70807603
submission
mpicpp writes:
“Under the Dome,” a searing documentary about China’s catastrophic air pollution, had hundreds of millions of views on Chinese websites within days of its release one week ago.
The country’s new environment minister compared it to “Silent Spring,” the landmark 1962 book that energized the environmental movement in the United States. Domestic and foreign journalists clamored to interview the filmmaker, a famous former television reporter, though she remained silent.
Then on Friday afternoon, the momentum over the video came to an abrupt halt, as major Chinese video websites deleted it under orders from the Communist Party’s central propaganda department.
The startling phenomenon of the video, the national debate it set off and the official attempts to quash it reflect the deep political sensitivities in the struggle within the Chinese bureaucracy to reverse China’s environmental degradation, among the worst in the world. The drama over the video has ignited speculation over which political groups were its supporters and which sought to kill it, and whether party leaders will tolerate the civic conversation and grass-roots activism that in other countries have been necessary to curbing rampant pollution.
“It’s been spirited away by gremlins,” said Zhan Jiang, a professor of journalism and media studies in Beijing.
70768503
submission
mpicpp writes:
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around the asteroid Ceres on Friday morning at an altitude of just under 38,000 miles. Currently, the spacecraft is above the night side of Ceres, limiting the amount of information that can be gathered.
When conventional spacecraft enter orbit, they fire their engines for less than an hour to slow down and be captured by the gravity of their target. But Dawn is powered by an ion engine, which generates a small amount of thrust but can fire continuously for weeks, and there was no big change in Dawn’s course on Friday.
By late April, it will move into a 8,400-mile circular orbit where it can start examining Ceres in detail. Ceres, at almost 600 miles wide, is the largest of the asteroids and is now counted as a dwarf planet; it follows an orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Already, scientists are intrigued by bright spots on its surface, which may be reflective patches of ice or salt.
70745537
submission
mpicpp writes:
Google has made it official: It’s getting into car insurance in the U.S.
The tech giant announced Thursday that it’s launching a new feature called “Google Compare for Auto Insurance.”
It’s a comparison shopping site that lets consumers compare rates from different insurance carriers.
The option to compare rates will pop up when a consumer searches on Google for “car insurance.”
At the outset, the service is available to California residents, but Google said it will expand to other states later this year.
Google already offers auto, travel and mortgage quotes in the United Kingdom.
It also operates a credit card comparison service in the U.S. under the “Google Compare” umbrella.
Several major U.S. insurance carriers are reportedly reluctant to work with Google. The tech giant does not list major carriers such as State Farm, GEICO, Progressive and Allstate among its current partners.
70715539
submission
mpicpp writes:
Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen and his research team have found a massive Japanese World War II battleship off the Philippines near where it sank more than 70 years ago, his representatives said Wednesday.
The apparent discovery of the wreckage of the Musashi, one of the largest battleships in history, comes as the world marks the 70th anniversary of the war’s end.
Allen and the team aboard his superyacht M/Y Octopus found the ship on Sunday, more than eight years after their search began, Allen’s publicity agency Edelman said in a statement.
Detailed images captured by a high-definition camera mounted on the underwater probe confirmed the wreckage as that of the Musashi, it said.
Japanese experts said they were eager to study the images to try to confirm the ship’s identity.
Allen’s team found the battleship in the Sibuyan Sea, using an autonomous underwater vehicle in its third dive after narrowing down the search area using detailed undersea topographical data and other locator devices, the statement said.
“The Musashi is truly an engineering marvel and as an engineer at heart, I have a deep appreciation for the technology and effort that went into its construction,” Allen said.
70688589
submission
mpicpp writes:
The ESA released an image Tuesday of the comet-orbiting Rosetta leaving a fleeting mark on the comet: its shadow. The space agency describes it as being "encircled in a wreath of light." It was a rare confluence of circumstances that enabled the image to exist as the sun, spacecraft and comet all came into alignment.
The shadow is diffuse, rather than sharp. The ESA explains this by noting, "If you were standing on the surface with Rosetta high above you, there would be no place in the shadow where the entire Sun would be blocked from view, which explains why there is no fully dark core to the shadow."
The image was taken during a close flyby of the comet on February 14, but the ESA just now brought it to the public's attention. Rosetta — which was launched back in 2004 and sent on a mission to approach and study Comet 67P — was at a distance of about 3.7 miles from the comet's surface at the time.
What's so intriguing about the shadow image is that it's something familiar happening in an alien place, 317 million miles away. We're all used to seeing our shadows here on Earth. Rosetta casting a shadow on a comet puts its epic space adventure into a more human perspective.
70688307
submission
mpicpp writes:
Over at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as DARPA, there are some pretty amazing (and often top-secret) things going on. But one notable component of a DARPA project was revealed by a Defense Department official at a recent forum, and it is the stuff of science fiction movies.
According to DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar, a paralyzed woman was successfully able use her thoughts to control an F-35 and a single-engine Cessna in a flight simulator.
It's just the latest advance for one woman, 55-year-old Jan Scheuermann, who has been the subject of two years of groundbreaking neurosignaling research.
First, Scheuermann began by controlling a robotic arm and accomplishing tasks such as feeding herself a bar of chocolate and giving high fives and thumbs ups.
Then, researchers learned that — surprisingly — Scheuermann was able to control both right-hand and left-hand prosthetic arms with just the left motor cortex, which is typically responsible for controlling the right-hand side.
After that, Scheuermann decided she was up for a new challenge, according to Prabhakar.
"Jan decided that she wanted to try flying a Joint Strike Fighter simulator," Prabhakar said, prompting laughter from the crowd at the New America Foundation's Future of War forum. "So Jan got to fly in the simulator."
Unlike pilots who use the simulator technology for training, Scheuermann wasn't thinking about controlling the plane with a joystick. She thought about flying the plane itself — and it worked.
"In fact," Prabhakar noted, "for someone who's never flown — she's not a pilot in real life — she's in there flying a simulator directly from neurosignaling."
70658763
submission
mpicpp writes:
It’s one of those enduring Zen koans of science that we’ve all grown up with: Light behaves as both a particle and a wave—at the same time. Einstein taught us that, so we’re all generally on board, but to actually understand what it means would require several Ph.D.s and a thorough understanding of quantum physics.
What’s more, scientists have never been able to devise an experiment that documents light behaving as both a wave and a particle simultaneously. Until now.
That’s the contention of a team of Swiss and American researchers, who say they’ve succeeded in capturing the first-ever snapshot of light’s dual behavior. Using an advanced electron microscope – one of only two on the planet – at the EPFL labs in Switzerland, the team has generated a kind of quantum photograph of light behaving as both a particle and a wave.
The experiment involves firing laser light at a microscopic metallic nanowire, causing light to travel — as a wave — back and forth along the wire. When waves traveling in opposite directions meet, they form a “standing wave” that emits light itself — as particles. By shooting a stream of electrons close to the nanowire, the researchers were able to capture an image that simultaneously demonstrates both the wave-nature and particle-nature of light.
“This experiment demonstrates that, for the first time ever, we can film quantum mechanics — and its paradoxical nature — directly,” says lead researcher Fabrizio Carbone of EPFL, on the lab’s project page. The study is to be officially published this week in the journal Nature Communications.
70590053
submission
mpicpp writes:
In a reversal, Google says that porn will continue to be allowed on its Blogger site.
Google said it has received a big backlash after deciding earlier in the week that bloggers will no longer be able to "publicly share images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity." The ban was to have taken place on March 23.
Instead, Google said that the company would simply double down on its crackdown of bloggers who use their sites to sell porn.
In July, Google stopped porn from appearing in its online ads that appear on Blogger. And in 2013, Google decided to remove blogs from its Blogger network that contained advertisements for online porn sites.
"We've had a ton of feedback, in particular about the introduction of a retroactive change (some people have had accounts for 10+ years), but also about the negative impact on individuals who post sexually explicit content to express their identities," wrote Jessica Pelegio, Google's social product support manager, in a post on Google product forums. "So rather than implement this change, we've decided to step up enforcement around our existing policy prohibiting commercial porn."
70559203
submission
mpicpp writes:
Digital photos and videos aren't consuming any less space these days, and as 4K recording grows in popularity, so too will our storage front — the company today announced that it's now mass producing the industry's first 128GB ultra-fast embedded memory based on the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.0 standard for tomorrow's flagship handsets.
According to Samsung, its UFS memory hits 19,000 IOPS for random reads, which is 2.7 times faster than eMMC 5.0, the common memory standard in phones today. And for random writes, it hits 14,000 IOPS, which is a whopping 28 times faster than a conventional external memory card. In terms of a real-world impact, Samsung's UFS memory is fast enough to handle 4K Ultra HD video and multitasking functions at the same time.
70554953
submission
mpicpp writes:
The signs that someone might be contemplating suicide are often missed until it’s too late. Among younger crowds, evidence that a person might need help are often written right on their social media profiles, which is why Facebook and suicide-prevention groups teamed up to release a new feature that could recognize these signs and offer help.
The feature developed by Facebook with Forefront: Innovations in Suicide Prevention, an organization at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work, and other partners was announced at Wednesday’s Compassion Research Day at Facebook’s headquarters.
Here’s how it works, according to a news release from the university:
When someone sees a post that suggests its author might be considering suicide, they can click on a dropdown menu and report the post to Facebook.
That reporting activates a series of responses. The person who flags the post will see a screen with links that allow them to message the potentially suicidal person, contact another Facebook friend for support or connect with a trained professional at a suicide helpline for guidance.
Facebook will then review the reported post. If the poster is thought to be in distress, a series of screens will be launched automatically when that person next logs onto Facebook, with suggestions for getting help. The responses link to a number of positive options, including videos from Now Matters Now, an online program started by Forefront research scientist Ursula Whiteside that uses real-life accounts of people who have struggled with suicidal thoughts to provide research-based coping strategies.
70554919
submission
mpicpp writes:
They are sleek, mostly silent converted weapons of war: Drones used by the Border Patrol to scan the skies in the empty deserts of the Southwest to spot illegal immigrants and then, if things work out, have agents arrest them. That's the idea, and the agents who use them say the drones give them a vantage point they never had before.
Flying at 18,000 feet, the drones view the landscape below, lock onto potential suspects crossing the Arizona desert, and agents on the ground move into make the arrests. But it's outrageously expensive: $28,000 for a single arrest.
70554663
submission
mpicpp writes:
The “Foodini”—an automated meal-assembly machine that creates homemade meals faster and more efficiently than human hands—is the first product by Natural Machines, Kucsma’s company.
Natural Machines is marketing the Foodini as a 3D food printer. That sort of futuristic branding may scare consumers from the supremely out-there concept. Kucsma’s not worried, though.
“When people first heard about microwaves they didn’t understand the technology, but now 90% of households have microwaves,” she says. “We see the same thing happening with 3D food printing, but on a much faster scale because we adopt technology faster and the technology advances faster.”
In reality, the Foodini isn’t a 3D printer, per se. 3D printers generally run at one speed and handle a single ingredient: plastic. The Foodini is programmed similarly, but offers multiple speeds and works with numerous ingredients at the same time. The box-shaped contraption is approximately 17 inches wide, 18 inches high and clocks in at 33 pounds.
Natural Machines’s first iteration of the Foodini works best for time-consuming projects like pasta, elaborately shaped breads and cookies. Users first select a recipe from the touch screen or send their own to the Internet-connected machine. They then make the individual components of the dish from scratch and put the components into Foodini’s stainless steel ingredient capsules. From there, Foodini whips up dinner.
If the user is making a recipe for ravioli, for instance, the Foodini prints the bottom layer of dough, the filling and the top dough layer in subsequent steps. It reduces a lengthy recipe to two minutes construction time and ensures that no one has to clean a countertop caked with leftover dough and flour.
70538665
submission
mpicpp writes:
eventeen years after losing the use of his hand in a motorcycle crash, Marcus Kemeter volunteered to have it amputated and replaced with a bionic version.
"It wasn't hard for me to decide to do the operation," said Kemeter, 35, a used-car dealer in Austria. "I couldn't do anything with my hand. The prosthesis doesn't replace a full hand, but I can do a lot of stuff."
Kemeter's artificial hand was made possible by a new medical procedure developed at the Medical University of Vienna, which combines reconstructive surgery with advances in prosthetics and months of training and rehabilitation, according to an article published Wednesday in the Lancet, a British medical journal. The researchers performed the procedure on three Austrian men from 2011 to 2014.
The technique, called bionic reconstruction, offers hope for patients like Kemeter who have brachial plexus injuries, which can result in severe nerve damage and the loss of function in the arms.
The process represents a significant step for patients with brachial plexus injuries, said Levi Hargrove, a researcher in prosthetics at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
"It provides them with an option," he said. "As mechanical prosthesis become more advanced and more functional, this should only improve."
The ultimate success of the procedure won't be known for years and will depend on how often patients use their new hands, said Simon Kay and Daniel Wilks in a Lancet article accompanying the study. Kay is a hand surgeon at the Leeds Teaching Hospital, while Wilks is at The Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne.
70538581
submission
mpicpp writes:
The Deep Q-network agent, or DQN as the researchers at DeepMind call it, approaches things the way a person might. All it "knows" is that it wants to maximize the score, and by watching the game carefully and observing which actions increase that score, it learns how to play — then how to play better.
Say a shot from an Space Invader is mere pixels away from striking the ship. On its first try the AI may simply allow the game to end. But on another run-through, it may find that by avoiding shots, it gets more chances to fire the ship's gun, destroying enemies and raising the score. DQN even hit on unique strategies, finding safe spots or getting easy points that humans never tried.
70515787
submission
mpicpp writes:
The U.S. State Department and FBI on Tuesday announced a $3 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Russian national Evgeniy Bogachev, the highest bounty U.S. authorities have ever offered in a cyber case.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation also issued a "Wanted" poster for Bogachev, who is charged in the United States with running a computer attack network called GameOver Zeus that allegedly stole more than $100 million from online bank accounts.
Bogachev has been charged by federal authorities in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with conspiracy, computer hacking, wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering in connection with his alleged role as administrator of GameOver Zeus.
He also faces federal bank fraud conspiracy charges in Omaha, Nebraska related to his alleged involvement in an earlier variant of Zeus malware known as "Jabber Zeus."
