Melting polar regions are already causing unprecedented sea level rise but there are other threats besides water buried in the swiftly melting ice.
Since 2003, large viruses (longer than 0.5 microns) have been found ensconced in permafrost, a layer of soil in the Arctic that is usually permanently frozen. In a new study published in PNAS today, scientists announced that they were studying a 30,000 year old virus found in the same frigid environment. The ancient virus, Mollivirus sibericum, is able to infect a modern amoeba, which raises concerns among scientists.
The authors of the paper worry that while the few ancient viruses identified in the permafrost sample don't appear to be harmful to humans (they haven't found varieties of small pox or herpes), others might not be so benign.
There is a concern that rising temperatures and melting ice--not to mention oil exploration in the Arctic--could see the reappearance of ancient deadly viruses.
"If we are not careful, and we industrialize these areas without putting safeguards in place, we run the risk of one day waking up viruses such as small pox that we thought were eradicated," one of the lead researchers, Jean-Michel Claverie, told AFP.
And it isn't just giant viruses found in the colder regions of the world. Small viruses were recently discovered in arctic lakes. It looks like all kinds of infection-causing viruses could defrost as the world warms.
The auto world seems hyper-sensitive to hacking these days -- and rightly so. Good-guy hackers have exposed numerous vulnerabilities in today's telematics systems, which could be exploited to frustrate drivers, pilfer personal information about owners, or worse.
According to analysts Colin Bird and Egil Juliussen at IHS Automotive, the answer to both questions is a resounding "yes". In fact, they insist that the continued computerization and networking of cars will offer huge benefits for drivers and automakers alike.
How so? Because computerization and networking will allow automakers to fix problems with their cars on the fly via over-the-air (OTA) software updates.
CARS: THE NEW SMARTPHONES
Think about it: there's a bug in your laptop's operating system, or the news media freaks out about a security hole in your favorite app. How do you fix it? You don't take your computer or phone to the shop where you bought it (as if most of the staff there could do do anything about it anyway). You download an update, install it, reboot, and voila.
Relatively few automakers have begun doing OTA updates yet, but IHS expects that to change dramatically in the near future. Remote updates have the potential to cut warranty costs, boost rates of completion for software recalls, and extend the performance of many components. OTA updates will also make customers happier because drivers won't have to take time out of their day to schlep to a dealership for repairs or even fiddle with a USB drive.
And that's not all: OTA updates stand to improve automakers' bottom lines, too. IHS predicts that cost savings from remote updates will swell from a "mere" $2.7 billion this year to $35 billion in 2022.
That dramatic growth is, in part, because the number of vehicles capable of benefiting from OTA updates is set to balloon from 1.2 million cars on the road today to around 32 million by 2022.
NOT ALL UPDATES ARE EQUAL
There are four areas that IHS identifies for targeted OTA updates. App updates are the easiest to carry out, because app software is relatively compact and doesn't often interfere with more critical functions of a vehicle. Infotainment and telematics systems are tougher to handle because they're larger, which means that updates take more bandwidth to download and more time to install. (Also, as we've seen, those systems can provide access to sensitive parts of a car's operating system.)
The last -- and hardest -- area to target for OTA updates is the electronic control unit (ECU) software. While BMW, Ford, Hyundai, Toyota, and Volkswagen have already begun carrying out OTA updates in other areas (or are about to), only Tesla has ventured into updating the ECU. Why? Because, as IHS points out, Tesla built its system from the ground up with OTA updates in mind:
Tesla has designed its system and ECU architecture with experienced staff from the PC and consumer electronics (CE) industries and has included OTA features in the basic design. It certainly helped that Tesla did not have legacy systems and could start the system architecture with a clean sheet.
And yet, Tesla won't be alone in this arena for long. Today, there are only about 86,000 vehicles capable receiving ECU updates over the air, but that number will swell to 25.7 million vehicles by 2022.
Of course, OTA updates won't solve every problem with every car. There will always be squeaks and other issues for dealers and their mechanics to fix. But the cash cow known as the dealership repair and service center could start to run dry before long.
Apple announced the iPhone 6S and the 6S Plus today during their fall event in San Francisco.
Apple announced their new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus today at its fall event in San Francisco. The phones have been given the standard Apple “S” treatment, with upgrades to their processors, cameras, and a smattering of other features including the long-rumored 3D Touch. The phones will also be available in a new Rose Gold color, which the rest of the world would call pink. They call the Rose Gold casing an entirely new kind of aluminum, not just a different kind of color.
Apple/ Screenshot
The colors of Apple's new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus.
The phones have been upgraded with Apple's A9 processor, which even outside of Apple’s “full stack” boasts a 50 percent improvement over the A8 processor. Apple claims the A9 gives the iPhone a 90 percent GPU boost.
The phone’s cameras have also been upgraded: the rear-facing camera has been bumped to 12 megapixels with the ability to shoot 4K video, and the front-facing camera sits at 5 megapixels. The iPhones' displays will also light up as a makeshift flash, matching the light in the room for proper color balance. Apple is also introducing "live photos". It's basically a GIF with the option of sound, but the camera takes 1.5 seconds of footage before and after the photo is taken. You can also set a live photo as your Apple Watch face, and Facebook will support live photos in the coming months as well.
The most significant addition to the 6S line is 3D Touch, a feature first debuted by Apple in the Apple Watch under the name Force Touch. Huawei actually beat Apple to the punch, announcing a similar capability last week in their Mate S flagship phone. The Chinese smartphone maker emphasizes their screen’s capability towards weighing objects, which maybe might be kinda useful sometimes, but Apple’s approach is more pragmatic.
Apple's 3D Touch is more geared towards user interaction, adding new ways to access menus and giving easy previews of content. It uses sensors in the backlight, combined with data from the accelerometer and touchscreen to give accurate force readings. Apple calls this features "the next generation of multitouch."
The new iPhones will also usher in iOS 9, Apple's newest mobile operating system. From WWDC, we saw that the new OS will feature a learning algorithm that tracks daily habits (called Proactive), as well as multitasking capabilities for the iPad Air 2. Notes will also get a long-overdue upgrade. (For all the nitty-gritty developer details, check out our coverage of WWDC.)
Siri is also getting an upgrade. Proactive aside, the virtual personal assistant will be always at the ready, waiting to hear the words “Hey, Siri.” That feature is available now, but only when plugged into the wall.
Behind the scenes, we’re also going to see improvements to the phone’s LTE chip. The new Qualcomm chip doubles the LTE speeds from 150 mbps to 300 mbps, which while impressive, is relatively meaningless as most carriers average at 40 mbps on LTE.
During the keynote, CEO Tim Cook also touted the iPhone's popularity, calling the 6 and 6 Plus not only the most popular phones in the world, but the "most loved phones". The new line of iPhone 6S and 6S Plus will be priced $199 and $299 respectively for 16GB models on a two-year plan, or $27 per month on an installment plan. Apple is also offering their own installment plan, selling the new unlocked iPhones starting at $32 per month with a yearly trade-in and Apple Care+. They'll be available for preorder September 12.
Metastatic cancer, or a cancer that spreads to other parts of the body, causes more than 90 percent of cancer deaths. Doctors constantly monitor patients’ blood to make sure that cancer cells haven’t broken off from the original tumor and started spreading, but these cells are difficult to detect, making the tests inefficient. Now a team of researchers has developed a tiny implantable sponge that can soak up these cancer cells so that doctors can intervene before the cancer settles in, according to a study published yesterday in Nature Communications.
Cancers don’t just metastasize anywhere. When cells break off from tumors, they flow in the blood to specific environments that are cozy for them. In the past researchers have found that immune cells play an important role in creating these microenvironments, and that the metastasizing cells tend to follow the immune cells.
In the study, the researchers tested sponges just a fifth of an inch in diameter made of a biocompatible plastic called PLGA on mice with breast cancer. They implanted the sponges in the mice’s abdomens and under their skin, places where cancer doesn’t usually spread. When they removed the sponges 28 days later, the researchers found that they contained cancer cells, though there were no cancer cells in the same tissues without the sponge.
The researchers hypothesize that, when the immune cells flocked to the site of the implanted sponge, the metastatic cancer cells followed, then stayed there when trapped by the sponge. This could help researchers detect metastatic cancer cells sooner, so they can intervene earlier. What’s more, the sponge seemed to soak up other cancer cells from the original tumor environment as well, reducing the number of their cells by 10 percent, which could make the original cancer easier to treat.
Since this experiment was limited to breast cancer, it’s hard to know if it would work as well in other types of cancer without solid tumors, like leukemias. What’s more, researchers still aren’t sure that early metastasis detection improves a patient’s overall outcome—something the researchers hope to pursue in future studies, the BBC reports. And though they will pursue those studies in animals, they hope to test the sponge in humans soon.
Force Touch entered the spotlight when the Apple Watch was introduced in 2014. By giving their touchscreen-enabled wearable the ability to sense pressure, users were able to deeply press into the screen to reveal hidden actions. Tapping on an object, for example, would choose it while giving the screen a Force Touch would reveal a menu of items or enable a different action to take place. The feature was later added to Apple’s 2014 Macbook and now its the iPhone 6S’s turn to use the force with 3D Touch.
How Will 3D Touch Be Used?
The iPhone 6S will make use of what Apple calls 3D Touch. Cupertino will take what they introduced with the Apple Watch a step further and apply it throughout iOS 9. When in the Mail app, for example, iPhone 6S users can use 3D Touch to preview an email and quickly close the message. Pressing hard enough will fully open the email.
On the device's springboard, iPhone users can put 3D Touch to use for app shortcuts. Giving the Music app a tap with some pressure behind it can bring you quickly to search or Beats 1. Using Force Touch on the phone app icon brings up a list of favorites. Even third-party apps can make use of Apple's pressure sensitivity functionality on the homescreen. Facebook, for example, will allow you to change your status or even check into locations from the home screen. 3D Touch can be used within third-party apps as well. In Instagram, pressing into a photo will bring up a preview of the picture.
Apple's use of 3D Touch in iOS 9 will extend to the app switcher as well. Swiping from the edge with a forceful touch will reveal all recently opened applications.
Apple demoed gaming using 3D Touch at their fall event as well. When playing a game, users can now leave their fingers on screen and press down when it's time to jump or shoot. Games like PixelToys' app coming this holiday season will make use of 3D Touch.
iPhone 6s
Apple announced more than just 3D Touch for the iPhone 6s at their fall event. For 2015, those buying the flagship iPhone can also get the device in rose gold (pink) as well as silver gold and space gray. The iPhone 6S also ships with an improved camera, faster A9 processor and increased pixel density. Features kept the same include screen size, TouchID fingerprint sensor, and physical design though we could see this altered with the release of the iPhone 7.
iPhone 6S will cost $200 on the low end, when customers agree to a 2 year contract. Above the 16GB option, users can get the 64GB version for $300 or the 128GB version for $400. Without contracts, the 6s will run users $650 for 16GB, $750 for 64GB and $850 for 128GB. Apple also introduced their retail stores yearly upgrade plan, starting at $32 per month--offering an unlocked phone, AppleCare+ and yearly upgrades.
In everything but material, Carbon Flyer is a fancy paper airplane. With two propellers and a Bluetooth controller, it’s a lot like the PowerUp 3.0 remote control paper airplane the FAA strangely approved as a drone. Instead of a body built from looseleaf, the plane’s structure is carbon fiber, giving it a rigidity and strength that paper lacks. In addition, it has a camera and lights, making it far more drone than its folded-sheet appearance suggests.
In January, the Carbon Flyer surpassed its IndieGogo crowdfunding goal by 637 percent. Last month, they sent their prototype plane to the factory The airplane is controlled by an app on either an iPhone or an Android, and with Bluetooth 4 it can be controlled up to 240 feet away from the pilot. That’s less distance than it sounds - a pilot in one end zone of a football field could steer the plane almost to the opposing 20 yard line, but to retain control, the plane would probably have to turn back sooner so the signal isn’t lost.
As a toy, the Carbon Flyer seems like a lot of fun. As a remotely controlled unmanned aerial vehicle, capable of recording video, it straddles the very edge of what counts as a toy.
Tim Cook kicked off Apple’s Fall event touting all the great things about Apple Watch: Siri, “healthy obsessions” with the activity rings, and a 97 percent customer satisfaction rate.
So what’s next for the smartwatch? The biggest aesthetic changes are the offerings of gold and rose gold (pink) anodized aluminum cases. We’ll also see a continuation of the stainless steel watch with a Product (RED) band, and as discussed in WWDC, we’ll get third-party complications (icons on the watch faces), transit directions in Maps, and custom watch faces.
Apple/ Screenshot
Apple announced two new colors of the Apple Watch at its fall event, Gold and Rose Gold.
This all comes with WatchOS 2, which will be available September 16 as a free upgrade, and gives the Watch the ability to run apps on the device itself rather than just transferring data from the iPhone. This opens the doors to more robust third party apps, and Apple is finally giving developers access to hardware like the speaker, microphone, and heart rate monitor.
These third-party apps are being given a serious spin, with a big pitch towards doctors and medical practitioners. The third-party medical app AirStrip lets doctors monitor the health metrics of pregnant women remotely, and give realtime data readouts of patients wearing Apple Watches. Doctors can send this data to other specialists using their own Apple Watches, straight from within the app's UI itself, and it's all HIPAA compliant. (I’m sure we’ll see a lot of thinkpieces about this one.) Facebook Messenger is also getting a facelift, with more options to respond on the Watch.
Apple is also releasing new watch faces (in addition to their previously-announced picture faces), in tandem with their partnership with French leather manufacturer Hermes. The watch faces will feature Hermes branding, and compliment a new leather watch band made by Hermes that wraps around the wrist twice.
Apple/ Screenshot
Apple has collaborated with French leather maker Hermes to bring new watch faces and bands to the Watch.
Running right now in the city of Nizhny Tagil, the Russia Arms Expo 2015 is a chance for the former superpower to show off its latest military hardware. Amidst the broken tanks and hypothetical fighter-hunting drones sits a somewhat more mundane craft: an armored bulldozer, Russia's first since the Soviet Union's World War II-era BAT-M.
Armored bulldozers may call to mind America’s 2004 “Killdozer” rampage, where a 56 year old man in a heavily armored bulldozer destroyed several buildings before taking his own life.
Military armored dozers are instead a tool of directed violence. Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the American military used bulldozers to demolish buildings suspected of hiding insurgents. The Israel Defense Forces use custom-modified Caterpillar bulldozers, known as D9s, to level buildings in support of infantry. These extra-armored dozers feature armor to keep the crew inside safe from rifle and machine-gun fire.
The armored bulldozer is a tool of urban warfare, moving with troops and crushing buildings with snipers inside, in situations where artillery or airstrikes are too risky for troops. It’s hardly a clean weapon of war--destroying buildings can easily cause civilian casualties, and leave plenty of people homeless after a conflict.
That’s a pretty grim fate, but converting a vehicle whose best civilian use is demolition into a tool of war is unlikely to create something not deadly. As the war in Eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists continues to drag on, there’s a chance these modified dozers will crash their way into combat.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today that it will invest a total of $35 million toward research into dietary supplements. Five research centers will spend the next five years investigating the effectiveness of some of the most popular “natural” dietary supplements in the country.
This research is important because the medical benefits of many nutritional supplements are unproven, despite the fact that about one-fifth of Americans take them. Antioxidant supplements, for example, have been found to stave off cancer, among other diseases, in some patients but worsen preexisting lung tumors in mice. Fish oil contains Omega-3 fatty acids, which may help lower your risk of heart attack, or it could increase your risk of prostate cancer, or do nothing to stop cognitive decline. If any of these chemicals contains a miracle cure—or if health-conscious people are unwittingly hastening their demise—doctors should probably know.
Paul Offit, an infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who has written extensively about vitamins and nutritional supplements, sees the value in these sorts of studies, even if the result is negative—in the past, similar studies have shown that taking concentrated garlic doesn’t slow bad cholesterol, or that the herb saw palmetto can’t help an enlarged prostate. “When patients want to take [these supplements] physicians can say ‘Don’t do it, take a statin instead. And don’t take garlic because it’s “natural”—it just doesn’t work,’” Offit says. The term “natural” is deceiving, he adds, since most drugs are derived from compounds found in nature.
But Offit doesn’t think the NIH’s investment in research will solve the real issue with supplements: a total lack of regulation. “The problem is getting a quality product in an unregulated industry. I cannot emphasize this more strongly—the FDA simply does not regulate [supplements],” he says. In recent years studies have shown that the nutritional supplements sold in health food stores contain varying quantities of the active ingredient that is often different from what is on the bottle, plus a whole bunch of extra ingredients not even mentioned on the label. Earlier this year, the New York State Attorney General conducted an investigation, adding to the mounting evidence against the efficacy of these supplements.
The studies that the NIH grantees conduct will likely not be very large or over a long enough period of time to be truly useful, Offit notes: “35 million dollars doesn’t get you very much.” But even if the researchers determined that a particular herbal extract provided a huge boost in patient health, the general public would never be able to buy the supplements with any certainty of their dosage or contents. Without the appropriate regulation, supplements will continue to be a gamble for patients, regardless of the purported health benefits of their active ingredients.
“I think [the NIH’s $35 million] is a waste of money,” Offit says. “The supplement industry is a fraud, and until it’s regulated by the FDA so that it meets safety and efficacy standards, Americans will continue to be duped.”
Defense Secretary Ash Carter opens DARPA's tech convention, Wait, What? Wednesday in St. Louis.
ST. LOUIS — The inventors of the Internet have some crazy ideas for the future. They want to build computers one atom at a time. They seek to turn biological molecules into synthetic "impossible materials," whose applications we can only imagine.
They want to carpet space with miniature satellites that take photos of the planet in all places at all times. They dream of dosing the public with genetic material to turn us all into bioreactors, cranking out antibodies to give ourselves immunity to virulent flu. And that's just from the first afternoon.
The Pentagon's blue-sky research wing, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is holding a bizarre, awesome and very unique conference this week called, appropriately, "Wait, What?" Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters once he heard that title, "I had to be there."
The next few days are full of genome editing; how to use huge chunks of the electromagnetic spectrum; designing new materials; preventing nuclear war; and a lot more. This is the type of convention where a professor decked out in a colorful Hawaiian shirt can rub elbows with a Marine in dress blues, and bond over a mutual interest in synthetic biology.
DARPA was born in the age of Sputnik, went on to build the precursor to the Internet, and today gives us things like BigDog, NACHOS and MAHEM. This conference is about how its roughly 200 workers housed in a nondescript building in Washington, D.C., can build the future.
The speakers break for dramatic pauses, channeling Steve Jobs and the most iconic TED talks. Presentations are enveloped in drama that sometimes belies the actual contents, like one super-short talk by DARPA physicist Vincent Tang called "Not Even Once." How mysterious! Turns out it was a brief introduction to a program called Sigma, which aims to detect nuclear weapons before any rogue nations or militants can detonate them "even once."
There's much more to come in the next couple days, so stay tuned here and on Twitter for more updates.
A reconstruction of Homo naledi’s head by paleoartist John Gurche, who spent some 700 hours recreating the head from bone scans. The find was announced by the University of the Witwatersrand, the National Geographic Society and the South African National Research Foundation and published in the journal eLife.
In September of 2013, two cave explorers, on a routine exploration in South Africa happened upon a collection of fossils that would soon question our current understanding of humans’ ancestral history. While probing a narrow fracture system in the Rising Star Cave System in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, they found the entrance into a dark cave now known as Dinaledi Chamber. Inside, they discovered a series of fossils, which anthropologists have now identified as a species of hominin distinct from those that make up our family tree — a human ancestor entirely new to science.
Lee Berger, an anthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa and lead author of the study, in collaboration with the National Geographic Society and South African Department of Science and Technology announced their findings today in the open access journal, eLife, and in an article in the October issue of National Geographic Magazine.
The new species, named Homo naledi after the Rising Star Cave where it was found (naleti means star in Sesotho, a local South African language), has an unusual combination of features found in the genus Homo (which includes modern humans, Neanderthals, and other extinct species such as homo erectus) and in the genus Australopithecus (from which the homo genus is derived).
Researchers are still figuring out where the species fits within our human lineage, however the striking combination of both Homo and Australopithecus-like physical features makes it quite possible that this new species was near the initial origin and diversification of the homo genus, placing it between 2.5 million and 2.8 million years old, the researchers said during a press conference.
After a series of two excavation trips, the researchers recovered 1,550 separate bone and bone fragments and, in total, remains of at least 15 distinct individuals with ranges from young infants to old adults. The sheer massive number of fossils found, the researchers said, allowed them to be more certain that this is indeed a new species, and not simply a collection of bones from two different, known species. They analyzed every anatomical feature —skull, hands, feet, teeth, etc. — separately, using specialized teams working independently. Each team came to the same conclusion: the features came from the same species, and thus collectively, the fossils as a whole must belong to the same species.
Robert Clark/National Geographic; Source: Lee Berger, Wits, photographed at Evolutionary Studies Institute
A composite skeleton of H. naledi is surrounded by some of the hundreds of other fossil elements recovered from the Dinaledi Chamber in the Rising Star cave in South Africa. The expedition team was led by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand. The find was announced by the University of the Witwatersrand, the National Geographic Society and the South African National Research Foundation and published in the journal eLife.
Entering the Dinaledi Chamber, where the fossils were found, is an incredibly tough task as it requires traveling through a series of narrow openings and tunnels in the pitch dark. Once there the cave is just 12 meters in length and anywhere between a half meter and two and a half meters in width. The roof reaches heights of about 32 feet to 50 feet (10 to 15 meters).
The fact that there such a massive number of the same species were discovered within the difficult-to-reach Dinaledi Chamber makes the researchers believe that the Homo naledi were using this location as a kind of mass grave — depositing bodies repeatedly en masse over time.
The researchers could only find one way to reach the chamber, and they saw no indication of other animals, nor any evidence it was used as a dwelling. Fossil parts were found in different layers of the sediment, which suggests that the fossils entered the chamber at different periods of time, and making it less likely that they all died from a single catastrophic event. Previously, this type of ritualized dumping procedure was thought to be unique to humans only, the researchers said.
Who Is Homo naledi?
Based on the fossils they have currently studied, the researchers believe that H. naledi stood at about 5 feet tall and weighed almost 100 pounds. But as a whole, H. naledi represents an unexpected combination of Australopith-like and human-like features. In particular, they appear to have had small brains, which more closely compares to that of the australopiths. However the shape of the skull is more similar to that of early species of our homo genus
Their hands also have a combination of traits that exist in two different known species. To make this discovery, the researchers were able to find bones in the hand that were partially joined together, which is an extreme rarity in the hominin fossil record, along with a hand skeleton that was nearly complete. The wrist bones show several adaptations that allowed the species to use tools and are also seen in the hands of modern humans and Neanderthals.
However, the fingers of Homo naledi are more curved than even most australopiths. This suggests that while Homo naledi did walk, they also probably spent a significant amount of their time climbing. Their feet help to confirm this hypothesis as they were slightly more curved and had a lower arch than the average human. This finding sheds some light on a constant debate among anthropologists as to whether early hominins exclusively walked or did indeed spend a significant amount of their time climbing trees.
Robert Clark/National Geographic; Source: Lee Berger, Wits, photographed at Evolutionary Studies Institute
H. naledi's hand which shows proportioned digits similar to that of humans. However the curved fingers, something not seen in modern humans, makes it likely that homo naledi spent a significant amount of time climbing trees.
Berger et al. eLife 2015;4:e09560. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.09560
Homo Naledi feet, which are much smaller than that of modern humans. The researchers said that if a Dinaledi lady went shopping for shoes in South Africa, the United Kingdom, or the United States, then she'd look for the smallest adult size possible.
The small size of Homo naledi's brain also stood out. Previously, anthropologists believed that a larger brain size emerged together with tool use, and in conjunction with smaller tooth size and a higher quality diet. The Homo naledi did have small teeth and hands effective for tool-making, but they also had a small brain. The researchers said this distinction has caused them to rethink their present models of when traits evolved and how, and poses the possibility that they didn't evolve “as a single adaptive package," the researchers write.
Art: Stefan Fichtel. Sources: Lee Berger and Peter Schmid, Wits; John Hawks, University of Wisconsin-Madison/National Geographic
The braincase of a composite male skull of H. naledi measures just 560 cubic centimeters in volume — less than half that of the modern human skull pictured behind it. The fossils were recovered from the Rising Star cave in South Africa by a team led by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand. The find was announced by the University of the Witwatersrand, the National Geographic Society and the South African National Research Foundation and published in the journal eLife.
While much information has already been gained from the Homo naledi remains, the fossils have not yet been firmly dated.
The Dinaledi Chamber poses a unique challenge for the researchers as the fossils could not be found as of yet in direct association with other animals, the researchers said, which makes it hard to establish a working estimate for the age of the fossils. Going forward, the researchers plan to employ other methods to try and date the fossils.
However, they point out that that date would not significantly affect their working hypothesis as to where Homo naledi lies on the ancestral tree. That hypothesis was determined through the physical features of the newly identified species, and comparing them to prior fossil discoveries of close ancestors, as well as modern humans.
Once a more exact age of Homo naledi is established, they will use this as a guide for future studies to interpret the South African archaeological record, and determine who exactly made various stone tools and what anatomical features were necessary to make them, the researchers said.
For now, this new discovery perhaps serves as a reminder that the answers to our burning questions about the evolution of our species and that of our most recent and distant cousins may lie in hidden caves like Dinaledi, simply waiting to be discovered. At the same time, the ambiguities within them may likely open up new questions that will continue to puzzle and challenge our understanding of our own kind.
Time to put the cards and handheld games away and go outside. But not because you’ve been cooped up too long: because next year outside is where you’ll find Pokémon.
The Pokémon Company, in conjunction with Nintendo and Google spin-off Niantic, is working on a new game for Android and iPhone called Pokémon Go, which will allow people to use their phones to hunt for, duel, and trade Pokémon in real life — yes, out in fields and on busy streets and stuff. No precise release date or price for the game has been given, aside from sometime in 2016.
It’s not surprising that one of gaming’s biggest franchises is now at the forefront of world integrated massively multiplayer online (MMO) and augmented reality (AR) technology (the latter a blanket term referring to layering digital information over the physical world). By the nature of the game itself, Pokémon has been aching for tech like this, which could overlay the gaming experience symbiotically over the real world. The trailer looks pretty impressive — in fact we’d say Pokémon Go looks to accomplish more than Pixels did in feature length.
Which isn’t to say it can deliver entirely on that promise. Screen captures really do show a game that takes place on your smartphone's screen alone, so while there may be GPS components and interactivity, you’ll still need decent service and still be staring at a screen most of the time. That was true of co-creator company Niantic's last gaming experience as well, a niche AR mobile game called Ingress, which asked users to join two sides and use their smartphones to claim territory around portals of energy (actually just real-world buildings and sculptures).
But for the there’s added tech to make it less tedious than checking your phone every few minutes for Pokémon. Nintendo is working on a kind-of smart wearable they’re calling Pokémon Go Plus — something we assume built in equal parts smart watch and motion sensitive controller — which will be part of the larger system of finding and capturing Pokémon in the real world.
The approach is noteworthy for merging one of Nintendo's traditional strong suits — dedicated gaming hardware — with an area it has long been reluctant to make headway: smartphone gaming. After all, the company released its first dedicated console-to-smartphone game in history, Pokémon Shuffle, just last month. In all honesty, Nintendo’s Wii and WiiU consoles now look like early beta tests, pieces of the puzzle that eventually led to this: a touch-screen controller and a wrist-wrapping motion sensitive dongle.
Whether Pokémon fans will be comfortable waving their arms wildly and displaying a bright red and white wrist dongle in public is a matter that only time will sort out. We doubt the adult Pokémon fans will stop in the middle of the walk to lunch with colleagues to capture another for their collection.
On the other hand, it presents a great opportunity for real-world interaction outside of a comic shop basement, where the card tournaments usually happen. LARPing gathers people together--why couldn’t something like this?
We’ll have to wait until 2016 to see if it catches on or dies. But until then fans of the show, games, cards, and cosplay have something to watch and talk about.
In ancient times, sailors navigated as much by the position of the stars at night as they did by familiar landscapes during the day. Now, in a twist on centuries of astronomical navigation, a satellite navigation company is joining with a robotic shipping initiative. If it all goes as planned, unmanned vessels will cross the globe, guided by signals sent from artificial objects in orbit, a mechanical facsimile of the oceans of old.
The Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications Initiative, as it is more technically known, is a project spearheaded by Rolls Royce to create ships that can cross the sea without humans on board. People take up already limited space on a ship, and they have biological needs that require even more space, so a ship without them can do without a galley, sleeping quarters, storing food for the crew, or anything else related to habitation. That’s a space savings, and also a security benefit: Without on-board crew as potential hostages, pirate attacks become just a material concern, and not a life-threatening one.
Inmarsat, the satellite company that just signed on to the project, will ferry the data from ship to shore. Inmarsat is set to launch the fourth satellite of its Global Xpress constellation in 2016. The network promises broadband-levels of data transfer. With this, remote control seamen could sail the seas as soon as the constellation is in place.
Electronic noses can detect bugs, disease or even explosives. Now scientists have applied similar technology to detecting contaminated drinking water, according to a study published recently in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.
To make water drinkable, treatment plants weed out most harmful chemicals and bacteria. But the resulting drinking water is almost never pure H2O; even the most potable water contains a cocktail of dissolved chemicals that give it a unique flavor or cause slight variations in its pH. Researchers have found that the human nose is very sensitive to two molecules that often slip through the treatment process: geosmin (GSM) and 2-methylisoborneol (MIB). And while these molecules aren’t harmful in water, they smell earthy and musty, respectively, which can make water taste just gross enough to be off-putting. Water quality experts have to test water samples in a lab to determine whether these molecules are in drinking water, a process that is expensive and time-consuming.
A team of South Korean researchers has developed a simple sensor based on the human nose to sniff out the smelly molecules. The sensor is coated with special proteins called olfactory receptors that bind to the molecules when they are present. In this particular sensor, the researchers found human olfactory receptors that react to GSM and MIB, and bound them in carbon nanotubes. When the molecules are present, the carbon nanotubes light up. In tests, the researchers found that their device could detect GSM and MIB concentrations as low as 10 nanograms per liter of water, or 10,000 parts per trillion. That's not quite as sensitive as the human nose, which can detect GSM at just 5 parts per trillion, but it's a good start.
A device like this one would help water quality technicians detect contaminants quickly and on site, preventing the delay caused by lab testing. But the researchers think their device could be used to detect many other contaminants in water or air. Or it could be used in different applications in the perfume or cosmetic industry, or even to spot explosives in airports.
Mercedes-Benz F015 Luxury in Motion concept, 2015 Consumer Electronics Show
Some automakers tease concept cars with autonomous-driving modes, lounge-style interiors, and augmented-reality windshields and windows, while others tout automatic cruise control, lane-keep systems, and automated parking features as technologies that are the gateway to autonomous driving.
But the reality is that autonomous driving isn’t as little as five or even ten years off, on a widespread basis, and that there are a lot of decidedly less glamorous pieces of technology required to make autonomous driving...well, autonomous.
Toyota Motor Corporation last week announced a $50 million investment aimed at autonomous-vehicle research—including advanced robotics and artificial intelligence—to a specific goal of reducing road injuries and fatalities.
And work with older drivers and those who have impairments might be one of the first jumping points for such “self-driving” technologies.
More artificial intelligence, less wowie zowie
Dr. Gill Pratt announces Toyota autonomous vehicle research initiative
Smart cruise control and other interim technologies are “the easy parts,” according to Dr. Gill Pratt, the mastermind of the DARPA Robotics Challenge and new head of this research effort, pointing to this partnership as aiming at many of the unseen elements of autonomous driving—including the artificial intelligence and predictive-behavior aspects.
Toyota’s chief officer for its R&D operations, Kiyotaka Ise, noted that this builds on autonomous research that Toyota has been conducting since the 1990s.
The partnership, which will include Professor Fei Fei Li at Stanford, and Professor Daniela Rus at MIT (the $50 million is essentially split between the two), will strive to “develop advanced architectures that allow cars to better perceive and navigate their surroundings in order to make safe driving decisions,” said Rus.
According to Pratt, the focus of the research partnership won’t only be on vehicles, more on the autonomy of people—helping them get a means to control when and where they want to move “regardless of age or illness.” And that might point to some of the oldest drivers—and those with severly compromised vision or other impairments—as some of the best early candidates for autonomous solutions.
“We’re committing to develop together new technologies that will improve the human condition,” said Dr. Gill Pratt, who pointed to those needing to take the keys away from an older driver in the family. “Toyota wants to improve all of these things and make a more dignified life.”
Over a million people die every year, globally, due to car accidents. Americans drive nearly three trillion miles annually and spend almost 50 billion hours in their vehicles. Furthermore, the annual economic cost of automobile accidents is $277 billion annually in the U.S. alone, according to the IIHS.
Elderly, disabled drivers need these technologies most
On a per-mile basis, fatal crash rates increase in the 70-74 year old range and are highest for drivers in the 85 and older group. While age-related declines to vision, hearing, and cognitive functioning are likely part of it, the higher fatality rate has more to do with their greater susceptibility to injuries and medical complications.
Rus described the initiative as “the beginning of the end of traffic accidents,” and noted that one of the targets is building a car that is never responsible for a collision.
Pratt also called it “the beginning of an acceleration of research in this area”—which may be a hint of further investment to come.
In many ways, cheap drones are just flying cellphones. They communicate using Bluetooth, are heavily dependent on battery power, and use small cameras made possible by the proliferation of cheaper, better cameras for phones.
Qualcomm makes the unsexy guts at the core of a bunch of cellphones, grouped together under their “Snapdragon” name. Now Qualcomm has a Snapdragon for drones, called Snapdragon Flight, and they’re hoping a shared and familiar processor will make it as easy to make smart drones as it’s been over the past few years to make smart phones.
“Today, drones are made from multiple component vendors providing separate solutions for photography, navigation and communications, adding to the cost and bulk of consumer drones,” said Raj Talluri, Qualcomm's senior vice president of product management, in a press release. “The Qualcomm Snapdragon Flight brings together the technologies that have defined the mobile industry onto a single board, enabling OEMs to build drones that are lighter, smaller, easy to use and affordable with long battery life and superior functionalities.”
The features Qualcomm says its new Snapdragon will offer support for 4K video, Bluetooth Wi-Fi and satellite navigation systems, sensor support, and fast charging. This news is primarily aimed at drone-makers, though it’s not hard to see what a universal powerful support board could do for hobbyist drones. Qualcomm is already working with Yuneec, a Chinese drone manufacture that rivals the popular DJI drone family.
Another benefit from Qualcomm’s drone board is that it’s a single part for many functions, which means a smaller and lighter overall drone. Condensing cell phones moved them from a Hollywood novelty to everyday pocketable accessory. Smaller drone motherboards mean more battery power devoted to the actual flying of the drone, which could be a boon itself. As with everything drone, it just has to take off first.
Yesterday, major health insurance providers Lifetime Healthcare Companies and its subsidiary BlueCross BlueShield announced that they had been hacked, affecting a total of 10.5 million patients. These aren’t the first healthcare companies to be hacked this year, and they certainly won’t be the last; though data breaches have become an unfortunate reality for many companies, health information is especially at risk.
Healthcare data is the cash cow of the hacker world. A hacker will get $10 on the black market for each individual healthcare profile, 10 or 20 times the amount they would receive for credit card information, according to a report from Reuters published last year.
Learning a patient’s medications and diagnoses means that a hacker can order expensive drugs or equipment and resell them, or file made-up claims with insurance companies and get money in return. They can even commit medical identity theft to seek free medical care for themselves. And unlike credit card companies, healthcare providers don’t usually vigilantly monitor this activity, so hackers can continue to reap benefits from the same data for years.
As a result, healthcare companies and hospitals find themselves under constant digital assault, and it’s costing them a total of $6 billion per year, Bloomberg reports. The companies find themselves ill prepared to ward off these attacks—81 percent of healthcare organizations have been subject to attacks in the past two years, according to a survey published last month by tax audit company KPMG. Earlier this year, healthcare providers were required to switch over to electronic medical records, making more patients vulnerable to attacks than ever.
Hospitals and insurance companies are slowly beefing up their digital security, aided by organizations like the FBI, but the process is slow. In response to this most recent attack, Christopher Booth, the CEO of Lifetime Healthcare (the parent company of Excellus BlueCross BlueShield) says that his organization has, “already taken aggressive steps to remediate our IT system of issues raised by this cyberattack,” by hiring a digital security firm to evaluate its current setup, according to a press release. Apparently, preventing digital attack can only go so far—healthcare providers seem to only be increasing their security measures once a breach has already happened.
Both BlueCross BlueShield and Lifetime Healthcare Companies have begun notifying patients of the security breach and will offer free identity theft protection and credit monitoring services to those affected.
Last night, Elon Musk suggested sending a nuclear bomb to Mars to terraform the planet. One of the potential targets is the south pole of Mars. But that's clearly ridiculous. Look at how gorgeous that area is. It's planetary park worthy. Who would ever want to destroy this?
This picture was taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express as it flew above the Martian Surface, at an altitude of over 6,000 miles. It shows a wide swath of the planet, encompassing craters and other notable landforms. The white section is a polar ice cap, formed from frozen water and carbon dioxide. That carbon dioxide is what Musk is hoping would melt and evaporate, eventually making the Martian atmosphere more like our own.
But in some ways Mars is already like Earth. At the south pole, scientists have observed snow. Sure, it's snowing dry ice, not frozen water, but a white Christmas on the red planet is possible, even without a nuclear winter.
With its passage through the Pluto system safely navigated, New Horizons can now focus on sending images and data back to Earth. The spacecraft began an intensive data downlink on September 5, but even with its efforts focused on sending back data, it's going to take about a year for all the information to cross the 3 billion miles to Earth. Still, the images so far have been breathtaking, and this newest batch shows they just keep getting better and better.
Last night on the Late Show, billionaire space entrepreneur and probable supervillain Elon Musk proposed nuking Mars as a way to terraform the planet. Creating an atmosphere on a planet with a magnetosphere is a challenge in and off itself, as are the questions of interplanetary nuclear war. Or testing. Which leads to a perplexing idea: Is it possible to detect a nuclear war in space?
Humans are already pretty good at identifying and tracking nuclear explosions on Earth. A network of seismographs, infrasound stations, and hydroacoustic monitoring can capture the aftereffects of a blast and pinpoint its location underground, in water, or in the air. Afterwards, radioactive particles can be matched to the blast. Developed during the Cold War, these sensors guarantee that any nuclear tests today are detected, very, very quickly.
Those sensors are limited to the boundaries of the Earth. To spy nuclear testing in the heavens, or on other worlds, we’d need something altogether different. For stars far away, we can make out something of the planets that orbit them through the way their light passes through various atmospheres on its way to Earth. That change in the light means it might be possible, if human astronomers are very prepared and very lucky, to catch a glimpse of a nuclear war on a distant world. Ross Andersen, writing in The Atlantic, says:
In July, Stevens, Forgan, and James published a paper that asked what a distant, “self-destructive civilization” might look like through the business end of a telescope. To do so, they gamed out several dystopian science fiction scenarios in great detail. They calculated the brightness of the gamma rays that would flash out from a massive exchange of nuclear weapons. They asked themselves what would happen if an engineered pathogen ripped through a large population of human-sized animals. What gases would fill a planet’s atmosphere, if its surface were strewn with rotting corpses? And would those gases be detectable across interstellar distances?
That helps us with nuclear wars far away (though the odds are so high against actually spying it that it doesn’t help us much, really), but what about much closer nuclear blasts, like on Mars? For that, we’ll just have to see if an electromagnetic pulse, the kind that follows an atomic weapon, kills Curiosity. If it does, may I suggest we check for any previously unknown silos in Musk’s backyard?
For what it’s worth, the U.S. Air Force Space Command is opposed to the idea.
