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Submission + - Hubble spots source of short GRB (redorbit.com)

Submitted by symbolset
symbolset writes: Researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope have imaged some evidence that the merger of neutron stars is responsible for producing a short-duration gamma ray burst. On June 3rd the Swift gamma-ray burst (GRB) mission detected GRB 130603B, a burst lasting only one tenth of a second nearly 4 billion lightyears away. Imaging with Hubble they located a small red dot which, over the course of the following two weeks dimmed. Cites an article in yesterday's special online edition of Nature.

Submission + - Less vaccination then, more measles now (wsj.com)

Submitted by DavidHumus
DavidHumus writes: Some of the longer-term effects of the anti-vaccination movement of past decades is now evident in a dramatic increase in measles. From the article: A measles outbreak infected 1,219 people in southwest Wales between November 2012 and early July, compared with 105 cases in all of Wales in 2011.

There continues to be no credible evidence that vaccination causes autism but the a significant minority believes this anyway.

Submission + - Some volcanoes 'scream' at ever-higher pitches until they blow their tops (washington.edu)

Submitted by vinces99
vinces99 writes: Swarms of small earthquakes often precede a volcanic eruption. They can reach such rapid succession that they create a "harmonic tremor" that resembles sound made by some musical instruments. A new analysis of an eruption sequence at Alaska's Redoubt Volcano in March 2009 shows the harmonic tremor glided to substantially higher frequencies and then stopped abruptly just before six of the eruptions. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Volcano Observatory have dubbed the highest-frequency harmonic tremor at Redoubt Volcano “the screams” because the episodes reach such high pitch compared with a 1-to-5 hertz starting point. Alicia Hotovec-Ellis, a University of Washington doctoral student in Earth and space sciences and an author of two papers examining the phenomenon, has created a 10-second recording and a one-minute recording that provides a 60-times faster representation of harmonic tremor and small earthquakes.

Submission + - What Medical Tests Should Teach Us about the NSA Surveillance Program

Submitted by Davak
Davak writes: In many ways finding the small amount of terrorists within the United States is like screening a population of people for a rare disease. A physician explains why collecting excessive data is actually dangerous. Each time a test is run, the number of people incorrectly identified quickly dwarfs the correct matches. Just like in medicine, being incorrectly labelled has serious consequences.

Submission + - Intel Caught Cheating in AnTuTu Benchmark To Show-up ARM? (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Recently, industry analysts came forward with the dubious claim that Intel's Clover Trail+ low power processor for mobile devices had somehow seized a massive lead over ARM's products, though there were suspicious discrepancies in the popular AnTuTu benchmark that was utilized to showcase performance. It turns out that the situation is far shadier than initially thought. The version used in testing with the benchmark isn't just tilted to favor Intel — it seems to flat-out cheat to accomplish it. The new 3.3 version of AnTuTu was compiled using Intel's C++ Compiler, while GCC was used for the ARM variants. The Intel code was auto-vectorized, the ARM code wasn't — there are no NEON instructions in the ARM version of the application. Granted, GCC isn't currently very good at auto-vectorization, but NEON is now standard on every Cortex-A9 and Cortex-A15 SoC — and these are the parts people will be benchmarking. But compiler optimizations are just the beginning. Apparently the Intel code deliberately breaks the benchmark's function. At a certain point, it runs a loop that's meant to be performed 32x just once, then reports to the benchmark that the task completed successfully. Now, the optimization in question is part of ICC (the Intel C++ compiler), but was only added recently. It's not the kind of procedure you'd call by accident. AnTuTu has released an updated "new" version of the benchmark in which Intel performance drops back down 20-50%. Systems based on high-end ARM devices again win the benchmark overall, as they did previously.

Submission + - Judge Orders Porn Suspect to Decrypt His Hard Drives 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After having first decided against forcing a suspect to decrypt a number of hard drives that were believed to be his and to contain child pornography, a U.S. judge has changed his mind and has now ordered the suspect to provide law enforcement agents heading the investigation with a decrypted version of the contents of his encrypted data storage system, or the passwords needed to decrypt forensic copies of those storage devices. Jeffrey Feldman, a software developer at Rockwell Automation, has still not been charged with any crime, and the prosecution initially couldn't prove conclusively that the encrypted hard drives contained child pornography or were actually Feldman's, which led U.S. Magistrate Judge William Callahan to decide that forcing him to decrypt them would violate his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Submission + - In Soviet Russia, Mammoth Clones You! (rt.com)

Submitted by kodiaktau
kodiaktau writes: While uncovering an adult female mammoth carcass, scientists discovered a baby Mammoth Elephant that still contains traces of blood and intact DNA. Interestingly the blood was still flowing at -10C. The discovery brings up the debate of cloning DNA and reproducing a mammoth in a laboratory setting.

Submission + - New best way to nuke a short-notice asteroid (space.com)

Submitted by doug141
doug141 writes: A scientist proposes the best way to deal with an asteroid on short notice is to hit it with an impacter, followed by a nuke in the crater. Delta 4 rockets could do the job. Grant money has been awarded and study is underway.

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