SoylentNews

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956_

Some fishes in the deep, dark sea may see their world in more than just shades of gray.

A survey of 101 fish species reveals that four from the deep sea had a surprising number of genes for light-sensitive eye proteins called rod opsins, researchers report in the May 10 Science. Depending on how the animals use those light catchers, the discovery might challenge the widespread idea that deep-sea fishes don't see color, says coauthor Zuzana Musilová, an evolutionary biologist at Charles University in Prague.

To see, many fishes, humans and most other vertebrates rely on two types of light-detecting cells in the eye known as rods and cones. Cone cells use two or more kinds of opsins and need decent amounts of light to work. Rods generally use only one opsin called RH1, which works in dim light. That variety in opsins in cones, but not in rods, lets vertebrates see a range of colors in well-lit conditions but be color-blind in the near dark.

In the new study, Musilová and Fabio Cortesi of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia sailed on research ships equipped to reach into the ocean depths for fish. The deep-sea specimens came from the "twilight" zone 200 to 1,000 meters below the surface, where sunlight becomes only a subtle lessening of darkness. The most colorful things to look at would be bioluminescent spots on animals' bodies.

The four deep-sea fishes with the special eyes came from three different lineages that had independently evolved genes for more than one kind of RH1 rod opsin, Musilová, Cortesi and their colleagues report. A glacier lantern fish (Benthosema glaciale) had genes for five different forms of RH1, and a tube-eye (Stylephorus chordatus) had six. Two kinds of spinyfin had even more, 18 genes for the longwing spinyfin (Diretmoides pauciradiatus) and a stunning 38 for the silver spinyfin (Diretmus argenteus).

Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/deep-sea-fish-eye-chemistry-might-let-them-see-colors-near-dark

Original Submission

sshelton76 writes:

A recent article in phys.org details PhD candidate Sasa Gazibegovic's thesis and her discovery that hashtags made of superconducting nano wires can produce stable, entangled pairs of majorana fermions.

For those who don't already know, Fermions are the group of particles which follow Fermi–Dirac statistics. These particles obey the Pauli exclusion principle. Fermions include all quarks and leptons, as well as all composite particles made of an odd number of these, such as all baryons and many atoms and nuclei. Fermions differ from bosons, which obey Bose–Einstein statistics.

A fermion can be an elementary particle, such as the electron, or it can be a composite particle, such as the proton. According to the spin-statistics theorem in any reasonable relativistic quantum field theory, particles with integer spin are bosons, while particles with half-integer spin are fermions.

Majorana fermions are fermions which are their own anti-particle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majorana_fermion

It is important to note that majorana fermions don't really exist in the same sense an electron or a photon exists. They are quasi-particle excitations, meaning that they are the result of getting several particles to act as one.

With majorana fermions you assign a single wave function to a group of particles that then act as a cohesive whole.
Where she has innovated here is by entangling pairs of majorana fermions by passing them along the hashtag shaped nano-wire and back, effectively braiding their wave functions together.

This is an amazing result and very exciting.

The long haul problem on general purpose quantum computers is that qubits and quantum logic gates are remarkably unstable. Once produced, marjorana fermion pairs have the property of being extremely stable without any extraordinary steps like noise elimination and cryogenics.

The process she details is entirely solid state and could be achieved by any reasonably recent fab.

Thus by using Ms. Gazibegovic's process, we may soon be able to construct general purpose quantum computers that are as accessible as modern solid state computers. Now if someone can just come up with a good programming language for it.

More good reading here..
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-years-closer-mistery-majorana-particles.html

Truthfully when I read this article I thought it was crackpot. A solid state process for producing stable qubits at room temperature? It violates a lot of what I thought I knew. But I researched it, this is legit and the author is well published and cited in her field.
https://www.tue.nl/en/our-university/departments/applied-physics/the-department/staff/detail/ep/e/d/ep-uid/20159542/ep-tab/4/

My instincts tell me this discovery / invention will end up being as transformative to quantum computing as the transistor was to classical computing.

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

The building of the R3D2 satellite, which launched without incident in March, for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has been discussed here previously.

However an interesting facet of the little satellite is that not only was it, of course, a satellite proving out a new technology (a membrane antenna) while in space, it was also a proof of concept that demonstrated faster, leaner processes on the ground.

Northrop Grumman completed the construction — from concept to spaceflight — in only 20 months, far shorter than the traditional timeline of years, Northrop Grumman representatives said in a statement. To reach that speed, the company said, the defense agency allowed for "greater levels of risk than is typical for an operational system," according to the statement; DARPA worked with Northrop Grumman to accept fewer requirements, reviews and deliverables during the construction than on a usual project.

"Our team's success with the R3D2 program is a strong proof of concept that the rapid development of future space capabilities is possible," Scott Stapp, the company's vice president of resiliency and rapid prototyping, said in the statement. "Taking thoughtful risks and eliminating bureaucracy allowed us to streamline our processes to achieve rapid timelines," he added.

Northrop Grumman plans to continue applying the fast construction lessons learned on R3D2 for future missions related to national security going forward, and to "lead the cultural change necessary in the industry".

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

A research group headed by Professor Pirjo Laakkonen at the University of Helsinki has found a weakness in glioblastoma multiforme (GBM)

Glioblastoma is the most prevalent and also the most lethal type of brain tumour in adults, with no curative treatment currently available. Glioblastomas cannot be surgically completely excised, as the tumour cells are adept at invading tissues and spreading around the brain. In addition, glioblastoma cells are extremely resistant to existing drug therapies.

[...] "Our new research revealed that glioblastoma cells depend on the expression of a gene which produces the MDGI protein. Inhibiting the function of this gene results in the death of the tumour cells," Laakkonen explains.

Using existing drugs with known safety profiles is beneficial in bringing new treatments to market. In this case

What makes this finding particularly interesting is that cell death caused by leakage in the lysosomes of glioblastoma cells can be activated by using drugs that cross the blood-brain barrier. In their studies, Laakkonen's group used an antihistamine known as clemastine.

[...] "Our findings demonstrate that antihistamines and other drugs that increase the permeability of the lysosomal membrane can be considered as an enhancing therapy for patients with glioblastoma alongside established treatments," Laakkonen says.

One can hope that in the not too distant future the phrase 'no curative treatment currently available' will be just a little less common.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

The DHS recently issued a warning against the use of common and or easily guessed passwords after several government agencies have been targeted by "password spray" attacks.

It seems that the world outside of technologists will never listen to advice regarding strong passwords, not reusing passwords, not writing passwords down, etc. If you're an administrator and have the ability to do so - for the love of Dog, please enable TOTP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_One-time_Password_algorithm) or something similar - and remember that SMS is far too easy to spoof to be considered a secure method of delivering one-time passwords."

Source: SC Magazine

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

AI SpaceFactory was named the final winner in NASA's competition to use 3D printing technology to build a habitat that could be used on the Moon or Mars.

AI SpaceFactory will receive $500,000 for winning the competition with second-place Penn State receiving $200,000.

The winning habitat, called Marsha, is tall and slim, to reduce the need for construction rovers on unfamiliar terrain, according to AI SpaceFactory. It is designed to be built on a vertically telescoping arm attached to a rover, which stays still during construction.

Marsha was built using a biopolymer basalt composite, "a biodegradable and recyclable material derived from natural materials found on Mars." It proved superior to concrete in NASA's pressure, smoke, and impact testing.

The final stage of the competition ran from May 1 through May 4 in Peoria Illinois in partnership with Bradley University and was hosted by Caterpillar inc.. Other sponsors included Bechtel, Brick & Mortar Ventures and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The competition was part of NASA's Centenial Challenges program. Which also includes the

        Cube Quest Challenge
        Space Robotics Challenge
        Vascular Tissue Challenge
        CO₂ Conversion Challenge

We developed these technologies for Space, but they have the potential to transform the way we build on Earth," said David Malott, CEO and Founder of AI SpaceFactory. "By using natural, biodegradable materials grown from crops, we could eliminate the building industry's massive waste of unrecyclable concrete and restore our planet.

AI SpaceFactory plans to adapt Marsha's design for an eco-friendly Earth habitat called Tera; a crowdfunding campaign will begin shortly on IndieGogo, the design agency said in a statement.

Previous Coverage

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Two major craft breweries are merging. But is it still "craft"?

Dogfish Head's merger with the maker of Sam Adams fundamentally disrupts the world of craft brewing — and beer lovers have mixed feelings

Boston Beer Company, which makes Sam Adams beer, is acquiring Dogfish Head, a Delaware craft brewery. "Not only are Dogfish Head and Boston Beer two original American breweries, but Jim Koch and I worked hard with other leading craft brewery founders and the Brewers Association to develop and champion what defines independent American brewers," the Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione said in a statement on Thursday, referring to the Boston Beer founder and chairman. "This merger better positions Dogfish Head and our coworkers to continue growing within this definition for many years to come." [...] The merger of the publicly traded Boston Beer Company, which also produces Angry Orchard cider, with Dogfish Head, the well-known craft brewery prominently featured in the 2009 documentary "Beer Wars," is sure to shake up the brewing industry.

[...] Dogfish Head posted a photo on Facebook and Twitter of Calagione sharing a drink with Koch. Though one Facebook user tagged the pair as "shill" and "sellout," not everyone who commented on the post had such a negative reaction. "To the haters: Samuel Adams / Boston Beer may not be perfect, but few people have been as vocal a proponent of craft beer for as long as Jim Koch," one Facebook user said. "I'd much rather DFH merge with them than get bought by Constellation or (gasp!) ABInbev-SabMillerCoors. We know that BBC won't force through drastic changes and expansion into other markets that the brand can't or won't handle."

[...] Not everyone was convinced, however. "Sam Adams has been completely out of touch with actual craft beer for a decade at least," one person wrote. "I don't see how this is good." Another added that Dogfish Head was the "last brewery on earth that I thought would sell out." "Not a fan," another Facebook poster wrote. "Dogfish Head has always been fiercely independent with a focus on unique and sometimes challenging beers. I've been to the brewery 6 times, to the brewpub many times. I spent my 31st birthday there and made some incredible memories. This is the last thing that I expected from DFH. What a shame."

Also at CNN and Brewbound.

Related: Playing Small is Okay, Says Judge in "Craft Beer" Case
Congress May Lower Beer Taxes, Sam Adams Could Cease to be "Craft Beer"
Craft Brewing Industry Saved Small Hop Growers
Craft Hard Cider Booming in the U.S.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48234440

Crowds gathered to witness a re-enactment of the day 150 years ago when a golden spike was hammered into place to complete the Transcontinental railway, linking the east and west coasts.

[...] The transport link slashed travel times from months to a week, and quickly spread Anglo-European influence.

[...] The Central Pacific Railroad started in Sacramento, California while the Union Pacific Railroad started in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Both met at Promontory Summit on May 10 in 1869.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666_

New Research Confirms That Ride-Hailing Companies Are Causing a Ton of Traffic Congestion

A study published today in Science Advances comparing pre- and post-rideshare boom traffic in San Fransisco found that the presence of Uber, Lyft, and similar companies has been an overall detriment for people who like getting where they're going quickly.

That businesses which pay people to have their vehicles on the road would, well, increase the number of cars blocking up the transit grid might appear to be a forgone, perhaps even obvious conclusion. But the body of writings on Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) as they're sometimes called is, surprisingly, mixed. Some studies found that Ubers and Lyfts were choking the streets of New York, Boston, and Chicago; a few claimed, conversely, that rideshares were alleviating traffic. Thus the team behind today's paper—composed of two University of Kentucky staffers and members of San Francisco's County Transportation Authority—had their work cut out for them.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

Amazon.com Inc. is in talks to acquire Chinese self-driving truck startup TuSimple, according to a Chinese media report Tuesday.

TMPost (Titanium Media), quoting people close to Amazon executives, said the two companies are in negotiations on an acquisition deal.

TuSimple, founded in 2015 with operations in Beijing, San Diego and Tucson, Arizona, is developing artificial intelligence and computer vision technology for self-driving trucks. The startup is a standout not only for developing the technology for self-driving trucks but for already having those trucks on public roads hauling freight.

Described by Business Insider in January as beating Waymo LLC and Tesla Inc. in the autonomous truck market, the company already has 12 contracted customers and is in the process of expanding its on-road fleet to 50 self-driving trucks.

TuSimple gained unicorn status in February when it raised $95 million in a Series D round on a valuation of $1.095 billion. Investors include Nvidia Corp., ZP Capital, Sina and Composite Capital.

Officially, TuSimple has denied the report, with Chief Executive Officer Chen Mo saying that the company is in process of raising a new round of funding and that selling the company is not currently an option.

from the comments-in-engrish dept.

Source: https://siliconangle.com/2019/05/07/report-amazon-talks-acquire-self-driving-truck-startup-tusimple/

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Microsoft Throws in the Towel on UWP, Elevates Win32:

Years ago — back before the launch of Windows 8 — Microsoft announced that going forward, app development would be driven by fundamentally different rules and capabilities than what had been the case before. Applications distributed via the Windows Store would be written to new standards, with new rules about what data they could access and which languages were supported. Older Win32 apps would still run, but they were ultimately intended to be replaced by an entirely new suite of applications written under new design rules, and distributed through the Windows Store.

Pretty much none of this actually happened. The Windows Store went on to become a dead-letter trainwreck of applications no one wanted or used. It was stuffed with counterfeit apps for applications like Facebook that pretended to be genuine products. Microsoft recently removed its own Office installer from the Windows Store. Over the years, Microsoft has tried rebranding its own software development push in various ways, but none of it has sparked much interest in creating UWP (Universal Windows Platform) apps. Now, the company is taking multiple steps to allow Win32 applications to take advantage of the same features it's rolled out for UWP in the past. While Microsoft isn't admitting defeat in its effort to push everyone into using the Windows Store, that's what this practically amounts to.

"You've told us that you would like us to continue to decouple many parts of the Universal Windows Platform so that you can adopt them incrementally," Microsoft corporate vice president Kevin Gallo wrote this week, in a developer-centric blog post. "Allowing you to use our platform and tools to meet you where your customers are going – empowering you to deliver rich, intelligent experiences that put people at the center."

But doesn't everyone want a program that plays for sure on Windows?

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Fellow AI Nerds, Beware: Google Cloud Glitch Leaves Nvidia T4 GPUs off Estimated Bills for Some Virtual Machines:

If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. There appears to be a bug in the Google Cloud Platform online user interface that may lead engineers into thinking they're renting GPU-accelerated virtual machines for free, when, really, they're not.

Anyone hoodwinked by the glitch will realize the Compute Engine resource is not gratis, and actually costing potentially several hundreds of dollars a month, the next time they look at their cloud bill. It's not going to bankrupt anyone, but it is something that you may trip up over, so consider this a heads up. You may even encounter a similar gremlin in future, or on another cloud platform. It can happen.

We found out about the bug from Soufian Salim, an AI engineer at French software startup Bee4win, who wanted to train a neural network model using Nvidia's spanking new Tesla T4 GPUs. He had spun up a virtual machine instance from the Google Cloud marketplace – specifically, the AI Platform Deep Learning VM Image – and configured it to use a bunch of T4s to speed up calculations.

[...] Google does offer free T4s on its Colaboratory platform. Here, developers can run specific AI models in Jupyter notebooks using Google's cloud resources at no charge at all. Salim said his model wasn't using the Colab service, however, and neither was our model. We're also aware that you can use T4s for free via certain non-AI promotions, such as within a BlazingSQL Colaboratory environment. These aren't production environments, though, and are for testing purposes, hence the freebie GPUs.

[...] Salim's inkling that it was simply a user interface bug, and that he would eventually be billed by a backend system for the T4 GPUs, was later confirmed when he discovered that Bee4win was indeed charged for the rented graphics processors despite it not appearing on the estimated costs. "As I suspected, we were billed for the GPU, at about 0.9$/hour. It was an UI error," he told The Register on Thursday.

The problem hasn't been fixed, so be warned. A Google spokesperson told us on Friday: "We are aware that some customers are not seeing estimated charges for T4 GPUs on the marketplace web interface before creating virtual machines, and we are working to fix the pricing estimator."

Maybe Google needs an AI to figure out the pricing?

Original Submission

James Orme writes:

The race to disrupt Hong Kong's traditional banking sector is heating up with four new major companies winning licenses to create virtual banks in the city.

The latest players to be granted licenses are Tencent Holdings Ltd., Ant Financial, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and Xiaomi Corp. The latest approvals follow three licenses granted in March to a variety of joint ventures backed by the likes of Standard Chartered, Ctrip and ZhongAn.

Tencent is partnering with ICBC's Hong Kong Unit, HKEX, Hillhouse Capital and Perfect Ridge in a venture called Infinium Ltd. Xiaomi and Ant received their permits via local entities.

The four virtual banks plan to launch their services in six to nine months. In a statement, HKMA said it will "closely monitor" their operations once they have commenced business.

Norman Chan, chief executive of the HKMA, said: "We are pleased to grant four more virtual banking licences today. The HKMA is now working closely with the 8 virtual bank licensees to prepare for the launch of their business operations in accordance with their plans."

Source: https://techerati.com/news-hub/tencent-and-ant-financial-latest-firms-to-be-awarded-virtual-banking-licenses-in-hong-kong/

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

Recently, on a dazzling morning in Palm Springs, California, Vivienne Sze took to a small stage to deliver perhaps the most nerve-racking presentation of her career.

She knew the subject matter inside-out. She was to tell the audience about the chips, being developed in her lab at MIT, that promise to bring powerful artificial intelligence to a multitude of devices where power is limited, beyond the reach of the vast data centers where most AI computations take place. However, the event—and the audience—gave Sze pause.

[...] Newly designed chips, like the ones being developed in Sze's lab, may be crucial to future progress in AI—including stuff like the drones and robots found at MARS. Until now, AI software has largely run on graphical chips, but new hardware could make AI algorithms more powerful, which would unlock new applications. New AI chips could make warehouse robots more common or let smartphones create photo-realistic augmented-reality scenery.

Sze's chips are both extremely efficient and flexible in their design, something that is crucial for a field that's evolving incredibly quickly.

The microchips are designed to squeeze more out of the "deep-learning" AI algorithms that have already turned the world upside down. And in the process, they may inspire those algorithms themselves to evolve. "We need new hardware because Moore's law has slowed down," Sze says, referring to the axiom coined by Intel cofounder Gordon Moore that predicted that the number of transistors on a chip will double roughly every 18 months—leading to a commensurate performance boost in computer power.

Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613305/this-chip-was-demoed-at-jeff-bezoss-secretive-tech-conference-it-could-be-key-to-the-future/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Exclusive: Google releases 53 gender fluid emoji

[As emojis] become more inclusive, each becomes less universal. Jennifer Daniel, designer at Google, thinks about this deep irony at the heart of visual language all the time. She traces it back to the age-old problem with the male bathroom symbol. "That person could be man, woman, anyone," she says. "But they had to add a little detail, that dress, and suddenly that person symbol doesn't mean person anymore; it means man. And that culture means a man-centered culture."

While Daniel can't fix our bathroom signage, as the director of Android emojis, she can fix another problem: The lack of gender-neutral symbols in texting. She can give us the zombies, merpeople, children, weightlifters that are neither male nor female. "We're not calling this the non-binary character, the third gender, or an asexual emoji–and not gender neutral. Gender neutral is what you call pants," says Daniel. "But you can create something that feels more inclusive."

Google is launching 53 updated, gender ambiguous emoji as part of a beta release for Pixel smartphones this week (they'll come to all Android Q phones later this year). Whether Google calls them "non-binary" or not, they have been designed to live between the existing male and female emoji and recognize gender as a spectrum. Given that Google collaborates with many of its rivals on emoji, it's likely that Apple and others will release their takes on genderless emoji later this year.