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Submission + - Extremely rare Enigma machine sells for $233,000 (luxurylaunches.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One of the finest pieces of technology used during the Second World War was without doubt the Enigma machine. Over time, only a few of these electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines have managed to stay intact, one of which was recently purchased by an unknown buyer for a whopping $233,000. The machine, sold at Sotheby’s, comes complete with three rotors with Bakelike thumbwheels and matching serial numbers. A standard QWERTZ keyboard with the maker’s plate, a plug board with ten cables and an oak carrying case is included in the set.

Submission + - 3-Year-Old with Huge Head Has Groundbreaking Skull Replacement Surgery (3dprint.com)

Submitted by ErnieKey
ErnieKey writes: Doctors in China have just successfully performed a groundbreaking surgery on a 3-year-old little girl named Han Han. Han Han was suffering from congenital hydrocephalus which caused her head to grow to four times the normal size. If something wasn't done, she probably wouldn't have lived much longer. This is when surgeons at the Second People’s Hospital of Hunan Province elected to remove a large portion of her skull and replace it with a 3d printed titanium mesh skull. The results were truly amazing, and Han Han is expected to make a full recovery.

Submission + - The New Laws of Explosive Networks (quantamagazine.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers usually think of network connectivity as happening in a slow, continuous manner, similar to the way water moves through freshly ground coffee beans, slowly saturating all the granules to become coffee in the container below. However, over the past few years, researchers have discovered that in special cases, connectivity might emerge with a bang, not a whimper, via a phenomenon they have dubbed “explosive percolation.”

This new understanding of how über-connectivity emerges, which was described earlier this month in the journal Nature Physics, is the first step toward identifying warning signs that may occur when such systems go awry — for example, when power grids begin to fail, or when an infectious disease starts to mushroom into a global pandemic. Explosive percolation may help create effective intervention strategies to control that behavior and, perhaps, avoid catastrophic consequences.

Submission + - NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Zips Past Pluto in Flyby (nytimes.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: “We’re going to do our 10-9-8 thing and you can get your flags out,” S. Alan Stern, the principal investigator for NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto told the people gathered here at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which is operating the mission. “We’re going to go absolutely ape.”

About 7:50 a.m. Tuesday, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made its closest pass by Pluto, coming within 7,800 miles of the surface.

The crowd, which included the children of Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930, cheered.

As soon as it arrived, New Horizons was leaving, speeding along its trajectory at 31,000 miles per hour.

For now, no one knows how the spacecraft is faring.

New Horizons, which is in the middle of 22 hours of automated scientific observations, will not check in with mission controllers for several more hours, with the signal scheduled to arrive on Earth at 8:53 p.m. By Wednesday, the spacecraft will be mostly finished with the data-collecting phase of the mission and begin sending back the trove of information for scientists to delve into.

Submission + - NASA releases a high res photo of Pluto. (nasa.gov)

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: After covering three billion miles since its launch nine years ago, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft finally reached the dwarf planet Pluto today. To celebrate, NASA released a photo of the dim and distant cousin of Earth.

Looks like a planet to me.

Submission + - Astronomers teach a machine to see (ras.org.uk)

Submitted by Jim Geach
Jim Geach writes: A team of astronomers and computer scientists have developed a novel unsupervised machine learning algorithm — a combination of Growing Neural Gas and Hierarchical Clustering — to automatically analyse astronomical images. In effect, the algorithm performs the same task as a human 'eyeballing' an image, automatically identifying and labelling the points of interest. The team is aiming to deploy the algorithm on the next generation of astronomical surveys such as LSST and Euclid, but note that the algorithm could also find application in other fields, such as medical imaging and early disease diagnosis. Team member Dr Jim Geach said

Our aim is to deploy this tool on the next generation of giant imaging surveys where no human, or even group of humans, could closely inspect every piece of data. But this algorithm has a huge number of applications far beyond astronomy, and investigating these applications will be our next step

The results are being presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Wales, and the details of the algorithm are described in this paper http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.0158...

Submission + - China's Stock Crash: $3.5 Trillion Wiped Out, $2.6 Trillion Frozen (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The stock market crisis going on in China is notable for the huge numbers involved. $3.5 trillion ($3,500,000,000,000) in value has been wiped out by falling prices, and over a thousand companies have forced a pause in trading. The combined value of all of these companies exceeds $2.6 trillion, and it represents about 40% of the total market capitalization. This follows attempts by the exchanges and the government to instill confidence in trading once more, but investors are still wary. The NY Times has a detailed explanation of how the market got into trouble, and why it's not likely to fix itself overnight: "Put all these pieces together, and here’s what we have: a rise in Chinese share prices in the last year that seemed to be driven more by investor psychology than by anything fundamental. It is hard to see how the prices as of a month ago were justified, and easy to see why the sell-off of the last month would occur. That, in turn, implies that Chinese officials are fighting an uphill battle in their policy moves to try to stop the correction, and helps explain why their policy actions have had little effect so far."

Submission + - World's First Road-Ready Line of 3D Printed Cars Unveiled Today by Local Motors (3dprint.com)

Submitted by ErnieKey
ErnieKey writes: Phoenix-based Local Motors 3D printed their first Strati car last September, and has been going strong since, announcing the Project [Redacted] design challenge in June seeking input from their co-creation community for a road-ready 3D printed car design. A panel of judges reviewed more than 60 entries, and this morning the winners were announced, with Oregon-based Kevin Lo taking the Grand Prize for his design, a customizable vehicle called the Reload Redacted — Swim and Sport. The modular design includes both the 'Swim' and the 'Sport' body types, and both allow for customization and repair via snap modularity.

Submission + - Microsoft introduces new music subscription service - Groove (windows10update.com)

Submitted by Ammalgam
Ammalgam writes: After being spotted yesterday lurking in Windows 10’s mobile utility app, Microsoft has confirmed that Groove is the company’s new $10 a month music subscription service. Offering 40 millions songs, ad free, with playlists and radio stations built around artists or moods, the product is being positioned as a direct rival for the likes of Apple Music, but with no distinguishing features of its own. Groove allows access to your music from any device or service, including iTunes, on any Windows 10 device, thanks to cloud storage on OneDrive. Microsoft is also expected to release an iOS and Android as well.

Submission + - 2,200 year-old town uses Twitter to run the entire city (citiesofthefuture.eu) 1

Submitted by dkatana
dkatana writes: Jun's administration is using Twitter to reduce bureaucracy, serve its citizens, and run a more efficient administration.

Former Twitter's CEO Dick Costelo visited the town of Jun [pronounced "hoon"] in Granada last April to see first hand how the city administration could run all basic services using the platform.

According to mayor José Antonio Rodríguez Salas (@JoseantonioJun) all city's paperwork is done on Twitter.

All public employees have a Twitter account, including the town’s police officer (@PoliciaJun), the town electrician, and the street sweeper (@BarredoraJun). Mayor Rodríguez Salas, who has been in the town’s government since 1991 and became mayor in 2005, personally answers his account, which has over 350,000 followers, more than the mayors of Madrid, New York and Barcelona.

Submission + - Extreme Reduction Gearing Device Offers an Amazing Gear Ratio of 11 Million to 1 (3dprint.com)

Submitted by ErnieKey
ErnieKey writes: The 3D printed extreme reduction gearing device, created by long-time puzzle maker M. Oskar van Deventer, may leave you puzzled for its obvious applications, but the coaxial cranking mechanism offers potential in a variety of real-world applications with multi-colored gears that move in opposite directions at a ratio of 11,373,076 : 1. This 3D printed reduction gearing device is compact and multi-colored, and looks deceivingly simple at first glance. Developed through a complex algorithm, it could possibly offer potential as parts for machines like 3D printers, aerospace and automotive components, as well as perhaps robotics and a variety of motors.

Submission + - Supercomputing Cluster Immersed in Oil Yields Extreme Efficiency (datacenterfrontier.com)

Submitted by 1sockchuck
1sockchuck writes: A new supercomputing cluster immersed in tanks of dielectric fluid has posted extreme efficiency ratings. The Vienna Scientific Cluster 3 combines several efficiency techniques to create a system that is stingy in its use of power, cooling and water. VSC3 recorded a PUE (Power Usage Efficiency) of 1.02, putting it in the realm of data centers run by Google and Facebook. The system avoids the use of chiillers and air handlers, and doesn't require any water to cool the fluid in the cooling tanks. Limiting use of water is a growing priority for data center operators, as cooling towers can use large volumes of water resources. The VSC3 system packs 600 teraflops of computing power into 1,000 square feet of floor space.

Submission + - Little Girl Moves Her Arms for the First Time Thanks to 3D Printed 'Angel Arms' (3dprint.com)

Submitted by ErnieKey
ErnieKey writes: Two Grand Valley State University students, named Joseph Kissling and Samuel Brooks, have helped a little girl move her arms for the first time, thanks to their 3D printed "Angle Arms" exoskeleton. Lylah, who suffers from a condition called Spinal Muscular Atrophy, is now able to play around with her toys, thanks to these two young men.

Submission + - Creating bacterial 'fight clubs' to discover new drugs (vanderbilt.edu)

Submitted by Science_afficionado
Science_afficionado writes: Vanderbilt chemists have shown that creating bacterial "fight clubs" is an effective way to discover natural biomolecules with the properties required for new drugs. They have demonstrated the method by using it to discover a new class of antibiotic with anti-cancer properties.

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