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Submission + - So many birds are migrating that they're appearing on weather radar (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Between 2010 and 2013, the radars were upgraded with technology that allows both horizontal and vertical pulses of energy to be emitted. By comparing the returned signals, meteorologists can determine the shape of whatever is in the sky. Raindrops are a bit wider than they are tall, and shaped like hamburger buns; snowflakes are — obviously — flaky; but lofted tornado debris is spiked or jagged.
Birds, meanwhile, appear as somewhat spiked objects, as do insects. But insects appear a bit more round and uniform on radar, and are also lightweight enough to become caught up in the wind. Birds travel higher than most bugs, and also can fly against or perpendicular to the wind. After all, they have places to go — southward. Meteorologists can also determine their direction of motion through their analyses.

Submission + - How USB-C Ended the Great Connector Wars (itbrew.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It's easy to forget the dark ages of peripheral connectivity. A twisted nest of proprietary connectors was the norm. Then, in 2014, a hero emerged: USB-C. It promised a reversible connector, high-speed data transfer, and enough power to charge a laptop. It was a revolution. This article from IT Brew breaks down the three waves of USB-C adoption, from its humble beginnings in the PC industry to its EU-mandated takeover of the mobile world. It's how a single connector brought order to the chaos and became the undisputed king of the hardware industry.

Comment Shrooms (Score 1) 56

by future assassin (#65643268) Attached to: LSD Shows Promise For Reducing Anxiety In Drugmaker's Midstage Study

Not into psyches but have done acid when I was younger and prefer to do 250mg of MDMA/MDA for fun but a few years back did some experimenting with shooms. I'd take about .5g and wait about 45min when I start to feel a tiny weed like buzz then take another .5g. You don't trip but get a weed like high with out the lethargic feel of weed and no munches. Next two days after where super relaxing and way less anxiety.

Only issue is you build up tolerance fast so I'd just stuck to Saturday nights for a nice relaxing sunday and fist day at work on Monday. I do get a similar experience with MDMA when doing about 75/100mg but that's not as fun as being blasted on 250mg+ but the hanger last a few days especially with MDA.

Submission + - 3 decades of satellite data confirm predictions of early sea level rise models (wiley.com)

Submitted by Mr. Dollar Ton
Mr. Dollar Ton writes: Three decades of satellite-based measurements of global sea-level change enable a comparison of models and reality and show that early IPCC climate projections were remarkably accurate. Predictions of glacier mass loss and thermal expansion of seawater were comparatively successful, but the ice-sheet contributions were underestimated. The findings provide confidence in model-based climate projections.

Key findings:

* IPCC projections in the mid-1990s of global sea-level change over the next 30 years were remarkably robust

* The largest disparities between projections and observations were due to underestimated dynamic mass loss of ice sheets

* Comparison of past projections with subsequent observations gives confidence in future climate projections

Comment Re:Credible pegs = stability Re:Designed by idiots (Score 1) 134

by dynamo (#65603552) Attached to: Wyoming Launches First State-Backed Stablecoin on Seven Blockchains

My point was not about arbitrage, though that's another issue to worry about and imo you are understating it significantly.

The bigger deal is if you bought some of this crypto on blockchain X, and you want to pay someone who bought theirs on blockchain Y, you won't be able to send it to them without an intermediary service, forcing centralization which defeats the purpose of having a coin in the first place.

Comment Designed by idiots (Score 1) 134

by dynamo (#65601012) Attached to: Wyoming Launches First State-Backed Stablecoin on Seven Blockchains

You can't have a single cryptocurrency be on more than one blockchain and be one single set of accounts / aka one "coin". If it's really on seven different blockchains, then this is actually seven different cryptocurrencies that will have seven different prices at any given time, that could be vastly different on different blockchains, not even taking multiple exchanges into account.

If they really did it this way, this crypto was designed by people who don't understand what crypto is or how it actually works. And if they are going to claim these seven different coins are actually one single one, you'll never know which price is the real one for what you have until they start publishing all seven prices.

Sounds like more of what I'd expect from this administration. I would have hoped that with all the huge crypto companies propping up this dictatorship though, they could have spared at least one or two experts who would say this is wrong.

Submission + - Recreating a Rare Mutation Could Grant Almost Universal Virus Immunity For Days (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The mutation, a deficiency in interferon-stimulated gene 15 (ISG15), causes a mild yet persistent inflammation across the body. Examining patients' immune cells revealed they'd had the usual run of encounters with flu, measles, chickenpox, and mumps, yet they'd never reported feeling particularly ill as a result.

Further investigation revealed their body's virus-fighting proteins were constantly on a low level alert, never really put away for later like in most people.

Submission + - New Zealand Air Traffic Control failure likely caused by data transfer issue

Submitted by twosat
twosat writes: The air traffic control failure that disrupted transtasman flights at the weekend was caused by an issue with the cross-system transfer of flight information data, says Airways New Zealand’s boss. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/...

New Zealand’s oceanic air traffic control system was disrupted by a technical fault in Airways’ main Operational Control System (OCS) platform on Saturday night.

The fault closed oceanic airspace, forcing five Australia-bound flights to circle off New Zealand’s coast, and delaying planes in both countries.

Submission + - By learning to harness light like nature, we're launching a new era of green che (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: In the Polyzos research group at the School of Chemistry, we have developed a new class of photocatalysts that, like plants, can absorb energy from multiple photons.

This breakthrough allows us to harness light energy more effectively, driving challenging and energy-demanding chemical reactions.

Submission + - In Barcelona, certain buses run on biomethane produced from human waste (lemonde.fr)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Odorless, quiet, sustainable. On the last day of July, passengers boarded Barcelona's V3 bus line with no idea where its fuel came from. Written in large letters on the bus façade, just below its name "Nimbus," a sign clearly stated: "This bus runs on biomethane produced from eco-factory sludge." Still, the explanation was likely too vague for most to grasp its full meaning. The moist matter from wastewater treated at the Baix Llobregat treatment plant was used to produce the biomethane. In other words: the human waste of more than 1.5 million residents of the Catalan city.

Submission + - AI Is Talking Behind Our Backs About Glue-Eating and Killing Us All (vice.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: A study released July 20 on arXiv by Anthropic and Truthful AI shows that large language models can slip subliminal messages to one another. They don’t need to literally spell things out. A string of numbers or lines of code is enough to pass along biases, preferences, and some disturbingly violent suggestions.

Submission + - Engineers Determine Why NASA Rovers Keep Getting Stuck (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: The first extraterrestrial robotic rover was launched from Earth in 1970. It's only now, more than half a century later, that scientists have figured out why these marvels of ingenuity and engineering keep getting stuck in the soils of alien worlds.

"In retrospect, the idea is simple: We need to consider not only the gravitational pull on the rover but also the effect of gravity on the sand to get a better picture of how the rover will perform on the Moon," explains mechanical engineer Dan Negrut of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"Our findings underscore the value of using physics-based simulation to analyze rover mobility on granular soil."

Submission + - Meteorite that Crashed Through Roof of Georgia Home Predates Earth (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A meteorite fragment that burst through the roof of a home in Georgia, US has been determined to be billions of years old and to predate the Earth, according to University of Georgia geology professor Scott Harris.

"These are objects that go back to the original material formed 4.56 billion years ago," Harris explained. "So, in the days slightly before the formation of the planets themselves, and at least the rocky interior planets. And, you know, those are the basic building blocks then of our rocky planets and, so that's one of the reasons that scientists are interested in studying them is it shows us about some of the processes that were active during the early days of the solar system."

Submission + - Sweet disguise: Body hides its own RNA from the immune system with sugar (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: To our immune system, naked RNA is a sign of a viral or bacterial invasion and must be attacked. But our own cells also have RNA. To ward off trouble, our cells clothe their RNA in sugars, Vijay Rathinam and colleagues at the UConn School of Medicine and Ryan Flynn at Boston Children's Hospital report in Nature.

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