CIA’s Venture Capital Arm Is Funding Skin Care Products That Collect DNA
April 8th, 2016Via: The Intercept:
KINCENTIAL SCIENCES, a company with an innovative line of cosmetic products marketed as a way to erase blemishes and soften skin, has caught the attention of beauty bloggers on YouTube, Oprah’s lifestyle magazine, and celebrity skin care professionals. Documents obtained by The Intercept reveal that the firm has also attracted interest and funding from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The previously undisclosed relationship with the CIA might come as some surprise to a visitor to the website of Clearista, the main product line of Skincential Sciences, which boasts of a “formula so you can feel confident and beautiful in your skin’s most natural state.”
Though the public-facing side of the company touts a range of skin care products, Skincential Sciences developed a patented technology that removes a thin outer layer of the skin, revealing unique biomarkers that can be used for a variety of diagnostic tests, including DNA collection.
Skincential Science’s noninvasive procedure, described on the Clearista website as “painless,” is said to require only water, a special detergent, and a few brushes against the skin, making it a convenient option for restoring the glow of a youthful complexion — and a novel technique for gathering information about a person’s biochemistry.
SpaceX: Falcon 9 First Stage Landing
April 8th, 2016Via: CBS:
An upgraded SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rocket boosted a Dragon cargo ship into orbit Friday, kicking off a two-day flight to the International Space Station to deliver 3.5 tons of cargo, including an innovative inflatable module that could pave the way to future deep space habitats and commercial space stations.
And in a notable first for the California rocket company, the booster’s first stage flew itself to a picture-perfect touchdown on an off-shore barge, whimsically named the “Of Course I Still Love You,” stationed about 185 miles northeast of Cape Canaveral.
Video from a company aircraft showed the 156-foot-tall stage descending vertically on the power of a single rocket engine and sticking the landing just a few feet from the center of the drone ship’s deck, stable on its splayed landing legs as the ship rocked in slightly choppy seas.
“‘Of Course I Still Love You,’ we have a Falcon 9 on board,” a SpaceX engineer triumphantly radioed about eight minutes and 35 seconds after launch.
It was the latest in a series of dramatic tests to perfect re-entry and landing techniques so spent rocket stages can be routinely recovered, refurbished and relaunched, a key element in SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s drive to lower the cost of spaceflight.
More:
CRS-8 Dragon Technical Webcast
Japan: Fingerprints To Be Tested As ‘Currency’
April 8th, 2016Via: The Yomiuri Shimbun:
Starting this summer, the government will test a system in which foreign tourists will be able to verify their identities and buy things at stores using only their fingerprints.
The government hopes to increase the number of foreign tourists by using the system to prevent crime and relieve users from the necessity of carrying cash or credit cards. It aims to realize the system by the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The experiment will have inbound tourists register their fingerprints and other data, such as credit card information, at airports and elsewhere.
Tourists would then be able to conduct tax exemption procedures and make purchases after verifying their identities by placing two fingers on special devices installed at stores.
The Inns and Hotels Law requires foreign tourists to show their passports when they check into ryokan inns or hotels.
The government plans to substitute fingerprint authentication for that requirement.
Venezuela: Three Day Weekends for all Workers Due to Power Shortages
April 7th, 2016Via: Independent:
Venezuelan workers will get Fridays off in the months of April and May, in a bid to save energy in the black-out hit country, the president said.
President Nicolas Maduro said Venezuelans will have “long weekends” in an appearance on state television on Wednesday night, announcing the measure as part of a 60-day plan to fight a power crunch.
“This plan for 60 days, for two months, will allow the country to get through the most difficult period with the most risk. I call on families, on the youth, to join this plan with discipline, with conscience and extreme collaboration to confront this extreme situation,” Maduro said.
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The majority of electricity in the country is supplied by hydropower, from infrastructure such as the 10.2-gigawatt Guri Dam in the eastern Bolivar state.
However, due to a drought, the water reserves which are needed to power hydroelectricity are extremely low.
The Sugar Conspiracy
April 7th, 2016Via: Guardian:
In 2008, researchers from Oxford University undertook a Europe-wide study of the causes of heart disease. Its data shows an inverse correlation between saturated fat and heart disease, across the continent. France, the country with the highest intake of saturated fat, has the lowest rate of heart disease; Ukraine, the country with the lowest intake of saturated fat, has the highest. When the British obesity researcher Zoë Harcombe performed an analysis of the data on cholesterol levels for 192 countries around the world, she found that lower cholesterol correlated with higher rates of death from heart disease.
More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments
April 6th, 2016Via: Wall Street Journal:
More than 40% of Americans who borrowed from the government’s main student-loan program aren’t making payments or are behind on more than $200 billion owed, raising worries that millions of them may never repay.
The new figures represent the fallout of a decadelong borrowing boom as record numbers of students enrolled in trade schools, universities and graduate schools.
While most have since left school and joined the workforce, 43% of the roughly 22 million Americans with federal student loans weren’t making payments as of Jan. 1, according to a quarterly snapshot of the Education Department’s $1.2 trillion student-loan portfolio.
About 1 in 6 borrowers, or 3.6 million, were in default on $56 billion in student debt, meaning they had gone at least a year without making a payment. Three million more owing roughly $66 billion were at least a month behind.
Meantime, another three million owing almost $110 billion were in “forbearance” or “deferment,” meaning they had received permission to temporarily halt payments due to a financial emergency, such as unemployment. The figures exclude borrowers still in school and those with government-guaranteed private loans.
Wind and Solar Are Crushing Fossil Fuels
April 6th, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
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Via: Bloomberg:
Wind and solar have grown seemingly unstoppable.
While two years of crashing prices for oil, natural gas, and coal triggered dramatic downsizing in those industries, renewables have been thriving. Clean energy investment broke new records in 2015 and is now seeing twice as much global funding as fossil fuels.
One reason is that renewable energy is becoming ever cheaper to produce. Recent solar and wind auctions in Mexico and Morocco ended with winning bids from companies that promised to produce electricity at the cheapest rate, from any source, anywhere in the world, said Michael Liebreich, chairman of the advisory board for Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).
“We’re in a low-cost-of-oil environment for the foreseeable future,” Liebreich said during his keynote address at the BNEF Summit in New York on Tuesday. “Did that stop renewable energy investment? Not at all.”
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The reason solar-power generation will increasingly dominate: It’s a technology, not a fuel. As such, efficiency increases and prices fall as time goes on. What’s more, the price of batteries to store solar power when the sun isn’t shining is falling in a similarly stunning arc.
Just since 2000, the amount of global electricity produced by solar power has doubled seven times over. Even wind power, which was already established, doubled four times over the same period. For the first time, the two forms of renewable energy are beginning to compete head-to-head on price and annual investment.
Southern California Braces for Summer Blackouts Due to Porter Ranch Gas Leak
April 6th, 2016Via: Los Angeles Times:
State officials warn that Southern California could face as many as 14 days of scheduled blackouts this summer because of depleted reserves of natural gas caused by the massive leak in Aliso Canyon.
The canyon in the hills above Porter Ranch is a crucial gas storage facility, supplying 17 power plants in the Los Angeles Basin. But the four-month leak that began in October left the facility at one-fifth of its capacity and new injections of gas have been prohibited until all of its wells have passed comprehensive tests.
Officials estimate the storage facility won’t be back on line for months, leaving local power plants without a key source of natural gas.
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In addition to the summer blackouts, the region could face an additional eight to 18 days of outages later in the year, according to the report by Rothleder’s agency and the California Energy Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
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Although Southern California Gas Co. sealed the Aliso Canyon leak in February, it is prohibited from injecting gas into the reservoir until safety checks are completed on the facility’s remaining 114 wells. So far, none of the wells has passed the required tests.
‘The Police Could be Controlling Your Self-Driving Car’
April 3rd, 2016Late library books? Unvaccinated children? Offensive comments on Facebook? Better keep your bicycle handy.
Sarcasm. Sort of.
Via: MarketWatch:
More intrusive controls may be called for to deal with crime. For instance, high-speed chases could become a thing of the past. The vehicles of drunk/drugged individuals who insist on doing their own driving could be pulled over if their cars’ actions could be controlled from the outside. To prevent great mayhem, police may dearly want to override the use of automated vehicles by terrorists or other criminals.
New Zealand: Hawaiki 30Tbps Trans-Pacific Subsea Cable Commences Construction
April 3rd, 2016Finally.
Via: ZDnet:
The 14,000km subsea cable connecting Australia and New Zealand to Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States has finally commenced construction, almost three years after first being announced.
The cable will be jointly constructed by Hawaiki Submarine Cable, based in Auckland, and TE SubCom, a company from Eatontown, New Jersey. According to the two companies, they began route planning in June last year, and expect completion of the project by mid-2018.
The cable, which has the option to extend to several South Pacific islands along the route via TE SubCom’s optical add/drop multiplexing (OADM) nodes, will have a capacity of over 30 Terabits per second (Tbps). The cable makes use of TE SubCom’s C100U+ Submarine Line Terminating Equipment (SLTE).
