Scientists Reprogram Social Behavior in Carpenter Ants Using Epigenetic Drugs
January 2nd, 2016Via: PhysOrg:
In Florida carpenter ant colonies, distinct worker castes called minors and majors exhibit pronounced differences in social behavior throughout their lives. In a new study published today in Science, a multi-institution team anchored at University of Pennsylvania found that these caste-specific behaviors are not set in stone. Rather, this pioneering study shows that social behavior can be reprogrammed, indicating that an individual’s epigenetic, not genetic, makeup determines behavior in ant colonies.
Research Credit: tal
Happy New Year, Power’s Out Again
January 1st, 2016Summer storm took down the power about two hours ago. You know the routine… Middle of the night now, but if the juice isn’t back on by tomorrow I’ll be rigging up the inverter to ‘ye ole Nissan van. About 23c so our freezer will definitely be ready for a cooling blast by then.
Engineers Demo First Processor That Uses Light for Ultrafast Communications
December 31st, 2015Via: UC Berkeley:
“This is a milestone. It’s the first processor that can use light to communicate with the external world,” said Vladimir Stojanovi?, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the development of the chip. “No other processor has the photonic I/O in the chip.”
Stojanovi? and fellow UC Berkeley professor Krste Asanovi? teamed up with Rajeev Ram at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Miloš Popovi? at the University of Colorado Boulder to develop the new microprocessor.
“This is the first time we’ve put a system together at such scale, and have it actually do something useful, like run a program,” said Asanovi?, who helped develop the free and open architecture called RISC-V (reduced instruction set computer), used by the processor.
Microsoft Keeping Disk Encryption Keys for Those Signing Into Windows 10 Using Microsoft Accounts
December 29th, 2015Via: The Intercept:
One of the excellent features of new Windows devices is that disk encryption is built-in and turned on by default, protecting your data in case your device is lost or stolen. But what is less well-known is that, if you are like most users and login to Windows 10 using your Microsoft account, your computer automatically uploaded a copy of your recovery key – which can be used to unlock your encrypted disk – to Microsoft’s servers, probably without your knowledge and without an option to opt-out.
Related: China: Decryption on Demand
Marines’ LS3 Robotic Mule Too Loud for Real-World Combat
December 29th, 2015Before $42 million of public money was flushed down the gurgler, I guess nobody realized that the thing was going to sound like a leaf blower.
Via: Ars Technica:
The kickable “robotic mule,” also known as AlphaDog or LS3, created by Alphabet-owned Boston Dynamics under a contract with DARPA, has proved too loud to fight alongside the US Marines. Following an extended test period during the “Rim of the Pacific” military exercise last year, the project has been suspended.
Christmas 2015—Why There Is No Peace On Earth
December 29th, 2015Via: David Stockman’s Contra Corner:
In fact, the War Party entrenched in the nation’s capital is dedicated to economic interests and ideological perversions that guarantee perpetual war; they ensure endless waste on armaments and the inestimable death and human suffering that stems from 21st century high tech warfare and the terrorist blowback it inherently generates among those upon which the War Party inflicts its violent hegemony.
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In a word, the real threat to peace circa 1990 was that Pax Americana would not go away quietly in the night.
In fact, during the past 25 years Imperial Washington has lost all memory that peace was ever possible at the end of the cold war. Today it is as feckless, misguided and bloodthirsty as were Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna and London in August 1914.
Research Credit: Pookie
Switzerland to Vote on Banning Banks from Creating Money
December 29th, 2015Via: Independent:
Switzerland will hold a referendum to decide whether its private banks can create money after 110,000 people said they want their central bank to be solely in charge.
Seven years after the financial crisis struck, the Swiss federal government confirmed on Christmas Eve that it would ask its people whether the central bank – the SNB – should be the sole institution to be able to create money in its financial system. No date has been set for the referendum yet.
The Swiss Sovereign Money campaign is leading the initiative and aims to curtail financial speculation, demanding that commercial banks hold 100 per cent reserves against their deposits. This issue will have to go to a referendum under Swiss law now that the petition has gained more than 100,000 signatures within 18 months of launching.
“Banks won’t be able to create money for themselves any more, they’ll only be able to lend money that they have from savers or other banks,” said the campaign group, as reported by The Telegraph.
Federal Judge: Drinking Tea, Shopping at a Gardening Store Is Probable Cause for a SWAT Raid on Your Home
December 28th, 2015Via: The Washington Post:
In April 2012, a Kansas SWAT team raided the home of Robert and Addie Harte, their 7-year-old daughter and their 13-year-old son. The couple, both former CIA analysts, awoke to pounding at the door. When Robert Harte answered, SWAT agents flooded the home. He was told to lie on the floor. When Addie Harte came out to see what was going on, she saw her husband on his stomach as SWAT cop stood over him with a gun. The family was then held at gunpoint for more than two hours while the police searched their home. Though they claimed to be looking for evidence of a major marijuana growing operation, they later stated that they knew within about 20 minutes that they wouldn’t find any such operation. So they switched to search for evidence of “personal use.” They found no evidence of any criminal activity.
The investigation leading to the raid began at least seven months earlier, when Robert Harte and his son went to a gardening store to purchase supplies to grow hydroponic tomatoes for a school project. A state trooper had been positioned in the store parking lot to collect the license plate numbers of customers, compile them into a spreadsheet, then send the spreadsheets to local sheriff’s departments for further investigation. Yes, merely shopping at a gardening store could make you the target of a criminal drug investigation.
More than half a year later, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department began investigating the Hartes as part of “Operation Constant Gardener,” basically a PR stunt in which the agency conducts multiple pot raids on April 20, or “4/20.” On several occasions, the Sheriff’s Department sent deputies out to sort through the family’s garbage. (The police don’t need a warrant to sift through your trash.) The deputies repeatedly found “saturated plant material” that they thought could possibly be marijuana. On two occasions, a drug testing field kit inexplicably indicated the presence of THC, the active drug in marijuana. It was on the basis of those tests and Harte’s patronage of a gardening store that the police obtained the warrant for the SWAT raid.
But, of course, they found nothing. Lab tests would later reveal that the “saturated plant material” was actually loose-leaf tea, which Addie Harte drinks on a regular basis. Why did the field tests come up positive for pot? As I wrote back in February, it’s almost as if these tests come up positive whenever the police need them to.
Cheap Batteries Will Give Utilities Electric Shock
December 28th, 2015Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
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Via: Reuters:
Power suppliers have long enjoyed a natural monopoly. But the arrival of budget batteries coupled with cheaper solar power will allow a growing number of consumers to pull the plug on old-fashioned electricity networks in 2016 and beyond.
Solar panel prices have already plummeted, and batteries look set to follow in the near future as manufacturers hone new technologies and ramp up production. Tesla says it can slash the cost of its own batteries by more than a third with a bigger, better factory. That’s plausible: costs dropped by 14 percent on average every year between 2007 and 2014: broker CLSA reckons they will tumble by a further 70 percent over the next five years.
The prospect of being able to generate, store and manage their own power may prompt some customers to leave the grid. In parts of developing economies where electricity has yet to arrive, power networks may not be needed. More than a fifth of India’s population does not have access to electricity. Rather than waiting for infrastructure to expand, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is offering a 30 percent subsidy to encourage homeowners to use solar to become self-sufficient.
Energy companies’ initial responses to this potentially existential crisis have ranged from denial to defensiveness. Doing nothing is not a great option; but actively resisting the shift is worse. In Australia, industry lobbyists initially tried to fight special subsidies for renewable energy and raise fees for homes with solar panels. Though such bullying tactics will burn solar home-owners in the short term, it only encourages them to seek ways to harvest and hoard their own energy.
A Silicon Valley for Drones, in North Dakota
December 26th, 2015Via: New York Times:
“California and New York want what we’ve got,” said Shawn Muehler, a 30-year-old Fargo resident, gazing at a horizon of empty fields, silos, windbreak trees and hardly any people. A winged craft traces the air, mapping a field with pinpoint accuracy for his start-up, a drone software company called Botlink. “They like drones, but they’ve got a steep learning curve ahead.”
For years, entrepreneurs have come here to farm and to drill for oil and natural gas. Now a new, tech-savvy generation is grabbing a piece of the growing market for drone technology and officials want to help them do it here, where there is plenty of open space and — unlike in other sparsely populated states — lots of expertise already in place.
