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Biotech

Electron Microscopes Close To Imaging Individual Atoms 55

Posted by timothy from the it's-down-there-somewhere-let-me-take-another-look dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Science: Today's digital photos are far more vivid than just a few years ago, thanks to a steady stream of advances in optics, detectors, and software. Similar advances have also improved the ability of machines called cryo-electron microscopes (cryo-EMs) to see the Lilliputian world of atoms and molecules. Now, researchers report that they've created the highest ever resolution cryo-EM image, revealing a druglike molecule bound to its protein target at near atomic resolution. The resolution is so sharp that it rivals images produced by x-ray crystallography, long the gold standard for mapping the atomic contours of proteins. This newfound success is likely to dramatically help drugmakers design novel medicines for a wide variety of conditions.

Submission + - Electron microscopes close to imaging individual atoms (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today’s digital photos are far more vivid than just a few years ago, thanks to a steady stream of advances in optics, detectors, and software. Similar advances have also improved the ability of machines called cryo-electron microscopes (cryo-EMs) to see the Lilliputian world of atoms and molecules. Now, researchers report that they’ve created the highest ever resolution cryo-EM image, revealing a druglike molecule bound to its protein target at near atomic resolution. The resolution is so sharp that it rivals images produced by x-ray crystallography, long the gold standard for mapping the atomic contours of proteins. This newfound success is likely to dramatically help drugmakers design novel medicines for a wide variety of conditions.
Build

Centimeter-Resolution GPS For Smartphones, VR, Drones 63

Posted by timothy from the don't-fall-off-the-edge dept.
agent elevator writes: UT Austin engineers have come up with a software fix that corrects for the errors GPS has when using the tiny antennas on smartphones. They demoed it using a VR setup and got 2-cm accuracy. For now it runs on a separate processor from the smartphone, but they say they'll fix that. The demo appears to have been done on a rooftop. VR. Outside. On a roof. Doesn't seem like a good idea, does it?

Submission + - This $9 computer might be more useful than Raspberry Pi (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: A small team of engineers and artists that make up Next Thing Co. launched a Kickstarter campaign today for Chip, their $9 single-board computer that boasts Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a larger processor than Raspberry Pi's most powerful models.

The tiny device runs a 1 GHz R8 ARM processor, and comes with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage. In comparison, the Raspberry Pi B and B+ models feature a 900 MHz quad-core ARM Cortex 7 processor. The Chip comes with a built-in composite output to connect to monitors and supports adapters for VGA or HDMI. It runs Debian Linux and comes preloaded with the Scratch programming language for those who might be new to coding.

Most noteworthy, though, is the Pocket Chip – a small device with a crude-looking screen and hard-key keyboard that plugs into the Chip and makes for portable computing. It may not be an iPhone killer, but it's an impressively inexpensive mobile form factor.
Government

FAA Program Tests Drones Flying Beyond Pilot's Line-of-Sight 37

Posted by timothy from the direct-supervision dept.
itwbennett writes: FAA administrator Michael P. Huerta announced Wednesday a new Pathfinder Program under which the agency has partnered with three U.S. companies to explore three key types of unmanned operations, possibly paving the way for operations such as the aerial delivery of packages as proposed by companies like Amazon.com. One of the companies the FAA has partnered with is drone manufacturer PrecisionHawk, which will be surveying crops in rural areas using unmanned aircraft flying outside of the pilot's direct vision.

Comment Re:Unlike sports, e-sports are owned (Score 1) 113

by tepples (#49640425) Attached to: Counter-Strike Finally Gets the League It Deserves

The organizations you mention are leagues, and leagues compete with leagues. The NFL, for example, had no legal power to prohibit competing leagues, such as the AFL, the USFL, or the XFL, from playing and broadcasting gridiron football because nobody owns gridiron football. The NFL owns only broadcasts of NFL games, not of any other league's games. A video game, on the other hand, is a copyrighted work, which gives its publisher the legal power to determine which leagues are allowed to exist.
Censorship

Defense Distributed Sues State Department Over 3-D Gun Censorship 312

Posted by timothy from the more-of-those-darn-illegal-shapes dept.
SonicSpike writes with word that Cody Wilson, whose projects to create (and disseminate the plans for) printable guns have fascinated some and horrified others, is not going to quietly comply with the U.S. State Deparment's demand that he remove such plans from the internet. Wilson, says Wired, is picking a fight that could pit proponents of gun control and defenders of free speech against each other in an age when the line between a lethal weapon and a collection of bits is blurrier than ever before. Wilson's gun manufacturing advocacy group Defense Distributed, along with the gun rights group the Second Amendment Foundation, on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the State Department and several of its officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry. In their complaint, they claim that a State Department agency called the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) violated their first amendment right to free speech by telling Defense Distributed that it couldn't publish a 3-D printable file for its one-shot plastic pistol known as the Liberator, along with a collection of other printable gun parts, on its website.

Comment Re:Haven't quite got my attention yet (Score 3, Interesting) 318

by TWX (#49640375) Attached to: Tesla To Unveil Its $35,000 Model 3 In March 2016
I have a beater Nissan Hardbody for much the same reason. I rarely drive it when I'm not using to haul cargo; either I'm dirty and don't want to get my car's interior dirty, or one of the other vehicles is broken. Otherwise it's used when a truck is actually needed.

I've thought about converting it to electric. When I was in high school in the nineties we had a Porsche 914 that had been donated with a blown motor and it was converted to electric and raced in the electric car classes. Pull the bed, get heavier duty springs from one of the late eighties 3/4 ton Hardbodies with the 8' bed, build battery boxes that attach to the frame rails, reinstall the bed with a hinge point aft of the axle to make battery service easier, move the transmission as far back as possible without cutting the floor too much, install the electric motor to the transmission with an adapter plate, then put more batteries under the hood and beef up the front springs. The biggest problem is getting the controller part right.

Submission + - 25 Percent of Cars Cause 90 Percent of Air Pollution 2

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Sara Novak reports that according to a recent study, “badly tuned” cars and trucks make up one quarter of the vehicles on the road, but cause 95 percent of black carbon, also known as soot, 93 percent of carbon monoxide, and 76 percent of volatile organic chemicals like benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes. “The most surprising thing we found was how broad the range of emissions was,” says Greg Evans. “As we looked at the exhaust coming out of individual vehicles, we saw so many variations. How you drive, hard acceleration, age of the vehicle, how the car is maintained – these are things we can influence that can all have an effect on pollution.” Researchers at the University of Toronto looked at 100,000 cars as they drove past air sampling probes on one of Toronto’s major roads. An automated identification and integration method was applied to high time resolution air pollutant measurements of in-use vehicle emissions performed under real-world conditions at a near-road monitoring station in Toronto, Canada during four seasons, through month-long campaigns in 2013–2014. Based on carbon dioxide measurements, over 100 000 vehicle-related plumes were automatically identified and fuel-based emission factors for nitrogen oxides; carbon monoxide; particle number, black carbon; benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes (BTEX); and methanol were determined for each plume. Evans and his team found that policy changes need to better target cars that are causing the majority of the air pollution. “The ultrafine particles are particularly troubling,” says Evans. “Because they are over 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, they have a greater ability to penetrate deeper within the lung and travel in the body.”

Comment Re: Around the block (Score 3, Insightful) 429

by TWX (#49640163) Attached to: Why Companies Should Hire Older Developers
Inexperience can even come in the form of someone that has experience with a small version, but never worked in a huge organization. Some things simply don't scale well, and the labor estimates to implement or maintain are WAY off.

It also doesn't help when the new manager assumes that existing employees don't know how to do anything and micromanages, such that the employees stop engaging him. The boss ends up stepping in a lot of piles that he didn't see because no one has any desire to help him avoid them.

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