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Submission + - Russia prepares to attack the petrodollar

Submitted by Snirt
Snirt writes: The existence of "petrodollars" is one of the pillars of America's economic might because it creates a significant external demand for American currency, allowing the US to accumulate enormous debts without defaulting. If a Japanese buyer wants to buy a barrel of Saudi oil, he has to pay in dollars even if no American oil company ever touches the said barrel. Dollar has held a dominant position in global trading for such a long time that even Gazprom's natural gas contracts for Europe are priced and paid for in US dollars. Until recently, a significant part of EU-China trade had been priced in dollars. Lately, China has led the BRICS efforts to dislodge the dollar from its position as the main global currency, but the "sanctions war" between Washington and Moscow gave an impetus to the long-awaited scheme to launch the petroruble and switch all Russian energy exports away from the US currency.

Submission + - Private keys stolen within hours from heartbleed OpenSSL site (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Billly Gates
Billly Gates writes: It was reported when heartbleed was discovered that only passwords would be at risk and private keys were still safe. Not anymore. Cloudfare launched the heartbleed challenge on a new server with the openSSL vulnerability and offered a prize to whoever could gain the private keys. Within hours several researchers and a hacker got in and got the private signing keys.

Expect many forged certificates and other login attempts to banks and other popular websites in the coming weeks unless the browser makers and CA's revoke all the old keys and certificates.

Submission + - FAA Shuts Down Search-and-Rescue Drones (ieee.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For about a decade, Gene Robinson has been putting cameras on remote-controller model aircraft and using them in search-and-rescue missions. But now the Federal Aviation Administration has shut him down, saying his efforts violate a ban on flying RC aircraft for commercial purposes. Robinson doesn't charge the families of the people he's looking for, and he created a non-profit organization to demonstrate that. He also coordinates with local authorities and follows their guidelines to the letter. The FAA shut him down because they haven't designed regulations to deal with situations like this, even though they've been working on it since 2007. 'So it’s difficult to argue that his flights are more dangerous than what goes on every weekend at RC modeling sites throughout the United States, which can include flights of huge models that weigh 10 times as much as Robinson’s planes; aerial stunts of nitromethane-fueled model helicopters; and the low-altitude, 500-kilometer-per-hour passes in front of spectators of model jets powered by miniature turbine engines.'

Submission + - The FBI Gamified the Hunt For One of Its Most Wanted (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: The FBI just gamified its latest manhunt. As I was just scanning the bureau's many twitter feeds, I saw a couple of fresh tweets reporting that William Bradford Bishop, Jr. had just been added to the bureau's most wanted list.

When I clicked on the tweet that offered a photo gallery of Bishop, the 'Family Annihilator,' some studio-lit photos of this gallery-quality clay bust were far beyond the everyday mug shots I'd expected.

"Am I'm picking out which glasses my character in GTA will wear?" I thought as I looked at artist Karen Taylor's masterful 3D rendering of Bishop. Bishop is a man who has been a fugitive for almost 40 years (he's 77 now, and Taylor age-processed him to look that old) after allegedly killing his mother, his wife, and their three sons in Bethesda, Md. Bishop, a former Foreign Service officer for the State Department, is described by the FBI as "highly intelligent," and investigators on his case believe he could be hiding in plain sight.

Submission + - Photos Of What Tesla's Battery Safety Shield REALLY Looks Like

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: Tesla said a few weeks ago it would add additional safety shielding to protect the battery of every Model S car on the road against damage from road debris. But it offered no photos of its update as it would look when installed--so one owner took his own. These may be the first detail shots of what the three different pieces look like. There's a half-round aluminum tube, a titanium plate, and a T-shaped section--and you can see how they combine to deflect and direct impacts to minimize damage to the battery. Do these updates look like they'll solve Tesla's problems

Submission + - EPIC Fail, NASA has NO ISS plan for Russian Nyet (house.gov) 2

Submitted by Jay Tyler
Jay Tyler writes: NASA Administrator Mr. Bolden went before Congress. He again played the blame game with comments of "That's not my Job" and "I'm not responsible to the Media". The plain FACT is that NASA has no backup plan to deal with the Russian problem. A problem that was designed by the Administration, and excutated by Mr. Bolden requiring the US to pay 71millon dollars for a taxi seat to the ISS. If the Pirate Putin says Nyet to NASA we are screwed, we have no plan. Before Congress Mr. Bolden, begs, and exhorts, for over a Billon US taxpayer dollars for FY2015 with the HOPE, that one of the Commercial Crew companies might be able to launch astronauts maybe in 2017. Mr. Boldens fix is we have no plan!

Submission + - California Just Slapped Tesla In The Face

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: California and Tesla have been in a relationship for some time now. The automaker has its headquarters there, its factory, and most of its engineering teams. But it seems the state just slapped Tesla in the face as the California Air Resources Board (CARB) ruled the ability to swap electric-car battery packs doesn't qualify for "fast fueling" incentives. The silicon valley start up loses because it previously had been earning extra "ZEV Gold" credits for this fast-fueling ability which increased its supply of credits that it could sell to other automakers for cash. CARB is accepting public comments on the revised rules through April 18, but don't expect a reversal on this decision. To date, Tesla hasn't reacted favorably when things don't go its way, so now the only question is how will it react to this situation?

Submission + - LHCb confirms existence of exotic hadrons (web.cern.ch)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration today announced results that confirm the existence of exotic hadrons – a type of matter that cannot be classified within the traditional quark model. Hadrons are subatomic particles that can take part in the strong interaction – the force that binds protons inside the nuclei of atoms. Physicists have theorized since the 1960s, and ample experimental evidence since has confirmed, that hadrons are made up of quarks and antiquarks that determine their properties. A subset of hadrons, called mesons, is formed from quark-antiquark pairs, while the rest – baryons – are made up of three quarks. ... The Belle Collaboration reported the first evidence for the Z(4430) in 2008. They found a tantalizing peak in the mass distribution of particles that result from the decays of B mesons. Belle later confirmed the existence of the Z(4430) with a significance of 5.2 sigma on the scale that particle physicists use to describe the certainty of a result.
LHCb reports a more detailed measurement of the Z(4430) that confirms that it is unambiguously a particle, and a long-sought exotic hadron at that. They analysed more than 25,000 decays of B mesons selected from data from 180 trillion (180 ×10^12) proton-proton collisions in the Large Hadron Collider.

Submission + - Navy to Test Deployment of New Railgun Tech in 2016 (wired.com)

Submitted by Jeremiah Cornelius
Jeremiah Cornelius writes: The US Navy's new railgun technology, developed by General Atomics, uses Lorentz force in a type of linear, electric motor to hurl a 23-pound projectile at speeds exceeding Mach 7 — excess 5000 MpH. The weapon has a range of 100 miles and doesn’t require explosive warheads. "The electromagnetic railgun represents an incredible new offensive capability for the U.S. Navy," says Rear Adm. Bryant Fuller, the Navy’s chief engineer. "This capability will allow us to effectively counter a wide range of threats at a relatively low cost, while keeping our ships and sailors safer by removing the need to carry as many high-explosive weapons." Sea trials begin aboard an experimental Navy catamaran, the USNS Millinocket, in 2016.

Submission + - Raspberry Pi's Eben Upton: How We're Turning Everyone Into DIY Hackers (readwrite.com)

Submitted by redletterdave
redletterdave writes: Eben Upton, cofounder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, is generally credited as the magician behind this incredible machine. While working on his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Cambridge's computer laboratory, Upton painstakingly put together Raspberry Pi prototypes by hand. Today, Upton is CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s trading company, where he oversees production and sales of the Raspberry Pi. In a lengthy interview with ReadWrite, Upton shares how he invented Raspberry Pi, and what's coming next for the $35 microcomputer.

Submission + - Organ regenerated inside a living animal for the first time (economist.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Scientists at Edinburgh University have successfully persuaded an organ to regenerate inside an animal. As they report in the journal Development, they have treated, in mice, an organ called the thymus, which is a part of the immune system that runs down in old age. Instead of adding stem cells they have stimulated their animals’ thymuses to make more of a protein called FOXN1. This is a transcription factor (a molecular switch that activates genes).
The scientists knew from earlier experiments that FOXN1 is important for the embryonic development of the thymus, and speculated that it might also rejuvenate the organ in older animals. They bred a special strain of mice whose FOXN1 production could be stimulated specifically in the thymus by tamoxifen, a drug more familiar as a treatment for breast cancer.
In one-year-olds, stimulating FOXN1 production in the thymus caused it to become 2.7 times bigger within a month. In two-year-olds the increase was 2.6 times. Moreover, when the researchers studied the enlarged thymuses microscopically, and compared them with those from untreated control animals of the same ages, they found that the organs’ internal structures had reverted to their youthful nature.

Submission + - Google Project Ara Design To Employ Electro-Permanant Magnets To Lock In Modules (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Google's Project Ara, an effort to develop a modular smartphone platform, sounded at first as much like vaporware as anything but Google is actually making it happen. In a whimsical upbeat video, Dave Hakkens (the guy who created the Phonebloks design that appears to be the conceptual basis for Project Ara) visited the Google campus to see what progress is being made on the project. The teams working on Project Ara have figured out a key solution to one of the first problems they encountered, which was how to keep all the modules stuck together. They decided to use electro-permanent magnets. In terms of design, they've decided not to cover up the modules, instead making their very modularity part of the aesthetic appeal. 3D Systems is involved on campus, as they're delivering the 3D printing technology to make covers for the modules.

Submission + - Fukushima photo essay: A drone's eye view (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: Stunning photos and incredible interactive aerial maps of the devastation, cleanup and reconstruction effort in the region around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. By Adam Klaptocz of Drone Adventures in collaboration with Taichi Furuhashi, researcher at the Center for Spatial Information Science at the University of Tokyo.

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