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upstart writes:

Food of the Future? 'Generator' Turns Plastic Trash Into Edible Protein:

Two U.S. scientists have won a 1 million euro ($1.18 million) prize for creating a food generator concept that turns plastics into protein.

The 2021 Future Insight Prize went to Ting Lu, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Stephen Techtmann, associate professor of biological sciences at Michigan Technological University, for their project. It uses microbes to degrade plastic waste and convert it into food.

The German science and technology company Merck sponsors the prize. Global plastics production totaled 368 million metric tons in 2019. The only decline in the past 60 years came because the COVID-19 pandemic choked production of goods worldwide as factories sputtered and shipping slowed down.

[...] The two scientists, who call their project a food “generator,” focused on finding an efficient, economical and versatile technology that finds a use for plastics that are at the end of their useful life and would otherwise end up in landfills or oceans.

The resulting foods “contain all the required nutrition, are nontoxic, provide health benefits and additionally allow for personalization needs,” according to Merck.

The scientists learned to exploit synthetically altered microbes, programming them genetically to convert waste into food.

Gives new meaning to the phrase you are what you eat.

Journal Reference:
Nicholas S. McCarty, Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro. Synthetic Biology Tools to Engineer Microbial Communities for Biotechnology, Trends in Biotechnology (DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2018.11.002)

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upstart writes:

Tobacco firm Philip Morris calls for ban on cigarettes within decade:

The chief executive of tobacco business Philip Morris International has called on the UK government to ban cigarettes within a decade, in a move that would outlaw its own Marlboro brand.

Jacek Olczak said the company could “see the world without cigarettes … and actually, the sooner it happens, the better it is for everyone.” Cigarettes should be treated like petrol cars, the sale of which is due to be banned from 2030, he said.

Government action would end the confusion felt by smokers, some of whom still thought the “alternatives are worse than cigarettes”, Olczak told the Sunday Telegraph. “Give them a choice of smoke-free alternatives … with the right regulation and information it can happen 10 years from now in some countries. You can solve the problem once and forever.”

Philip Morris International (PMI) recently said it wanted half its turnover to come from non-smoking products as it morphs into a “healthcare and wellness company” with executive pay tied to its new mission to “unsmoke the world” by phasing out cigarettes.

Nonetheless the company has come under fire from anti-smoking campaigners who accused it of hypocrisy after it launched a £1bn takeover bid for Vectura, a British pharmacy company that makes asthma inhalers.

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Editor's note: this in the 50,000th story submission to SoylentNews! Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this milestone!

upstart writes:

England’s Covid unlocking is threat to world, say 1,200 scientists:

Boris Johnson’s plan to lift virtually all of England’s pandemic restrictions on Monday is a threat to the world and provides fertile ground for the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants, international experts say.

Britain’s position as a global transport hub would mean any new variant here would rapidly spread around the world, scientists and physicians warned at an emergency summit. They also expressed grave concerns about Downing Street’s plans.

Government advisers in New Zealand, Israel and Italy were among those who sounded alarm bells about the policy, while more than 1,200 scientists backed a letter to the Lancet journal warning the strategy could allow vaccine-resistant variants to develop.

[...] New coronavirus infections in the UK are at a six-month high, according to government figures, and the number of people in hospital and dying with Covid are at their highest level since March. Thursday’s data showed 3,786 people in hospital with Covid and another 63 virus-related deaths.

Downing Street, which has defended the lifting of all remaining legal restrictions on social gatherings in England on 19 July, is hoping the rapid rollout of vaccines will keep a lid on the number of people becoming seriously ill.

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upstart writes:

The Moon Tricks Tesla's Full Self-Driving Feature Into Thinking It's a Yellow Light:

Tesla recently announced that any Tesla user can subscribe to Autopilot’s Full Self-Driving feature for $99 to $199 per month, but it seems the new feature still comes with its fair share of kinks. Recently a Tesla driver took to Twitter to share an entertaining little problem with the system.

It turns out that the feature mistakes the full moon for a yellow light and slows down the vehicle. It should be noted that this is an extremely yellow and quite low moon.

Hey @elonmusk you might want to have your team look into the moon tricking the autopilot system. The car thinks the moon is a yellow traffic light and wanted to keep slowing down. 🤦🏼 @Teslarati @teslaownersSV @TeslaJoy pic.twitter.com/6iPEsLAudD

— Jordan Nelson (@JordanTeslaTech) July 23, 2021

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TheMightyChickadee writes:

With Successful 10th Flight, Ingenuity Has Now Flown More Than a Mile on Mars:

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter successfully completed its 10th flight on Mars on Saturday, bringing its total distance flown on the Red Planet to more than one mile (roughly 1.60 kilometers) and capturing important images to help out its friend, the Perseverance rover.

In a Twitter post early Sunday, NASA confirmed that its helicopter had flown over an area called “Raised Ridges,” which is part of a fracture system that the Perseverance team finds intriguing and is considering visiting sometime in the future. Fracture systems often operate as pathways for fluid to get underground. If water did indeed flow through Raised Ridges, it would be an ideal spot to look for evidence of past Martian life, which is the rover’s primary goal, and maybe even drill a sample for further examination.

And, just a reminder:

The status update also takes the time to remind us how Ingenuity has gone above and beyond its initial goals and carried out impressive maneuvers. It has survived on Mars for 107 sols, or Martian days, which is 76 more than its original mission.

In addition, the helicopter has also managed to perform two flight software updates designed to improve its flight and color image capture abilities. Ingenuity has flown for a total of more than 14 minutes on Mars, or more than 112% above its performance in tech demos. It has also given us new views of the Red Planet, taking 43 13-megapixel color images and 809 black and white navigation images.

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upstart writes:

Paris-based Gourmey hopes ethical lab grown foie gras will overcome bans - EU Today:

The push to make foie gras, the fattened liver of a duck or goose, in a lab comes amid a push to find a sustainable, ethical alternative to meat raised for slaughter. Most foie gras is made by force-feeding ducks and geese through a tube to engorge their livers up to 10 times their normal sizes. The process can leave ducks too big to walk or breathe, according to animal activists.

[...] With growing opposition to foie gras because of animal cruelty concerns, Nicolas Morin-Forest, Gourmey’s co-founder and chief executive, said that producing the delicacy from cultivated cells was a way to preserve a centuries-old French culinary tradition.

[...] Gourmey engineers faux meat by taking cells out of a freshly laid duck egg and placing them into a cultivator. The cells are then fed with proteins, amino acids and sugar, similar to the nutrients a duck would get from a diet of oats, corn and grass. The cells are then harvested and transformed into foie gras in a process that uses significantly less land and water than traditional methods.

[...] Mr. Morin-Forest said that, on a technical level, foie gras was well suited to be grown in a lab precisely because of its delicate texture compared with other types of meat.

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canopic jug writes:

Although initially expecting to only sell a few thousand units, the Raspberry Pi has sold more than 40 million computers to date. Over time it has developed quite a fan base. Part of cultivating that base has been through a dedicated blog and help forum. The Raspberry Pi blog and forum have now turned 10 years old.

We’ve kept every single blog post we’ve ever written up on this site, starting way back in July 2011. Ten years is a long time in internet terms, so you’ll find some dead links in some earlier posts; and this website has undergone a number of total redesigns, so early stuff doesn’t tend to have the pretty thumbnail associated with it to show you what it’s all about. (Our page design didn’t use them back then.) But all the same, for the internet archeologists among you, or those interested in the beginnings of Raspberry Pi, those posts from before we even had hardware are worth flicking through.

There are two organizations involved. Raspberry Pi Trading makes the hardware, the magazines, the peripherals, etc. The Raspberry Pi Foundation runs the charitable programs.

Previously:
(2021) Raspberry Pi Begins Selling its RP2040 Microcontroller for $1
(2021) The Ongoing Raspberry Pi Fiasco
(2021) Raspberry Pi Users Mortified as Microsoft Repository that Phones Home is Added to Pi OS
(2020) Raspberry Pi: We're Making it Easier to Build Our Devices into Your Hardware
(2020) Raspberry Pi 400: Its Designer Reveals More About the Faster Pi 4 in the $70 PC's Keyboard

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upstart writes:

Dutch Startup 3D Prints Bridge With 10,000 Pounds of Stainless Steel:

If you walk along the Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal in Amsterdam, you will notice an elegant and aesthetically pleasing steel bridge for pedestrians. If not for the media attention it got, you would even consider it a regular feature of the city's architecture. But this bridge loaded with sensors, is actually the world's first 3D-printed steel bridge, according to an Imperial College London press release.

Printed by four robots in a matter of just six months, the bridge heralds a new beginning in additive manufacturing. Most 3D printing projects, whether they are designed for outer space or rapid infrastructure, use proprietary inks or starting material. This bridge, however, uses steel, a tried and tested construction material, and is actually an experiment to test whether it can find applications in 3D printing.

"A 3D-printed metal structure large and strong enough to handle pedestrian traffic has never been constructed before," said Imperial co-contributor Prof. Leroy Gardner of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, in a press release. "We have tested and simulated the structure and its components throughout the printing process and upon its completion, and it's fantastic to see it finally open to the public."

The project, initiated in 2015, used multi-axis robots to heat the steel to 2,732°F (1,500°C) and constructed the bridge layer by layer. The almost 40-foot (12-meter)-long bridge is made up of close to 10,000 pounds (4,500 kg) of stainless steel. Considering the way the bridge was constructed, it was only befitting that a robot was actually used to inaugurate it. Dutch Queen Maxima pressed a green button to set a robotic arm equipped with a pair of scissors into motion to cut the ribbon and opened the bridge to pedestrians and cyclists.

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stormwyrm writes:

The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing has filed suit against gaming giant Activision Blizzard, alleging that they fostered a hostile and sexist work environment for female employees, who comprise about 20% of their workforce. From Bloomberg Law:

Video game giant Activision Blizzard Inc., maker of games including World of Warcraft and Diablo, fosters a "frat boy" culture in which female employees are subjected to constant sexual harassment, unequal pay, and retaliation, according to a lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.

A two-year investigation by the state agency found that the company discriminated against female employees in terms and conditions of employment, including compensation, assignment, promotion, and termination. Company leadership consistently failed to take steps to prevent discrimination, harassment, and retaliation, the agency said.

[...] The agency seeks an injunction forcing compliance with workplace protections, as well as unpaid wages, pay adjustments, back pay, and lost wages and benefits for female employees.

"We value diversity and strive to foster a workplace that offers inclusivity for everyone. There is no place in our company or industry, or any industry, for sexual misconduct or harassment of any kind," a spokesperson for Activision Blizzard said in a statement. "We take every allegation seriously and investigate all claims. In cases related to misconduct, action was taken to address the issue."

[...] "The picture the DFEH paints is not the Blizzard workplace of today," the company said.

Some examples of the allegations include "cube crawls", where male employees would get drunk and harass female employees, delegating heavy workloads to women while paying them less, and even an incident where a female employee committed suicide after nude photos of her were passed around during a company holiday party.

The case is Calif. Dep't of Fair Emp. & Housing v. Activision Blizzard Inc., Cal. Super. Ct., No. 21stcv26571, 7/20/21. Further coverage of the story at The Verge, the BBC, and CNN.

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upstart writes:

Amazon's New World game is bricking GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards:

It is probably not a good idea to play New World right now. The closed Beta and Alpha builds of this game have reportedly been a reason for the bricking of GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards, multiple users on the official game's forum have reported.

The issue appears to affect mainly GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards which are reportedly overheating and see power spikes. The game has an uncapped framerate in the main menus, which is usually associated with buzzing capacitors. Most users however have reported that EVGA RTX 3090 cards specifically are the most affected brand. A number of the RTX 3090 cards have been bricked in the process.

[...] Update: Amazon Games released the following statement:

Hundreds of thousands of people played in the New World Closed Beta yesterday, with millions of total hours played. We've received a few reports of players using high-performance graphics cards experiencing hardware failure when playing New World.

New World makes standard DirectX calls as provided by the Windows API. We have seen no indication of widespread issues with 3090s, either in the beta or during our many months of alpha testing.

The New World Closed Beta is safe to play. In order to further reassure players, we will implement a patch today that caps frames per second on our menu screen. We're grateful for the support New World is receiving from players around the world, and will keep listening to their feedback throughout Beta and beyond.

New World (video game).

See also: Issues with EVGA RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra
r/newworldgame - Did the New World Beta brick your gpu?

Related: Micron Accidentally Confirms GDDR6X Memory, and Nvidia's RTX 3090 GPU
Nvidia Announces RTX 30-Series "Ampere" GPUs
Linux Foundation and Partners Announce "Open 3D Foundation"

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canopic jug writes:

The Conversation discusses the archeological time line indicating the earliest known usage of various psychoactive substances. They conclude that it is most likely that use of psychoactive substances mostly began relatively late in our history. It probably began after the Neolithic Revolution in 10,000 BC when we invented farming and civilisation. Wine, betel, and cannabis rank among those with the earliest evidence of use found so far.

Archaeology suggests alcohol and drugs date back millennia, to early agricultural societies. But there’s little evidence early hunter-gatherers used them. That implies something about agricultural societies and the civilisations they gave rise to promoted substance use. But why?

It’s possible large civilisations simply drive innovation of all kinds: in ceramics, textiles, metals – and psychoactive substances. Perhaps alcohol and drugs also promoted civilisation – drinking can help people socialise, altered perspectives encourage creativity, and caffeine makes us productive. And it may just be safer to get drunk or high in a city than the savannah.

A darker possibility is that psychoactive substance use developed in response to civilisation’s ills. Large societies create large problems – wars, plagues, inequalities in wealth and power – against which individuals are relatively powerless. Perhaps when people couldn’t change their circumstances, they decided to change their minds.

It’s a complex problem. Just thinking about it makes me want to grab a beer.

Some psychoactive compounds are stimulants and increase alertness, others decrease it. Some affect mood, and others alter perception of reality.

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aristarchus writes:

From the pages of WIRED, more or less unfortunately.

This week, scientists are dropping an Olympus Mons of findings from the two brave robots. In three papers published today in the journal Science—each authored by dozens of scientists from around the world—researchers detail the clever ways they used InSight’s seismometer to peer deep into the Red Planet, giving them an unprecedented understanding of its crust, mantle, and core. It’s the first time scientists have mapped the interior of a planet other than Earth. And yesterday, another group of scientists held a press conference to announce early research results from Perseverance, and the next steps the rover will take to explore the surface of Jezero Crater, once a lake that could have been home to ancient microbial life.

Of course, it is the marsotectonic stuff we are all interested in.

The researchers reckon that the crust is made of two or three layers. There’s a topmost layer that’s 10 kilometers thick, which InSight’s measurements revealed to be unexpectedly light, perhaps because it’s made of fractured rock left over from meteorite impacts. The layer below that goes down to about 20 kilometers. “Unfortunately, we are not sure what follows next, if it’s already the mantle or if we have a third layer in the crust. There’s some ambiguities that we haven’t resolved,” says Knapmeyer-Endrun. “We can definitely say that the crust is not as thick as has been predicted previously, and it has a lower density.”

Planetary seismologist Simon Stähler of ETH Zürich led the effort to characterize the hottest and innermost chunk of Mars’ interior—its core. Though they lack the ability to actually see inside the planetary center, Stähler’s team was able to extract some information just by analyzing the S-waves that bounce off the core-mantle boundary. These rumblings, unable to penetrate the liquid core, find their way back up to the Martian surface, where they are picked up by InSight’s receivers. “It takes a good 10 minutes,” Stähler says, from the time of the quake to the detection of the signal reflected by the core. By measuring this interval, his team was able to deduce how deep into the planet the waves are traveling, thus measuring the depth of the core itself: around 1,550 kilometers from the surface.

And,

upstart writes:

Elon Musk’s Starlink provides free internet in West German areas ravaged by floods:

A week after Germany was hit by devastating floods that released two months’ worth of rainfall in just two days, several areas of the country remain severely hobbled by the effects of the natural disaster. Rescue operations are still underway, but in locations such as Rhineland-Palatinate, communication remains difficult due to limited cellular reception and internet service.

This is where Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system is making a difference. Rhineland-Palatinate has set up Starlink kits to provide free web access to citizens to help them communicate with family and authorities. Twelve Starlink systems were initially deployed to the Ahrweiler district, in Liers, Ahrbrück, Brück, Pützfeld, Kreuzberg, Rech Nord, Rech Süd, Dernau, Marienthal, Heimersheim and Heppingen. Plans are also underway to expand the system to 35 Starlink dishes, though the locations for these systems are yet to be released.

[...] Granted, Starlink’s deployment in Rhineland-Palatinate is but a short-term solution to the area’s current internet connectivity issues, but even such small efforts are valuable. Starlink could help improve communication in the area, for example, especially as efforts to rebuild cell coverage in Rhineland-Palatinate continue.

The state government has stated that cellphone coverage in the Rhineland-Palatinate area is still not fully available, thanks in part to numerous cellular facilities being destroyed during the floods. Alexander Schweitzer, digitization minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, however, noted that the rebuilding process is well underway. “More than 70% of the well over 500 failed mobile radio stations have already been put back into operation,” he said, adding that work is now underway to fix more “difficult” facilities.

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upstart writes:

FTC Unanimously Backs New Policy Supporting Your Right to Repair Your Own Devices In The U.S.:

Following an executive order from U.S. President Biden, today the U.S. Federal Trade Commission voted unanimously to adopt a new a[sic] policy designed to support the growing right to repair movement.

Passed in a 5-0 decision, the FTC’s new policy is designed to make it easier for consumers to fix their own devices and also pledges to step up investigations of companies suspected of having unlawful repair restrictions. That’s something the FTC admitted has not been an “enforcement priority for the Commission for a number of years.”

No new laws have been set in stone just yet, but the FTC’s new policy outlines five things it’s looking to improve going forward. The first is that the FTC will now prioritise investigations into unlawful repair restrictions covered under laws like the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Additionally, the FTC says it will urge the public to submit complaints and info about companies that are potentially violating relevant laws, while also keeping a closer eye on private litigation to help decide which companies may require further investigation.

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takyon writes:

Astronomers make first clear detection of a moon-forming disc around an exoplanet:

Using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, astronomers have unambiguously detected the presence of a disc around a planet outside our Solar System for the first time. The observations will shed new light on how moons and planets form in young stellar systems.

"Our work presents a clear detection of a disc in which satellites could be forming," says Myriam Benisty, a researcher at the University of Grenoble, France, and at the University of Chile, who led the new research published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. "Our ALMA observations were obtained at such exquisite resolution that we could clearly identify that the disc is associated with the planet and we are able to constrain its size for the first time," she adds.

The disc in question, called a circumplanetary disc, surrounds the exoplanet PDS 70c, one of two giant, Jupiter-like planets orbiting a star nearly 400 light-years away. Astronomers had found hints of a "moon-forming" disc around this exoplanet before but, since they could not clearly tell the disc apart from its surrounding environment, they could not confirm its detection — until now.

In addition, with the help of ALMA, Benisty and her team found that the disc has about the same diameter as the distance from our Sun to the Earth and enough mass to form up to three satellites the size of the Moon.

Also at Science Magazine and The Register.

See also: Amateur Astronomer Discovers New Moon of Jupiter in Photo from 2003

Journal Reference:
Myriam Benisty, Jaehan Bae, Stefano Facchini, et al. A Circumplanetary Disk around PDS70c - IOPscience, The Astrophysical Journal Letters (DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ac0f83) (PDF)

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