Solo Colonoscopies, Cannibal Calories, and More 2018 Ig Nobel Prize Winners

George Dvorsky

53 minutes ago

From workplace voodoo dolls and self-inflicted colonoscopies to cannibalistic diets and using roller coasters to pass kidney stones, here are the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes.

It’s that time of year again, when some of the strangest science gets its turn to shine. To be clear, the Ig Nobel Prizes aren’t meant to diminish or demean scientific work, nor do they recognize dubious or bad science. Rather, it’s an opportunity to highlight some of the weirder work that gets done in research labs around the world, or scientific work that, quite frankly, is fucking hilarious. The tagline from the group behind the Ig Nobel Prize, Improbable Research, says it best: “Research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.” The winners of the 2018 Ig Nobel Prize were announced yesterday during a ceremony, if it can be called that, at Harvard University.

Among the 10 award winners on Thursday night was James Cole, a researcher from the University Brighton, who showed that human flesh doesn’t pack the same caloric punch as that of wild animals, and that cannibalism wasn’t worth the trouble, given the alternatives.

Lindie Liang, a Canadian business professor at Wilfrid Laurier University and the recipient of this year’s Ig Nobel Prize in economics, discovered that workers who take out their aggression on their bosses through the use of voodoo dolls tend to feel better because “their injustice perceptions are deactivated,” a fancy way of saying that justice was served.

The medicine prize went to Marc Mitchell and David Wartinger for showing that roller coaster rides can hasten the passage of kidney stones, while the medical education prize was awarded to Akira Horiuchi for his paper, “Colonoscopy in the Sitting Position: Lessons Learned From Self-Colonoscopy by Using a Small-Caliber, Variable-Stiffness Colonoscope,” the title alone being deserving of an Ig Nobel.

READ MORE: Hilarious!

https://gizmodo.com/solo-colonoscopies-cannibal-calories-and-more-2018-ig-1829060914

House Passes Bill to Advance Quantum Science in the U.S.

Ryan F. Mandelbaum

Today 12:40pm

The House of Representatives passed the National Quantum Initiative Act yesterday. When signed into law, the bill will outline a 10-year plan to push forward applications using the counterintuitive science of subatomic particles.

The House bill, sponsored by congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), serves to “ensure the continued leadership of the United States” in this technology—as we’ve said before, some have framed quantum science as a space race part two. The bill aims to increase the number of researchers, students, and people working in quantum information-related fields, as well as accelerate quantum technology.

Quantum technology is a quickly advancing and incredibly hyped field that takes advantage of the mathematics of subatomic particles to accomplish things current technology cannot. We often cover quantum computers, which incorporate this mathematics into processors that may one day perform algorithms regular computers struggle with, like factoring enormous numbers, simulating molecules, and maybe even advanced AI. But the bill covers other technologies as well, and has potential impacts in communications and cybersecurity, sensor and imaging technology, materials science, and more.

The House bill outlines a 10-year “National Quantum Initiative Program” meant to set goals, fund research, promote coordination between different agencies, and create partnerships between industry and academia. It mandates the creation of a National Quantum Coordination Office with a director appointed by the Office of Science and Technology, and a subcommittee with members from various science groups, including the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It plans for an advisory committee using expertise from industry, academia, and federal labs.

It’s not just new bureaucracy, though. The program would allocate $400 million to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, $625 million to the Department of Energy, and $250 million to the National Science Foundation. This money would serve to train scientists, expand research, and establish up to 10 quantum research and education centers, five each from the DOE and NSF.

Statements from Smith and co-sponsor congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) make it clear that the bill is meant to keep the US competitive internationally.

READ MORE: https:// gizmodo.com/house-passes-bill-to-advance-quantum-science-in-the-u-s-1829060167

Plan to Build a Genetic Noah’s Ark Includes a Staggering 66,000 Species

George Dvorsky

Yesterday 10:10am

An international consortium involving over 50 institutions has announced an ambitious project to assemble high-quality genome sequences of all 66,000 vertebrate species on Earth, including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. With an estimated total cost of $600 million dollars, it’s a project of biblical proportions.

It’s called the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP), and it’s being organized by a consortium called Genome 10K, or G10K. As its name implies, this group had initially planned to sequence the genomes of at least 10,000 vertebrate species, but now, owing to tremendous advances and cost reductions in gene sequencing technologies, G10K has decided to up the ante, aiming to sequence both a male and female individual from each of the approximately 66,000 vertebrate species on Earth.

Cofounders of the project announced the new goal yesterday at a press briefing held during the opening session of the 2018 Genome 10K conference, currently being held at Rockefeller University in New York City. The project will involve over 150 experts from 50 institutions in 12 countries.

READ MORE: https:// gizmodo.com/plan-to-build-a-genetic-noah-s-ark-includes-a-staggerin-1829010545

SpaceX Reboots Plan to Send Tourists Around the Moon—and It's About to Name the First Passenger

George Dvorsky

Today 11:20am

In a tweet posted late yesterday, SpaceX said it has signed a passenger to fly around the Moon aboard its next-generation launch system. Details are scarce, but the announcement suggests the Elon Musk-led rocket company is still intent on delivering private individuals, rather than just cargo and professional astronauts, into space.

That SpaceX has revived its lunar intentions shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Back in June, when the company canceled its plans to send a pair of space tourists around the Moon, SpaceX insisted that it was a postponement, and not an abandonment, of the company’s space tourism ambitions.

“SpaceX is still planning to fly private individuals around the moon and there is growing interest from many customers,” said James Gleeson, a company spokesperson, at the time.

What’s more, it was obvious why the company had postponed the lunar mission. Back in February, Elon Musk admitted that the Falcon Heavy, just one day before its inaugural launch, will not be rated for human space travel, saying SpaceX will instead focus its energies on developing the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR)—a strong hint that the company was intending to use the BFR launch system, and not the Falcon Heavy and Crew Dragon Spacecraft, to deliver humans into space.

Yesterday’s surprise tweet suggests SpaceX is inching closer to its ambitions.

“SpaceX has signed the world’s first private passenger to fly around the Moon aboard our BFR launch vehicle,” announced SpaceX in its tweet, saying it’s “an important step toward enabling access for everyday people who dream of traveling to space.”

The name of the passenger will be announced on Monday, September 17, at 9pm ET, which you’ll be able to watch here. No timelines or other details were provided by SpaceX. Hopefully, we’ll learn more on Monday, as the SpaceX hype machine continues to rev on all four cylinders

READ MORE: https:// gizmodo.com/spacex-reboots-plan-to-send-tourists-around-the-moon-an-1829056852

Python Programming Language Ditches 'Master-Slave' Terms, Pissing Off Some

Rhett Jones

Today 12:05pmFiled to: PC POLICE

A quiet debate has been brewing in the coding community for years that’s forced programmers to ask if using the terms “master” and “slave” are insensitive. Now, Python, one of the most popular high-level programming languages in the world, has ditched the terminology—and not everyone is happy about it.

Master/Slave is generally used in hardware, architecture, and coding to refer to one device, database, or process controlling another. For more than a decade, there’s been some concern that the terms are offensive because of their relationship to the institution of slavery. Last week, a developer named Victo Stinner published four pull requests asking the Python community to consider changing the Master/Slave terms to something like Parent/Worker. “For diversity reasons, it would be nice to try to avoid ‘master’ and ‘slave’ terminology which can be associated to slavery,” he wrote to explain his thinking.

This is the internet, so people had opinions. Some people disagreed with the suggestion in measured terms and simply didn’t feel it was necessary. Others launched into the anti-diversity screeds and predictable talk of censorship and mind control. “Seeing all the PC/SJW nonsense around me, I’m afraid that this can be the starting of Python becoming PCython,” one developer wrote. Another commenter decided to take things quite literally, saying, “As far as I can’t [sic] tell there isn’t a single instance where the docs use ‘master’ as a reference to human slavery or where the use could be seen to imply an endorsement of that notion.” Someone else claimed that the terms are actually positive in the BDSM community. “You want to support diversity, then why are you discriminating against that subculture,” they asked. And, of course, Reddit turned into a cesspool as users watched this all go down.

It was all enough to get Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python, involved. Van Rossum officially retired in July, leaving the community to fend for itself when it comes to governance, but the squabbles pulled him back in to lay down the law. “I’m closing this now,” he wrote. His final decision was to accept three of Stinner’s four requests. In his view, “the fourth one should not be merged because it reflects the underlying terminology of UNIX ptys.” And so it is decided that Python 3.8 will change the term “slave” to “worker” or “helper” and “master process” to “parent process.”

READ MORE: https:// gizmodo.com/python-programming-language-ditches-master-slave-terms-1829057867

Named After A Snake?

'Telescope Did Not See Aliens,' Director of Mysteriously Shut Down Observatory Claims

Jennings Brown

Today 11:55amFiled to: I WANT TO BELIEVE

It has been a week since the National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico, was shut down, evacuated, and visited by FBI agents—and the undisclosed “security issue” behind all this activity remains a mystery to the public.

Theories about the true reasoning behind the shutdown range from an accidental interception of military signals to captured proof of alien life.

Now, James McAteer, director of the Sunspot Solar Observatory, has seemingly ruled out one of those theories. McAteer told local news outlet KOB that the “telescope did not see aliens. All data will be made public in its unaltered form. Nothing is hidden or kept secret.”

McAteer, a professor at New Mexico State University, clarified to Gizmodo that we probably wouldn’t even find extraterrestrials with a telescope. “Any aliens in our vicinity of the Universe are very likely microbial,” McAteer told Gizmodo. He also dispelled other theories. “There was no killer solar storm. Solar storms happen all the time. No observations of an imaginary planet.”

But he said he does not know why the FBI were involved. New Mexico State University runs the telescope, but the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) operates the property. “AURA closed the site. It was their decision,” McAteer said. “Neither AURA or local police have confirmed why, but I suggest approaching them as primary sources.”

Shari Lifson, a spokesperson for AURA told Gizmodo that “nothing has changed, the facility remains closed.”

FBI’s Albuquerque Division did not respond to a Gizmodo request for comment.

AURA’s silence on the matter is only encouraging more wild speculation and citizen sleuthing. YouTuber Dj.R@NSOM of 4:20 TV FREEDOMIST FILMS filmed his walkthrough of the area on Thursday and observed the premises is still completely abandoned. He found nothing that sheds light on the security issue, but he did find a discarded X-Files DVD resting on top of a trash bin.

[KOB]

Update 2:45pm:

AURA spokesperson Shari Lifson sent Gizmodo the following comment:

The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) has decided that the observatory will remain closed until further notice due to an ongoing security concern. The rest of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) facilities remain open and are operating normally.

https:// gizmodo.com/telescope-did-not-see-aliens-director-of-mysteriously-1829058158

Apple Magically Makes the Notch Disappear

Harrison Weber

Today 1:16pmFiled to: IPHONE

If you’re planning to buy one of the new iPhones Apple just announced, you should know something by now: It will have a notch.

It’s tough to swallow, I know, but when Apple based all its new phones on the iPhone X, it was always going to show up and take a squircle-shaped bite out of the top of your display to make room for Face ID. Whether you like it or not, notches are part of your life now. Forever, probably!

But as one hawk-eyed Twitter user pointed out yesterday, if you look at the wallpaper Apple picked out for its three new devices, you may notice something interesting. Ask yourself this: On the Compare iPhone Models page, on Apple’s official website, which one of these nice new phones do you think has a notch?

Well they all do, of course. We’re not going to waste your time or ours playing dumb here. Let’s cut right to the chase: How come we can only see the notch on Apple’s cheapest new phone, the iPhone XR?

Let’s take a closer look at an enhanced version of that image, zoomed in on the iPhone XR notch:

If you recall last year’s ads for the iPhone X, the notch was the star. All the new tech in it helped convinced actual humans, including yours truly, to spend upwards of $1,000 on a smartphone. On billboards, the amorphous wallpaper Apple chose swirled around the notch in loud hues of red, blue, orange, green, and yellow. You couldn’t ignore it—you wouldn’t dare—and you can’t ignore it still on the iPhone XR. But what about on the iPhone XS? Let’s take a step back for a moment.

READ MORE: https:// gizmodo.com/apple-magically-makes-the-notch-disappear-1829056511

>>3023397

I'm leaning in your direction too. China China China

"Stop The Hammering"

Read Paul Manafort's Full "Cooperation Agreement"

Profile picture for user Tyler Durden

by Tyler Durden

Fri, 09/14/2018 - 14:44

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort agreed on Friday to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller.

The deal comes after a 76-page "Superseding Criminal Information" document was filed against Manafort, charging him with money laundering and obstruction (see below). Jury selection in Manafort's second trial in US District Court in Washington was scheduled to begin on Monday.

This could be bad for Trump, Podesta and several members of the Obama administration

Language in the plea deal has fueled speculation that Manafort's cooperation could potentially be devastating for President Trump - however many have also pointed out that others may be directly in the special counsel's crosshairs.

Those people include former Manafort associates Tony Podesta, Vin Weber and Greg Craig - all of whom failed to register as foreign agents in connection with work outside the United States, as well as members of the Obama administration.

Michael Isikoff

✔

@Isikoff

Manafort superseding not good sign for Mercury, Weber & Podesta. "Various employees of Companies A and B understood that they were receiving direction from MANAFORT and President Yanukovych, not the Centre."

12:44 PM - Sep 14, 2018

READ MORE: https:// www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-14/read-paul-manaforts-full-cooperation-agreement