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RandomFactor writes:

Scientists have, for the first time, created a permanently magnetic liquid.

[Senior author Thomas Russell, a distinguished professor of polymer science and engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst] and his team created these liquid magnets by accident while experimenting with 3D printing liquids at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (where Russell is also a visiting faculty scientist). The goal was to create materials that are solid but have characteristics of liquids for various energy applications.

Russell leads the program "Adaptive Interfacial Assemblies Towards Structuring Liquids", which focuses on developing a new class of materials – 3D-printable all-liquid structures - at Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division.

Post Doctoral student and Lead Author Xubo Liu noticed unexpected behavior in one 3D-printed material made from magnetized particles spinning in unison on a magnetic stir place. After additional investigation

Using a technique to 3D-print liquids, the scientists created millimeter-size droplets from water, oil and [20 nanometer diameter iron-oxide particles]. The liquid droplets keep their shape because some of the iron-oxide particles bind with surfactants — substances that reduce the surface tension of a liquid. The surfactants create a film around the liquid water, with some iron-oxide particles creating part of the filmy barrier, and the rest of the particles enclosed inside, Russell said.

The team then placed the millimeter-size droplets near a magnetic coil to magnetize them. But when they took the magnetic coil away, the droplets demonstrated an unseen behavior in liquids — they remained magnetized. (Magnetic liquids called ferrofluids do exist, but these liquids are only magnetized when in the presence of a magnetic field.)

The scientists have not determined exactly how the liquid is retaining the field, but once this is fully understood a variety of applications present according to Russell, for example:

printing a cylinder with a non-magnetic middle and two magnetic caps. "The two ends would come together like a horseshoe magnet," and be used as a mini "grabber," he said.

In an even more bizarre application, imagine a mini liquid person — a smaller-scale version of the liquid T-1000 from the second "Terminator" movie — Russell said. Now imagine that parts of this mini liquid man are magnetized and parts aren't. An external magnetic field could then force the little person to move its limbs like a marionette.

Also mentioned are potential applications in flexible electronics and drug delivery.

News Release at Berkeley

Journal Reference
Science 19 Jul 2019: Vol. 365, Issue 6450, pp. 264-267 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw8719

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Drama in Low-Earth Orbit as LightSail 2 Deploys its Sails:

LightSail 2 has successfully deployed its solar sails. Shortly after 12:00 pm PST The Planetary Society tweeted that the sails were deployed, and that the spacecraft was sailing with sunlight. We can all enjoy their success and start to wonder how solar sails will fit into humanity's plans for space exploration.

[...] This is a dramatic moment for LightSail 2 and for The Planetary Society, the world's largest non-profit space organization. LightSail 2 is the third spacecraft in their LightSail program. It was launched on June 25th, and has been in orbit since then, preparing for sail deployment and sending us some sweet pictures of Earth.

[...] LightSail 2's sail is actually a system of four smaller triangular sails that make one large square when deployed. Once deployed, the sail measures 32 sq. meters, or 340 sq. ft. Once it's deployed, it can be used to raise the spacecraft's orbit, demonstrating the power and usefulness of solar sails.

[...] In some ways, the solar sail is exactly like a sail on a boat. The sail can be aimed at angles, to direct the travel of the spacecraft. If the sails are aimed directly at the Sun, the spacecraft will travel directly away from the Sun. But by tacking, or changing the angle of the sails, a spacecraft using solar sails can steer and propel itself through the Solar System and beyond.

Planetary Society Twitter feed.

Also at: The Register, NYT, and The Verge.

Previously:
Planetary Society Receiving Data From LightSail 2
One Legacy of Carl Sagan May Take Flight Next Week—a Working Solar Sail
Planetary Society's "LightSail" Solar Sail Test Launch on May 20

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Altitude Angel, a U.K. startup that provides safety, data and traffic management systems for drones, is launching a de-confliction service for drone flights — available via its developer API platform.“

"The dynamic system will continuously monitor the airspace around an aircraft for the 'unexpected' such as other aerial vehicles or changes to airspace (such as a Temporary Flight Restriction/Dynamic Geofence around a police incident)," it writes of the new service.

"After identifying a potential conflict, CRS will make the necessary routing adjustments, allowing the drone to maintain an appropriate separation standard between other airspace users or fly around restricted airspace so it can continue safely (and efficiently) to its destination."

The global Conflict Resolution Service (CRS) has two components: Strategic de-confliction, which will launch first, on July 23, letting drone operators submit flight plans to the startup to determine whether there are any conflicts with other previously submitted flight plans, or against ground and airspace geofenced areas available in Altitude Angel's worldwide data feeds.

[...] The second component — which will launch in late September — is called Tactical de-confliction. This will provide information to drone pilots or the drone itself to ensure separation is maintained during the in-flight phase.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/17/altitude-angel-launches-an-api-for-safer-drone-flights/

Original Submission

MostCynical writes:

Telstra pulls the plug on Australia's 'talking clock' which has given 'millisecond precise' time for the past 66 years. The Daily Mail reports that the phone service talking clock is to be shut down after 66 years.

The speaking clock function that gives people the precise time down to the second will be a thing of the past come October.

For the last 66 years, Australians have been able to dial 1194 to hear the old-fashioned voice of a man telling them the exact time. 'At the third stroke it will be 1.10 and 40 seconds,' before a beeping sound plays and the the new time is repeated.

The service still receives about two million calls a year - a lot considering today's technology.

Telstra, which provides the service's network and billing, is pulling the plug on October 1 - saying it's not compatible with their new network technology. It was always the best way of setting clocks, especially since many mobiles don't have visible seconds on their clock. I will miss it.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6936919/Telstra-pulls-plug-Australias-talking-clock-given-millisecond-precise-time.html

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Checkmate, Qualcomm: Apple in billion-dollar bid to gobble Intel's 5G modem blueprints, staff – new claim

Apple and Intel are apparently in "advanced talks" over buying up the remains of Chipzilla's defunct 5G modem business.

Sources close to the deal told the Wall Street Journal on Monday that Cook & Co were offering the x86 processor goliath a billion dollars for the intellectual property and staff behind its cellular modem business. The unit has been on hiatus since its primary customer Apple reached a smartphone modem supply deal with Qualcomm in April.

Intel has plowed mega-millions into designing mobile modems ever since it wolfed down Infineon in 2010 for $1.4bn. The chip factory eventually won a contract to supply 4G/LTE modems for some Apple smartphones. At the time, Apple was fed up with its primary modem supplier Qualcomm, which it later sued, along with its manufacturing partners, for $30bn.

After plenty of money went up in smoke on lawyers' fees, Apple and Qualcomm agreed to settle their differences, with the Cupertino idiot-tax operation signing another modem supply contract with Qualy. The same day that deal was announced, Intel, having lost its only serious cellular modem customer, announced it was winding up its 5G unit.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

First 3D Nanotube and RRAM ICs Come Out of Foundry

Here's something you don't see very often at government-sponsored technology meetings—spontaneous applause. It happened at DARPA's Electronics Resurgence Initiative Summit this week when MIT assistant professor Max Shulaker held up a silicon wafer that is the first step in proving DARPA's plan to turn a trailing edge foundry into something that can produce chips that can compete—even in a limited sense—with the world's leading edge foundries.

"This wafer was made just last Friday... and it's the first monolithic 3D IC ever fabricated within a foundry," he told the crowd of several hundred engineers Tuesday in Detroit. On the wafer were multiple chips made of a layer of CMOS carbon nanotube transistors and a layer of RRAM memory cells built atop one another and linked together vertically with a dense array of connectors called vias. The idea behind the DARPA-funded project, called 3DSoC, is that chips made with multiple layers of both would have a 50-fold performance advantage over today's 7-nanometer chips. That's especially ambitious given that the lithographic process the new chips are based on (the 90-nanometer node) was last cutting-edge back in 2004.

The project is only about a year old, but by the end of its 3.5-year run, DARPA wants a foundry technology that makes chips with 50-million logic gates, 4 gigabytes of nonvolatile memory, and 9 million interconnects per square millimeter between the layers that can transmit 50 terabits per second while consuming less than 2 picojoules per bit.

What Shulaker showed on Tuesday can't do all that yet, of course. But it's a key milestone in that journey. Together with SkyWater Technology Foundry and other partners "we've completely reinvented how we manufacture this technology, transforming it from a technology that only worked in our academic labs to a technology that can and is already today working inside a commercial fabrication facility within a U.S. foundry," he said.

Here's the paper I've linked a dozen times in the last year.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49084605

Boris Johnson has been elected new Conservative leader in a ballot of party members and will become the next UK prime minister.

He beat Jeremy Hunt comfortably, winning 92,153 votes to his rival's 46,656.

The former London mayor takes over from Theresa May on Wednesday.

In his victory speech, Mr Johnson promised he would "deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn".

Speaking at the Queen Elizabeth II centre in London, he said: "We are going to energise the country.

"We are going to get Brexit done on 31 October and take advantage of all the opportunities it will bring with a new spirit of can do.

"We are once again going to believe in ourselves, and like some slumbering giant we are going to rise and ping off the guy ropes of self doubt and negativity."

Any other comments would be editorializing...

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for AnonymousLuser

Watch this paper doll do sit-ups thanks to new kind of "artificial muscle"

A new twist on lightweight organic materials shows promise for artificial-muscle applications. Chinese scientists spiked a crystalline organic material with a polymer to make it more flexible. They reported their findings in a new paper in ACS Central Science, demonstrating proof of concept by using their material to make an aluminum foil paper doll do sit-ups.

There's a lot of active research on developing better artificial muscles—manmade materials, actuators, or similar devices that mimic the contraction, expansion, and rotation (torque) characteristic of the movement of natural muscle. And small wonder, since they could be useful in a dizzying range of potential applications: robots, prosthetic limbs, powered exoskeletons, toys, wearable electronics, haptic interfaces, vehicles, and miniature medical devices, to name just a few. Most artificial muscles are designed to respond to electric fields, (such as electroactive polymers), changes in temperature (such as shape-memory alloys and fishing line), and changes in air pressure via pneumatics.

Yet artificial muscles typically weigh more than scientists would like and don't respond as quickly as needed for key applications. So scientists are keen to develop new types of artificial muscle that are lightweight and highly responsive. Just this past week, Science featured three papers from different research groups (at MIT, University of Texas at Dallas, and University of Bordeaux) describing three artificial-muscle technologies based on tiny twisted fibers that can store and release energy.

DOI: ACS Central Science, 2019. 10.1021/acscentsci.9b00212  (

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Spotting and diagnosing cancer is a complex and difficult process even for the dedicated medical professionals who do it for a living. A new tool from Google researchers could improve the process by providing what amounts to reverse image search for suspicious or known cancerous cells. But it's more than a simple matching algorithm.

Part of the diagnosis process is often examining tissue samples under a microscope and looking for certain telltale signals or shapes that may indicate one or another form of cancer. This can be a long and arduous process because every cancer and every body is different, and the person inspecting the data must not only look at the patient's cells but also compare them to known cancerous tissues from a database or even a printed book of samples.

As has been amply demonstrated for years now, matching similar images to one another is a job well-suited to machine learning agents. It's what powers things like Google's reverse image search, where you put in one picture and it finds ones that are visually similar. But this technique has also been used to automate processes in medicine, where a computer system can highlight areas of an X-ray or MRI that have patterns or features it has been trained to recognize.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/19/googles-smily-is-reverse-image-search-for-cancer-diagnosis/

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for AnonymousLuser

UK to toughen telecoms security controls to shrink 5G risks – TechCrunch

Amid ongoing concerns about security risks posed by the involvement of Chinese tech giant Huawei in 5G supply, the U.K. government has published a review of the telecoms supply chain, which concludes that policy and regulation in enforcing network security needs to be significantly strengthened to address concerns.

However, it continues to hold off on setting an official position on whether to allow or ban Huawei from supplying the country’s next-gen networks — as the U.S. has been pressurizing its allies to do.

Giving a statement in parliament this afternoon, the U.K.’s digital minister, Jeremy Wright, said the government is releasing the conclusions of the report ahead of a decision on Huawei so that domestic carriers can prepare for the tougher standards it plans to bring in to apply to all their vendors.

“The Review has concluded that the current level of protections put in place by industry are unlikely to be adequate to address the identified security risks and deliver the desired security outcomes,” he said. “So, to improve cyber security risk management, policy and enforcement, the Review recommends the establishment of a new security framework for the UK telecoms sector. This will be a much stronger, security based regime than at present.

“The foundation for the framework will be a new set of Telecoms Security Requirements for telecoms operators, overseen by Ofcom and government. These new requirements will be underpinned by a robust legislative framework.”

Wright said the government plans to legislate “at the earliest opportunity” — to provide the regulator with stronger powers to to enforcement the incoming Telecoms Security Requirements, and to establish “stronger national security backstop powers for government.”

The review suggests the government is considering introducing GDPR-level penalties for carriers that fail to meet the strict security standards it will also be bringing in.

First policy response will be 'soft', common cybersecurity standards. Then regulations, with strict standards and #GDPR like fines. New powers allowing to compel telecoms to do something. And work to increase diversity. pic.twitter.com/nBLWneFUDK

— Lukasz Olejnik (@lukOlejnik) July 22, 2019

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

From New Atlas

In order to better trap or evade malaria-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, it helps if we know more about the manner in which they track their victims. New research now indicates that it's a matter not just of smell, but also enhanced visual processing that's triggered by smell.

It's long been known that – among other things – mosquitoes are attracted to the odor of the carbon dioxide which we exhale. A team of Virginia Tech scientists, however, wondered if there was more to it than that. Led by Asst. Prof. Clément Vinauger, they built a sort of "flight simulator" for mosquitoes in order to find out.

[...] "Analyzing how mosquitoes process information is crucial to figuring out how to create better baits and traps for mosquito control," says Vinauger. "My research aims at closing the key knowledge gaps in our understanding of the mechanisms that allow mosquitoes to be such efficient disease vectors and, more specifically, to identify and characterize factors that modulate their host-seeking behavior."

A paper on the research was recently published in the journal Current Biology.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Tourists on safari track leopards and lions just as well as scientists

Kasim Rafiq had spent all day in the woodlands of Botswana looking for a one-eared leopard named Pavarotti—with no luck—when his Jeep sank grill-first into an abandoned warthog burrow. Two hours later, frustrated and exhausted after extricating his vehicle, he passed some tourists on safari. He told the guides about what had happened, and they laughed. They'd seen Pavarotti earlier that morning.

The encounter got Rafiq, a wildlife researcher at Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom, thinking: Wildlife tourists encounter animals like Pavarotti every day and take hundreds of photos. But once the tourists leave, they take those data with them. Rafiq wondered whether there was a way to use the photos they took for research. Now, a monthslong trial with two dozen different groups of tourists suggests not only is it possible, but it's also far cheaper than traditional methods of tracking.

To count large animals like lions and hyenas in a given area, researchers typically use one of three methods. They use motion-triggered camera traps to photograph passing animals. They look for tracks by driving along predetermined routes. Finally, they bring the animals to them by playing sounds at specific stations. (If you're interested in lions, Rafiq says, "you play the sound of a dying wildebeest.")

But all these methods have their drawbacks. Camera traps, for instance, are expensive and easily knocked down by curious creatures. When it's too dry or too windy, tracks don't show up in the dust. And researchers often have difficulty obtaining permits for call-in stations, especially in areas with lots of tourists.  

To test the method of using tourist photos, Rafiq and his colleagues surveyed the populations of several large carnivores in Botswana's Okavango delta, including lions, hyenas, leopards, wild dogs, and cheetahs using traditional methods. They then had more than 50 people in 26 tour groups provide safari photos over 3 months.

Before they set out, tourists were outfitted with GPS devices to record their location at 1-minute intervals. When they returned, they uploaded more than 25,000 photos to Rafiq's computer. Rafiq and his team tagged the photos with times and locations and identified individual animals based on patterns on their faces or bodies. They then estimated the number of animals in the area using computer models.

It worked

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Torturing An Instrumented Dive Watch, For Science

The Internet is a wild and wooly place where people can spout off about anything with impunity. If you sound like you know what you’re talking about and throw around a few bits of the appropriate jargon, chances are good that somebody out there will believe whatever you’re selling.

Case in point: those that purport that watches rated for 300-meter dives will leak if you wiggle them around too much in the shower. Seems preposterous, but rather than just dismiss the claim, [Kristopher Marciniak] chose to disprove it with a tiny wireless pressure sensor stuffed into a dive watch case.

[...] The first interesting result is how exquisitely sensitive the sensor is, and how much a small change in temperature can affect the pressure inside the case. The watch took a simulated dive to 70 meters in a pressure vessel, which only increased the internal pressure marginally, and took a skin-flaying shower with a 2300-PSI (16 MPa) pressure washer, also with minimal impact. The video below shows the results, but the take-home message is that a dive watch that leaks in the shower isn’t much of a dive watch.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes in with a submission, via IRC, for FatPhil.

Elon Musk's vision for a futuristic form of transport has achieved a new milestone after a Hyperloop test pod hit a new top speed of 288mph (463kph) before it exploded.

At the 2019 edition of the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, student teams launch their prototype pods through a 1.2 km vacuum tube beside the SpaceX headquarters in California.

Unfortunately for the winning team, their pod exploded shortly after reaching the top speed.

"We are happy to announce that we have reached a top speed of 463 km/h today," the team announced on Twitter.

"Although we lost some parts on the way, we were able to successful [sic] finish our run and are proud to be the winners of the 2019 SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition."

[...] After announcing the new speed record on Twitter, Mr Musk revealed that the 2020 edition of the Hyperloop competition will take place in a 10km vacuum tunnel "with a curve".

A longer test track should presumably lead to much faster speeds, while the curve will mean teams will have to prepare a pod that can cope with real-world routes.

Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/elon-musk-hyperloop-top-speed-record-virgin-hyperlooptt-a9015381.html

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

According to a new study published in the Journal Nature Geoscience there may be far more water on the moon than scientists previously believed.

Study authors Lior Rubanenko, Jaahnavee Venkatraman and David Paige reference prior research from the Arecibo Observatory and NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft which

found that there are cratered areas on Mercury's poles that appear shadowed from Earth. Data from the LRO probe that was intentionally crashed into the surface of Mercury (which was released from the orbiting satellite LCROSS in 2009) revealed water and ice vapor—evidence of ice deposits several meters thick in the shadowed craters. The research also showed that the ice was able to persist in the craters because they were shaded, preventing it from being decomposed by sunlight.

The treo investigated the likelihood that similar-looking areas on the moon might similarly harbor large ice deposits. Investigating more than 20,000 craters on Mercury and 12,000 on the Moon

the researchers compared their diameter-to-depth ratios to one another. In so doing, they noted that shallowing of shaded craters on Mercury was very similar to the shallowing seen with the shaded craters on the Moon. They suggest the evidence indicates that the material that is collecting in the shallowed craters on the moon is likely ice as well.

If they are correct, this would mean that the moon has millions of tons of water ice available on the surface and some very promising destinations for future missions.

Journal Reference
Lior Rubanenko et al. Thick ice deposits in shallow simple craters on the Moon and Mercury, Nature Geoscience (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-019-0405-8

Original Submission