Most people think that the Earth’s atmosphere stops a bit over 62 miles (100 km) from the surface, but a new study based on observations made over two decades ago by the joint US-European Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite shows that it actually extends as far 391,000 miles (630,000 km) or 50 times the Earth’s diameter. This makes the Moon a very high altitude aircraft.
The remarkable properties of a recently-discovered squid protein could revolutionize materials in a way that would be unattainable with conventional plastic, finds a review published in Frontiers in Chemistry. Originating in the ringed teeth of a squid’s predatory arms, this protein can be processed into fibers and films with applications ranging from ‘smart’ clothes for health monitoring, to self-healing recyclable fabrics that reduce microplastic pollution. Materials made from this protein are eco-friendly and biodegradable, with sustainable large-scale production achieved using laboratory culture methods.
“Squid proteins can be used to produce next generation materials for an array of fields including energy and biomedicine, as well as the security and defense sector,” says lead author Melik Demirel, Lloyd and Dorothy Foehr Huck Endowed Chair in Biomimetic Materials, and Director of Center for Research on Advanced Fiber Technologies (CRAFT) at Penn State University, USA. “We reviewed the current knowledge on squid ring teeth-based materials, which are an excellent alternative to plastics because they are eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable.”
Squid ring teeth are all-rounders
As humanity awakens to the aftermath of a 100-year party of plastic production, we are beginning to heed nature’s warnings—and its solutions.
“Nature produces a variety of smart materials capable of environmental sensing, self-healing and exceptional mechanical function. These materials, or biopolymers, have unique physical properties that are not readily found in synthetic polymers like plastic. Importantly, biopolymers are sustainable and can be engineered to enhance their physical properties,” explains Demirel.
The oceans, which have borne the brunt of plastic pollution, are at the center of the search for sustainable alternatives. A newly-discovered protein from squid ring teeth (SRT) – circular predatory appendages located on the suction cups of squid, used to strongly grasp prey—has gained interest because of its remarkable properties and sustainable production.
The elasticity, flexibility and strength of SRT-based materials, as well as their self-healing, optical, and thermal and electrical conducting properties, can be explained by the variety of molecular arrangements they can adopt. SRT proteins are composed of building blocks arranged in such a way that micro-phase separation occurs. This is a similar situation to oil and water but on a much smaller, nano-scale. The blocks cannot separate completely to produce two distinct layers, so instead molecular-level shapes are created, such as repeating cylindrical blocks, disordered tangles or ordered layers. The shapes formed dictate the property of the material and scientists have experimented with these to produce SRT-based products for a variety of uses.
In the textiles industry, SRT protein could address one of the main sources of microplastic pollution by providing an abrasion-resistant coating that reduces microfiber erosion in washing machines. Similarly, a self-healing SRT protein coating could increase the longevity and safety of damage-prone biochemical implants, as well as garments tailored for protection against chemical and biological warfare agents.
It is even possible to interleave multiple layers of SRT proteins with other compounds or technology, which could lead to the development of ‘smart’ clothes that can protect us from pollutants in the air while also keeping an eye on our health. The optical properties of SRT-based materials mean these clothes could also display information about our health or surroundings. Flexible SRT-based photonic devices—components that create, manipulate or detect light, such as LEDs and optical displays, which are typically manufactured with hard materials like glass and quartz—are currently in development.
“SRT photonics are biocompatible and biodegradable, so could be used to make not only wearable health monitors but also implantable devices for biosensing and biodetection,” adds Demirel.
No squid was harmed in the making of this film
One of the main advantages of SRT-based materials over synthetic materials and plastics made from fossil fuels are its eco-credentials. SRT proteins are cheaply and easily produced from renewable resources and researchers have found a way of producing it without catching a squid.”We don’t want to deplete natural squid resources and hence we produce these proteins in genetically modified bacteria. The process is based on fermentation and uses sugar, water, and oxygen to produce biopolymers,” explains Demirel.
It is hoped that the SRT-based prototypes will soon become available more widely, but more development is needed.
Demirel explains, “Scaling up these materials requires additional work. We are now working on the processing technology of these materials so that we can make them available in industrial manufacturing processes.”
Given Singapore’s reputation for being an unabashed surveillance state, a passenger on a Singapore Airlines (SIA) flight could be forgiven for being a little paranoid.
Vitaly Kamluk, an information security expert and a high-ranking executive of cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, went on Twitter with concerns about an embedded camera in SIA’s inflight entertainment systems. He tagged SIA in his post on Sunday, asking the airline to clarify how the camera is being used.
SIA quickly responded, telling Kamluk that the cameras have been disabled, with no plans to use them in the future. While not all of their devices sport the camera, SIA said that some of its newer inflight entertainment systems come with cameras embedded in the hardware. Left unexplained was how the camera-equipped entertainment systems had come to be purchased in the first place.
In another tweet, SIA affirmed that the cameras were already built in by the original equipment manufacturers in newer inflight entertainment systems.
Kamluk recommended that it’s best to disable the cameras physically — with stickers, for example — to provide better peace of mind.
Could cameras built into inflight entertainment systems actually be used as a feature though? It’s possible, according to Panasonic Avionics. Back in 2017, the inflight entertainment device developer mentioned that it was studying how eye tracking can be used for a better passenger experience. Cameras can be used for identity recognition on planes, which in turn, would allow for in-flight biometric payment (much like Face ID on Apple devices) and personalized services.
It’s a long shot, but SIA could actually utilize such systems in the future. The camera’s already there, anyway.
IBM Watson Anywhere is built on top of Kubernetes, the open source orchestration engine that can be deployed in diverse environments. Since the Watson Anywhere platform is built as a set of microservices designed to run on Kubernetes, it is flexible and portable.
[…]
According to IBM, the microservices-based Watson Anywhere delivers two solutions –
Watson OpenScale: IBM’s open AI platform for managing multiple instances of AI, no matter where they were developed – including the ability to explain how AI decisions are being made in real time, for greater transparency and compliance.
Watson Assistant: IBM’s AI tool for building conversational interfaces into applications and devices. More advanced than a traditional chatbot, Watson Assistant intelligently determines when to search for a result, when to ask the user for clarification, and when to offload the user to a human for personal assistance. Also, the Watson Assistant Discovery Extension enables organizations to unlock hidden insights in unstructured data and documents.
IBM Cloud Private for Data is an extension of the hybrid cloud focused on data and analytics. According to IBM, it simplifies and unifies how customers collect, organize and analyze data to accelerate the value of data science and AI. The multi-cloud platform delivers a broad range of core data microservices, with the option to add more from a growing services catalog.
IBM Watson Anywhere is seamlessly integrated with Cloud Private for Data. The combination enables customers to manage end-to-end data workflows to help ensure that data is easily accessible for AI.
If you’re living in Earth’s southern hemisphere, chances are you may be able to see some of the stars in a newly identified cosmic river that’s flowed through the Milky Way for hundreds of millions of years.
Astronomers say the freshly discovered gigantic cluster of stars is passing relatively close to our Solar System. The cluster contains at least 4,000 stars that have been steadily moving together across the night sky like a river, covering almost the entire southern sky. To be clear, the stars aren’t new discoveries: the fact they are in a cluster together is the revelation here.
“Most star clusters in the galactic disk disperse rapidly after their birth as they do not contain enough stars to create a deep gravitational potential well, or in other words, they do not have enough glue to keep them together,” said Stefan Meingast, lead author of the study published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics journal and an astronomer working at the University Vienna, Austria.
If you’re living in Earth’s southern hemisphere, chances are you may be able to see some of the stars in a newly identified cosmic river that’s flowed through the Milky Way for hundreds of millions of years.
Astronomers say the freshly discovered gigantic cluster of stars is passing relatively close to our Solar System. The cluster contains at least 4,000 stars that have been steadily moving together across the night sky like a river, covering almost the entire southern sky. To be clear, the stars aren’t new discoveries: the fact they are in a cluster together is the revelation here.
“Most star clusters in the galactic disk disperse rapidly after their birth as they do not contain enough stars to create a deep gravitational potential well, or in other words, they do not have enough glue to keep them together,” said Stefan Meingast, lead author of the study published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics journal and an astronomer working at the University Vienna, Austria.
“Even in the immediate solar neighborhood, there are, however, a few clusters with sufficient stellar mass to remain bound for several hundred million years. So, in principle, similar, large, stream-like remnants of clusters or associations should also be part of the Milky Way disk.”
It is estimated the stellar river formed about a billion years ago, and has circled the Milky Way four times already.
The projection of the stellar stream centered around the south Galactic pole. The Milky Way is curved around in an arc, and the red points are the stars in the cluster. Image credit: Astronomy & Astrophsyics.
The researchers from the University of Vienna and Harvard University spotted the stellar stream by carefully mapping the 3D motion of 200 stars using data taken from Europe’s Gaia spacecraft. The stars’ distribution and movements showed telltale signs that they were all locked in a clump together, and are being pulled apart by the Milky Way’s gravitational field.
“Identifying nearby disk streams is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack,” said João Alves, co-author of the paper and an astrophysics professor at the University of Vienna.
“Astronomers have been looking at, and through, this new stream for a long time, as it covers most of the night sky, but only now realize it is there, and it is huge, and shockingly close to the Sun. Finding things close to home is very useful, it means they are not too faint nor too blurred for further detailed exploration, as astronomers dream.”
A team of Canadian scientists has developed a fascinating new experimental drug that is purported to result in rapid improvements to both mood and memory following extensive animal testing. It’s hoped the drug will move to human trials within the next two years.
Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a key neurotransmitter, and when altered it can play a role in the development of everything from psychiatric conditions to cognitive degeneration. Benzodiazepines, such as Xanax or Valium, are a class of drugs well known to function by modulating the brain’s GABA systems.
[…]
In animal tests the drug has been found to be remarkably effective, with old mice displaying rapid improvements in memory tests within an hour of administration, resulting in performance similar to that of young mice. Daily administration of the drug over two months was also seen to result in an actual structural regrowth of brain cells, returning their brains to a state that resembles a young animal.
“The aged cells regrew to appear the same as young brain cells, showing that our novel molecules can modify the brain in addition to improving symptoms,” says Sibille.
The experimental drug is not some miracle cognitive enhancer however, with no beneficial effects seen when administered to younger mice. So it seems likely the drug’s modulations to the brain’s GABA systems is directly related to normalizing either age- or stress-related disruptions.
[…]
If it proves safe and efficacious it could be a useful preventative tool, administered in short bursts to subjects in their 50s or 60s to slow the onset of age-related dementia and cognitive impairment.
At a glance, the images featured on the website This Person Does Not Exist might seem like random high school portraits or vaguely inadvisable LinkedIn headshots. But every single photo on the site has been created by using a special kind of artificial intelligence algorithm called generative adversarial networks (GANs).
Every time the site is refreshed, a shockingly realistic — but totally fake —picture of a person’s face appears. Uber software engineer Phillip Wang created the page to demonstrate what GANs are capable of, and then posted it to the public Facebook group “Artificial Intelligence & Deep Learning” on Tuesday.
The underlying code that made this possible, titled StyleGAN, was written by Nvidia and featured in a paper that has yet to be peer-reviewed. This exact type of neural network has the potential to revolutionize video game and 3D-modeling technology, but, as with almost any kind of technology, it could also be used for more sinister purposes. Deepfakes, or computer-generated images superimposed on existing pictures or videos, can be used to push fake news narratives or other hoaxes. That’s precisely why Wang chose to create the mesmerizing but also chilling website.
In a Twitter post on Wednesday, those behind the software project said a hand-tuned build of the version 6.0.0 HashCat beta, utilizing eight Nvidia GTX 2080Ti GPUs in an offline attack, exceeded the NTLM cracking speed benchmark of 100GH/s (gigahashes per second).
“Current password cracking benchmarks show that the minimum eight character password, no matter how complex, can be cracked in less than 2.5 hours” using that hardware rig, explained a hacker who goes by the pseudonym Tinker on Twitter in a DM conversation with The Register. “The eight character password is dead.”
The last time the EU tweaked its copyright laws was in 2001, so the idea of updating regulations in the information age made a lot of sense. But critics became alarmed by two sections of the bill: Article 11 (aka the “link tax”) and Article 13 (aka the “upload filters”). In 2018, critics like Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, began to warn that these portions of the legislation would have dire and unintended consequences.
Lawmakers hope to wrestle away some of the power that has been gobbled up by tech giants like Facebook and redirect money to struggling copyright holders and publications. Unfortunately, the law may create an environment that’s only navigable by the richest and most powerful organizations. As Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales put it, “This is a complete disaster.”
[…]
If you’ve read our previousexplanations of the problems with the copyright directive, congratulations, you’re mostly caught up. The biggest issues remain the same, though Electronic Frontier Foundation adviser Cory Doctorow called this new version “the worst one yet.”
The final text of Article 11 still seeks to impose a “link tax” on platforms whenever they use a hyperlink to a news publication and quote a short snippet of text. Even a small business or individual running a monetized blog could face penalties for linking to an article and reproducing “single words or very short extracts” from the text without first acquiring a license.
The idea is to get a company like Google to cough up money that would be redirected to news outlets. But Google has said it may just shut down Google News in the EU, just as it did in Spain when similar legislation was implemented in that country. Publishers would lose the traffic boost they get from users being directed to their sites from Google News. And perhaps most importantly, smaller platforms and individuals will be discouraged from sharing and quoting information. According to Julia Reda, a member of European Parliament from Germany, “we will have to wait and see how courts interpret what ‘very short’ means in practice – until then, hyperlinking (with snippets) will be mired in legal uncertainty.”
Article 13 still requires platforms to do everything possible to prevent users from uploading copyrighted materials. We’ve become used to systems like YouTube’s that comply with takedown notices after a user has submitted content that doesn’t belong to them. But the EU wants platforms to stop it before it happens. It will be virtually impossible for even the biggest companies to comply with this directive.
Under the legislation, any platform will have to use upload filters to catch offending material. YouTube spends millions of dollars trying to perfect its system, and it’s still absolutely awful. The little guys will presumably have to license some sort of system if building one in-house isn’t an option. And as critics have emphasized from the beginning, paranoid webmasters will simply clamp down hard on anything that could possibly get themselves in trouble. Who would want to go to court to defend the fair use of a user-submitted Stranger Things meme?
The finalized text of Article 13 also stipulates that platforms will be held liable for any copyright violations unless they demonstrate that they made “best efforts to obtain an authorisation.” If something slips by and the platform shows it did everything it could to prevent it, a platform can be given a pass as long as it acts “expeditiously” to remove the offending content and make “best efforts to prevent” any future occurrences. That leaves a good bit of room for interpretation, but MEP Reda interprets the rules to mean the only safe solution is to do everything in their power to “preemptively buy licences for anything that users may possibly upload – that is: all copyrighted content in the world.”
Giving jobless people in Finland a basic income for two years did not lead them to find work, researchers said.
From January 2017 until December 2018, 2,000 unemployed Finns got a monthly flat payment of €560 (£490; $634).
The aim was to see if a guaranteed safety net would help people find jobs, and support them if they had to take insecure gig economy work.
While employment levels did not improve, participants said they felt happier and less stressed.
When it launched the pilot scheme back in 2017, Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income. It was run by the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), a Finnish government agency, and involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits.
It immediately attracted international interest – but these results have now raised questions about the effectiveness of such schemes.
[…]
Although it’s enjoying a resurgence in popularity, the idea isn’t new. In fact, it was first described in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, published in 1516 – a full 503 years ago.
Such schemes are being trialled all over the world. Adults in a village in western Kenya are being given $22 a month for 12 years, until 2028, while the Italian government is working on introducing a “citizens’ income”. The city of Utrecht, in the Netherlands, is also carrying out a basic income study called Weten Wat Werkt – “Know What Works” – until October.
[…]
Did it help unemployed people in Finland find jobs, as the centre-right Finnish government had hoped? No, not really.
Mr Simanainen says that while some individuals found work, they were no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren’t given the money. They are still trying to work out exactly why this is, for the final report that will be published in 2020.
But for many people, the original goal of getting people into work was flawed to begin with. If instead the aim were to make people generally happier, the scheme would have been considered a triumph.
[…]
Researchers from Kela are now busy analysing all of their results, to figure out what else – if anything – they can tell us about basic income’s uses and shortcomings.
Mr Simanainen says that he doesn’t like to think of the trial as having “failed”.
From his point of view, “this is not a failure or success – it is a fact, and [gives us] new information that we did not have before this experiment”.
A team of chemists at Purdue may have found a partial solution to our plastic woes. As detailed in a paper published this week in Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering, the chemists discovered a way to convert polypropylene—a type of plastic commonly used in toys, medical devices, and product packaging like potato chip bags—into gasoline and diesel-like fuel. The researchers said that this fuel is pure enough to be used as blendstock, a main component of fuel used in motorized vehicles.
Polypropylene waste accounts for just under a quarter of the estimated 5 billion tons of plastic that have amassed in the world’s landfills in the last 50 years.
To turn polypropylene into fuel, the researchers used supercritical water, a phase of water that demonstrates characteristics of both a liquid and a gas depending on the pressure and temperature conditions. Purdue chemist Linda Wang and her colleagues heated water to between 716 and 932 degrees Fahrenheit at pressures approximately 2300 times greater than the atmospheric pressure at sea level.
When purified polypropylene waste was added to the supercritical water, it was converted into oil within in a few hours, depending on the temperature. At around 850 degrees Fahrenheit, the conversion time was lowered to under an hour.
The byproducts of this process include gasoline and diesel-like oils. According to the researchers, their conversion process could be used to convert roughly 90 percent of the world’s polypropylene waste each year into fuel.
Network attached storage maker QNAP’s customers have reported being hit by a mystery issue that disables software updates by hijacking entries in host machines’ hosts file.
The full effects are, as yet, unknown – but users have reported that the most visible symptom is that some 700 entries are added to the /etc/hosts file that redirect a bunch of requests to IP address 0.0.0.0.
This, said forlorn QNAP forum user ianch99, stopped his antivirus from updating by sinkholing all of the software’s requests to the vendor’s website. Others reported that the Taiwanese NAS appliance maker’s own MalwareRemover was borked, though it is not known whether these two things are linked.
“If you remove these entries, the update runs fine but they return on after rebooting,” posted ianch99. So far the only cure appeared to be a script provided by QNAP itself, which one helpful Reddit user posted the link to after apparently being given it by one of the storage firm’s techie in live chat.
Other users publicly wondered about the QNAP’s seeming reluctance to say anything about the issue, with a Reg reader telling us: “The wider QNAP-using population could perhaps do with a heads-up from your esteemed organ.”
QNAP failed to respond when The Register asked the company to comment on these goings-on, and has made no public statement at the time of writing.
A couple of years ago firmware from the Taiwanese headquartered biz was discovered to have a catastrophic bug that corrupted data on RAID drives during a rebuild “through faulty calculations”. It was eventually patched.
Your Android could be pwned by simply viewing an innocent-looking image – be it from browsing the internet or an image received via text – according to the Android Security Bulletin issued this month. While this certainly doesn’t apply to all images, Google discovered that a maliciously crafted PNG image could be used to hijack a wide variety of Androids – those running Android Nougat (7.0), Oreo (8.0), and even the latest Android OS Pie (9.0).
The latest bulletin lists 42 vulnerabilities in total – 11 of which are rated as critical. The most severe critical flaw is in Framework; it “could enable a remote attacker using a specially crafted PNG file to execute arbitrary code within the context of a privileged process.”
Although Google had no report of the security flaws being actively exploited, it remains to be seen if and how long it will take before attackers use the flaw for real-world attacks. Android owners were urged to patch as soon as security updates becomes available. But let’s get real: Even if your Android still receives security updates, there’s no telling how long it will be (weeks or months) before manufacturers and carriers get it together to push out the patches.
The most severe of these issues is a critical security vulnerability in Framework that could allow a remote attacker using a specially crafted PNG file to execute arbitrary code within the context of a privileged process.
a Beijing-based online education start-up has developed an artificial intelligence-powered maths app that can check children’s arithmetic problems through the simple snap of a photo. Based on the image and its internal database, the app automatically checks whether the answers are right or wrong.
Known as Xiaoyuan Kousuan, the free app launched by the Tencent Holdings-backed online education firm Yuanfudao, has gained increasing popularity in China since its launch a year ago and claims to have checked an average of 70 million arithmetic problems per day, saving users around 40,000 hours of time in total.
Yuanfudao is also trying to build the country’s biggest education-related database generated from the everyday experiences of real students. Using this, the six-year-old company – which has a long line of big-name investors including Warburg Pincus, IDG Capital and Matrix Partners China – aims to reinvent how children are taught in China.
“By checking nearly 100 million problems every day, we have developed a deep understanding of the kind of mistakes students make when facing certain problems,” said Li Xin, co-founder of Yuanfudao – which means “ape tutor” in Chinese – in a recent interview. “The data gathered through the app can serve as a pillar for us to provide better online education courses.”
Video game publisher Ubisoft is working with Mozilla to develop an artificial intelligence coding assistant called Clever-Commit, head of Ubisoft La Forge Yves Jacquier announced during DICE Summit 2019 on Tuesday.
Clever-Commit reportedly helps programmers evaluate whether or not a code change will introduce a new bug by learning from past bugs and fixes. The prototype, called Commit-Assistant, was tested using data collected during game development, Ubisoft said, and it’s already contributing to some major AAA titles. The publisher is also working on integrating it into other brands.
“Working with Mozilla on Clever-Commit allows us to support other programming languages and increase the overall performances of the technology. Using this tech in our games and Firefox will allow developers to be more productive as they can spend more time creating the next feature rather than fixing bugs. Ultimately, this will allow us to create even better experiences for our gamers and increase the frequency of our game updates,” said Mathieu Nayrolles, technical architect, data scientist, and member of the Technological Group at Ubisoft Montreal.
Mozilla is assisting Ubisoft by providing programming language expertise in Rust, C++, and Javascript. The technology will also help the company ship more stable versions of its Firefox internet browser.
It will be an offence to view terrorist material online just once – and could incur a prison sentence of up to 15 years – under new UK laws.
The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill was granted Royal Assent yesterday, updating a previous Act and bringing new powers to law enforcement to tackle terrorism.
But a controversial inclusion was to update the offence of obtaining information “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism” so that it now covers viewing or streaming content online.
The rules as passed into law are also a tightening of proposals that had already been criticised by human rights groups and the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Max Hill.
Originally, the proposal had been to make it an offence for someone to view material three or more times – but the three strikes idea has been dropped from the final Act.
The law has also increased the maximum penalty for some types of preparatory terrorism offences, including the collection of terrorist information, to 15 years’ imprisonment.
[…]
In the summer, when the proposals were for multiple clicks, terrorism law reviewer Max Hill (no relation to your correspondent) told the Joint Committee on Human Rights that the “the mesh of the net the government is creating… is far too fine and will catch far too many people”.
He also pointed out that the offence could come with a long sentence as the draft bill also extends the maximum penalties to 15 years’ imprisonment.
Corey Stoughton of rights campaigner Liberty echoed these concerns, and said the law should not cover academics and journalists, but should also exempt people who were viewing to gain a better understanding of the issues, or did so “out of foolishness or poor judgement”.
The UN’s special rapporteur on privacy, Joseph Cannataci, has also slammed the plans, saying the rule risked “pushing a bit too much towards thought crime”.
At an event during his visit to the UK, Cannataci said “the difference between forming the intention to do something and then actually carrying out the act is still fundamental to criminal law… here you’re saying: ‘You’ve read it three times so you must be doing something wrong’.”
The government said the law still provides for the existing “reasonable excuse defence”, which includes circumstances where a person “did not know, and had no reason to believe” the material acccessed contained terrorist propaganda.
“Once a defendant has raised this defence, the burden of proof (to the criminal standard) to disprove this defence will rest with the prosecution,” the Home Office’s impact assessment said.
A new type of electric vehicle power using “refillable” technology has taken another giant leap in advancing alternative energy with testing that shows it could provide enough energy to run a car for about 3,000 miles.
The technology employs a novel type of “flow” battery that is being successfully tested in golf carts and industrial vehicles such a forklifts. It was first showcased in 2017.
“The jump that this technology has made in the past two years is a testament to its value in changing the way we power our vehicles,” said John Cushman, Purdue University distinguished professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences and a professor of mathematics. “It’s a game-changer for the next generation of electric cars because it does not require a very costly rebuild of the electric grid throughout the US. Instead, one could convert gas stations to pump fresh electrolyte and discard depleted electrolyte and convert oil-changing facilities to anode replacing stations. It is easier and safer to use and is more environmentally friendly than existing battery system.”
The technology uses a patented technology that is safe and affordable for recharging electric and hybrid vehicle batteries by replacing the fluid in the batteries about every 300 miles through a process similar to refueling a car at a gas station. Every 3,000 miles, the anode material is replaced, taking less time than is needed to do an oil change and costing about the same with an estimated cost of about $65.
Cushman and Eric Nauman, professor in mechanical engineering and in basic medical sciences, co-founded IFBattery Inc. to commercialize the technology.
“The battery does two things: it produces electricity and it produces hydrogen. That is important because most hydrogen-powered cars run on a 5,000 or 10,000 PSI [pounds per square inch] tank, which can be dangerous,” said Michael Dziekan, senior engineer for IFBattery. “This system generates hydrogen as you need it, so you can store safe hydrogen at pressures of 20 or 30 PSI instead of 10,000.”
The flow battery technology was first tested in scooters and then larger off-road vehicles. The next step will be industrial equipment and then automobiles, according to Cushman.
Technology using a membrane-free, flow battery is showing success in powering golf carts and industrial vehicles such as forklifts. Credit: Purdue University
“Historically, flow batteries have not been competitive because of the low energy density,” Cushman said. “For example, conventional flow batteries have an energy density of about 20 watt hours per kilogram. A lithium-ion battery run on 130 or 140 watts per kilogram. Our flow battery has the potential to run between five and 10 times that amount.”Cushman will present the technology at the 11th annual meeting of InterPore in Valencia Spain, in May 2019 and he previously presented at the International Society for Porous Media 9th International Conference in Rotterdam, Netherlands and its 10th International Conference in New Orleans.
“Conventional electric cars like Tesla have lithium-ion batteries that are usually plugged in overnight. Our flow battery uses a water-based single fluid that can run the car like it is a gas engine except it is not burning anything – it’s like a hybrid of a battery and a gas,” Nauman said.
Without using a membrane or separator, the single-fluid technology oxidizes the anode to produce electrons, and through a reduction at the cathode, it generates the current of energy to power vehicles. The oxidant is a macro-molecule that lives in the electrolyte, but is reduced only at the cathode.
“We are at the point now where we can generate a lot of power. More power than you would ever guess could come out of a battery like this,” Cushman said.
The spent battery fluids or electrolytes can be collected and taken to a solar farm, wind turbine installation or hydroelectric plant for recharging.
“It is the full circle of energy with very little waste,” Cushman said. “IFBattery’s components are safe enough to be stored in a family home, are stable enough to meet major production and distribution requirements and are cost-effective.”
Dr. Elisa Ferre, senior lecturer in psychology, and Maria Gallagher, lead author and Ph.D. student, both from Royal Holloway, investigated how alterations in gravity changed decision making.
Astronauts are primarily trained in physical fitness and given the right equipment, but are rarely proficient in how their brain functions will work millions of miles away from earth, when making decisions away from the comfort of terrestrial gravity.
The experiment saw participants take part in Random Number Generation task where they were upright, with the natural pull of gravity around them, and asked to shout out a random number between one and nine every time they heard a beep. This was then repeated, but with the participant laying down which manipulates the gravity.
When sitting up, the participant was able to shout out a different random sequence of numbers, but when lying down, and thus not within the natural force of gravity, things started to change.
Maria Gallagher explained: “We found decreased randomness in the sequence of numbers when participants were laying down: participants started to repeat the same number they shouted out before and the random choices they made almost ceased.”
Dr. Elisa Ferre said: “With the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Landing, we are getting ever closer to the new space age we have all imagined, which is very exciting.
“However, whilst the physical training and incredible equipment is given to astronauts, research in decision-making when we’re away from terrestrial gravity is little known, and our findings show that altered gravity might affect the way in which we make decision.
“This is incredibly important and we need to fix this.
“With the prospect of people going up into space, whether as a trained astronaut or in the near future, civilian passengers, it can take few minutes for any transition messages to get from the spacecraft to Houston, so being able to make decisions promptly, concisely and on-the-spot without any outside help, is of paramount importance.”
Making the correct decision is vital in high-pressured environments, such as space travel, remarked upon by Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield, ‘Most of the time you only really get one try to do most of the critical stuff and the consequences are life or death.’
During spaceflight, astronauts are in an extremely challenging environment in which decisions must be made quickly and efficiently.
To ensure crew well-being and mission success, understanding how cognition is affected by gravity is vital.
Imagine using machine learning to ensure that the pieces of an aircraft fit together more precisely, and can be assembled with less testing and time. That is one of the uses behind new technology being developed by researchers at Purdue University and the University of Southern California.
“We’re really taking a giant leap and working on the future of manufacturing,” said Arman Sabbaghi, an assistant professor of statistics in Purdue’s College of Science, who led the research team at Purdue with support from the National Science Foundation. “We have developed automated machine learning technology to help improve additive manufacturing. This kind of innovation is heading on the path to essentially allowing anyone to be a manufacturer.”
The technology addresses a current significant challenge within additive manufacturing: individual parts that are produced need to have a high degree of precision and reproducibility. The technology allows a user to run the software component locally within their current network, exposing an API, or programming interface. The software uses machine learning to analyze the product data and create plans to manufacture the needed pieces with greater accuracy.
“This has applications for many industries, such as aerospace, where exact geometric dimensions are crucial to ensure reliability and safety,” Sabbaghi said. “This has been the first time where I’ve been able to see my statistical work really make a difference and it’s the most incredible feeling in the world.”
The researchers have developed a new model-building algorithm and computer application for geometric accuracy control in additive manufacturing systems. Additive manufacturing, commonly known as 3-D printing, is a growing industry that involves building components in a way that is similar to an inkjet printer where parts are ‘grown’ from the building surface.
Additive manufacturing has progressed from a prototype development tool to one that can now offer numerous competitive advantages. Those advantages include shape complexity, waste reduction and potentially less expensive manufacturing, compared to traditional subtractive manufacturing where the process involves starting with the raw material and chipping away at it to produce a final result.
Wohlers Associates estimates that additive manufacturing is a $7.3 billion industry.
“We use machine learning technology to quickly correct computer-aided design models and produce parts with improved geometric accuracy,” Sabbaghi said. The improved accuracy ensures that the produced parts are within the needed tolerances and that every part produced is consistent and will perform that same way, whether it was created on a different machine or 12 months later
University of Maryland researchers have created a fabric that can automatically regulate the amount of heat that passes through it. When conditions are warm and moist, such as those near a sweating body, the fabric allows infrared radiation (heat) to pass through. When conditions become cooler and drier, the fabric reduces the heat that escapes. The development was reported in the February 8, 2019 issue of the journal Science.
The researchers created the fabric from specially engineered yarn coated with a conductive metal. Under hot, humid conditions, the strands of yarn compact and activate the coating, which changes the way the fabric interacts with infrared radiation. They refer to the action as “gating” of infrared radiation, which acts as a tunable blind to transmit or block heat.
“This is the first technology that allows us to dynamically gate infrared radiation,” said YuHuang Wang, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UMD and one of the paper’s corresponding authors who directed the studies.
The base yarn for this new textile is created with fibers made of two different synthetic materials—one absorbs water and the other repels it. The strands are coated with carbon nanotubes, a special class of lightweight, carbon-based, conductive metal. Because materials in the fibers both resist and absorb water, the fibers warp when exposed to humidity such as that surrounding a sweating body. That distortion brings the strands of yarn closer together, which does two things. First, it opens the pores in the fabric. This has a small cooling effect because it allows heat to escape. Second, and most importantly, it modifies the electromagnetic coupling between the carbon nanotubes in the coating.
University of Maryland Chemistry and Biochemistry Professor YuHuang Wang (left) and Physics Professor Min Ouyang hold a swatch of their new fabric that can automatically adjust its insulating properties to warm or cool a human body. Credit: Faye Levine, University of Maryland
“You can think of this coupling effect like the bending of a radio antenna to change the wavelength or frequency it resonates with,” Wang said. “It’s a very simplified way to think of it, but imagine bringing two antennae close together to regulate the kind of electromagnetic wave they pick up. When the fibers are brought closer together, the radiation they interact with changes. In clothing, that means the fabric interacts with the heat radiating from the human body.”
Depending on the tuning, the fabric either blocks infrared radiation or allows it to pass through. The reaction is almost instant, so before people realize they’re getting hot, the garment could already be cooling them down. On the flip side, as a body cools down, the dynamic gating mechanism works in reverse to trap in heat.
“The human body is a perfect radiator. It gives off heat quickly,” said Min Ouyang, a professor of physics at UMD and the paper’s other corresponding author. “For all of history, the only way to regulate the radiator has been to take clothes off or put clothes on. But this fabric is a true bidirectional regulator.”
According to the Science paper, this is first textile shown to be able to regulate heat exchange with the environment.
Scientists from ITMO in collaboration with international colleagues have proposed new DNA-based nanomachines that can be used for gene therapy for cancer. This new invention can greatly contribute to more effective and selective treatment of oncological diseases. The results were published in Angewandte Chemie.
Gene therapy is considered one of the promising ways of treating oncological diseases, even though the current approaches are far from perfect. Oftentimes, the agents fail to discern malignant cells from healthy ones, and are bad at interacting with folded RNA targets.
In order to solve this issue, scientists, including a Russian team from ITMO University headed by professor Dmitry Kolpashchikov, proposed special nanomachines. They sought to develop particular molecules, deoxyribozymes, which can interact with targeted RNA, bind them, unfold and cleave. According to the idea, these nanomachines have to recognize DNA oncomarkers and form complexes that can break down messenger RNA of vital genes with high selectivity, which will then result in apoptotic death of malignant cells.
The researchers tested the efficiency of the new machines in a model experiment and learned that they can cleave folded RNA molecules better than the original deoxyribozymes. They showed that the design of the nanomachine makes it possible to break down targeted RNA in the presence of a DNA oncomarker only, and the use of RNA-unfolding arms provides for better efficiency. The scientists also learned that the nanomachine can inhibit the growth of malignant cells, though cellular experiments didn’t show high specificity. The researchers associate this result with a possibly poor choice of the RNA target and a low stability of DNA structures in the cell.
The new approach differs fundamentally from the ones used before. The existing gene therapy agents are aimed at suppressing the expression of oncological markers. In the research in question, the scientists focused on the messenger RNA of vital genes, and the oncological marker was used as an activator. This makes it possible to apply the DNA nanomachine in treating any kind of cancer by using new DNA oncomarkers for activating the breakdown of targeted molecules.
The new invention opens new ways of treating oncological diseases. Still, there are many experiments to be conducted before it can be applied in therapy.
“For now, we are trying to introduce new functional elements in the framework that will contribute to a more effective recognition of oncological markers, and are also optimizing the DNA nanomachine for various RNA targets. In order to improve the efficiency and selectiveness of our constructions in cellular conditions, we are selecting new RNA targets and studying the stability of DNA machines in cells, which we plan to improve with the help of already existing chemical modifications,” comments Daria Nedorezova, Master’s student at ITMO University.
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Many major companies, like Air Canada, Hollister and Expedia, are recording every tap and swipe you make on their iPhone apps. In most cases you won’t even realize it. And they don’t need to ask for permission.
You can assume that most apps are collecting data on you. Some even monetize your data without your knowledge. But TechCrunch has found several popular iPhone apps, from hoteliers, travel sites, airlines, cell phone carriers, banks and financiers, that don’t ask or make it clear — if at all — that they know exactly how you’re using their apps.
Worse, even though these apps are meant to mask certain fields, some inadvertently expose sensitive data.
Apps like Abercrombie & Fitch, Hotels.com and Singapore Airlines also use Glassbox, a customer experience analytics firm, one of a handful of companies that allows developers to embed “session replay” technology into their apps. These session replays let app developers record the screen and play them back to see how its users interacted with the app to figure out if something didn’t work or if there was an error. Every tap, button push and keyboard entry is recorded — effectively screenshotted — and sent back to the app developers.
Or, as Glassbox said in a recent tweet: “Imagine if your website or mobile app could see exactly what your customers do in real time, and why they did it?”
In new research they plan to present at the USENIX Security conference on Thursday, a group of researchers from the University of Washington has shown for the first time that it’s possible to encode malicious software into physical strands of DNA, so that when a gene sequencer analyzes it the resulting data becomes a program that corrupts gene-sequencing software and takes control of the underlying computer. While that attack is far from practical for any real spy or criminal, it’s one the researchers argue could become more likely over time, as DNA sequencing becomes more commonplace, powerful, and performed by third-party services on sensitive computer systems. And, perhaps more to the point for the cybersecurity community, it also represents an impressive, sci-fi feat of sheer hacker ingenuity.
Financial analysts whose surnames are perceived as favourable elicit stronger market reactions to their earnings forecasts, new research from Cass Business School has found.
The researchers found that following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, market reactions weakened for forecasts from analysts with Middle Eastern surnames. They also found that following the French and German governments’ opposition to the US-led Iraq War, the US market reactions weakened for analysts with French or German surnames. This effect was stronger in firms with lower institutional ownership and for analysts with non-American first names.
The researchers measured surname favourability using the US historical immigration records to identify countries of origin associated with a particular surname and the Gallup survey data on Americans’ favourability toward foreign countries.
Dr. Jay Jung, assistant professor of accounting at Cass Business School, said surname favourability was not associated with forecast quality such as accuracy, bias, and timeliness but rather it suggested the investors made biased judgements based on their perception of analysts’ surnames.
“Our finding is consistent with the prediction based on motivated reasoning that people have a natural desire to draw conclusions that they are motivated to reach. If investors have favourable views toward an analyst due to his or her surname, they are motivated to assess the analyst’s forecasts as being more credible or of higher quality because it reduces the unpleasant inconsistency between their attitudes and judgments,” said Dr. Jung.
Dr. Jung said surname favourability did have a complementary effect on analysts’ career outcomes, helping analysts prosper in their profession.
“We found that, conditional on good forecasting performance, having a favourable surname made it more likely for an analyst to get elected as an All-Star analyst and survive in the profession when his or her brokerage house went out of business or went through a M&A (mergers and acquisition) process,” he adds.
Dr. Jung said surname favourability also had impact on price drifts in the stock market.
“The speed at which stock prices reacted to an analyst’s forecasts was faster when the analyst had a favourable surname. We found significantly smaller delayed price responses.”
Dr. Jung said the research demonstrated that investors’ perception of an analyst’ surname not only influences their information processing in capital markets but also affects market efficiency and leads to different labour market consequences for finance professionals.
“It is quite interesting to see how the favorability of a surname, unrelated to the information content or quality of an analyst’s forecast, influences investor reaction and price anomalies in the capital market.”
More information: The research paper ‘An Analyst by Any Other Surname: Surname Favorability and Market Reaction to Analyst Forecasts’ is conditionally accepted for publication in the Journal of Accounting and Economics.
Explore further: Marriage name game: What kind of guy would take his wife’s last name?
