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Submission + - Elderly drivers in Japan could be limited to vehicles with automatic braking 1

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Japan's National Police Agency has proposed several new rules to regulate elderly drivers, including limiting them to vehicles with automatic braking systems to increase public safety. The panel was tasked with finding ways to mitigate the risks associated with dementia, poor vision and deteriorating physical strength associated with seniors. Deadly traffic accidents caused by people 75 or older are on the rise, though fatal accidents overall are on the decline. Automatic braking systems apply the car's brakes if a collision is imminent.

Separately Japanese authorities are offering elderly drivers who give up their licences a discount on their funerals.

Submission + - Stephen Hawking: "I Am Convinced That Humans Need to Leave Earth" (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Back in May, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking made yet another doomsday prediction. He said that humanity has 100 years left on Earth, which knocked 900 years off the prediction he made in November 2016, which had given humanity 1,000 years left. With his new estimate, Hawking suggested the only way to prolong humanity's existence is for us to find a new home, on another planet. Speaking at the Starmus Festival in Trondheim, Norway on Tuesday, Hawking reiterated his point: "If humanity is to continue for another million years, our future lies in boldly going where no one else has gone before," he explained, according to the BBC. Specifically, Hawking said that we should aim for another Moon landing by 2020, and work to build a lunar base in the next 30 years — projects that could help prepare us to send human beings to Mars by 2025. "We are running out of space and the only places to go to are other worlds. It is time to explore other solar systems. Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth," Hawking added.

Submission + - Scientists Think They Might Have Found Evidence for Parallel Universe (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by LCooke
LCooke writes: A international research team led by the University of Durham thinks a mysterious cold spot in the universe could offer evidence of a parallel universe. The cold spot could have resulted after our universe collided with another. Physicist Tom Shanks said, "...the Cold Spot might be taken as the first evidence for the multiverse — and billions of other universes may exist like our own."

Submission + - Chemists may be zeroing in on chemical reactions that sparked the first life (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: DNA is better known, but many researchers today believe that life on Earth got started with its cousin RNA, since that nucleic acid can act as both a repository of genetic information and a catalyst to speed up biochemical reactions. But those favoring this “RNA world” hypothesis have struggled for decades to explain how the molecule’s four building blocks could have arisen from the simpler compounds present during our planet’s early days. Now chemists have identified simple reactions that, using the raw materials on early Earth, can synthesize close cousins of all four building blocks. The resemblance isn’t perfect, but it suggests scientists may be closing in on a plausible scenario for how life on Earth began.

Submission + - Humans Accidentally Made a Space Cocoon For Ourselves Out of Radio Waves (vice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Humans have accidentally created a protective bubble around Earth by using very low frequency (VLF) radio transmissions to contact submarines in the ocean. It sounds nuts, but according to recent research published in Space Science Reviews, underwater communication through VLF channels has an outer space dimension. This video explainer, released by NASA on Wednesday, visualizes how radio waves wafting into space interact with the particles surrounding Earth, and influence their motion. Satellites in certain high-altitude orbits, such as NASA's particle-watching Van Allen Probes, have observed these VLF ripples creating an "impenetrable boundary," a phrase coined by study co-author Dan Baker, director of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. This doesn't mean impenetrable to spacecraft or asteroids, per se, but rather to potentially harmful particle showers created by turbulent space weather.

Submission + - US and EU Reject Expanding Laptop Ban To Flights From Europe (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: US and EU officials have decided against a ban on laptops and tablets in cabin baggage on flights from Europe. But after a four-hour meeting in Brussels to discuss the threats to aviation security, officials said other measures were still being considered. US officials had previously said they were looking into extending to Europe a ban on electronics on flights from eight mostly Muslim countries. The measure was introduced over fears a bomb could be concealed in a device. The meeting was requested by EU officials after recent reports suggested US authorities had new information regarding laptop parts being turned into explosives.

Submission + - How The Lights Have Gone Out For The People Of Syria (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Six years of war in Syria have had a devastating effect on millions of its people. One of the most catastrophic impacts has been on the country’s electricity network. Images from Nasa, obtained by BBC Arabic, show clearly how the lights have gone out during the course of the conflict, leaving people to survive with little to no power. Each timelapse frame shows an average of the light emitted at night every month from 2012, one year after the war began. They show that the areas where Syrians can turn lights on at night, power their daily lives and get access to life-saving medical equipment, have shrunk dramatically.

Submission + - Extracting and Comparing Data from 10 Sleep Tracking Devices and Apps (brown.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Brown University team extracts the previously irretrievable sleep tracking data from the Hello Sense, from the Microsoft Band, and other popular devices by decompiling the apps and using man-in-the-middle attacks. Using this data, they compare their detection of sleep/wake and sleep stages on 10 devices and apps for someone wearing them simultaneously over 9 days to see how they match up. There are some correlations with sleep/wake detection, but sleep stage seems more spurious.

Submission + - NASA Won't Fly Astronauts On First Orion-SLS Test Flight Around the Moon (space.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The first flight of NASA's next-generation heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), is now scheduled for 2019 and will not include a human crew, agency officials said today (May 12). As of 2016, NASA had planned for the SLS' first flight to take place in 2018, without a crew on board. But the transition team that the Trump administration sent to the agency earlier this year asked for an internal evaluation of the possibility of launching a crew atop the SLS inside the agency's Orion space capsule. Robert Lightfoot, NASA's acting administrator, said during a news conference today that, based on the results of this internal evaluation, a crewed flight would be "technically feasible," but the agency will proceed with its initial plan to make the rocket's first flight uncrewed. The internal evaluation "really reaffirmed that the baseline plan we had in place was the best way for us to go," Lightfoot said. "We have a good handle on how that uncrewed mission will actually help [the first crewed mission of SLS] be a safer mission when we put crew on there." SLS' first flight will be called Exploration Mission 1, or EM-1, and will send an uncrewed Orion capsule (which has already made one uncrewed test flight, aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket) on a roughly three-week trip around the moon. The first crewed flight, EM-2, was originally scheduled to follow in 2021.

Submission + - The Woman Who Saved Manhattan From A Freeway Running Through It (bbc.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: The BBC reports: A massive freeway project dreamed up by city planner Robert Moses would have destroyed Greenwich Village and altered much of Lower Manhattan if not for one woman’s efforts — those of Jane Jacobs. As vast tracts of this US journalist’s adopted New York were razed to make way for theoretically fast-flowing urban freeways potted about with soulless high-rise housing projects for the urban poor, Jane Jacobs, skeptical of grand plans and nobody’s victim, took on the City of New York through her urgent writing and by galvanizing protest groups who took to the streets of Manhattan to save the city from being dismembered, disinfected and depopulated. Robert Moses wanted to clean up New York while investing heavily in its infrastructure: its public parks, swimming pools, bridges, playgrounds, parkways, Shea Stadium, Lincoln Center and the United Nations headquarters. For many years, New York’s intellectual elite supported such developments, including the destruction of working-class neighborhoods Moses saw as “cancerous growths” in need of surgical removal.

Submission + - Going After Netflix, Cannes Bans Streaming-Only Movies From Competition Slots

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Cannes Film Festival is taking a stand against Netflix. Responding to a rumor that the streaming service’s Okja, directed by Bong Joon Ho, and The Meyerowitz Stories, directed by Noah Baumbach, would be excluded from awards consideration after being included in the Competition lineup, the festival released a statement clarifying and adjusting its positioning going forward. The short version: From now on, if you want to compete at Cannes, your movie had better be released in French movie theaters—not just online.

There has long been a point of tension between Cannes and Netflix, to the extent where the inclusion of Okja and The Meyerowitz Stories came as a bit of a surprise. Netflix films had previously been snubbed and festival officials had advocated for “discouraging” the streaming service’s online-first approach to release. The two movies included in Cannes’ lineup this year are slated for theatrical bows stateside, but according to the festival’s official statement, “no agreement has been reached” to get the moves into French cinemas and the effort to reach one was made “in vain.” However, the statement does clarify that this rule goes into effect next year, so Okja and The Meyerowitz Stories will remain in competition and eligible for the Palme d’Or.

Submission + - Buzz Aldrin to NASA: Retire the ISS ASAP To Reach Mars (space.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If NASA and its partner agencies are serious about putting boots on Mars in the near future, they should pull the plug on the International Space Station (ISS) at the earliest opportunity, Buzz Aldrin said. "We must retire the ISS as soon as possible," the former Apollo 11 moonwalker said Tuesday (May 9) during a presentation at the 2017 Humans to Mars conference in Washington, D.C. "We simply cannot afford $3.5 billion a year of that cost." Instead, Aldrin said, NASA should continue to hand over activities in low Earth orbit (LEO) to private industry partners. Indeed, the space agency has been encouraging that move by awarding contracts to companies such as SpaceX, Orbital ATK and Boeing to ferry cargo and crew to and from the ISS. Bigelow Aerospace, Axiom Space or other companies should build and operate LEO space stations that are independent of the ISS, he added. Ideally, the first of these commercial outposts would share key orbital parameters with the station that China plans to have up and running by the early 2020s, to encourage cooperation with the Chinese, Aldrin said. Establishing private outposts in LEO is just the first step in Aldrin's plan for Mars colonization, which depends heavily on "cyclers" — spacecraft that move continuously between two cosmic destinations, efficiently delivering people and cargo back and forth.

Submission + - Macron Message to US Climate Scientists (newsweek.com) 1

Submitted by Thelasko
Thelasko writes: French President elect Emmanuel Macron has a message to US scientists and engineers working on climate change. "Please, come to France. You are welcome. It's your nation. We like innovation. We want innovative people. We want people working on climate change, energy renewables and new technologies. France is your nation."

Submission + - IBM: Remote Working Is Great! (For Everyone Except Us) (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: IBM, the company that just weeks ago said it was doing away with its work-from-home policy, is now preaching the benefits of telecommuting to customers.

Big Blue's Smarter Workforce Group says a recent panel it hosted at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) conference concluded that customers who work remotely are "more engaged, have stronger trust in leadership and much stronger intention to stay."

"These findings mirror what an IBM Smarter Workforce Institute study found," the group wrote.

"Challenging the modern myths of remote working shares employee research revealing that remote workers are highly engaged, more likely to consider their workplaces as innovative, happier about their job prospects and less stressed than their more traditional, office-bound colleagues."

This is posted without any apparent sense of irony, as IBM said just weeks ago that remote workers were not part of its "recipe for success" and could no longer be permitted to work anywhere other than its six regional offices in various techie hubs around the US.

Submission + - Facebook takes out full-page newspaper ads to help U.K. citizens detect fake new (venturebeat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has today taken out full-page ads in U.K. newspapers ahead of the general election that’s scheduled to take place next month. These ads are designed to educate the public about how to spot fake news online.

Appearing in nationwide publications, including the Guardian and the Telegraph, Facebook’s “Tips for spotting false news” ad is similar to the one it published in France last month and covers such areas as being skeptical of misleading headlines, spotting manipulated images, and checking the URL of the story. The advice offered may not always help, however — under “Consider the photos,” for example, the text reads: “You can search for the photo or image to verify where it came from.” But anyone requiring advice on how to spot fake news through a newspaper ad likely isn’t tech savvy enough to know how to do that or to even understand what it means. Alongside these ads, Facebook also revealed that is has deleted “tens of thousands” of accounts that it believes were deliberately spreading fake news and that it is also updating its algorithms to demote articles it suspects of carrying dubious messaging.

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