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Latest Articles: Science/Tech
Otto Wants Big Rigs to Drive Themselves 'Exit to Exit' - And Has a Plan to Make it Happen Fast
Post Date: 2016-05-23 01:23:14 by Tatarewicz
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LatinPost... What do you get when a couple dozen former Google, Apple, and Tesla employees get together? A startup called Otto -- quite possibly the most disruptive tech since the Internet. Until this week, when Backchannel published the first report about the company, Otto was a so-called "stealth startup." Led by 15 former Google engineers, including some behind Google's self-driving car and maps projects, the startup's approximately 40 employees have been working in secrecy on a different (and bigger) kind of self-driving technology. On late Monday night, Otto unveiled itself and its mission: To replace the country's fleet of (human-piloted) big rigs with the ...
World’s Largest Solar Plant Just Torched Itself
Post Date: 2016-05-22 02:15:37 by Tatarewicz
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Gizmodo... Misaligned mirrors are being blamed for a fire that broke out yesterday at the world’s largest solar power plant, leaving the high-tech facility crippled for the time being. It sounds like the plant’s workers suffered through a real hellscape, too. Damaged steam ducts and water pipes. (Image: San Bernardino County Fire Department via AP) A small fire was reported yesterday morning at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) in California, forcing a temporary shutdown of the facility. It’s now running at a third of its capacity (a second tower is down due to scheduled maintenance), and it’s not immediately clear when the damaged tower will restart. ...
The Problem With Smart Policing
Post Date: 2016-05-21 08:29:18 by Ada
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Cops nationwide secretly exploit intrusive technologies. Can’t you see the writing on the touchscreen? A techno-utopia is upon us. We’ve gone from smartphones at the turn of the twenty-first century to smart fridges and smart cars. The revolutionary changes to our everyday life will no doubt keep barreling along. By 2018, so predicts Gartner, an information technology research and advisory company, more than three million employees will work for “robo-bosses” and soon enough we—or at least the wealthiest among us—will be shopping in fully automated supermarkets and sleeping in robotic hotels. With all this techno-triumphalism permeating our digitally ...
22 Old Weather Proverbs That Are Actually True
Post Date: 2016-05-20 08:47:53 by Ada
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When you really think about it, the weather impacts our decisions every single day. What we wear, when we leave for our morning commute, the chores we do, the hobbies we partake in, the family activities we plan. And on and on the list goes of how our lives are influenced by the winds and skies. Today, we have meteorologists and entire government agencies dedicated to predicting the weather with high-tech computers and algorithms, but a hundred and two-hundred years ago (and more!), folks had to rely mostly on observation and rudimentary tools to predict the weather of the coming days. To help with this task of predicting the weather, farmers, sailors, and amateur meteorologists of all ...
Ex-Google Engineers Launch "Otto": Completely Driverless Truck Testing Underway
Post Date: 2016-05-18 11:08:42 by Horse
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Movement in the autonomous vehicle space accelerated once again. Four ex-Google engineers, including the man who built Google’s first self-driving car, announced “Otto”, an autonomous truck retrofitting business. The service isn’t vaporware. “Otto” is currently operating on Nevada highways. BackChannel reports The Man Who Built Google’s First Self-Driving Car Is Now a Trucker. Founded by four ex-Google engineers?—?including Anthony Levandowski, the man who built Google’s very first self-driving car?—?Otto is applying Google’s all-or- nothing approach to commercial big rigs: ditch human drivers, avoid thousands of road deaths, help ...
These new earbuds can translate languages for you in real-time
Post Date: 2016-05-18 06:41:47 by Tatarewicz
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ScienceAlert... As anybody who's ever tried to get by in a foreign country without much grasp of the local language can tell you, oversized hand gestures and speaking English loudly and slowly will only get you so far. But a nifty new wearable technology could soon make conversing with people from other cultures a much easier affair, with New York City-based startup Waverly Labs about to release what they're claiming is the world's first 'smart' earpiece that translates between users speaking different languages. Dubbed the Pilot, the earpiece is shaped much like a regular earbud, but comes without any wires or cables. It sits in your ear, and even without an internet ...
Futuristic device is helping scientists break solar-efficiency record
Post Date: 2016-05-18 06:32:51 by Tatarewicz
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Yahoo... Looking a little like the world-saving stones from sci-fi classic The Fifth Element, a new device is expected to have a big impact on renewable energy. Built by Mark Keevers and Martin Green from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), the unique prism could help make solar panels cheaper and more efficient. In fact, it's already broken a world record for the amount of solar energy it can create from unfocused sunlight. The prism has a sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiency rate of 34.5 percent, Keevers told Mashable Australia. That's about a 44 percent improvement in efficiency on the previous record, he said, which sat at 24 percent efficiency but over 800 ...
NYT account of: Creating synthetic humans
Post Date: 2016-05-17 08:23:49 by Tatarewicz
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C2C... The idea of creating a human out of chemicals in a lab may sound unsettling, but what may be more worrisome is that experts recently held a secret meeting to discuss the possibility. Around 150 medical researchers convened at Harvard Medical School to contemplate the concept of building a human genome with chemicals and ultimately bringing that 'person' to life. Indicative of how controversial the proposal might be, attendees at the conference were forbidden to talk to the media or tweet about the event. The researchers spearheading the discussion likened the idea to the Human Genome Project only with the goal being to create a human genome rather than deciphering it. ...
"Change the Textbooks: This eukaryote completely lacks mitochondria."
Post Date: 2016-05-15 05:18:21 by Tatarewicz
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ScienceDaily... Mitochondria are membrane-bound components within cells that are often described as the cells' powerhouses. They've long been considered as essential components for life in eukaryotes, the group including plants, fungi, animals, and unicellular protists, if for no other reason than that every known eukaryote had them. But researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 12, 2016 now challenge this notion. They've discovered a eukaryote that contains absolutely no trace of mitochondria at all. "In low-oxygen environments, eukaryotes often possess a reduced form of the mitochondrion, but it was believed that some of the mitochondrial ...
Step to Cloning? Scientists Aim to Recreate Human Genome in a Decade
Post Date: 2016-05-14 05:04:09 by Tatarewicz
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Some of the world’s top scientists gathered behind closed doors at Boston’s Harvard Medical School on Tuesday to discuss a project to synthesize the entire human DNA genome in a move that could make cloning humans possible. Social Media Helps Solve Health Mystery That Doctors Couldn’t Explain The meeting concerned a proposed international project that would synthesize “a complete human genome in a cell line within a period of 10 years,” according to the organizer’s premise. All attendees were asked to refrain from speaking publicly about the summit. The project, dubbed “HGP-Write: Testing Large Synthetic Genomes in Cells” (where HGP stands for ...
Can Our Bodies Handle the Hyperloop?
Post Date: 2016-05-14 03:04:57 by Tatarewicz
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ScientificAmerican... Hyperloop One wants to transport commuters through a tube at close to the speed of sound, but can regular humans handle it? Credit: Photo by Hyperloop One Advertisement Today, in the sunburnt desert north of Las Vegas, a tech firm conducted a demo of a cutting-edge propulsion system. The firm is among a handful of companies and universities vying to build the first hyperloop. Hyperloop is a futuristic transportation system that resembles a supersized version of a pneumatic tube at the drive-through window of a bank. Here’s how it would work. People hop into a pod, which would travel up to 760 miles per hour inside a tube. That’s a whisker shy of breaking ...
Scientists are uncovering a terrible new effect that space might have on our bodies
Post Date: 2016-05-13 07:37:49 by Tatarewicz
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ScienceAlert... If humanity is ever going to realise its ambitions of travelling to Mars and elsewhere in the Solar System, one of the challenges we're going to have to address is how to stay healthy in space over long periods of time. NASA estimates it's going to take at least 150 days for humans to get to Mars, and that's a long time to be exposed to things like cosmic radiation without the benefits of Earth's protective magnetic field. Unfortunately, some of the latest research on the effects of spending time in space doesn't have very positive findings. A recent study found that mice flown aboard the space shuttle Atlantis returned to Earth with the early signs of ...
Scientists have unveiled the world's first holographic flexible smartphone
Post Date: 2016-05-11 04:30:17 by Tatarewicz
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ScienceAlert... Canadian researchers have developed what they are claiming is the world's first holographic flexible smartphone, with a bendable display that allows multiple people looking at the device to see different 3D images depending on their perspective. To view the device, called Holoflex, you don't need those dumb plastic glasses you have to wear in the cinema to watch 3D movies, and it doesn't employ head tracking to tailor the appearance to the viewer, as seen in devices like the newer Nintendo 3DS. Instead, the smartphone sports a Full HD LED display with 1,920 x 1,080 resolution – albeit one that's flexible, as you can see in the video below. So how ...
New plastic-free wrap keeps fruit fresh for more than a week outside the fridge
Post Date: 2016-05-09 05:21:05 by Tatarewicz
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ScienceAlert... Our kitchens might be about to get a whole lot more sustainable, with researchers announcing the development of a new type of edible food wrap that can keep fruit fresh for more than a week - without a fridge or plastic. That's incredibly promising, seeing as researchers have shown that we're tossing out so much plastic these days, that by 2050, there'll be more plastic than fish in our oceans. Unfortunately, one of the things we rely on plastic for the most is keeping our fruits and vegetables fresh between the farm and our shelves - and that's an important job, seeing as an estimated half of the world's fruit and vegetables are lost because they go ...
Come to think of it or not: Study shows how memories can be intentionally forgotten
Post Date: 2016-05-09 03:34:55 by Tatarewicz
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ScienceDaily Jeremy Manning, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth College, and his collaborators show that people can intentionally forget past experiences by changing how they think about the context of those memories. Context plays a big role in our memories, both good and bad. Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" on the car radio, for example, may remind you of your first love -- or your first speeding ticket. But a Dartmouth- and Princeton-led brain scanning study shows that people can intentionally forget past experiences by changing how they think about the context of those memories. The findings have a range of potential applications ...
How GPS Came to Be—and How It May Be Altering Our Brains A history of GPS examines the costs of relying on it.
Post Date: 2016-05-08 06:59:24 by Tatarewicz
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Bloomberg Businessweek In Pinpoint: How GPS Is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds, Greg Milner tells two stories. One’s about how the Global Positioning System became one of the 21st century’s most important technologies. The other’s about how it may be stunting the brains of the ingenious species that created it. We use GPS today to guide airplanes, ships, and tractors. It keeps tabs on sex offenders and helps find oil deposits. “GPS surveys land, and builds bridges and tunnels,” Milner writes. “GPS knows when the earth deforms; it senses the movement of tectonic plates down to less than a millimeter.” GPS can tell you how long until your ...
10 Mind Blowing Facts About Time That Will Destroy Your Biological Clock
Post Date: 2016-05-06 02:29:36 by Tatarewicz
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DailyForest... Time is always there yet it is non existent. Time is a measurement that we use to scale our lives in a way that we can understand. We use minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years as a means to structuring our lives in meaningful ways yet despite our usage we still don’t understand it as fully as we could. Despite not having a rock solid understanding of what time actually is, we set our life and eventual death by the belief in it. We decided to pull together some mind blowing facts about time that will leave you reeling. Listed below are 12 facts about time and what it has meant to the world that will leave your biological clock reeling. Time will eventually come ...
'Cancer cells simply melt away': Miracle drug amazes Australian researchers after lengthy trials
Post Date: 2016-05-06 01:22:56 by X-15
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Cancer patients are finally catching a break, as Australian researchers have tested a miracle drug that leads to big improvement in a majority of cases, and total recovery in some. The drug targets a specific protein that helps cancer cells survive. The Melbourne-based trial took place over four years and tested 116 patients. It was shown by researchers at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre that the drug Venetoclax can greatly reduce cancer blood cells. Positive results were seen in 79 percent of cases involving patients suffering from chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Some patients who had previously undergone treatment were left as good as new after agreeing to ...
The south is SINKING: Giant chunks of the Earth's mantle are falling off and causing quakes across the southeastern US - and more are coming, warn researchers
Post Date: 2016-05-05 08:40:41 by Ada
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Area hit by a series of strange unexplained quakes Most recent was 2011 magnitude-5.8 earthquake near Mineral, Virginia Area should be seismically quiet as it is in middle of Earth's tectonic plate The southeastern United States has been hit by a series of strange unexplained quakes - most recently, the 2011 magnitude-5.8 earthquake near Mineral, Virginia that shook the nation's capital. Researchers have been baffled, believing the areas should be relatively quiet in terms of seismic activity, as it is located in the interior of the North American Plate, far away from plate boundaries where earthquakes usually occur. Now, they believe the quakes could be caused by pieces of ...
Trial operation of magnetic levitation line in Changsha to start
Post Date: 2016-05-05 04:00:23 by Tatarewicz
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A train runs on the magnetic levitation line in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, May 5, 2016. CHANGSHA, May 5, 2016 (Xinhua) -- A train runs on the magnetic levitation line in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, May 5, 2016. A trial operation of the magnetic levitation line in Changsha is scheduled to start on May 6. The maglev shuttles between Changsha's south railway station and the airport. It takes about ten minutes to complete the 18.55-km journey, according to a statement from operator Hunan Maglev Transport Co. Poster Comment:Great photo gallery at link. Amazing what "American dollars" can do domestically if not used for ...
Marines Taking Robots to Military-Grade Level
Post Date: 2016-05-04 22:15:09 by BTP Holdings
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Marines Taking Robots to Military-Grade Level Published Wed, May 4, 2016 | Greg Miller, Senior Analyst Marines Taking Robots to Military-Grade Level Things look pretty tough right now for the Terminator. Forget “I’ll be back”… some robots are struggling to even get there in the first place. Take Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), for example, which recently put its Boston Dynamics robotics division up for sale. Having only acquired the company at the end of 2013, it’s not like Boston Dynamics isn’t putting in the effort or making substantial progress. Far from it, in fact. (Take a look at some clips on YouTube if you don’t believe me.) Rather, it’s ...
10-year-old Finn awarded 10,000 USD for discovering security fault in Instagram
Post Date: 2016-05-04 01:58:42 by Tatarewicz
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HELSINKI, May 3 (Xinhua) -- A 10-year-old Finnish boy has received 10,000 U.S. dollars from Instagram after finding a security fault in the service, reported Finnish daily Iltalehti on Tuesday. The boy whose name was given as Jani discovered the security vulnerability in the Instagram app, a mobile photo-sharing service owned by Facebook, in March this year, said the daily. He found he could delete other people's comments when he inputted malicious code into the comment field of the application. Jani informed Instagram about the technical fault by email. After a few days, Instagram replied to him that the flaw was fixed. As a reward, he received 10,000 U.S. dollars from Instagram. ...
Wastewater discharge into streams can lead to rapid antibiotic resistance, bacterial infections and disease
Post Date: 2016-05-02 22:12:50 by BTP Holdings
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Wastewater discharge into streams can lead to rapid antibiotic resistance, bacterial infections and disease Monday, May 02, 2016 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer (NaturalNews) Discharges from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) may be a major contributor to the evolution of antibiotic resistance in the wild, according to a study partially funded by the European Regional Development Fund. Bacteria naturally possess an intrinsic resistance to toxic chemicals, including antibiotics, and new resistance may also develop naturally through mutation. But scientists agree that widespread overuse of antibiotics has rapidly accelerated the evolution of antibiotic resistance, by killing off ...
A New Madrid Earthquake Is Coming And America Will Be Shaken Like Never Before
Post Date: 2016-05-02 11:22:55 by Ada
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Most Americans expect the next great earthquake in the United States to come on the west coast. But what if it strikes right down the middle of the country instead? The New Madrid fault zone is six times larger than the San Andreas fault zone in California and it covers portions of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Back in 1811 and 1812, a series of absolutely devastating earthquakes along the New Madrid fault zone opened very deep fissures in the ground, caused the Mississippi River to run backwards in some places, and were reportedly felt as far away as Washington D.C. and Boston. They were the strongest earthquakes ever recorded east of ...
Japan has approved gene editing using a fertilised human egg
Post Date: 2016-05-02 03:10:32 by Tatarewicz
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FUTURISM/ScienceAlert A Japanese government bioethics panel has approved the modification of genes from fertilised human egg cells for basic research. They did so just last week, on Friday April 22. However, they rejected clinical testing of gene modification technology, citing unknown and possibly harmful impacts on the next generation. Clinical trials of gene editing technology, which involve correcting genetic defects and putting the egg back into the womb, carry too many risks and potential detrimental effects on the offspring. So the eggs that are modified will not currently be brought to term. The bioethics panel agreed that researchers could use the technology and modify ...
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