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Submission + - Infrared Imaging Shows Trifid Nebula in a New Light (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: The European Southern Observatory's (ESO) VISTA survey telescope has revealed a beautiful new aspect of the Trifid Nebula, a star formation area that sits around 5,200 light years away from Earth, in the direction of the galactic center. By observing and imaging the nebula in infrared light, astronomers can look through the dust-filled, central parts of the Milky Way to expose new objects.

Submission + - Sydney Uni to divest from fossil fuels, as global momentum builds (reneweconomy.com.au)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: The University of Sydney has revealed its plans to begin divesting from heavy-polluting and fossil fuel companies, in an effort to cut the carbon footprint of its investment portfolio by 20 per cent in three years.

The partial divestment plan, released by the University on Monday, brings it in line with a growing number of tertiary, religious and other organizations around the world that have divested over $50 billion in fossil fuel stocks for reasons both environmental and economic – that is, their business models are incompatible with the pledge by the world’s governments to tackle global warming.

Comment "Undoing the interactions"? (Score 1) 59

This phrase "undoing the interactions" is vague. It sounded like they had some kind of new principle of superposition that had been discovered. From the article:

By eliminating the interactions between the optical channels, we are able to double the distance signals can be transmitted error-free...

In reality, they are using a higher-order symbol constellation (16QAM) to carry more information per symbol, and I suspect that they combined several optical channels into a larger bandwidth to do that. I think this phrase "undoing the interactions" is more accurately "exploiting the interactions".

Submission + - One Man's Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake (medium.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Fascinating profile of one particular Wikipedia editor Giraffedata (a 51-year-old software engineer named Bryan Henderson), who has spent the last seven years correcting only the incorrect use of "comprised of" on Wikipedia. Using a code to crawl for uses of "comprised of" throughout all of Wiki's articles, he'll then go in and manually corrects them (for example, using "consists of" or "composed of") and has made over 47,000 edits to date

Submission + - FDA finds herbal supplements at GNC, Walmart don't contain what they claim

Submitted by MikeChino
MikeChino writes: The New York State Attorney General's Office is demanding that GNC, Walmart, Walgreens, and Target remove store brand herbal supplements from their shelves after the pills were found to be packed with a strange array of fraudulent—and in some cases hazardous—ingredients. Popular supplements such as ginseng, valerian root, and St. John's wort sold under store brand names at the four major retailers were found to contain powdered rice, asparagus, and even houseplants, while being completely void of any of the ingredients on the label.

Submission + - DNA can be a dark matter detector!

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: When you think of dark matter, you very likely think of a halo of diffuse, unseen mass whose gravitational influence is felt by everything within our galaxy, and every galaxy or cluster out there. But what you might not consider is that this dark matter is consistently passing through Earth and every atom-and-molecule on it. Every once in a while, a lucky (or unlucky) dark matter particle strikes, say, a DNA molecule in your body, breaking its bonds and leaving an unmistakeable, destructive signature. Creatively, a new paper has the scoop on how we might use this exact phenomenon to experimentally, directly confirm the particle nature of dark matter!

Submission + - Liability issue for drone co's using technical measures to enforce no fly zones (robohub.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Shortly after a Phantom drone crash-landed on the grounds of the White House, its maker, DJI, announced that it would release a mandatory firmware update that would restrict flights within 15.5 miles of downtown Washington, D.C. Drone liability expert Diana Cooper writes about the liability issues drone manufacturers may be opening themselves up to if technical measures they impose to enforce no fly zones fail.

Submission + - Chinese mobile internet users reach 557 million despite aggressive censorship (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to a new report released by the Chinese government, the country now has 557 million mobile internet users, up from half a billion at the end of 2013. Following a massive adoption of smartphones from China’s leading providers Apple and Xiaomi over the last year, the country is now the world’s largest market for mobile companies. Apple has recently announced that its Chinese sales had surpassed those in the US. Despite strict censorship against foreign tech firms, overall internet usage is also on the rise with China now counting around 673 million internet users, nearly equating to half of the entire population.

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