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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Rice University researchers have created an efficient, low-cost device that splits water to produce hydrogen fuel.

The platform developed by the Brown School of Engineering lab of Rice materials scientist Jun Lou integrates catalytic electrodes and perovskite solar cells that, when triggered by sunlight, produce electricity. The current flows to the catalysts that turn water into hydrogen and oxygen, with a sunlight-to-hydrogen efficiency as high as 6.7%.

This sort of catalysis isn't new, but the lab packaged a perovskite layer and the electrodes into a single module that, when dropped into water and placed in sunlight, produces hydrogen with no further input.

The platform introduced by Lou, lead author and Rice postdoctoral fellow Jia Liang and their colleagues in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano is a self-sustaining producer of fuel that, they say, should be simple to produce in bulk.

"The concept is broadly similar to an artificial leaf," Lou said. "What we have is an integrated module that turns sunlight into electricity that drives an electrochemical reaction. It utilizes water and sunlight to get chemical fuels."

More information: Jia Liang et al, A Low-Cost and High-Efficiency Integrated Device toward Solar-Driven Water Splitting, ACS Nano (2020). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.9b09053

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Nearly 20,000 Georgia Teens Are Issued Driver’s Licenses Without a Road Test:

Gov. Brian Kemp suspended the requirement that most Georgians pass a behind-the-wheel test when applying for licenses last month.

Like Georgia, Wisconsin also amended its procedures for issuing new driver’s licenses because of the coronavirus pandemic. Last month, Georgia waived its road-test requirement for most drivers in an effort to help fight the spread of the coronavirus. This week, the state said it had issued driver’s licenses to thousands of teenagers without one.

“There have been 19,483 teens who upgraded their permit to a provisional driver’s license with the consent of their parent or responsible adult,” Susan Sports, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Driver Services, said on Thursday.

“These teens held a permit for a year and a day and complied with all Georgia’s mandatory driver education requirements,” including 40 hours of supervised training behind the wheel, she said.

Gov. Brian Kemp suspended the road-test requirement for most Georgians applying for driver’s licenses in an April 23 executive order.

[...] Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for American teenagers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The risk of motor vehicle crashes is higher among drivers ages 16 to 19 than among any other age group, the C.D.C. said, noting that drivers in that age group were three times as likely to be in a fatal crash compared with drivers 20 and older. Teenage drivers’ risk of crashing is particularly high during their first months of having a license.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Virgin birth has scientists buzzing: Researchers discover a gene in honey bees that causes virgin birth:

"It is extremely exciting," said Professor Benjamin Oldroyd in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences. "Scientists have been looking for this gene for the last 30 years. Now that we know it's on chromosome 11, we have solved a mystery."

Behavioural geneticist Professor Oldroyd said: "Sex is a weird way to reproduce and yet it is the most common form of reproduction for animals and plants on the planet. It's a major biological mystery why there is so much sex going on and it doesn't make evolutionary sense. Asexuality is a much more efficient way to reproduce, and every now and then we see a species revert to it."

In the Cape honey bee, found in South Africa, the gene has allowed worker bees to lay eggs that only produce females instead of the normal males that other honey bees do. "Males are mostly useless," Professor Oldroyd said. "But Cape workers can become genetically reincarnated as a female queen and that prospect changes everything."

But it also causes problems. "Instead of being a cooperative society, Cape honey bee colonies are riven with conflict because any worker can be genetically reincarnated as the next queen. When a colony loses its queen the workers fight and compete to be the mother of the next queen," Professor Oldroyd said.

[...] Perhaps the most exciting prospect arising from this study is the possibility to understand how the gene actually works functionally. "If we could control a switch that allows animals to reproduce asexually, that would have important applications in agriculture, biotechnology and many other fields," Professor Oldroyd said. For instance, many pest ant species like fire ants are thelytokous, though unfortunately it seems to be a different gene to the one found in Capensis."

Journal Reference:

Boris Yagound, Kathleen A. Dogantzis, Amro Zayed, Julianne Lim, Paul Broekhuyse, Emily J. Remnant, Madeleine Beekman, Michael H. Allsopp, Sarah E. Aamidor, Orly Dim, Gabriele Buchmann, Benjamin P. Oldroyd. A Single Gene Causes Thelytokous Parthenogenesis, the Defining Feature of the Cape Honeybee Apis mellifera capensis. Current Biology, 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.04.033

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

A few weeks ago, I submitted a story about NASCAR scheduling virtual races in iRacing to provide entertainment for fans during the pandemic. NASCAR's virtual racing series ends this weekend at North Wilkesboro Speedway, a track that hasn't hosted a Cup Series race since 1996 and any racing since 2011. North Wilkesboro was one of NASCAR's oldest and most unique tracks, a 0.625 mile short track built on an incline, with an uphill backstretch and downhill frontstretch. The historic track has sat largely abandoned in rural North Carolina since NASCAR left, falling into disrepair and decay. In December, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and many other volunteers cleaned the surface of the race track to allow it to be scanned into iRacing. This 15 minute video shows North Wilkesboro Speedway was cleaned up and describes the laser scanning process used to capture the track surface for iRacing, which is why the story may be of interest for SoylentNews readers. The first race at the virtual North Wilkesboro Speedway is at 3 PM EDT and will be televised on Fox and FS1. For those who cannot watch the race on TV, NASCAR generally streams races on YouTube within a few days of the race.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

China plans to send four crewed space missions and the same number of cargo craft to complete work on its permanent space station within about two years, officials said after the launch of a newly designed spacecraft aboard the latest heavy-lift rocket.

The announcement by the country's crewed space program further cements China's aspirations to rival the U.S., Europe, Russia and private companies in outer space exploration.

The unmanned spacecraft and its return capsule were flung into space aboard a Long March 5B rocket in its debut flight Tuesday evening from the Wenchang launch center in the southern island province of Hainan.

The capsule is reportedly an improvement on the Shenzhou capsule based on the former Soviet Union's Soyuz model and can carry six astronauts rather than the current three.

China earlier launched an experimental space station that later crashed back through the atmosphere, and plans to build a larger facility with multiple modules to rival the scale of the International Space Station.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In a new study published April 23 on arXiv.org, Spanish astronomers have reported on an extreme blazar known as 2WHSP J073326.7+515354. Results of the research reveal the distance to this source and provide essential information about the stellar population of its host galaxy.

Blazars are very compact quasars associated with supermassive black holes at the centers of active, giant elliptical galaxies. Based on their optical emission properties, astronomers divide blazars into two classes: flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) that feature broad, prominent optical emission lines, and BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs), which do not.

One subclass of BL Lacs with the highest frequency of synchrotron peak (over 100 PHz) comprises extreme high-frequency peaked BL Lacs (EHBLs). 2WHSP J073326.7+515354 (also called PGC 2402248) is a gamma-ray emitter first reported in 2017, and one of the few EHBLs detected at TeV energies. Therefore, the object is of particular interest for astronomers studying very high energy (VHE) blazars.

A team of researchers led by Josefa Becerra Gonzalez of the University of La Laguna, Spain, have recently observed 2WHSP J073326.7+515354 using the 10.4-meter Gran Telescopio de Canarias (GTC) and the 2.5-meter Isaac Newton Telescope (INT). The observations allowed them to determine the blazar's redshift precisely and provided more hints about the properties of its host.

[...] The researchers found that 2WHSP J073326.7+515354 is at a redshift of approximately 0.0065. This is the first distance estimation for this source, and knowing the exact redshift could be important for gamma-ray studies. It could, for instance, be helpful to estimate the effect of the distortion imprinted by the interaction of gamma-rays with the extragalactic background light (EBL).

More information: Optical spectral characterization of the the TeV extreme blazar 2WHSP J073326.7+515354, arXiv:2004.11359 [astro-ph.GA] arxiv.org/abs/2004.11359

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Rhode Island, Oklahoma rank worst in national road study - Roadshow:

America's road infrastructure is in bad shape. It's one of the very few things that everyone seems to agree on, but because of the massive scale of the problem and the costs involved in fixing it, not much is being done, and the problem is getting worse.

To put in perspective just how bad it's getting, let's take a look at a road study performed by the Federal Highway Administration and interpreted by car insurance website QuoteWizard. The study ranks all 50 states' roads based on three criteria:

• Percentage of roads rated in "Poor" condition
• Annual cost per motorist incurred due to road condition
• Percentage of the state's bridges rated as structurally deficient

Now, while you might expect someplace like New York, Massachusetts or California to rank worst, none of those states even cracks the top five. Which do? Well, at the top of the list is Rhode Island, which has over half (53% to be specific) of its roads rated as poor, 23% of its bridges marked as structurally deficient and an average cost of $823 per driver per year. Pretty impressive for a state with a population of just over a million people.

Next on the list are Oklahoma and West Virginia, with 33% and 31% rated-poor roads, respectively. Rounding out the top five are Mississippi and Pennsylvania with 30% each, though Mississippi edges out PA thanks to its significantly higher cost to motorists -- $820 versus $610.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Intensive blood pressure control may reduce the risk of atrial fibrillation (AFib), an irregular heartbeat that can lead to serious complications such as stroke, heart failure and heart attacks, according to scientists at Wake Forest School of Medicine.

In a study published in the May 4 edition of the American Heart Association journal Hypertension, the researchers found that lowering a systolic blood pressure to less than 120 resulted in a 26% lower risk of AFib compared to systolic blood pressure of less than 140.

"This is the first evidence from a randomized controlled trial that showed benefit in reducing the risk of atrial fibrillation as a result of aggressive blood pressure control to a target of less than 120 mm Hg," said the study's lead author, Elsayed Z. Soliman, M.D., professor of epidemiology and prevention at Wake Forest School of Medicine, part of Wake Forest Baptist Health.

Journal Reference:
Elsayed Z. Soliman, AKM F. Rahman, Zhu-ming Zhang, et al. Effect of Intensive Blood Pressure Lowering on the Risk of Atrial Fibrillation. Hypertension, 2020; DOI: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.120.14766

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Three years of imaging observations using the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's NOIRLab, have probed deep into Jupiter's cloud tops. The ultra-sharp Gemini infrared images complement optical and ultraviolet observations by Hubble and radio observations by the Juno spacecraft to reveal new secrets about the giant planet.

"The Gemini data were critical because they allowed us to probe deeply into Jupiter's clouds on a regular schedule," said Michael Wong of UC Berkeley. "We used a very powerful technique called lucky imaging," adds Wong. With lucky imaging, a large number of very short exposure images are obtained and only the sharpest images, when the Earth's atmosphere is briefly stable, are used. The result in this case is some of the sharpest infrared images of Jupiter ever obtained from the ground. According to Wong, "These images rival the view from space."

Gemini North's Near Infrared Imager (NIRI) allows astronomers to peer deep into Jupiter's mighty storms, since the longer wavelength infrared light can pass through the thin haze but is obscured by thicker clouds high in Jupiter's atmosphere. This creates a "jack-o-lantern"-like effect in the images where the warm, deep layers of Jupiter's atmosphere glow through gaps in the planet's thick cloud cover.

The detailed, multiwavelength imaging of Jupiter by Gemini [and] Hubble has, over the past three years, proven crucial to contextualizing the observations by the Juno orbiter, and to understanding Jupiter's wind patterns, atmospheric waves, and cyclones. The two telescopes, together with Juno, can observe Jupiter's atmosphere as a system of winds, gases, heat, and weather phenomena, providing coverage and insight not unlike the network of weather satellites meteorologists use to observe Earth.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Why We Focus on Trivial Things:

Bikeshedding is a metaphor to illustrate the strange tendency we have to spend excessive time on trivial matters, often glossing over important ones. Here's why we do it, and how to stop.

How can we stop wasting time on unimportant details? From meetings at work that drag on forever without achieving anything to weeks-long email chains that don't solve the problem at hand, we seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on the inconsequential. Then, when an important decision needs to be made, we hardly have any time to devote to it.

To answer this question, we first have to recognize why we get bogged down in the trivial. Then we must look at strategies for changing our dynamics towards generating both useful input and time to consider it.

[...] Bike-shedding happens because the simpler a topic is, the more people will have an opinion on it and thus more to say about it. When something is outside of our circle of competence, like a nuclear power plant, we don’t even try to articulate an opinion.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for TurkeyWaddle:

Coronavirus: Apple, Google to ban location tracking in joint contact tracing system - National:

Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google on Monday said they would ban the use of location tracking in apps that use a new contact tracing system the two are building to help slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Apple and Google, whose operating systems power 99% of smart phones, said last month they would work together to create a system for notifying people who have been near others who have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The companies plan to allow only public health authorities to use the technology.

Both companies said privacy and preventing governments from using the system to compile data on citizens was a primary goal. The system uses Bluetooth signals from phones to detect encounters and does not use or store GPS location data.

But the developers of official coronavirus-related apps in several U.S. states told Reuters last month it was vital they be allowed to use GPS location data in conjunction with the new contact tracing system to track how outbreaks move and identify hotspots.

The Apple-Google decision to not allow GPS data collection with their contact tracing system will require public health authorities that want to access GPS location to rely on what Apple and Google have described as unstable, battery-draining workarounds.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Fishing can disrupt mating systems:

Sexual selection depends on the advantage certain individuals have over other conspecifics. It creates important filters for reproductive success and can consequently increase fitness and population viability. A large male can provide more intensive care for the developing offspring than small male and is therefore preferred by a female. A large female salmon, on the other hand, is more fecund than a small one and attracts multiple males.

[...] Zebrafish female prefers a large male as a mating partner and releases more eggs for him compared to a small male. In some species females also produce higher quality eggs towards large males, says Academy Research Fellow Silva Uusi-Heikkilä from the University of Jyväskylä.

Fisheries often remove the largest individuals from the population, [and] thus operates in the opposite direction than sexual selection. The effects of fisheries selection on sexual selection has received relatively little attention.

Silva Uusi-Heikkilä. "Implications of size-selective fisheries on sexual selection" Evolutionary Applications https://doi.org/10.1111/eva.12988

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Meant to Combat ID Theft, Unemployment Benefits Letter Prompts ID Theft Worries:

My first thought when a reader shared a copy of the letter was that he recently had been the victim of identity theft. It took a fair amount of digging online to discover that the nebulously named "Cardholder Services" address in Florida referenced at the top of the letter is an address exclusively used by U.S. Bank.

That digging indicated U.S. Bank currently manages the disbursement of funds for unemployment programs in at least 17 states, including Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. The funds are distributed through a prepaid debit card called ReliaCard.

To make matters more confusing, the flood of new unemployment applications from people out of work thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic reportedly has overwhelmed U.S. Bank's system, meaning that many people receiving these letters haven't yet gotten their ReliaCard and thus lack any frame of reference for having applied for a new payment card.

[20200508_220152 UTC: Update 2: "Monitoring - We've corrected the issues affecting connectivity to our Dallas data center, and we'll continue to monitor this issue to ensure that connectivity remains stable. If you are still experiencing connectivity issues, please reach out to our Support team by opening a ticket through the Linode Manager or by emailing support@linode.com.

May 8, 21:57 UTC"]

---------------------------

[20200508_170527 UTC: Update 1: "Investigating - Our Dallas data center is experiencing additional connectivity issues, which we're investigating. We'll post additional updates as we learn more.
May 8, 20:49 UTC

https://linode.statuspage.io/]

---------------------------

martyb writes:

We are aware of connectivity issues with Linode, out hosting provider:

Linode Status Page:

Investigating - We are aware of connectivity issues affecting Linodes in our Dallas data center and are currently investigating. We will continue to provide additional updates as this incident develops.
May 8, 20:07 UTC

From what I could see, IRC dropped for a while as did access to our main page. There are reports on IRC that mail was down, too.

We are monitoring the situation and will update when we know more.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Fnord666:

Clearview AI to stop selling controversial facial recognition app to private companies:

Controversial facial recognition provider Clearview AI says it will no longer sell its app to private companies and non-law enforcement entities, according to a legal filing first reported on Thursday by BuzzFeed News. It will also be terminating all contracts, regardless of whether the contracts are for law enforcement purposes or not, in the state of Illinois.

The document, filed in Illinois court as part of lawsuit over the company's potential violations of a state privacy law, lays out Clearview's decision as a voluntary action, and the company will now "avoid transacting with non-governmental customers anywhere." Earlier this year, BuzzFeed reported on a leaked client list that indicates Clearview's technology has been used by thousands of organizations, including companies like Bank of America, Macy's, and Walmart.

"Clearview is cancelling the accounts of every customer who was not either associated with law enforcement or some other federal, state, or local government department, office, or agency," Clearview's filing reads. "Clearview is also cancelling all accounts belonging to any entity based in Illinois." Clearview argues that it should not face an injunction, which would prohibit it from using current or past Illinois residents' biometric data, because it's taking these steps to comply with the state's privacy law.

Previously:
(2020-04-20) Security Lapse Exposed Clearview AI Source Code
(2020-04-18) Some Shirts Hide You from Cameras
(2020-03-13) Vermont Sues Clearview, Alleging "Oppressive, Unscrupulous" Practices
(2020-02-28) Clearview AI's Facial Recognition Tech is Being Used by US Justice Department, ICE, and the FBI
(2020-02-26) Clearview AI Reports Entire Client List Was Stolen
(2020-02-24) Canadian Privacy Commissioners to Investigate "Creepy" Facial Recognition Firm Clearview AI
(2020-02-06) Clearview AI Hit with Cease-And-Desist from Google, Facebook Over Facial Recognition Collection
(2020-01-22) Clearview App Lets Strangers Find Your Name, Info with Snap of a Photo, Report Says

Original Submission