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Earth

EPA Says No Evidence That Fracking Has "Widespread" Impact On Drinking Water 266

Posted by samzenpus from the go-ahead-and-drink-it dept.
sycodon writes: A long-awaited EPA report on hydraulic fracturing concludes that the extraction process has "not led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources." The report also cautions of potential contamination of water supplies if safeguards are not maintained. "The study was undertaken over several years and we worked very closely with industry throughout the process," Tom Burke, EPA's science advisor and deputy assistant administrator of EPA's Office of Research and Development, said on a conference call hosted by the agency.

Comment Re:That poor man (Score 1) 272

Cal residential rates average about 15cents/kwh, a 2.5KWH panel would need about 17.8 cents per kwh to save them $818 in the first year.

I don't know where you get your data, but I'm assuming that's the state average. In urban areas it is higher, much higher, especially if you go over "baseline." When I lived in Orange County we were never within baseline, because we actually turned on lights, cooked food, watched TV, and dared to run the AC when it was 100 degrees.
Iphone

A Text Message Can Crash An iPhone and Force It To Reboot 248

Posted by Soulskill from the easy-way-to-get-your-kids-to-put-the-phone-down dept.
DavidGilbert99 writes with news that a bug in iOS has made it so anyone can crash an iPhone by simply sending it a text message containing certain characters. "When the text message is displayed by a banner alert or notification on the lockscreen, the system attempts to abbreviate the text with an ellipsis. If the ellipsis is placed in the middle of a set of non-Latin script characters, including Arabic, Marathi and Chinese, it causes the system to crash and the phone to reboot." The text string is specific enough that it's unlikely to happen by accident, and users can disable text notification banners to protect themselves from being affected. However, if a user receives the crash-inducing text, they won't be able to access the Messages app without causing another crash. A similar bug crashed applications in OS X a few years ago.
Earth

Bats' White-Nose Syndrome May Be Cured 89

Posted by samzenpus from the wipe-your-nose dept.
New submitter alabamatoy writes: Several news outlets are reporting that a common bacteria may be proving successful in curing "white-nose syndrome" which has been decimating the bat populations across North America. A new treatment using a common bacterium was developed in Missouri by Forest Service scientists Sybill Amelon and Dan Lindner, and Chris Cornelison of Georgia State University. The Nature Conservancy reports: "On May 20, 2015, Scientists and conservationists gathered outside the historic Mark Twain Cave Complex in Hannibal, Missouri, to release back into the wild some of the first bats successfully treated for deadly White-Nose Syndrome." Bats are a key player in the environment, keeping insect populations under control, especially mosquitoes.
EU

EU Drops Plans For Safer Pesticides After Pressure From US 156

Posted by Soulskill from the say-it-don't-spray-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The European Union recently published plans to ban 31 pesticides containing chemicals linked to testicular cancer and male infertility. Those potential regulations have now been dropped after a U.S. business delegation said they would adversely affect trade negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. "Just weeks before the regulations were dropped there had been a barrage of lobbying from big European firms such as Dupont, Bayer and BASF over EDCs. The chemical industry association Cefic warned that the endocrines issue 'could become an issue that impairs the forthcoming EU-US trade negotiations.'"
NASA

Hubble Discovers a Fast-Aging Star Nicknamed "Nasty 1" 29

Posted by samzenpus from the vanity-plate-ideas dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, Astronomers have uncovered surprising new clues about a large, rapidly aging star whose behavior has never been seen before. The star is so strange in fact that astronomers have nicknamed it "Nasty 1," a play on its catalog name of NaSt1. Wolf-Rayet stars like NaSt1 are typically large, rapidly evolving stellar bodies that form by shedding their hydrogen-filled outer layers quickly, exposing a bright hot, helium-burning core. Nasty 1 is unique because it contains a disk like structure. "We were excited to see this disk-like structure because it may be evidence for a Wolf-Rayet star forming from a binary interaction," said Jon Mauerhan of UC Berkeley, lead author on the new Nasty 1 paper. "There are very few examples in the galaxy of this process in action because this phase is short-lived, perhaps lasting only a hundred thousand years, while the timescale over which a resulting disk is visible could be only ten thousand years or less."
Blackberry

Microsoft Reportedly May Acquire BlackBerry 129

Posted by samzenpus from the circle-of-business dept.
New submitter techtsp writes: Microsoft is just one one of many companies reportedly looking to get a bigger piece of the enterprise mobile market by buying BlackBerry. Reports claim that Chinese firms including Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi are also interested in picking up BlackBerry following the company's recent return to profitability. This report comes on the heels of BlackBerry announcing it is cutting jobs across its global business units in an attempt to consolidate its software, hardware and applications business.

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