SoylentNews

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[...] An unmanned X-37B space plane landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday, wrapping up a record 780 days in orbit, the US Air Force said Sunday. The mission breaks the mysterious plane's own record by spending more than two years in space.

[...] Altogether, the program, which has at least two of the reusable planes, has spent 2,865 days in space over the course of five missions, the Air Force said. The fifth mission launched on Sept. 7, 2017.

The Boeing-built space planes resemble a smaller version of NASA's old space shuttles and have a similar re-entry trajectory that uses a runway, like the old shuttles. They feature a small payload bay and use a deployable solar array for power.

The 11,000-pound vehicle is about 29 feet long with a wingspan of just under 15 feet and was designed to stay in orbit for 270 days. It was originally a NASA program, with roots in the space agency's lifting-body research, that ran from 1999 to 2004. The X-37B is designed to serve as a platform for experiments and to offer insights on transporting satellite sensors and other equipment to and from space.

[ed: Nuked dead link on "originally a NASA program' —chromas]

Original Submission

Mojibake Tengu writes:

Craig Murray of Information Clearing House writes about his observation at Westminster Magistrates Court:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52433.htm

Before I get on to the blatant lack of fair process, the first thing I must note was Julian's condition. I was badly shocked by just how much weight my friend has lost, by the speed his hair has receded and by the appearance of premature and vastly accelerated ageing. He has a pronounced limp I have never seen before. Since his arrest he has lost over 15 kg in weight.

But his physical appearance was not as shocking as his mental deterioration. When asked to give his name and date of birth, he struggled visibly over several seconds to recall both. I will come to the important content of his statement at the end of proceedings in due course, but his difficulty in making it was very evident; it was a real struggle for him to articulate the words and focus his train of thought.

Until yesterday I had always been quietly sceptical of those who claimed that Julian's treatment amounted to torture – even of Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture – and sceptical of those who suggested he may be subject to debilitating drug treatments. But having attended the trials in Uzbekistan of several victims of extreme torture, and having worked with survivors from Sierra Leone and elsewhere, I can tell you that yesterday changed my mind entirely and Julian exhibited exactly the symptoms of a torture victim brought blinking into the light, particularly in terms of disorientation, confusion, and the real struggle to assert free will through the fog of learned helplessness.

I had been even more sceptical of those who claimed, as a senior member of his legal team did to me on Sunday night, that they were worried that Julian might not live to the end of the extradition process. I now find myself not only believing it, but haunted by the thought. Everybody in that court yesterday saw that one of the greatest journalists and most important dissidents of our times is being tortured to death by the state, before our eyes. To see my friend, the most articulate man, the fastest thinker, I have ever known, reduced to that shambling and incoherent wreck, was unbearable. Yet the agents of the state, particularly the callous magistrate Vanessa Baraitser, were not just prepared but eager to be a part of this bloodsport. She actually told him that if he were incapable of following proceedings, then his lawyers could explain what had happened to him later. The question of why a man who, by the very charges against him, was acknowledged to be highly intelligent and competent, had been reduced by the state to somebody incapable of following court proceedings, gave her not a millisecond of concern.

Now tell me some fine arguments justifying the legality and justness of such person destruction methodics, I wish to hear them.
 

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for AzumaHazuki

Missouri man flies to California, sets 13 wildfires, then tries to fly home, cops say

A Missouri man flew to California, spent two days setting wildfires, then tried to fly home, officials say. He was arrested Monday.

Freddie Graham, 68, hopped on a flight from Missouri to San Jose last Thursday, KPIX reported. After renting a car, he spent the next two days setting fires as he drove the “narrow, windy roads” between Ed Levin Park and the Calaveras Reservoir in the foothills near San Jose, Deputy District Attorney Bud Porter said.

Officials say Graham would light pieces of paper on fire and then toss them out of his window as he drove, The East Bay Times reported. He’s believed to have set at least 13 fires — four on Friday and nine on Saturday — which are collectively referred to as the Reservoir Fire, officials say.

It took hours for firefighters to put out Friday’s blazes, officials say, but Saturday’s proved even more tenacious, taking firefighters the rest of the weekend to extinguish them, The East Bay Times reported. The fire burned more than 128 acres, though no injuries or damaged structures were reported.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The scientists from R.R.R. Conservation Network attached SMS transmitters to 13 eagles to study their migration flight patterns. They aimed to better understand possible threats to the endangered Russian eagle population (the steppe eagle was listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2015).

As the birds migrated four times a day, the scientists received SMS messages with coordinates of the birds' location. They used satellite photos to see where the birds ended up, according to BBC News.

Whenever an SMS message was sent, the Russian phone company MegaFon billed the scientists.

What the scientists didn't count on was one of the tagged birds flying out of range from Kazakhstan to Iran, which ran up huge data roaming charges for the team.

An onslaught of text messages from the bird ended up costing 49 rubles each (approximately 77 cents) -- which was more than five times the expected price, and ended up exceeding the research project's budget, according to The New York Times on Saturday.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for soylent_red

Nacre, the rainbow-sheened material that lines the insides of mussel and other mollusk shells, is known as nature's toughest material. Now, a team of researchers has revealed precisely how it works, in real time.

More commonly known as mother-of-pearl, nacre's combination of hardness and resilience has mystified scientists for more than 80 years. If humans could mimic it, it could lead to a new generation of ultra-strong synthetic materials for structures, surgical implants and countless other applications.

"We humans can make tougher materials using unnatural environments, for example extreme heat and pressure. But we can't replicate the kind of nano-engineering that mollusks have achieved. Combining the two approaches could lead to a spectacular new generation of materials, and this paper is a step in that direction," said Robert Hovden, U-M assistant professor of materials science and engineering.

Researchers have known the basics of nacre's secret for decades -- it's made of microscopic "bricks" of a mineral called aragonite, laced together with a "mortar" made of organic material. This bricks-and-mortar arrangement clearly lends strength, but nacre is far stronger than its materials suggest.

"Nature is handing us these highly optimized structures with millions of years of evolution behind them," he said. "We could never run enough computer simulations to come up with these -- they're just there for us to discover."

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191023150330.htm

Journal Reference: Jiseok Gim, Noah Schnitzer, Laura M. Otter, Yuchi Cui, Sébastien Motreuil, Frédéric Marin, Stephan E. Wolf, Dorrit E. Jacob, Amit Misra, Robert Hovden. Nanoscale deformation mechanics reveal resilience in nacre of Pinna nobilis shell. Nature Communications, 2019; 10 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12743-z

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for soylent_red

Physicists have identified a microscopic process of electron spin dynamics in nanoparticles that could impact the design of applications in medicine, quantum computation, and spintronics.

Magnetic nanoparticles and nanodevices have several applications in medicine -- such as drug delivery and MRI -- and information technology. Controlling spin dynamics -- the movement of electron spins -- is key to improving the performance of such nanomagnet-based applications.

"This work advances our understanding of spin dynamics in nanomagnets," said Igor Barsukov, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and lead author of the study that appears today in Science Advances.

Electron spins, which precess like spinning tops, are linked to each other. When one spin begins to precess, the precession propagates to neighboring spins, which sets a wave going. Spin waves, which are thus collective excitations of spins, behave differently in nanoscale magnets than they do in large or extended magnets. In nanomagnets, the spin waves are confined by the size of the magnet, typically around 50 nanometers, and therefore present unusual phenomena.

In particular, one spin wave can transform into another through a process called "three magnon scattering," a magnon being a quantum unit of a spin wave. In nanomagnets, this process is resonantly enhanced, meaning it is amplified for specific magnetic fields.

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191025145304.htm

Journal Reference: Barsukov, H. K. Lee, A. A. Jara, Y.-J. Chen, A. M. Gonçalves, C. Sha, J. A. Katine, R. E. Arias, B. A. Ivanov, I. N. Krivorotov. Giant nonlinear damping in nanoscale ferromagnets. Science Advances, 2019; 5 (10): eaav6943 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aav6943

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Left-leaning Fernandez hails government of people, but central bank currency move shows no quick fix to economic woes.

Fernandez's win unleashed euphoria in parts of Buenos Aires, as supporters cruised the streets honking their car horns, and a wave of people surged towards the neighbourhood of Chacarita, where the official victory party was being held. 

Speaking to supporters at his party's headquarters, Fernandez thanked voters for showing a commitment to building a more equal Argentina. 

"We're going to be the Argentina that we deserve because it's not true that we're condemned to this Argentina," he said.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for soylent_red

Zamna raises $5M to automate airport security checks between agencies using blockchain

When VChain-now-Zamna first appeared, I must admit I was confused. Using blockchain to verify passenger data seemed like a hammer to crack a nut. But it turns out to have some surprisingly useful applications.

The idea is to use it to verify and connect the passenger data sets which are currently silo-ed between airlines, governments and security agencies. By doing this, says Zamna, you can reduce the need for manual or other checks by up to 90 percent. If that's the case, then it's quite a leap in efficiency.

In theory, as more passenger identities are verified digitally over time and shared securely between parties, using a blockchain in the middle to maintain data security and passenger privacy, the airport security process could become virtually seamless and allow passengers to sail through airports without needing physical documentation or repeated ID checks. Sounds good to me.

Zamna says its proprietary Advance Passenger Information (API) validation platform for biographic and biometric data, is already being deployed by some airlines and immigration authorities. It recently started working with Emirates Airline and the UAE's General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners (GDRFA) to deliver check-in and transit checks.

Here's how it works: Zamna's platform is built on algorithms that check the accuracy of Advanced Passenger Information or biometric data, without having to share any of that data with third parties, because it attaches an anonymous token to the already verified data. Airlines, airports and governments can then access that secure, immutable and distributed network of validated tokens without having actually needing to ‘see’ the data an agency, or competing airline, holds. Zamna's technology can then be used by any of these parties to validate passengers’ biographic and biometric data, using cryptography to check you are who you say you are.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for soylent_green

A health care algorithm affecting millions is biased against black patients

A health care algorithm makes black patients substantially less likely than their white counterparts to receive important medical treatment. The major flaw affects millions of patients, and was just revealed in research published this week in the journal Science.

The study does not name the makers of the algorithm, but Ziad Obermeyer, an acting associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who worked on the study says "almost every large health care system" is using it, as well as institutions like insurers. Similar algorithms are produced by several different companies as well. "This is a systematic feature of the way pretty much everyone in the space approaches this problem," he says.

The algorithm is used by health care providers to screen patients for "high-risk care management" intervention. Under this system, patients who have especially complex medical needs are automatically flagged by the algorithm. Once selected, they may receive additional care resources, like more attention from doctors. As the researchers note, the system is widely used around the United States, and for good reason. Extra benefits like dedicated nurses and more primary care appointments are costly for health care providers. The algorithm is used to predict which patients will benefit the most from extra assistance, allowing providers to focus their limited time and resources where they are most needed.

To make that prediction, the algorithm relies on data about how much it costs a care provider to treat a patient. In theory, this could act as a substitute for how sick a patient is. But by studying a dataset of patients, the authors of the Science study show that, because of unequal access to health care, black patients have much less spent on them for treatments than similarly sick white patients. The algorithm doesn't account for this discrepancy, leading to a startlingly large racial bias against treatment for the black patients.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Starvation halts brain development, but hungry cells jump-start growth when food becomes available

We all know that food is essential to healthy development of the brain and body, especially in the earliest stages of life. But exactly how early brain growth is affected by nutrition is not as well understood, especially on a cellular level.

One reason for this lack of understanding is simply the difficulty of studying animals before they are born. But in a study involving tadpoles, which develop entirely outside of a mother's womb, scientists at Scripps Research were able to unearth new findings about how brain cells respond to--and recover from--lack of nutrition.

"With tadpoles, we can look at early stages of brain development that are typically inaccessible to us," says cell biologist Caroline McKeown, PhD, a senior staff scientist in the neuroscience lab of Hollis Cline, PhD, and lead author of the study. "This study showed us, for the first time in a vertebrate species, the cell signaling pathways that are integral to nutrient-responsive cell division in neural stem cells. These findings may lead to new approaches for starting and stopping cell growth in the brain."

The research, which appears in the journal Development^[$], has multiple potential applications--including improved prenatal care in humans. McKeown said the findings also will contribute to on-going research in the lab on the role of neural stem cells in recovery from brain injury.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

World's loudest bird is as deafening as thunder, scientists discover

Meet the white bellbird, a Brazilian banshee-bird with a screeching squawk that can reach up to 125.4 decibels. That's louder than a rock concert and almost as loud as a gunshot. It doesn't quite have the same melody as a rock song might, nor the explosiveness of a gunshot -- in fact, listening to the bellbird scream, I'm not even sure that this is really a bird.

The sound that emanates from its throat sounds like a robot with a chest infection.

Nevertheless, Jeffrey Podos and Mario Cohn-Haft ventured out into the forests of South America to record the bellbird and another incredibly loud flier known as the screaming piha. Their study, published Monday in the journal Current Biology, shows the bellbird's shriek is louder than that of any other bird in the world. The previous record, held by the screaming piha, was around 116 decibels, but Podos and Cohn-Haft found the bellbird to scream 9 decibels louder.

The screaming piha is practically whispering in comparison to the thunderous boom the white bellbird produces. Remarkably, it's louder than the much bigger and more built howler monkeys, which can only reach around 114 decibels. For such a small bird, it's pretty remarkable.

Why is the bellbird so loud? Well, to attract a mate, of course. While shouting at the opposite sex doesn't work very well for humans, the volume of the male white bellbird's song is a way to attract a female. In fact, the loudest songs of all came when females sidled up close to the males.

Original Submission

JoeMerchant writes:

C++ is a language you should give serious consideration to learning in 2019 (or whenever you happen to come across this article). Rapid language modernization, better tooling, a growing and inclusive community, and a thriving job market are just some of the reasons C++ should be your next language to learn.

Wow, this guy drank too much Kool-Aid ™️️, I'm out.

Yeah, I get it. At least in the communities I've been a part of over the years, C++ has a consistently bad reputation.

...

Modern C++ (versions ≥ 11) is an entirely different beast and should be considered separately.

foreach new_shiny in hackerland
    { import; improve; integrate; }

Plus, importing crusty old code into your projects is fun, well, at least more fun than dissecting them and re-coding in a new language which lacks the libraries they leaned on.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Windows 10X Details Leak, Confirm Laptop Support

A new leak confirms that Windows 10X will be coming to laptops and other traditional PC form factors. The leak also shows a more refined version of the system's Chrome OS-like user interface that Brad and I, and others, had seen in the past.

The leak comes courtesy of The Walking Cat on Twitter, who discovered a public-facing Azure website for the coming system. It was quickly taken down by Microsoft, but not before a few enthusiast websites took a peek.

Also at The Verge and ZDNet.

See also: Windows 10X Leaks Show A Mobile OS World I Want No Part Of

Previously: Microsoft Demonstrates Dual-Screen Device Running Android Apps, Announces Windows 10X

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for soylent_brown

Inside National Conspiracy Writing Month, a challenge for creating 'fan fiction about reality'

Next week, a tiny group of researchers will feverishly devote themselves to unmasking the shadowy forces that control the world. Thirty days later, they will reveal a series of shocking conspiracies that only the most perceptive — some might even say paranoid — sleuths could possibly uncover. And if they succeed in their mission, nobody will believe a word of it.

The project is called National Conspiracy Writing Month, an unofficial spinoff of the long-running National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) challenge. Where NaNoWriMo requires participants to write a 50,000-word novel, the inaugural NaCoWriMo asks them to produce a "deep, viable, and complete conspiracy theory." Its creator Tim Hwang hopes these fake plots can illuminate a pervasive cultural phenomenon — helping both participants and spectators understand how conspiracy theories emerge. He just hopes people don't take them too seriously.

[...] NaCoWriMo is designed to explore the point where logic goes haywire, so a lot of these links will be fanciful — Hwang, for example, plans to expose mysterious ties between American politics and Wrestlemania. (Given Trump's history in pro wrestling, it's not as far-fetched as it sounds.) But the project also raises a strange possibility: what if somebody uncovers a real conspiracy?

[...] Ultimately, Hwang thinks of conspiracies as an extension of our natural pattern-finding impulses — not just a political enterprise, but part of the same basic human urge that produces pareidolia and TV fan theories. "I think actually what's interesting is that the origin of it is investigation, it's trying to connect dots. And in a lot of cases, we really admire people who are able to find connections between things that other people have not seen before," he says. "'Conspiracy theory' has a certain kind of baggage about politics and sinister doings and smoke-filed rooms. But I think in some ways, the cognitive exercise of it has a lot of parallels with a lot of things."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for soylent_brown

A company that sold encrypted phones was run by crime lords

You've probably heard the idiom of the fox guarding the hen house — but how about the one of the encrypted phone company run by drug lords?

Okay, that's obviously not an idiom, but it's a true story chronicled by Vice's Joseph Cox. In the story, Cox tells how MPC — a now-seemingly defunct company that apparently sold phones, tablets, and computers running custom firmware with significant encryption protections — was ultimately controlled by two at-large criminal kingpins known as The Brothers.

As Cox's reporting explains, The Brothers apparently first bought and used encrypted BlackBerrys before hiring developers to make a custom operating system that could theoretically offer them even more privacy and loaded it on phones. The story doesn't say what type of phones The Brothers use(d), but MPC sold Nexus 5 and 5X phones loaded with a custom OS, which seems likely to be the same one paid for by The Brothers.

[...] It's a fascinating and, at times, horrifying story (warning: it describes a murder), but you should go read it.

Original Submission