously: Netflix is the Latest Company to Try Bypassing Apple's App Store

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

SingularityHub:

Producing synthetic spider silk isn’t the problem, according to Lewis, but the ability to do it at scale commercially remains a sticking point.

Another challenge is “weaving” the synthetic spider silk into usable products that can take advantage of the material’s marvelous properties.

“It is possible to make silk proteins synthetically, but it is very hard to assemble the individual proteins into a fiber or other material forms,” said Markus Buehler, head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, in an email to Singularity Hub. “The spider has a complex spinning duct in which silk proteins are exposed to physical forces, chemical gradients, the combination of which generates the assembly of molecules that leads to silk fibers.”

Efforts to reproduce spider silk have thus far failed to scale commercially, but the research has spawned potential applications in tissue regeneration and improved adhesives.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Bloomberg:

The fact that both combustion engines and electric motors find themselves inside the same 18,000-person complex in Dingolfing, BMW’s largest in Europe, makes it a microcosm of a shift overtaking automakers the world over. A visitor can see that 625-horsepower engine—more than twice as powerful as the original from 1985, a luxury product relentlessly branded as “the ultimate driving machine”—then walk around the corner and see its puny electric replacement. You start thinking the better slogan might be “the ultimate combustion engine.” As in: last of its kind.

Deep within Dingolfing you can find the human representations of the end of a 100-year technological era. These workers have electric flashes stitched onto their blue factory smocks, and their jobs are focused on the BMW i3—the company’s only all-electric model—as well as a lineup of plug-in hybrids. There were just a few employees marked with electric patches in a remote corner of the factory back when BMW first started gearing up for electric vehicles. Today, electric works occupy about 10 percent of Dingolfing.

In just a few years BMW will sell a dozen battery-powered models. The transition is already proving painful and expensive. Last month, expecting a 10 percent slump in profit this year, the company said it would begin a 12 billion-euro efficiency campaign to pay for this battery-focused revamp. Starting in 2021, meanwhile, BMW plans to eliminate up to 50 percent of drivetrain options. About a third of its 133,000-strong workforce has been trained to handle production of electric vehicles—and it’s clear that all of today’s employees won’t be necessary for tomorrow’s tasks.

Soon BMW's engines will roar no more?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

Reports of methane in the martian atmosphere have been intensely debated because detections have been very sporadic in time and location, and often fell at the limit of the instruments' detection limits. ESA's Mars Express contributed one of the first measurements from orbit in 2004, at that time indicating the presence of methane amounting to 10 ppbv.

Earth-based telescopes have also reported both non-detections and transient measurements up to about 45 ppbv, while NASA's Curiosity rover, exploring Gale Crater since 2012, has suggested a background level of methane that varies with the seasons between about 0.2 and 0.7 ppbv – with some higher level spikes. More recently, Mars Express observed a methane spike one day after one of Curiosity's highest-level readings.

The new results from TGO[*] provide the most detailed global analysis yet, finding an upper limit of 0.05 ppbv, that is, 10–100 times less methane than all previous reported detections. The most precise detection limit of 0.012 ppbv was achieved at 3 km altitude.

[*] TGO: ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter.

On Earth 95% of atmospheric methane is produced by living things, so the presence of methane in the Martian atmosphere has teased the possibility of life there.

Previously: ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter Begins Mapping the Atmosphere of Mars Remember the Discovery of Methane in the Martian Atmosphere? Now Scientists Can't Find Any Evidence

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Smart speaker recordings reviewed by humans

Amazon, Apple and Google all employ staff who listen to customer voice recordings from their smart speakers and voice assistant apps.

News site Bloomberg highlighted the topic after speaking to Amazon staff who "reviewed" Alexa recordings.

All three companies say voice recordings are occasionally reviewed by humans to improve speech recognition.

But the reaction to the Bloomberg article suggests many customers are unaware that humans may be listening.

The news site said it had spoken to seven people who reviewed audio from Amazon Echo smart speakers and the Alexa service.

Reviewers typically transcribed and annotated voice clips to help improve Amazon's speech recognition systems.

Amazon's voice recordings are associated with an account number, the customer's first name and the serial number of the Echo device used.

Some of the reviewers told Bloomberg that they shared amusing voice clips with one another in an internal chat room.

They also described hearing distressing clips such as a potential sexual assault. However, they were told by colleagues that it was not Amazon's job to intervene.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Microsoft Say Edge May Come to Linux "Eventually"

When Microsoft announced it was switching the foundations of its home-grown Edge browser to a Chromium base we asked if it might allow the app to come to Linux.

[...] Microsoft's Kyle Pflug responded to the tux question on Twitter. He said that a Linux build is something the Edge team would "like to do eventually" but they 'can't commit to Linux just yet'.

Not yet – it's something we'd like to do eventually (our build system runs on Linux) but we're taking things one step at a time starting from Win10, and can't commit to Linux just yet.
— Kyle Pflug (@kylealden) April 8, 2019

[...] That said, the availability of Edge on Linux would help web developers working on Linux. They'd no longer need to keep a Windows VM within reach solely to double check changes.

[Editor's Comment: Irrelevant submitter's comment regarding systemd removed. --JR 120454 Apr]

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The specifications defining the Internet and most of the technologies running on top of it began just over 50 years ago. These specifications, called RFCs (Request For Comments) cover everything. That includes from TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) to HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol), TLS (Transport Layer Security), and even SSH (Secure SHell). The first RFC was dated April 7^th, 1969.

Today there are over 8,500 RFCs whose publication is managed through a formal process by the RFC Editor team. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is responsible for the vast majority (but not all) of the RFCs – and there is [a] strong process through which documents move within the IETF from ideas (“Internet-Drafts” or “I-Ds”) into published standards or informational documents[2].

50 years ago, one of the fundamental differences of the RFC series from other standards at the time was that:

• anyone could write an RFC for free.
• anyone could read the RFCs for free. They were open to all to read, without any fee or membership.

[...][2] For more explanation of the different types of RFCs, see “How to Read a RFC“.

The current RFC Editor, Heather Flanagan, also has some remarks on 50 years of RFCs.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

ARES ["Air-retaining Surfaces"] studies novel ship coatings, by means of which an air layer is permanently retained under water, which considerably reduces frictional resistance of surfaces. At the same time, release of toxic substances from ship paints and biofilms (fouling) and corrosion is prevented by the air envelope between the ship and the water. Coordinator Thomas Schimmel, who works at the Institute of Applied Physics (APH), the Institute of Nanotechnology (INT), and the Material Research Center for Energy Systems (MZE) of KIT[*], and his group develop air-retaining surfaces under water based on the salvinia effect.

The salvinia effect studied by physicist Professor Thomas Schimmel of KIT and botanist Professor Wilhelm Barthlott of Bonn University in close collaboration with fluid mechanics expert Professor Alfred Lederer of Rostock University enables certain plants, such as the aquatic fern Salvinia molesta, to breathe under water. For this purpose, the aquatic fern is covered with special hairs that resemble small whisks and are characterized by a special chemical heterogeneity: while the individual hairs are water-repellent, each single hair has a water-attracting tip that adheres to water and permanently stabilizes the retained air layer.

[*] KIT: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

The project reports the team has demonstrated a 20% reduction in friction between ships and water, an efficiency gain with large implications for global shipping.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Woolly mammoths and Neanderthals may have shared genetic traits

A new Tel Aviv University study suggests that the genetic profiles of two extinct mammals with African ancestry -- woolly mammoths, elephant-like animals that evolved in the arctic peninsula of Eurasia around 600,000 years ago, and Neanderthals, highly skilled early humans who evolved in Europe around 400,000 years ago -- shared molecular characteristics of adaptation to cold environments.

The research attributes the human-elephant relationship during the Pleistocene epoch to their mutual ecology and shared living environments, in addition to other possible interactions between the two species. The study was led by Prof. Ran Barkai and Meidad Kislev of TAU's Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures and published on April 8 in Human Biology.

"Neanderthals and mammoths lived together in Europe during the Ice Age. The evidence suggests that Neanderthals hunted and ate mammoths for tens of thousands of years and were actually physically dependent on calories extracted from mammoths for their successful adaptation," says Prof. Barkai. "Neanderthals depended on mammoths for their very existence. They say you are what you eat. This was especially true of Neanderthals; they ate mammoths but were apparently also genetically similar to mammoths."

Neanderthal and Woolly Mammoth Molecular Resemblance: Genetic Similarities May Underlie Cold Adaptation Suite (DOI: 10.13110/humanbiology.90.2.03) (DX)

Original Submission