In parts of Libya, African migrants are being sold into slavery for as little as $400.
Human auctions, where migrants are sold like cattle have becoming a chilling reality for many in the North African country, an exclusive report from CNN last week has revealed.
"Does
anybody need a digger? This is a digger, a big strong man, he'll dig," a
salesman dressed in camouflage reportedly said during one auction.
"What am I bid, what am I bid?"
Credit: Sanni Somppi
“It seems that the hormone oxytocin influences what the dog sees and how it experiences the thing it sees,” says doctoral student Sanni Somppi. Researchers in the Canine Mind group showed 43 dogs images of smiling and angry faces on a computer screen. Each dog was tested twice: once under the influence of oxytocin, which was administered as part of the test, and once without oxytocin. The dog’s gaze on the images and pupil size were measured with an eye-tracking device. Emotions and attentiveness guide the gaze and regulate pupil size, making eye tracking a window into the dogs’ minds.
Dogs typically focus on the most remarkable aspect of each situation, such as threatening stimuli in a frightening situation. Recognising and interpreting threats quickly is important for survival. Dogs under the influence of oxytocin were more interested in smiling faces than they were in angry ones.
In addition, oxytocin also influenced the dogs’ emotional states, which was evident in their pupil size.
“We were among the first researchers in the world to use pupil measurements in the evaluation of dogs’ emotional states. This method had previously only been used on humans and apes,” says Professor Outi Vainio, who heads the research group.
Without oxytocin, the dogs’ pupils were at their largest when they looked at angry faces. This indicated that the angry faces caused the most powerful emotional reaction in the dogs. Under the influence of oxytocin, however, images of smiling faces enhanced the dogs’ emotional state more than angry ones. This is to say that oxytocin probably made the angry faces seem less threatening and the smiling faces more appealing.
“Both effects promote dog-human communication and the development of affectionate relations,” says Professor Vainio.
Professor Vainio’s research group has previously successfully applied eye tracking and EEGs to studying the canine mind. In this study, the group partnered with József Topál, a Hungarian pioneer of canine research who specializes in dog-human interaction and the social intelligence of dogs.
Professor Vainio’s research group has previously successfully applied eye tracking and EEGs to studying the canine mind. In this study, the group partnered with József Topál, a Hungarian pioneer of canine research who specialises in dog-human interaction and the social intelligence of dogs
The judge overseeing a lawsuit between Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Waymo self-driving car unit issued a series of orders this week, prompted by information shared with him by the U.S. Department of Justice.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco disclosed on Wednesday that he had received a letter from Justice Department attorneys about the case, which is set for trial in December. The judge did not reveal the letter’s contents.
However, Alsup issued two subsequent orders, including one on Saturday, that discussed some details. He ordered Uber to make three witnesses, including a former Uber security analyst and a company attorney, available to testify on Tuesday at a final pretrial hearing. Trial is scheduled to begin on Dec. 4.
It is unusual for the Justice Department to share information with a judge days before a civil case is set to begin.
Earlier this year Alsup, who is hearing the civil action brought by Waymo, asked federal prosecutors to investigate whether criminal theft of trade secrets had occurred. That probe is being handled by the intellectual property unit of the Northern California U.S. Attorney’s office, sources familiar with the situation said. No charges have been filed.
Representatives for Waymo, Uber and the Justice Department declined to comment. The former Uber security analyst could not be reached for comment.
Waymo sued Uber in February, claiming that former Waymo executive Anthony Levandowski downloaded more than 14,000 confidential files before leaving to set up a self-driving truck company, called Otto, which Uber acquired soon after.
Uber denied using any of Waymo’s trade secrets. Levandowski has declined to answer questions about the allegations, citing constitutional protections against self-incrimination.
Since the case began, Uber said its personnel have spent thousands of hours scouring its servers and other communications devices but have not found Waymo trade secrets.
In an order on Friday, Alsup referred to a former Uber security analyst in connection with the letter from the U.S. Attorney’s office and to certain “devices” the former employee said were maintained by Uber.
Alsup asked Uber to disclose whether it had searched those devices for relevant evidence in the case.
Reuters is part of a media coalition seeking to maintain public access to the trial.
Hedge fund manager Mike Novogratz, who is starting a $500 million fund to invest in cryptocurrencies, says the bitcoin rally still has some serious legs.
After surging more than sevenfold since December, the largest and most widely known digital currency will end the year at $10,000 from about $8,400, he said. Smaller rival ether will trade at $500 from almost $370 Tuesday.
Bitcoin is like digital gold in that “gold has value solely because people say it has value; bitcoin is built on an amazing technology, there’s a limited supply of it,” Novogratz said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.
“This whole revolution came out of a breakdown in trust in the 2008 crisis.”
Bitcoin climbed to a record $8,374 today after Novogratz’s comments. It had earlier tumbled as much as 5.4 percent after $31 million was stolen from a separate cryptocurrency known as tether. Those gyrations aren’t new as it’s been a tumultuous way up for the virtual asset, with three separate slumps of more than 25 percent all giving way to subsequent rallies.
But this doesn’t give Novogratz pause. “We’re in the second or third inning,” he said. “Because prices have moved so far people are nervous. You made a whole lot of money, there’s news, so you want to book your profit and get out.”
At $500 million, Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital Assets Fund would be the biggest of its kind and signal a growing acceptance of cryptocurrencies as legitimate investments. For Novogratz, the fund marks a comeback to professional money management after humbling losses at Fortress Investment Group LLC and almost two years of self-imposed exile from Wall Street.
Many of his former Wall Street colleagues are far from sharing his enthusiasm. JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief Jamie Dimon has said anyone who buys bitcoin is "stupid" and will pay the price, while Neil Dwane of Allianz Global Investors said it’s a "scam for criminals around the world," and Larry Fink of BlackRock Inc. said it’s an index to gauge the demand for laundering money around the world.
He has a lot of company. There are now more than 100 cryptocurreny-focused hedge funds, with 84 opening this year, up from 11 last year, according to research by Autonomous Next. As institutional investors start to dip their toes into cryptocurrencies, firms are scrambling to build the market infrastructure to make trading smoother, from regulated exchanges, to indexes and derivatives.
The most bullish crypto watchers are also struggling to keep up, having to update their already lofty price forecasts. Standpoint Research’s Ronnie Moas on Monday raised his 2018 price target for the second time this month, to $14,000 from $11,000. Douglas Kass of Seabreeze Partners also raised his 2018 forecast yesterday to an even higher $27,000.
Novograz said investors coming into the sector for the first time will keep boosting the bitcoin price, as it’s the cryptocurrency they’ve heard of the most.
“Bitcoin is the poster-child of the decentralized revolution,” he said. — With assistance by Alix Steel, and David Westin
Credit: Mesoscale Materials Modeling Group/Rice University
Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Science, National Science Foundation, University of Wisconsin-Madison WEI Seed Grant, Vilas Research Travel Awards
High-performance electrodes for lithium-ion batteries can be improved by paying closer attention to their defects — and capitalizing on them, according to Rice University scientists.
Rice materials scientist Ming Tang and chemists Song Jin at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Linsen Li at Wisconsin and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology led a study that combined state-of-the-art, in situ X-ray spectroscopy and modeling to gain insight into lithium transport in battery cathodes. They found that a common cathode material for lithium-ion batteries, olivine lithium iron phosphate, releases or takes in lithium ions through a much larger surface area than previously thought.
"We know this material works very well but there's still much debate about why " Tang said. "In many aspects, this material isn't supposed to be so good, but somehow it exceeds people's expectations."
Part of the reason, Tang said, comes from point defects — atoms misplaced in the crystal lattice — known as antisite defects. Such defects are impossible to completely eliminate in the fabrication process. As it turns out, he said, they make real-world electrode materials behave very differently from perfect crystals.
That and other revelations in a Nature Communications paper could potentially help manufacturers develop better lithium-ion batteries that power electronic devices worldwide.
The lead authors of the study — Liang Hong of Rice and Li of Wisconsin and MIT — and their colleagues collaborated with Department of Energy scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory to use its powerful synchrotron light sources and observe in real time what happens inside the battery material when it is being charged. They also employed computer simulations to explain their observations.
One revelation, Tang said, was that microscopic defects in electrodes are a feature, not a bug.
"People usually think defects are a bad thing for battery materials, that they destroy properties and performance," he said. "With the increasing amount of evidence, we realized that having a suitable amount of point defects can actually be a good thing."
Inside a defect-free, perfect crystal lattice of a lithium iron phosphate cathode, lithium can only move in one direction, Tang said. Because of this, it is believed the lithium intercalation reaction can happen over only a fraction of the particle's surface area.
But the team made a surprising discovery when analyzing Li's X-ray spectroscopic images: The surface reaction takes place on the large side of his imperfect, synthesized microrods, which counters theoretical predictions that the sides would be inactive because they are parallel to the perceived movement of lithium.
The researchers explained that particle defects fundamentally change the electrode's lithium transport properties and enable lithium to hop inside the cathode along more than one direction. That increases the reactive surface area and allows for a more efficient exchange of lithium ions between the cathode and electrolyte.
Because the cathode in this study was made by a typical synthesis method, Tang said, the finding is highly relevant to practical applications.
"What we learned changes the thinking on how the shape of lithium iron phosphate particles should be optimized," he said. "Assuming one-dimensional lithium movement, people tend to believe the ideal particle shape should be a thin plate because it reduces the distance lithium needs to travel in that direction and maximizes the reactive surface area at the same time. But as we now know that lithium can move in multiple directions, thanks to defects, the design criteria to maximize performance will certainly look quite different."
The second surprising observation, Tang said, has to do with the movement of phase boundaries in the cathode as it is charged and discharged.
"When you take the heat out of the water, it turns into ice," he said. "And when you take lithium out of these particles, it forms a different lithium-poor phase, like ice, that coexists with the initial lithium-rich phase." The phases are separated by an interface or a phase boundary. How fast the lithium can be extracted depends on how fast the phase boundary moves across a particle, he said.
Unlike in bulk materials, Tang explained, it has been predicted that phase boundary movement in small battery particles can be limited by the surface reaction rate. The researchers were able to provide the first concrete evidence for this surface reaction-controlled mechanism, but with a twist.
"We see the phase boundary move in two different directions through two different mechanisms, either controlled by surface reaction or lithium bulk diffusion," he said. "This hybrid mechanism paints a more complicated picture of how phase transformation happens in battery materials. Because it can take place in a large group of electrode materials, this discovery is fundamental for understanding battery performance and highlights the importance of improving the surface reaction rate."
The paper's co-authors are graduate student Fan Wang of Rice, Jun Wang, Yuchen-Karen Chen-Wiegart and Jiajun Wang of Brookhaven National Laboratory, Kai Xiang and Yet-Ming Chiang of MIT, and Liyang Gan, Wenjie Li and Fei Meng of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Tang is an assistant professor of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice.
The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Basic Energy Science, the National Science Foundation (NSF), a University of Wisconsin-Madison WEI Seed Grant and the Vilas Research Travel Awards. The research was also conducted at the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. The Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center funded by the DOE and the Big-Data Private-Cloud Research Cyberinfrastructure funded by the NSF and Rice provided computing resources.
The club confirmed that the former French international (pictured,
center) would leave "by mutual consent" in a statement on Friday,
minutes after European football's governing body UEFA announced the ban
from their competitions. The 36-year-old must also pay a €10,000 fine.
He got in to a verbal altercation with his own fans before aiming a kick at one of them and was sent off before a match against Portuguese club Vitoria on November 2.
After
the incident, Marseille president Jacques-Henri Eyraud condemned the
"unacceptable behavior" of some fans who insulted the player but suspended the player and opened an internal investigation into Evra's actions.
Patrice Evra was banned for this karate kick on his own fans
France coach Didier Deschamps had his say on the incident ahead of his side's match with Wales on Friday night.
"I'm neither condemning him nor judging him," said Deschamps, for
whom Evra played at Monaco and with France. "Patrice is fully aware of
the consequences. It's something that you just can't do and he knows
that," said Deschamps.
Evra played for Manchester United and
Juventus and won 81 France caps in a highly-decorated career. It is
currently unclear whether he will now hang up his boots.
Patrice Evra was handed an initial one-match ban by UEFA and suspended by his club Marseille on Friday after he aimed a karate kick at the head of one of his team's own supporters.
The
former Manchester United defender was red-carded for the assault during
the pre-match warm-up at Thursday's Europa League clash at Guimaraes in
Portugal.
Marseille said that club president Jacques-Henri
Eyraud had met the 36-year-old to inform him of the suspension and
warned that he could face further disciplinary action.
"Marseille also denounced the unacceptable behaviour of some fans who hurled hateful insults," said a club statement.
Earlier,
European football governing body UEFA said Evra was banned for "violent
conduct" and indicated that the former French international faced
further sanctions at a disciplinary hearing next week.
"Following
his dismissal, the player is suspended for at least one match. The UEFA
Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body will decide on this case at its
next meeting on 10 November," UEFA said in a statement.
Both Marseille and Guimaraes, who went on to win 1-0, were also charged over their fans invading the pitch.
Announcing
their probe, Marseille said in a statement: "No matter what happens, a
professional player must maintain self-control despite provocations and
insults, no matter how unjustified they may be."
Evra was
confronted by a group of supporters who had managed to get out of an
area in the Afonso Henriques ground reserved for around 500 Marseille
fans.
Stewards at the ground quickly intervened to break up the
trouble, with Evra, who was originally listed as a substitute, ordered
to return to the dressing room by the referee.
"Pat has
experience, and he must not react, it's obvious," said Marseille coach
Rudi Garcia whose side lost the game 1-0 and also had Boubacar Kamara
sent off three minutes from time.
"Patrice is more than just an
experienced player. You can't respond, of course, to insults, as bad as
they are and as incredible as they might be because they come from one
of our supporters. He must learn to keep his cool."
It's unclear
what motivated Evra to lash out, but he has been criticized for his
performances this season by sections of the club's support.
German investigators have shut down an illegal
file-sharing site as part of a police sting across the country.
Authorities say the site's activities caused several million in damages
to copyright owners.
German police and public prosecutors have cracked down on the
operators and members of an illegal fire-sharing site, carrying out
raids on suspects' homes in 13 of Germany's 16 states and closing down
the server in question, prosecutors in Frankfurt said on Friday.
The
operations, which took place on Wednesday and Thursday, targeted 42
suspects across Germany, with the main accused a 49-year-old man from
the Wetteraukreis district in the state of Hesse, where Frankfurt is
located.
The site, usenetrevolution.info, was used to share
illegal copies of films, music, computer games and e-books. It had some
27,000 members and is thought to have caused damage to copyright owners
to the tune of at least €2.9 million ($3.7 million).
More suspects targeted
In addition to closing
the server in Germany, German police and prosecutors cooperated with
local authorities in the Netherlands and France to shut down internet
sites there that were used as so-called Usenet access points.
Numerous
computers and hard drives were also seized as evidence of the suspected
illegal use of copyrighted material for commercial purposes,
prosecutors said in a statement.
Other suspects targeted by the
operation are believed to have acted as moderators or so-called
"uploaders" for the file-sharing site.
The operation was carried
out by German federal and state police and prosecutors in conjunction
with the EU justice agency Eurojust.
Has Bitcoin finally hit the ceiling many have predicted
it would? Although its price fluctuations are notoriously volatile, a
slide in value of $1000 (€859) in less than 48 hours has raised a few
eyebrows.
Bitcoin, the world's most famous cryptocurrency, has fallen
dramatically in value over the last two days, dropping below a $7,000
(€6012) value per one bitcoin on Friday, having edged close to the
$8,000 mark as recently as Wednesday evening.
Such swings are nothing new for Bitcoin
— it often moves by hundreds of dollars in a given day — and as
recently as September, it crashed by around 40 percent in the space of
two weeks, dropping from a value of $5,000 to $3,000.
On Friday,
Bitcoin had dropped in value to $6,870 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp
exchange but while the fall, around 7 percent for the week in total, is
significant, the overall story for Bitcoin in 2017 has been one of relentless rises.
The
value of the digital currency, which was created in 2009 with the
aim of securing and organizing financial transactions beyond centralized
banking systems, has shot up by an extraordinary 600 percent this year
alone.
Don't divide, and conquer?
It has
been a dramatic few days for Bitcoin. On Wednesday, a major software
upgrade for the technology was suspended after an influential group of
Bitcoin developers and investors said it could "divide the community."
The Bitcoin network has struggled to cope with rapidly increasing
demand and the upgrade was aimed primarily at dealing with that issue.
However, it would also have changed Bitcoin's rules and effectively
created a second cryptocurrency, a contentious move among many, hence
the "split community" rhetoric.
That news initially prompted an
upward surge in Bitcoin's value but other factors are likely to have
influenced the fall of the last two days.
BaFin,
Germany's top financial regulator, earlier this week issued an investor
warning on initial coin offerings (ICOs), a controversial fund-raising
system strongly associated with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
Investors
should be wary of the "numerous risks" involved in token sales,
including "the possibility of losing their investment completely," BaFin
said.
Bitcoin is also grappling with other future uncertainties.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the world's largest futures
exchange, announced recently that it is launching Bitcoin futures by the
end of the year, a move that would firmly bring Bitcoin towards the financial mainstream as it would also likely a prompt an exchange-traded fund (ETF) of the cryptocurrency on to stock exchanges.
However,
that CME decision is currently going through an extensive regulatory
review in the US and Switzerland and if approval for the move was turned
down, it would have an obvious impact on Bitcoin's future prospects.
Transfers detailed in
documents shine light on the role of global banks in a scandal that has
consumed South African business and politics
Brothers Ajay and Atul Gupta with President Jacob Zuma’s son, Duduzane, in Johannesburg in 2011.
Photo:
Muntu Vilakazi/City
zThe documents show money moving among three
United Arab Emirates-based firms in January and February 2013 through
HSBC accounts while one of the firms was receiving payments from a
Chinese rail company with a contract to sell locomotives to a South
African state-owned enterprise.
One of the documents, a spreadsheet of bank transactions,
shows that the transfers among U.A.E.-based firms were made in dollars
and cleared by HSBC in New York.
The spreadsheet and other
documents cited in this article were among a trove of emails, bank
statements and other documents that appear to have been obtained from
Gupta-controlled companies earlier this year. The documents have buttressed longstanding suspicions among many South Africans that the powerful business clan leveraged its connection to President
Jacob Zuma
and other government officials to amass great personal wealth.
They also underscore the risks for banks of processing potentially illicit money flows.
HSBC said it is determined to keep criminals out of the financial system. It said it “has been reviewing its exposure to the
Guptas
for some time, and has closed a number of accounts for associated front companies wherever we have found them.”
“This
is inherently challenging because those who seek to launder money are
often extremely sophisticated, hiding behind legitimate companies,
layers of front companies, connected parties and individuals that have
controlling interests in the subject companies,” HSBC said.
Credit: Hanna Koikkalainen
The trick is to be able to use beryllium atoms in gallium nitride.
Gallium nitride is a compound widely used in semiconductors in consumer
electronics from LED lights to game consoles. To be useful in devices
that need to process considerably more energy than in your everyday home
entertainment, though, gallium nitride needs to be manipulated in new
ways on the atomic level.
"There is growing demand for semiconducting gallium nitride in the
power electronics industry. To make electronic devices that can process
the amounts of power required in, say, electric cars, we need structures
based on large-area semi-insulating semiconductors with properties that
allow minimising power loss and can dissipate heat efficiently. To
achieve this, adding beryllium into gallium nitride – or 'doping' it –
shows great promise," explains Professor Filip Tuomisto from Aalto
University.
Experiments
with beryllium doping were conducted in the late 1990s in the hope that
beryllium would prove more efficient as a doping agent than the
prevailing magnesium used in LED lights. The work proved unsuccessful,
however, and research on beryllium was largely discarded.
Working with scientists in Texas and Warsaw, researchers at Aalto
University have now managed to show – thanks to advances in computer
modelling and experimental techniques – that beryllium can actually
perform useful functions in gallium nitride. The article published in Physical Review Letters
shows that depending on whether the material is heated or cooled,
beryllium atoms will switch positions, changing their nature of either
donating or accepting electrons. "Our results provide valuable knowledge
for experimental scientists about the fundamentals of how beryllium
changes its behaviour during the manufacturing process. During it –
while being subjected to high temperatures – the doped compound
functions very differently than the end result," describes Tuomisto.
If the beryllium-doped gallium nitride structures and their
electronic properties can be fully controlled, power electronics could
move to a whole new realm of energy efficiency.
"The magnitude of the change in energy efficiency could as be similar
as when we moved to LED lights from traditional incandescent light
bulbs. It could be possible to cut down the global power consumption by
up to ten per cent by cutting the energy losses in power distribution
systems," says Tuomisto.
Researchers from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston
recently discovered that alcohol killed the stem cells residing in
adult mouse brains. Because the brain stems cells create new nerve cells
and are important to maintaining normal cognitive function, this study
possibly opens a door to combating chronic alcoholism.
The researchers also found that brain stem cells in key brain regions
of adult mice respond differently to alcohol exposure, and they show
for the first time that these changes are different for females and
males. The findings are available in Stem Cell Reports.
Chronic alcohol abuse can cause severe brain damage and
neurodegeneration. Scientists once believed that the number of nerve
cells in the adult brain was fixed early in life and the best way to
treat alcohol-induced brain damage was to protect the remaining nerve
cells.
"The discovery that the adult brain produces stem cells that create
new nerve cells provides a new way of approaching the problem of
alcohol-related changes in the brain," said Dr. Ping Wu, UTMB professor
in the department of neuroscience and cell biology. "However, before the
new approaches can be developed, we need to understand how alcohol
impacts the brain stem cells at different stages in their growth, in
different brain regions and in the brains of both males and females."
In the study, Wu and her colleagues used a cutting-edge technique
that allows them to tag brain stem cells and observe how they migrate
and develop into specialized nerve cells over time to study the impact
of long-term alcohol consumption on them.
Wu said that chronic alcohol drinking killed most brain stem cells
and reduced the production and development of new nerve cells. The researchers found that the effects of repeated alcohol
consumption differed across brain regions. The brain region most
susceptible to the effects of alcohol was one of two brain regions where
new brain cells are created in adults.
They also noted that female mice showed more severe deficits than
males. The females displayed more severe intoxication behaviors and more
greatly reduced the pool of stem cells in the subventricular zone.
Using this model, scientists expect to learn more about how alcohol
interacts with brain stem cells, which will ultimately lead to a clearer
understanding of how best to treat and cure alcoholism.
Other authors include UTMB's Erica McGrath, Junling Gao, Yong Fang
Kuo, Tiffany Dunn, Moniqua Ray, Kelly Dineley, Kathryn Cunningham and
Bhupendra Kaphalia.
Credit: Photo by Randy Montoya.
Where do you get your water? How do you generate
electricity to cook your food and keep it fresh? What happens to your
waste after you toss it or flush it?
For soldiers overseas, the answers to questions about basic
facilities and services are vital. Since 2013, Sandia National
Laboratories has been helping the Army's Product Directorate Contingency
Base Infrastructure identify the best equipment for temporary bases
overseas. For the first time, a Sandia-designed software tool is being
used to recommend the core set of equipment for bases to be built in
2020 and beyond.
Contingency
bases are overseas camps intended to be used for less than five years.
Traditionally, each base was designed in an ad-ho manner with
individual camp planners and commanders selecting what they thought they
needed. As part of a larger effort to standardize designs and make the
bases more efficient, the Army asked Sandia to help determine the best
combinations of equipment to create all the infrastructure the bases
need. Sandia's specialty in trade space optimization and exploration is
being used to solve this complex systems of systems problem. The
analytic tools leverage Sandia's fundamental safety, security and
reliability expertise and have been applied to a range of Department of
Defense and nuclear weapons programs.
"A base is essentially a self-contained city. You have places for
people to sleep. You've got places for people to eat. You've got places
for people to work out and exercise," said Alex Dessanti, the computer
scientist heading Sandia's Contingency Base Infrastructure computational
optimization project. "You have a power generation infrastructure, you
have fuel and water storage and you have waste collection and disposal.".
Optimizes five criteria simultaneously
Of course, what qualifies as the "best" isn't easy to define,
especially when you have multiple, sometimes conflicting goals, said
Karina Munoz-Ramos, another systems analyst on the project. Sandia's
Contingency Base Infrastructure tool optimizes the whole system of
systems based on five criteria: affordability, performance, risk,
commonality and scalability.
Affordability is a rather straightforward optimization criterion, one
you likely use in your day-to-day life. However, affordability doesn't
just include initial purchase cost, but also the cost to transport the
equipment to the site and the cost of consumables, such as fuel or
water, said Dessanti. Generator A might be cheaper than Generator B but
if it requires more fuel per kilowatt-hour, it might not be worth it in
the long run.
Performance takes into account setup time, maintenance, resupply
needs and the quality of life for the soldiers. For example, rigid-wall
billeting is higher performing than tents because it blocks more noise,
is better insulated and is quicker to set up. Dessanti said, "If the
soldiers have a better quality of life on the camp, then when they go do
their mission, they'll be more effective. If they're better rested,
better fed and can shower regularly, then they're going to be able to do
their job better."
Some equipment considered in the analyses involves new technologies
that reuse water or supply electricity more efficiently to drive down
the resupply cost for a base. However, there is a chance the new
technology won't be ready when the Army needs to set up the camp in a
few years. This is captured by the schedule risk criteria.Commonality reflects the efficiency gained when the base uses the
same kind of generators for the kitchens and laundry or uses the same
structures to sleep, eat and conduct administrative tasks. This synergy
improves base set-up, maintenance and repair.
The last optimization criterion is scalability. For example, can the
base support another unit passing through the area for a few days, or
will that deplete the base's water storage or strain the generators?
Alternatively, how much additional equipment could the camp sustain if
its mission changes at some point and it needs to support many more
soldiers, said Dessanti.
Provides select options to decision-makers
The Contingency Base Infrastructure optimization tool is an
application of Sandia's Whole System Trades Analysis Tool, which is
designed to solve these complex, multi-variable optimization problems.
Sandia's optimization tool uses advanced evolutionary algorithms to
search for the very best combinations of equipment. After scoring a few
million of the roughly 10150 possible combinations (which is about the
number of fundamental particles in the universe squared), the tool will
keep several thousand of the best options it found across the five
decision criteria. Army decision-makers then use the tool to explore and
understand the tradeoffs between the five decision criteria. After
careful consideration of the tradeoffs, they select one recommended set
of equipment that best meets the goals for the base camp being designed.
The project has focused on optimizing three different sized bases.
Extra small base camps support 50 to 299 soldiers; small bases support
300 to 1,999; and medium bases support 2,000 to 5,999. The equipment
needed for a cluster, defined as 12 extra small, five small, and one
medium base that are all in the same geographic location and support
each other, also has been optimized.
In addition, Sandia's analyses can help the Army evaluate investments
in developmental technologies, said Dessanti. Perhaps technologies that
drastically reduce the resupply cost of a base but are still "risky"
can become viable with further investment in research and development.
In 2015, the joint Sandia/Army team received an Army Modeling and
Simulation Award for, in the citation's words, "best applications of
Army models and simulations in an era of fiscal austerity and rapid
innovation."
One ongoing challenge is that the tool needs high-quality data to
support the decision-making process. And it can be difficult to gather
all the data, Munoz-Ramos said. For example, if the reliability estimate
for a generator is too high, the analysis might incorrectly recommend
that generator over other sources of power generation. The team is
constantly working to improve the decision analytics expertise and tools
and the data that support them.
Ultimately, the project can help save the Army a lot of money while
enhancing the quality of life at its base camps. "Enabling dramatic
improvements in base camp cost and efficiency for our soldiers instills a
sense of pride in the work that you're doing and it really motivates
you to make sure that you're getting it right," Dessanti said
There are times when all relationships come under strain and things don’t go as smoothly as hoped. Although we are inundated with Hollywood films and fairy-tales presenting a relationship ideal of happily ever after, in the real world this is not always the case. Relationships off screen are complicated and often require a great deal of work and compromise between two individuals. Communication is considered vital for strong relationships, but in our busy lives this can easily be lost and as a result other problems begin to emerge. All couples will experience ups and downs, but if you are really unhappy in your relationship or marriage, it is important to know when to address the issues you are facing and where to get help. If you believe your relationship is worth fighting for, but you have reached a roadblock with your significant other, considering couples counselling could be the best option. This page will explore relationship issues in more depth, looking into the signs of relationship problems and how couples counselling can help.
Apple is soft-launching direct, person-to-person payments in an iMessage today with the Apple Pay Cash beta. The feature, which was announced earlier this year, allows you to send and receive cash inside the Messages app on iPhones.
The program is launching in public beta today on iOS 11.2 beta 2, and you can opt in using the iOS Public Beta program here. Once you’ve updated, you’ll see an Apple Pay button in the apps section of Messages that allows you to initiate a payment. Payments can also be triggered by simply asking for money in a message or tapping on a message sent by someone else asking for money.
The beta is available for U.S. customers only with iOS devices on 11.2 or later and with two-factor authentication set up on their Apple ID.
The source of funding is any debit or credit card you have currently added to Apple Pay. Apple will charge no fees for money that is funded via debit cards and an ‘industry standard’ fee for credit cards, likely in the few percent.
The first time someone sends you money, you will opt in to accept it and be issued a new virtual Apple Pay Cash card. This card can only be used to send money or pay for things via Apple Pay, so it’s not a completely discrete “credit/cash card”, but it functions as one as long as you’re within Apple Pay. The reason for the card is multi-faceted, but one big one is that this allows Apple to fund payments to the card immediately. This means that when you get paid via Apple Cash, you’re going to be able to spend that money hright away as long as it’s via Apple Cash to someone else or via Apple Pay at a retailer or website that accepts it.
Apple is working with Green Dot to power the financial mechanics of Apple Cash. There’s obviously some small float involved here on instant transactions.
The card also functions as a transaction log for all of your Apple Pay purchases on the web or at physical locations. Just tap on the ‘i’ icon to flip the card in Wallet to see them. You can also add money to the card from this screen from any funding source. Touch ID, passcode or Face ID are used to verify any Apple Pay Cash transaction.
When you get money for the first time, you’ll tap on the payment bubble to accept terms, the card will get generated and put into your wallet and the balance will instantly appear on that card. From there you can use it or transfer it out to your bank (with the normal transaction times).
This isn’t a card that anyone can just ‘use’ like a credit or debit card though. If, for instance, you’re splitting rent and your roommate pays you for their half you have the following options:
If your landlord uses an iPhone and will accept it you can send that on directly to them via Messages
You can transfer it to your bank account and pay them via check or debit
Otherwise, they’d have to be an Apple Pay merchant for you to just boop your phone and pay them on a terminal or via the web.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that there are already several very widely used person-to-person payment systems out there like Square’s Cash, Venmo, AliPay and WeChat Pay. Apple is certainly doing a job of ‘validating their space’ with this launch, but I’d expect some press from those firms with a variety of vanity metrics and differentiating factors like “cross platform,” “social” and “popular with youths”. I personally really like Square’s Cash a ton and my close group has long used it to pay each other back and balance our friendship books. It will be interesting to see how Apple Pay Cash affects that behavior among people who have mixed iPhone/Android usage.
Sending and receiving works pretty much as you’d expect. If you ask for money in a text, say ‘hey you owe me $10 for movie tickets’, the other party can tap on the underlined dollar amount and send it. You can also use the Pay Cash app in Messages to send a formal request, they’ll see that and can tap to pay. When they send it you’ll get a notification and you tap on that to accept the money. You can choose to automatically accept payments or not in settings. The first time you use it you’ll have to accept the money within 7 days.
You can also send money directly from the Contacts app in iOS by tapping a contact and then the $ icon below their name. Siri, of course, is also involved and you can use it to send money or request money from a friend. Saying “ask Sally to pay me $10 for breakfast” will send that message via Messages and they can tap and pay.
Apple Pay Cash provides the vital person-to-person leg of Apple’s payments stool. The journey began back in 2012 when it introduced Passbook, a place to hold airplane tickets and other coupon-type stuff. Even back then, it was clear where Apple was headed with this. I remember writing extensively about the way Apple was building up to offering a payments platform:
Say Apple hooks up an iPayment card of some sort to your iTunes account and tucks it into Passbook. Perhaps you enter a passcode to get into Passbook, then type in your Apple ID and it generates a 2D code, then you scan it, and the code expires after a billing has been made to it. Or the URL can require a passcode, generating a new link for each transaction…Unless, and this comes back to trust, Apple required a direct connection to your bank account to enable your Apple ID for direct payments. This would be a hard sell, but it would be making that pitch to people who have already trusted credit cards to it for some time, so it’s not as outlandish as you think.
Back then, we were still in a big trust deficit hole with mobile payments (and QR codes are still finding their place) but the years since have proven that people are willing to pay with their phone. An impressive recent stat notes that 50% of all US retail locations now accept Apple Pay and that 90% of all mobile contactless transactions in markets where it is available are done with Apple Pay. Clearly, people get that money and mobile go together, and they’re becoming more willing to treat a digital wallet like their physical wallet.
As I put it in 2012:
The fact of the matter is that people, by and large, are not ready for mobile payments. I’m probably not even ready and I’m an early adopter. This is why other technologies like NFC haven’t taken off for Google or other mobile makers that have tried to make it happen.
There is a trust threshold that hasn’t yet been breached by any major company, although services like Square are making headway. Apple is uniquely positioned to take its current cachet with regards to credit cards and build on that through the redemption of passes and gift cards through Passbook. Once it has this kind of trust, it can use NFC hardware in a future phone to further expand its payment options.
AI promises to make human labor smarter and more efficient, even something as traditional as small-scale farming. To that end, researchers have developed a smartphone-based program that can automatically detect diseases in the cassava plant—the most widely grown root crop on Earth—with darn near 100 percent accuracy. It’s a glimpse at a future in which farmers in the developing world trade the expertise of a handful of specialists for increasingly omnipresent and powerful technology.
The most impressive bit about the technology is that the neural network that powers it runs entirely on the smartphone, no cloud computing or hulking processors required, as the researchers detail in a preprint paper to be published in Frontiers in Plant Science. That's thanks to TensorFlow, Google's open source machine learning library, which gave rise to Inception v3, a slimmed-down network the researchers deployed. "Some neural networks require hundreds of millions of parameters, and just the file size you would need to store those is beyond what you could include in an app," says Google’s Pete Warden, tech lead on TensorFlow Mobile. "This network only has around 25 million."
That and it doesn't require anywhere near the processing power. “It only requires—I say only—but it only requires about 11 billion floating point operations to actually calculate its result,” Warden adds, “and some other networks require hundreds of billions of operations to do a similar job.”
Now, if you want to train a neural network to recognize certain objects, be it cats or dogs or chairs, you have to feed it millions and millions of images. That’s of course a hassle, and no one has millions and millions of images of diseased cassava leaves. But there's this fancy trick called transfer learning. “Happily, it turns out that networks trained to recognize certain kinds of objects can actually be taught to recognize other things with a lot less data, and that's really the idea behind transfer learning,” says Warden.
Which is useful, since images of cassava leaves aren’t as readily available as lolcats and puppers. And training a robust neural network requires feeding it the choicest of pictures. “It really comes down to the data, because garbage in, garbage out,” says Penn State agricultural engineer Amanda Ramcharan, lead author on the study. “So you want to have really clean, high-quality data sets.”
That’s exactly what she and her coauthors got. Thanks to the magic of transfer learning, they only had to feed the network 2,756 images of cassava leaves right from the field in Tanzania, then trained the system to recognize damage from ailments like cassava brown streak disease and cassava mosaic disease, plus the ravages of mites. And they trained it well—in the end, it was able to identify brown leaf spot with 98 percent accuracy and red mites at 96 percent.
China's second most powerful supercomputer just nearly doubled its power with its latest upgrade. The race to build the first exascale supercomputer is on, and China holds a significant lead.
One of China’s supercomputers, Tianhe-2, just received a major upgrade, nearly doubling its power. An announcement from the head of Matsuoka Lab, Satoshi Matsuoka, was made during the International HPC Forum (IHPCF) via a series of tweets. The upgraded computer now performs at a staggering 94.97 petaflops, or 949.7 trillion calculations per second, compared to its previous peak performance of 54.9 petaflops.
Image credit: Sam Churchill/Flickr
The upgrade came from replacing coprocessor chips installed in 2013 and replacing them with domestic chips. The 2013 installation used chips developed by Intel, called Knights Corner Xeon Phi coprocessors, and the original plan was to upgrade the system with upgraded Intel chips. However, the United States issued an embargo blocking the export of these chips to specific supercomputing sites, including the home of the Tianhe-2. In response, China was forced to begin building their own chips. They succeeded in matching the power of the Intel chips with the Matrix-2000 GPDSP accelerators.
There is a major race for nations to expand their supercomputing power to the exascale (1,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second). Right now, China holds a significant lead by being home to the two fastest supercomputers; the United states comes in fourth (behind Switzerland) with its Titan machine.
