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Submission + - Carlsberg and Coca-Cola Back Pioneering Project To Make Plant-Based Bottles (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A biochemicals company in the Netherlands hopes to kickstart investment in a pioneering project that hopes to make plastics from plant sugars rather than fossil fuels. The plans, devised by renewable chemicals company Avantium, have already won the support of beer-maker Carlsberg, which hopes to sell its pilsner in a cardboard bottle lined with an inner layer of plant plastic. Avantium’s chief executive, Tom van Aken, says he hopes to greenlight a major investment in the world-leading bioplastics plant in the Netherlands by the end of the year. The project, which remains on track despite the coronavirus lockdown, is set to reveal partnerships with other food and drink companies later in the summer.

The project has the backing of Coca-Cola and Danone, which hope to secure the future of their bottled products by tackling the environmental damage caused by plastic pollution and a reliance on fossil fuels. [...] Avantium’s plant plastic is designed to be resilient enough to contain carbonate drinks. Trials have shown that the plant plastic would decompose in one year using a composter, and a few years longer if left in normal outdoor conditions. But ideally, it should be recycled, said Van Aken. The bio-refinery plans to break down sustainable plant sugars into simple chemical structures that can then be rearranged to form a new plant-based plastic – which could appear on supermarket shelves by 2023.

Submission + - Meet the First NASA Astronauts SpaceX Will Launch To Orbit (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader writes: NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are about to star in the biggest spaceflight event of the decade: launching on the inaugural flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. For years, they’ve anticipated this moment, picturing throngs of people lined up on Florida’s beaches to watch them ascend into the sky. Now, their launch will likely look very different, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to grip the nation. That electric atmosphere they expected will mostly be absent for this monumental flight as NASA has urged spectators to watch the launch from home — and it’s what the two astronauts want, too.

Even though the atmosphere will be different, Hurley and Behnken, both longtime colleagues and friends, are still set to make history together when they board the Crew Dragon on May 27th. They’ll be the first passengers that SpaceX has ever launched into space, and they’ll also be the first people to launch to orbit from the United States since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. All of NASA’s astronauts have had to fly on Russian rockets out of Kazakhstan for nearly the last decade. But thanks to a partnership with NASA, SpaceX is set to start launching the agency’s astronauts from Florida once again with the Crew Dragon, beginning with Behnken and Hurley.

Submission + - Senate Passes Bill That Could Delist Chinese Companies From U.S. Stock Exchanges (marketwatch.com)

phalse phace writes: The U.S. Senate approved sweeping new legislation Wednesday that could ultimately bar many Chinese companies from listing shares on U.S. exchanges, or otherwise raising money from American investors.

Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, submitted the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act for unanimous consent, a bill co-sponsored by Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota. The bill was approved without objection.

The bill would require Chinese companies to establish they are not owned or controlled by a foreign government. Furthermore, they would be required to submit to an audit that can be reviewed by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the nonprofit body that oversees audits of all U.S. companies that seek to raise money in public markets.

The bill would also need to pass the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives before reaching the president’s desk to be signed into law.

Submission + - Cold War satellites inadvertently tracked species declines (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into orbit in 1957, the United States responded with its own spy satellites. The espionage program, known as Corona, sought to locate Soviet missile sites, but its Google Earth–like photography captured something unintended: snapshots of animals and their habitats frozen in time. Now, by comparing these images with modern data, scientists have found a way to track the decline of biodiversity in regions that lack historic records.

The researchers tested the approach on bobak marmot populations in the grassland region of northern Kazakhstan. There, Soviets converted millions of hectares of natural habitat into cropland in the 1960s. The scientists searched the satellites’ black and white film images on a U.S. Geological Survey database for signs of the squirrellike animal’s burrows. They identified more than 5000 historic marmot homes and compared them with contemporary digital images of the region, mapping more than 12,000 marmot burrows in all.

Overall, the researchers estimate the number of marmot burrows dropped by 14% since the ’60s. But the number of burrows in some of the oldest fields—those persistently disturbed by humans plowing grassland to plant wheat—plunged by much more—about 60%.

Comment Re:comparison (Score 1) 135

The article you point out is a bit misinformed, there are several papers out there specifying how to do (multi-resolution) motion-compensation in a lifting scheme; the implementation is not more complex. From my point of view, the main reason why the DWT is not attractive and only remains a topic of interest in the Academia is because all the patents surrounding it.

Comment Re:Evil patents (Score 1) 135

Exactly! The patents are not just underlying JPEG2000, they affect everything from multi-resolution analysis to the algorithms of DWTs. I speculate it's the reason why MPEG stayed away from it, even though the DWT is clearly supperior to the DCT.
Today it is not just the UHD resolutions that would benefit from JPEG2000. JPEG 2000 also supports arbitrary precision coding which is good for today's HDR which is starting to popup in consumer and cinema.
Anyway, this is a lost cause because everybody is moving to MPEG/AVC which addresses all of that.

Comment Re:comparison (Score 3, Informative) 135

They are basically just bringing the entropy coder from JPEG2000 into JPEG... Why the heck not just fully re-encode the images in lossless JPEG2000 instead? There is a good reason why the DWT was used instead of DCT on JPEG2000, it is because it yields higher coding efficiency. It is also why JPEG2000 is the standard format for digital cinema (yes, movies are coded intra-only with JPEG2000).

Comment Re:GOOD GRIEF! (Score 1) 570

It gets worse than that really. For example, most 100% fruit pulp juices need to be pasteurized so that they can be stored for longer in containment tanks before distribution. Some fruits (like orange) completely lose their flavor after pasteurization so the juice producers add artificial flavors to the juice after pasteurization to make it taste again like the original fruit... Ever wondered why all 100% orange pulp juices taste the same? Well now you have your answer, all juice brands pretty much use the same flavoring colorant...

Comment Re:I still want one (Score 2) 172

This is a product for morons who lack the ability to think critically: No more, no less.

You don't know anything about what you are talking about! I'm using these batterisers with my CD rewinder device right now and it allows to rewind 5 more CDs using a single battery! How great is this?

Comment Re:Exactly, here is an analogy (Score 1) 280

Also, from Uber itself:
https://www.uber.com/legal/ind...

These terms and conditions ("User Terms") apply to your visit to and your use of our website at www.uber.com (the "Website"), the Service and the Application (as defined below), as well as to all information, recommendations and/or services provided to you on or through the Website, the Service and the Application.

I wonder what is this "the Service" they keep talking about? :)

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