Researchers have discovered an ancient Japanese pottery vessel from the late Jomon period (4500-3300 BP) with an estimated 500 maize weevils incorporated into its design. The vessel was discovered in February 2016 from ruins in Hokkaido, Japan. This extremely rare discovery provides clues on the cultivation and distribution of chestnuts, food in the Jomon era, and the spirituality of ancient Japanese people. Maize weevils are beetles of the Dryophthorinae subfamily, and are destructive pests of stored rice and grains. By 2003, Jomon-period pottery and pottery fragments containing foreign-body impressions had been collected by various researchers from multiple archeological sites around Japan. Surveys of these impressions exposed hundreds of seed and insect traces on and in the pottery. Over the years, researchers found that maize weevils constituted over 90 percent of all recorded insect impressions. In 2010, Professor Obata's research group from Kumamoto University (KU) in Japan found maize weevil impressions in 10,000 year-old pottery that had been recovered from the southern Japanese island of Tanegashima. They showed that maize weevils, which were thought to have come from the Korean Peninsula, had damaged stored food, such as acorns and chestnuts, long before rice cultivation began in the area. In 2012, the KU research group found maize weevils impressions in pottery fragments from the Sannai-Maruyama site in the northern Japanese prefecture of Aomori. The fact that weevils inhabited an area with a cold winter is an indicator for the distribution food by humans and a warm indoor environment that persisted throughout winter. It is presumed that weevil infestation of stored food was well underway in the Jomon period. Ancient Japanese pottery includes an estimated 500 maize weevils (Top) A pottery vessel excavated from the Tatesaki archaeological site in Fukushima Town, Hokkaido with maize weevils impressions. (Bottom) Yellow dots represent maize weevil locations. Credit: Prof. Hiroki Obata Continuing their study of pottery from northern Japan, Professor Obata's team discovered the first maize weevil impressions from Hokkaido, and in February of 2016 discovered a pottery vessel that contained a large number of maize weevils. X-ray CT scans were taken to count insect cavities and revealed that 417 adult maize weevils were contained in the remaining parts of the pottery. In addition, if all of the missing pieces were accounted for, it is estimated that up to 501 weevils were mixed into the clay and appeared in the vessel when it was whole. Interestingly, when comparing the body size of 337 maize weevil impressions found nationwide, the team discovered that the body length of maize weevils from eastern Japan was about 20 percent longer than that of western Japan. It is presumed that this body-length discrepancy is due to the different nutritional values between the types of foods they infested—the sweet chestnuts of eastern Japan vs the acorns of western Japan. Chestnuts are not native to Hokkaido and previous studies surmised that people carried them to the northern Japanese island. The discovery of weevils at the Tatesaki archaeological site in Hokkaido is evidence that the Jomon people of Tohoku (south of Hokkaido) carried supplies, including chestnuts infested by weevils, over the Tsugaru Strait by ship. "The meaning of a large amount of adult maize weevils in pottery was not touched upon in detail in my paper," said Professor Obata. "However, I believe that the Jomon people mixed the weevils into the pottery clay with the hope of having a good harvest."

An X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) is an X-ray produced by a beam of free electrons that have been accelerated almost to the speed of light. XFELs produce laser beams with exceedingly high peak power intensity, which makes them attractive for applications in fundamental research, such as X-ray nonlinear optics and protein crystal structure determination, and also in medicine. It is important to precisely focus XFEL beams to achieve high performance. Lasers are typically focused using total reflection mirrors; however, conventional mirrors are unsuitable for formation of sub-10 nm X-ray beams because such mirrors cannot deliver the large numerical aperture required. To overcome this limitation, X-ray beams can be focused using multilayer mirrors. Unfortunately, it is difficult to manufacture such multilayer mirrors because very high fabrication accuracy is required. A collaboration led by Osaka University has recently developed a new technique to manufacture ultraprecise multilayer focusing mirrors with a shape accuracy of less than 1 nm, which can focus an XFEL beam to a size of less than 10 nanometers. "To achieve a highly focused XFEL, we investigated wavefront determination using an X-ray single-grating interferometer and direct shape correction of the multilayer focusing mirrors by a differential deposition method," says lead author Satoshi Matsuyama. The team first fabricated multilayer focusing mirrors by magnetron sputtering of platinum and carbon multilayers. The sputtering process was finely controlled using a one-dimensional scanning stage and computer. The fabricated multilayer mirrors were assembled into a two-stage beam-focusing system. The wavefront of an XFEL beam after passing through the beam-focusing system was then measured using a grating interferometer to determine the aberration of the wavefront from the theoretical ideal caused by deviation of the actual mirror shape from the intended design. Focus on this: Japanese team increases X-ray laser focusing ability Wavefront measurement using an X-ray grating interferometer. Credit: Reprinted with modifications from the corresponding original paper The shape of the focusing mirrors was then corrected by differential deposition. The wavefronts before and after shape correction were compared, which revealed that the correction successfully improved the quality of the multilayer mirrors to provide XFEL beam size of less than ten nanometers. "We anticipate that multilayer focusing mirrors fabricated by the approach established in this work will soon be available for use in XFEL and synchrotron radiation facilities," says senior author Kazuto Yamauchi. "Such highly focused beams will open new frontiers in X-ray science." The high XFEL intensity achieved using the developed ultraprecise multilayer focusing mirrors is expected to improve the performance of state-of-the-art X-ray analyses using XFELs.

Extreme heat over the North China Plain is happening with increasing frequency in recent years, posing a substantial threat to human health and social activities. Thus, the mechanism behind the formation of extreme heat is of broad concern. A collaborative research team from China has published a new analysis that shows the horizontal heat flux in the mixed layer plays a crucial role in extreme heat events in the North China Plain region. Generally, large-scale anticyclonic circulation and descending flows lead to increases in air temperature. Previous studies have pointed out that extreme heat over the North China Plain is typically induced by the North China high. However, an extreme heat event that happened in the North China Plain region during 12-13 July 2015, with maximum temperatures exceeding 40°C at some stations, was characterized by only a weak simultaneous appearance of an anomalous anticyclone and descending flow, suggesting that some other factor(s) may have induced this heat event. In the above context, Prof. Riyu Lu and his team from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and their coauthors from the Institute of Urban Meteorology, China Meteorological Administration, decided to examine the role that mesoscale circulation systems might play in extreme heat events. Specifically, they analyzed the 2015 extreme high temperature event, employing the forecast data produced by the Beijing Rapid Updated Cycling operational forecast system, which predicted the heat event well, to investigate the formation mechanism of this extreme heat event. They calculated the cumulative heat in the mixed-layer air column of North China, which was composed of sensible heat flux from the ground surface and horizontal heat flux convergence, and the results indicated that the horizontal heat flux in the mixed layer played a crucial role in the temporal and spatial distribution of high temperatures. "Our investigations reveal that mesoscale circulation systems may also play a crucial role in extreme heat, which emphasizes the level of detail required when forecasting extreme high temperatures," concludes Prof. Lu.

The properties of matter are typically the result of complex interactions between electrons. These electrically charged particles are one of the fundamental building blocks of nature. They are well researched, and theoretical physics has determined the electronic structure of the majority of matter. However, the behavior of matter under extreme conditions is still largely unexplained. Such conditions can be found in places where very high pressure and high temperatures prevail, such as in the interior of stars and planets. Here, matter exists in an exotic state on the border between solid, liquid and gas. A research group at Kiel University and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf has now developed a new method to describe the dynamic properties of this so-called "warm dense matter" for the first time. They have published their computer simulations in Physical Review Letters. Today, warm dense matter can also be produced experimentally in large research institutions, for example, by using high-intensity lasers or free-electron lasers at the European XFEL in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. Powerful lasers are used to compress and heat the matter to extremes. It can then be examined using another laser. A measurement of the so-called X-ray Thomson scattering—in other words, how the laser beam is scattered by free electrons—makes it possible to determine many properties of warm dense matter, such as its electrical conductivity, or its absorption of radiation. However, this requires a comprehensive theoretical understanding of warm dense matter, and in particular, of the so-called dynamic structure factor of the compressed hot electrons. To date, science has not been able to describe this reliably and accurately. The interaction of the various factors that play a role here is just too complex at temperatures of up to 10 million degrees Celsius, and a density usually found only in solids. In addition to the intense heat, this state also includes Coulomb interactions, occurring when two negatively charged electrons repel each other, as well as numerous quantum mechanical effects. The research team under the direction of Michael Bonitz, professor of theoretical physics at the CAU, has now achieved a breakthrough. Using complex simulations performed on supercomputers, they have developed a computational method with which they precisely described the dynamic structure factor of electrons in warm dense matter for the first time. To achieve this, they further extended their own quantum Monte Carlo simulations, developed in recent years. "Our new data provides unique insights," explained Bonitz. "Remarkably, it has already been shown that the exact description of the repulsion between negative charges results in a significantly modified Thomson scattering signal, in particular to a drastically changed plasmon dispersion, compared with previous theories." These predictions will now be checked experimentally. The results thus obtained are of extraordinary importance for the interpretation of state-of-the-art experiments with warm dense matter, such as those beginning shortly at the European XFEL. For example, they can be used to determine key properties such as the temperature of the electrons or the velocity of propagation of waves arising when matter is bombarded with lasers.

Apollo 8 was supposed to be a test flight, meant to simulate atmospheric re-entry from the moon but never meant to go there. Hurtling toward Earth at 2,407.5 miles per hour is hairy business and NASA, having never done so before, needed practice. But then the USSR successfully launched two of its own moonshots (unmanned Zond 5 and 6) on the heels of President Kennedy's call for men on the moon by the end of the '60s. It felt to most like a matter of time before America lost its space race for good. NASA's plan for Apollo 8 had to change. Following a spark of ambitious vision, NASA reorganized, galvanizing a wild rush of fervor and late nights. In mid-August of 1968, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders received a call telling them to cancel their holiday plans—they were going to the moon. By December, the three men were suddenly farther away than any human had ever been from our home planet, traveling faster and seeing more than could be seen in the entire history of life on Earth. From prehistoric cephalopods to T-Rex to our ape-like ancestors to Alexander the Great, no single pair of eyeballs had ever been so far from Earth's gravitational influence until Dec. 21, 1968. We were shooting for the moon and we got there, sure enough, but the real triumph of Apollo 8 was beyond nationalism, beyond the tumultuousness of an age that catapulted these three men into the dark unknown. Apollo 8 was the fruition of ancient Chinese stargazers, renaissance dreamers and mid-century physicists. It was, above all, our first good look at ourselves, with the best possible perspective. Today, leading up to the anniversary of one of humankind's most audacious missions, we begin to celebrate 50 years of learning, inspiration, altitude and ingenuity not only about our nearest neighbor but also about Earth and where modern lunar exploration will take us next.

Enantiomeric molecules resemble each other like right and left hands. Both variants normally arise in chemical reactions. But frequently, only one of the two forms is effective in biology and medicine. Completely converting this mixture into the desired enantiomer has been deemed impossible. However, via a photochemical method, a team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now achieved this feat. Producing active ingredients with very specific properties—antibacterial characteristics, for example—is not always so easy. The reason: Many of these organic compounds are chiral. They have two mirror-image forms, so-called enantiomers. This small difference can be consequential because the two enantiomers can have different properties. While one has a healing effect, the other might be ineffective or even cause unwanted side effects. Saving time, energy and resources "For a long time, researchers around the world have been seeking ways to selectively synthesize only the desired enantiomer from a racemate," explains Prof. Thorsten Bach, Chair of Organic Chemistry at the Technical University of Munich. However, this has been very difficult, since chemical reactions usually produce both molecule variants. Together with his team, the researcher has now developed a method with which the desired enantiomer can be obtained from a racemate, the mixture of both enantiomers, in high concentrations of up to 97 percent. The vanished mirror image The allenic group of the unwanted enantiomer is much closer to the thioxanthone sensitizer and is therefore converted to the desired form. Credit: S. M. Huber and A. Bauer / TUM Rather than painstakingly extracting the unwanted mirror-molecules from the mixture, the researchers use a photochemical reaction to transform them into the desired end product. "That saves time, energy and resources because all the molecules are used and you do not need to throw away half of them," explains Bach. A catalyst for the "right" compounds The secret of the transformation is a special photochemical catalyst. Originally, the thioxanthone sensitizer was developed for [2 + 2] photocycloadditions. The dye is itself chiral and therefore specifically converts only one of the enantiomers to the other. In the span of a few minutes, the equilibrium shifts in favor of the desired molecule. The undesirable mirror images disappear. The chemists have successfully tested their new method on various molecular mixtures from the allene structural class. "We could thus demonstrate that selective and efficient catalysis to prepare enantiopure compounds from racemates is fundamentally possible," said Bach.

From birth, it takes humans almost two decades to reach adulthood; for a fruit fly, it takes only about 10 days. During a fly embryo's initial stages of development, the insect looks different from minute to minute, and its body plan is defined in just a few hours. Caltech researchers have now gained new insights into how a fly's genes influence this fast period of development—work that ultimately could shed light on the rapid cellular proliferation that occurs in other situations, including human cancers. The research was done in the laboratory of Professor of Biology Angelike Stathopoulos. A paper describing the research appears in the December 17 issue of the journal Developmental Cell. Unlike a human embryo, which begins as a single cell that divides into more cells, the early embryo of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is a single football-shaped bag of dividing nuclei. Each division of the nuclei constitutes one nuclear cycle, which takes between 8 and 15 minutes to complete. After the 14th nuclear cycle, the bag contains about 6,000 nuclei. At this point, the embryo separates into individual cells and the length of the cycles increases. A nucleus contains an organism's genetic information, and can be thought of as a library. Each gene is like an individual reference book, containing instructions on how to build a protein. These books—the genes—never leave the library, so in order for the cell to use the instructions to build a protein, a photocopy must be made and taken out of the nucleus. This process of photocopying is called transcription. There are limits to how quickly a gene can be transcribed, and so some especially long genes cannot be transcribed in their entirety during the limited amount of time that constitutes a single nuclear cycle. Instead, only a portion of the gene gets transcribed—only a chapter of the book is photocopied. For the Developmental Cell paper, a team of Caltech scientists led by former graduate student Jeremy Sandler (Ph.D. '17) aimed to study what function, if any, these shorter transcripts have in the growing embryo. In particular, the group studied the activity of one long gene with the counterintuitive name short gastrulation, or sog, during the early nuclear cycles of Drosophila embryos. The sog gene encodes a complex protein that is responsible for regulating cellular communication, or cell signaling. Sandler found that during the rapid early stages of Drosophila development, short transcripts of sog are produced that encode for a partial, yet still functional, protein. Previously, researchers who detected the sog gene early in the developing embryo assumed that its presence must have been a mistake, as a partially transcribed gene generally is not translated into a working protein. But the Caltech team discovered that the truncated version of sog actually has its own important role in the embryo. Normally, the full Sog protein regulates a kind of chemical communication channel between cells called the TGF-ß (Transforming growth factor beta) signaling pathway. The TGF-ß pathway is like a particular radio frequency: In the early embryo, cells use TGF-ß to communicate messages about the development of the fly's nervous system. (If cells want to communicate about some other process, they use a different signaling pathway.) The cells send messages with molecules called ligands. The full Sog protein grabs onto ligands, ferries them around the embryo, and deposits them at the appropriate place to begin communication. The short form of the Sog protein that is produced by a truncated transcript also can grab onto ligands—but it cannot let go. This silences any attempted communication via the TGF-ß pathway. Sandler explains: "The short form of the Sog protein, the form that is being produced during the very young stages of the embryo's development, mutes all communication on the TGF-ß channel by sequestering all of the ligands. It's like short Sog is saying, 'Hey guys, we can't send signals yet. It's too early to think about neuronal development.'" Later in the fly's development, there is more time for the full length of the sog gene to be transcribed and for the full Sog protein to be produced. This complete protein can both grab and release ligands, so it is able to initiate TGF-ß signaling. "We were excited to learn that the short form of this gene is not just a hasty, accidental, partial transcript," says Sandler. "It actually controls when a signaling pathway is turned on. This is a previously undescribed program in development that regulates the timing of signaling throughout the whole embryo." Though Drosophila are very different organisms from humans, they provide a powerful model for studying gene expression during rapid development. Understanding the role that short transcripts play in a healthy organism may also provide insights into what happens when development goes wrong, such as in the case of cancer. When cells become cancerous, many short transcripts of genes are produced, and—as would happen if only one chapter of an instruction manual were copied and used—these short forms are missing key sequences that would otherwise keep the gene's activity in check. The Stathopoulos laboratory plans to continue working on understanding how these short transcripts are produced and how they affect normal development. The paper is titled "A developmental program truncates long transcripts to temporally regulate cell signaling."

Every year, trillions of animals migrate for thousands of kilometres between their summer and winter habitats. Among them are several species of bats whose journeys in the dark of the night unfold largely unnoticed by humans and have only partially been investigated by science. A reconstruction of individual migration patterns of the common noctule (Nyctalus noctula) in Central Europe has now revealed that traveling distances vary greatly among individuals, yet overall, females cover longer distances than males. Local bat populations, which remain separate when females rear their offspring in summer, strongly mix in their hibernacula, the roost where they hibernate in winter. Additionally, the study showed that individuals rarely change their migration habits—a behaviour that could prove problematic when bats are forced to adjust to rapidly changing ecosystems. The study was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. An international team of scientists led by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) in Berlin used stable hydrogen isotope ratios in minute fur samples to estimate the region of origin of more than 1,000 individuals from seven wintering areas across Central Europe. This data informed researchers about the migration routes of noctule bats within, into and out of Central Europe. The data reveals that the animals from a hibernacula show a great variety of migratory behaviour: The majority of the bats populate the same region in summer and winter, but in each hibernacula, a significant share of animals traveled for longer distances to reach it. "We showed that individuals from a hibernacula can show divergent migratory behaviours with some individuals staying local and others being long-distance migrants," says Christian Voigt from the Leibniz-IZW. "This pattern is called partial migration, and it causes strong genetic mixing of populations when bats mate during migration and hibernation. During rearing of the offspring in the summer months, bats remain separate in distinct regions such as Poland, Russia, the Baltic States, Scandinavia or Germany." Furthermore, data analyses indicate that female bats cover especially long distances in their migration. More often than males, female common noctules came from northern regions to their hibernacula. Correlating these findings with morphologic measurements, the researchers show that the females benefit from long journeys. "We derived a coefficient from body mass and forearm length, a body mass index, and were able to show that males are in best shape when they stay in the same region locally, while among females, the ones who travel long distances are in better shape," explains Linn Lehnert from Leibniz-IZW, first author of the study. "We assume that a superior food supply for the insectivorous bats in northern regions is the main reason for this pattern. Females have higher energy demands during pregnancy and nursing, which makes it worthwhile for them to shoulder the epic journeys." Males, on the contrary, migrate predominantly during their early life and tend to adopt a regional lifestyle for much of their adult life. Last but not least, the scientists analysed isotopic data from 79 individuals that were caught more than once in different years in the same hibernacula. They found that the vast majority of common noctules are creatures of habit. Eighty-six percent showed the exact same migratory behaviour as in a previous year. These firm habits could constrain adjusting to changing environmental conditions, a scenario that becomes more and more probable thinking of global warming, insect decline and other human-induced ecosystem changes. Individuals with a greater flexibility may have better chances to cope successfully with these challenges. In order to assess the resilience of different bat species in connection with migratory behaviour, more research is needed, says Lehnert. "What we do know for sure, however, is how important local hibernacula are for the population of the common noctule bat in Central Europe. A combination of locally embedded and internationally coordinated conservation efforts is needed urgently to protect hibernacula."

The nuclear force that holds protons and neutrons together in the center of atoms has a non-central component—the tensor force, which depends on the spin and relative position of the interacting particles. The importance of the tensor force has been observed in the binding energies of light particles, but as of yet their effect on nuclear structure has not been studied in a more direct manner. Previous experiments in the field have demonstrated either the ability to detect the necessary particles, or the resolution required to probe this nuclear force component. However, none have shown both the resolution and the ability to link the observed large momentum transfer of the proton-neutron pairs (or nucleon pair) to nuclear structure. Now, an international research collaboration including Osaka University has reported the first evidence on the relation between strongly correlated proton-neutron pairs in an atomic nucleus induced by the tensor interactions and the nuclear structure. The researchers used a proton scattering experiment to capture the strong interaction of proton-neutron pairs with moderate energy resolution of the final states. By measuring the simultaneous occurrences of deuterons (particles consisting of one proton and one neutron) and protons traveling in opposite directions, they have been able to show the dominance of particular nuclear structures. Their findings were published in Physical Review Letters. Proton scattering reveals the secrets of strongly-correlated proton-neutron pairs in atomic nuclei Figure 2: The top figure shows how the nature of the electromagnetic force acting between two bar magnets changes depending on their orientations, which is an exact analogy for the case of tensor force acting between a proton and a neutron …more "The behavior we have detected can be likened to a pair of skaters executing a spin—one of them represents a proton and the other represents a neutron," study author Hooi Jin Ong explains. "If a third skater (another proton) approaches at the correct velocity and picks up the neutron, they travel off together in one direction and the effect of them moving off causes the original proton to travel in the opposite direction. Detecting and analyzing such an event leads to information on the nuclear structure." "Our data, acquired on the GRAF beam line at the Osaka cyclotron facility, are the first to demonstrate this behavior at large momentum transfer," study first author Satoru Terashima says. "We hope that our findings will be useful not only to nuclear physicists, but also to researchers working in a variety of fields, particularly astrophysics." It is expected that improving our understanding of how the neutron and proton pairing affects nuclear structure, namely the energy levels and the magic number (the number of protons and neutrons that provides nuclei with considerably greater stability than other combinations) will lead to a better understanding of the internal structures of neutron stars and other celestial bodies.

It's the political scientist's often-asked chicken and egg: does a person's political party or policy attitudes come first? With party and ideology so closely intertwined, the question has in the past been nearly impossible to pin down, but BYU political science professors Michael Barber and Jeremy C. Pope found a way. The duo published a study in top-ranked American Political Science Review showing that people's policy positions are quite malleable when told that leaders of their political party support a different position. The key to answering their question? The election of a president who has made statements both opposing and supporting a range of controversial issues. "With President Trump as a bit of a weathervane on certain issues, it makes it easier to discern party loyalists from policy loyalists," Pope said. In their research, Pope and Barber studied two different groups: party loyalists and policy loyalists. Party loyalists are those who, when informed of the party leaders' position, willingly and quickly change their policy position to align with the party leader. Policy loyalists are those who hold to their original policy preference, despite opinions or stances of party leaders that might contradict their beliefs. "It's odd to think about partisanship and ideology as being disconnected," said Barber. "Why else does a political party exist rather than to advance a particular set of policies?" Using a representative survey of 1,300 Americans, the researchers randomly assigned respondents into control, liberal and conservative groups and asked participants about their political positions on a variety of contemporary issues. The issues they explored were ones on which Donald Trump took different positions during his presidential campaign, including abortion, immigration, guns, health care, climate change and minimum wage. Control-group participants were asked about their opinions on issues, with no mention of Trump's position. But Barber and Pope presented participants in the liberal group with questions such as, "Donald Trump has said that he supports increasing the minimum wage over $10. How about you? Do you support or oppose increasing the minimum wage to over $10 an hour?" In this way, the researchers could uncover the effect of a party leader's endorsement of a policy in both a liberal and conservative direction. President Trump is unique in that most party leaders don't endorse policies that run counter to the dominant ideology of the party, let alone advocate for both ideological sides of an issue. Pope and Barber found that many people in each treatment group moved to support the policy when informed that President Trump likewise supported the policy. This was true of both liberal and conservative policies. "When informed of the president's issue position, many people willingly followed that position in either a liberal or a conservative direction," Pope said. Respondents who knew less about politics, those who approved of President Trump, strong Republicans and self-identified conservatives were the groups most likely to be moved by seeing an endorsement of a policy by President Trump. Surprisingly, this was true of both a liberal and conservative endorsement. In other words, despite identifying as conservative Republicans, these individuals were more likely to endorse a liberal policy when told that President Trump supported that policy. This kind of loyal partisanship should worry political observers, said Pope and Barber. They both maintain that politics are better when they revolve around more than just the party label. "It should be about ideas and not about winning or beating the other side," Barber said. "Politics should be about pushing ideas and policies that you think will better the country."

Researchers at UNSW Sydney have developed an effective process to turn old clothing and textiles into high-quality building products such as flat panels. These high-end composite products can have a wood veneer look or a ceramic-style finish and were lab tested for qualities such as fire and water resistance, flexibility, acoustic and load-bearing capabilities but have not undergone any formal regulatory assessment. This follows a separate but related research exercise that converted used glass into high-quality ceramics suitable for benchtops and tiles in kitchens and bathrooms that can come in all sort of sizes, colours and finishes. Researchers led by Professor Veena Sahajwalla, Director of UNSW's Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT), have been scientifically reforming common waste items using prototype technology developed for a laboratory-scale 'green microfactory' to be launched in 2019. "These newly published results of the wonderful products developed from waste come as an effort to find ways to reduce waste and address our unsustainable landfill problems, which all countries are experiencing," she said. "It could be said that consumers and the fashion industry have a lot to answer for, given that clothing is now one of the biggest consumer waste streams, with 92 million tons estimated to be thrown out a year globally. The clothing and textiles industry is the second most polluting sector in the world, accounting for 10% of the world's total carbon emissions." Microfactory Reforming old clothing and mixed waste glass into various high-quality building products represents a new way to convert low-value waste into high-value products and materials. This new work builds on technology which can recover and reform materials from electronic waste from UNSW's demonstration e-waste microfactory launched in April 2018. Professor Sahajwalla said that when considering that the population growth trend is expected to jump from a current world population of 7.6 billion to 9.8 billion by 2050, the earth's resources need to be preserved and re-used rather than put in landfill or incinerated. "There is much that can be done right now given that scientifically-developed, proven methods are currently available through our green microfactory technology," she said. "Rather than export our rubbish overseas and to create more land fill, green microfactory technology has the potential to enable small- and large-scale creation of newly manufactured products instead." While the textiles materials tested exceptional well in labs to mechanical performance properties including strength, flexibility and resistance, further lab testing is required to explore these properties ahead of consideration of applying for any formal assessment against construction regulations. Professor Sahajwalla said green microfactories can not only produce high performance materials and products, they eliminate the necessity of expensive machinery, save on the extraction from the environment of yet more natural materials, and reduce the waste burden. Recent UNSW consumer research showed most people did not believe the waste materials they put out in their recycle bins is actually recycled but ends up in landfill, with 91.7% of people saying is it very or somewhat important for Australia to invest in technology to 'reform' most common waste to reduce landfill. A major impediment to new solutions to the waste problem, Professor Sahajwalla said, was getting the technology commercialised and into the market, and without government incentives to attract industry and change behaviour progress would be slow. Glass stockpiles alone amount to more than one million tonnes per year nationally. In total, Australia produces nearly 65 million tonnes of industrial and domestic solid waste each year, but it is now cheaper to import than recycle glass here. About 60 per cent of waste is reportedly recycled but much of this is low value. E-waste microfactory background The NSW Environment Minister launched the world's first demonstration e-waste microfactory in April this year. This showcases a process developed by the UNSW SMaRT Centre which transforms the components of discarded electronic items like mobile phones, laptops and printers in to new and reusable materials that can then be used to manufacture high value products such as high value metal alloys, carbon and products such as 3-D printer filament. Our e-waste mircofactory involves a number of small machines for this process and they fit into a small room. The discarded electronic devices and items are first placed into a module to break them down. The next module may involve a special robot to extract useful parts. Another module uses a small furnace to separate the metalic parts into valuable materials, while another one reforms the plastic into filament suitable for 3-D printing. UNSW is now finalising a second demonstration green microfactory which converts glass, plastics and other waste materials in to value-added products. Mixed waste glass is used to create engineered stone products. Wood, plastic and textile waste is used to create valuable insulation and building panels. UNSW, through its ARC Green Manufacturing Hub, has developed this technology with support from the Australian Research Council and is in partnership with several businesses and organisations including recycler TES and manufacturer Moly-Cop. And through the Commonwealth funded CRC-P initiative, SMaRT is partnering with Dresden, which makes spectacles, in the use of recycled plastics.

The climate is changing, Earth's population is growing and more people are living in cities. That means urban areas—particularly those in arid or semiarid regions—need to update their water supply systems. The world was reminded of this earlier in the year with the water crisis in Cape Town, South Africa, which has a climate almost identical to that of Los Angeles. At the peak of the crisis, residents were required to limit daily water consumption to 50 liters (about 13 gallons), taking two-minute showers and letting their lawns and gardens dry up. A new UCLA paper has created a guide for Los Angeles County—based on 10 years of research—that could prevent such a crisis from happening here. Stephanie Pincetl, director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA and lead author of the study, said infrastructure designed for the 20th century needs serious upgrades. "First of all, it's fragile," said Pincetl, recalling the 2017 Oroville Dam crisis in Northern California, when heavy rains damaged spillways and forced the evacuation of 180,000 people. "Second, precipitation patterns aren't going to be the same going forward in the 21st century." The paper, which was published in the journal Environmental Management and co-written by a team of experts including UCLA's Mark Gold, Tom Gillespie and Kathryn Mika, struck an optimistic note. "Even under climate change we have options," Pincetl said. "It's a hopeful message." The report is the latest in a series of studies that comprehensively analyzed Los Angeles County's water system and laid out an economic case for getting more water locally. The key findings of the latest paper focus on specific themes. One is eliminating thirsty lawns and outdoor landscaping. Switching to vegetation better adapted to Southern California's dry summers and droughts would reduce water use by an estimated 30 percent. But the paper suggests that replacing all that vegetation should be done in a strategic, science-informed manner to maximize tree canopy shade and other benefits. Other themes include making the most of groundwater basins, capturing more stormwater—most of which is now funneled to the ocean as runoff via the L.A. River and other channels—and increasing use of recycled water. Making this all happen will take physical improvements and fresh policies across a patchwork of more than 100 agencies. "I think infrastructure challenges are a lot less difficult to surmount than institutional challenges. Agencies don't want to lose their viability or their purpose and funding," Pincetl said. "The hardest part is really to change the institutions we've created." Los Angeles County's complex system should be reexamined, she said. Bringing the city's water supply into the 21st century will require much more collaboration among agencies or even the creation of a new management entity, such as a joint powers authority, to manage the resource of water as a whole. "I think the way you cut through red tape is political leadership," Pincetl said. "People could be presented with a simple fact—that we have huge groundwater resources that are managed in a way that doesn't take advantage of their full ability to supply the region with the kind of water we need. That's a pretty straightforward and true thing." Los Angeles currently gets about 60 percent of its water from hundreds of miles away, Pincetl said, an inefficient and energy-intensive process that destroys ecosystems upstream. The report recommends importing water only during wet years to build supply for dry years and droughts. In November, L.A. County voters passed the Safe, Clean Water Act. It created a parcel tax on each square foot of property to fund projects that would catch more stormwater and increase the region's future water supply. The UCLA report could help guide expenditure of that money. The bottom line, according to Pincetl: "We aren't going to run out of water. We just need to better manage the resources we have."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: By now, of course, you're aware that the Verizon-owned Tumblr (which was bought by Yahoo, which was bought by Verizon and merged into "Oath" with AOL and other no longer relevant properties) has suddenly decided that nothing sexy is allowed on its servers. This took many by surprise because apparently a huge percentage of Tumblr was used by people to post somewhat racy content. Knowing that a bunch of content was about to disappear, the famed Archive Team sprung into action -- as they've done many times in the past. They set out to archive as much of the content on Tumblr that was set to be disappeared down the memory hole as possible... and it turns out that Verizon decided as a final "fuck you" to cut them off. Jason Scott, the mastermind behind the Archive Team announced over the weekend that Verizon appeared to be blocking their IPs. Thankfully, it didn't take long for the Archive Team to get past the blocks. Scott tweeted on Sunday: "why look at that the archiving of tumblr restarted how did that happen must be a bug surely a crack team of activist archivists didn't see an ip block as a small setback and then turned everything up to 11."

Two of 2018's best statistics from the Royal Statistical Society are about the environment. "The winning international statistic of the year was 90.5% -- the proportion of plastic waste that has never been recycled," reports the BBC. "And in the UK category, the top stat was 27.8% -- the highest percentage of all electricity which was generated by solar power." From the report: A panel of judges picked the two winners, along with several highly commended statistics, from more than 200 nominations. Entries for 2018 were submitted earlier this year. Judges on the panel included Dame Jil Matheson, former national statistician -- the top adviser to the government on official statistics, as well as RSS president Sir David Spiegelhalter, BBC home editor Mark Easton and the Guardian's U.S. data editor Mona Chalabi. The environment and plastic waste has repeatedly made headlines in 2018, and "single-use" -- referring to plastic waste -- was named the word of the year. Other highly commended statistics include: $1.3 billion: the amount lost from the value of Snapchat within a day after Kylie Jenner tweeted: "Sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore?" 85.9%: the proportion of British trains that ran on time -- the lowest for more than a decade 40%: the percentage of Russian men who do not live to the age of 65 64,946: the number of measles cases in Europe from November 2017 to October 2018 82%: the percentage of all British retail shopping that is still in-store rather than online 16.7%: the percentage reduction of the number of Jaffa Cakes in the McVities' Christmas tube 6.4%: the percentage of female executive directors within FTSE 250 companies

A new study published in the journal Icarus found that Saturn is losing its signature rings at a "worst-case scenario" rate, and the bands could disappear completely within 100 million years. USA Today reports: The rings are being pulled into the planet "by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn's magnetic field," NASA said. The phenomenon is called "ring rain," and it drains enough water from rings to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every 30 minutes, said James O'Donoghue of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "From this alone, the entire ring system will be gone in 300 million years," O'Donoghue said in a statement. "But add to this the Cassini-spacecraft measured ring-material detected falling into Saturn's equator, and the rings have less than 100 million years to live. We are lucky to be around to see Saturn's ring system, which appears to be in the middle of its lifetime."

The New York Times obtained hundreds of pages of Facebook documents which were generated in 2017 that show that the social network considered these companies business partners and effectively exempted them from its privacy rules. From a report: Facebook allowed Microsoft's search engine Bing to see the names of nearly all users' friends without their consent, let Spotify, Netflix, and the Royal Bank of Canada read, write, and delete users' private messages, and see participants on a thread, allowed Amazon to get users' names and contact information through their friends, and let Yahoo view streams of friends' posts "as recently as this summer" despite publicly claiming it had stopped sharing such information a year ago, the report said. Collectively, applications made by these technology companies sought the data of hundreds of millions of people a month. The records also show that Russian search giant Yandex, which was accused last year by Ukraine's security service for giving user data to Kremlin, also had access to Facebook's unique user IDs in 2017. A Yandex spokeswoman told the Times that the company was unaware of the access to user data provided by Facebook. Yandex did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment. In response to the report, Steve Satterfield, Facebook's Director of Privacy and Public Policy defended the actions of the social network.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A team of researchers from Austria, Italy and Sweden has successfully demonstrated teleportation using on-demand photons from quantum dots. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group explains how they accomplished this feat and how it applies to future quantum communications networks. Scientists and many others are very interested in developing truly quantum communications networks -- it is believed that such networks will be safe from hacking or eavesdropping due to their very nature. But, as the researchers with this new effort point out, there are still some problems standing in the way. One of these is the difficulty in amplifying quantum signals. One way to get around this problem, they note, is to generate photons on-demand as part of a quantum repeater -- this helps to effectively handle the high clock rates. In this new effort, they have done just that, using semiconductor quantum dots. Prior work surrounding the possibility of using semiconductor quantum dots has shown that it is a feasible way to demonstrate teleportation, but only under certain conditions, none of which allowed for on-demand applications. Because of that, they have not been considered a push-button technology. In this new effort, the researchers overcame this problem by creating quantum dots that were highly symmetrical using an etching method to create the hole pairs in which the quantum dots develop. The process they used was called a XX (biexciton)--X (exciton) cascade. They then employed a dual-pulsed excitation scheme to populate the desired XX state (after two pairs shed photons, they retained their entanglement). Doing so allowed for the production of on-demand single photons suitable for use in teleportation. The dual pulsed excitation scheme was critical to the process, the team notes, because it minimized re-excitation.

According to the Wall Street Journal, SpaceX is raising a $500 million round of fundraising to help build its massive satellite internet project, called Starlink. "The new funding puts SpaceX's valuation at $30.5 billion," reports CNBC. "The report says the capital comes from existing shareholders as well as new investor Baillie Gifford, a Scottish investment firm." From the report: Starlink -- a name SpaceX filed to trademark last year -- is an ambition unmatched by any current satellite network. The company is attempting to build its own constellation of 4,425 broadband satellites, with another 7,518 satellites to come after. SpaceX will begin launching the constellation in 2019. The system will be operational once at least 800 satellites are deployed. Starlink would offer broadband speeds comparable to fiber optic networks.The satellites would provide direct-to-consumer wireless connections, rather the present system's redistribution of signals, transforming a traditionally high-cost, low reliability service.

According to Windows Central, there are two upcoming next-generation Xbox consoles in the works -- a cheaper "S"-style console to succeed the Xbox One S, and a more beastly "X"-style console to succeed the Xbox One X. "The codename for the 'S 2' seems to be 'Lockhart,' and the codename for the 'X 2' seems to be 'Anaconda,' which may also be serving as a dev kit," reports Windows Central. From the report: The next-gen Lockhart console will be the affordable SKU, providing the next-gen Xbox experience in a package potentially around as powerful as the current Xbox One X hardware wise, with refinements under the hood. The Anaconda console will be more powerful and more expensive, providing a cutting-edge console gaming experience. We've also heard Microsoft is exploring technology to dramatically reduce loading times, potentially including SSD storage in the package. We've heard from multiple places that the next-gen Xbox consoles will be fully compatible with everything on your current Xbox One consoles, including your OG Xbox and Xbox 360 library via backward compatibility. We've also heard that Microsoft is working on a new platform for games dubbed "GameCore," as part of Windows Core OS, which the Scarlett family will support when it's ready. It extends the work Redmond has been doing on UWP. GameCore should make it easier for developers to build games that function not only on Xbox "Scarlett" consoles but also Windows 10 PCs, further reducing the amount of work studios need to do to get games running across both platforms. The report doesn't mention if the cheaper next-generation Xbox console will be streaming-only, or if it will still support traditional discs and downloads. With a disc-free version of the Xbox One reportedly coming next spring, this seems like a possibility.

Twitter is introducing a new toggle in the app to allow users to switch from the ranked timeline to the original, reverse-chronological feed. "The company says the move comes in recognition of the fact that Twitter is often most useful in real time, particularly during live events such as sports games or the Oscars," reports The Verge. From the report: The latest incarnation of the original Twitter feed can be accessed by tapping the cluster of small stars -- the company calls it the "sparkle" and now so shall we all, forever -- and switching to see the latest tweets. Over time, the company will learn your behavior. If you routinely switch to the latest tweets, Twitter will default you to them. This marks a change from the past, when the app would switch you back to the ranked timeline at unpredictable intervals.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: T-Mobile has denied an allegation that it lied to the Federal Communications Commission about the extent of its 4G LTE coverage. A group that represents small rural carriers says that T-Mobile claimed to have 4G LTE coverage in places where it hadn't yet installed 4G equipment. That would violate FCC rules and potentially prevent small carriers from getting network construction money in unserved areas. T-Mobile said the allegations made by the Rural Wireless Association (RWA) in an FCC filing on Friday "are patently false." "RWA's misrepresentations are part of an ongoing pattern of baseless allegations by the organization against T-Mobile designed to delay or thwart competition in rural America and deprive rural Americans of meaningful choice for broadband services," T-Mobile wrote. "The organization's repeated disregard for fact-based advocacy is a disrespectful waste of Commission time and resources." RWA members have conducted millions of speed tests at their own expense to determine whether the major carriers' coverage claims are correct. The RWA says both Verizon and T-Mobile have exaggerated coverage, and the FCC is taking the allegations seriously. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced last week that the FCC has begun an investigation and that a preliminary review of speed-test data "suggested significant violations of the Commission's rules." The FCC has not said which carrier or carriers violated the rules.

"Anthony Levandowski, the controversial engineer at the heart of a lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, claims to have built an automated car that drove from San Francisco to New York without any human intervention," reports the Guardian. Levandowski told the Guardian that he completed the 3,099-mile journey on October 30th using a modified Toyota Prius, which "used only video cameras, computers and basic digital maps." From the report: Levandowski told the Guardian that, although he was sitting in the driver's seat the entire time, he did not touch the steering wheels or pedals, aside from planned stops to rest and refuel. "If there was nobody in the car, it would have worked," he said. If true, this would be the longest recorded road journey of an autonomous vehicle without a human having to take control. Elon Musk has repeatedly promised, and repeatedly delayed, one of his Tesla cars making a similar journey. A time-lapse video of the drive, released to coincide with the launch of Levandowski's latest startup, Pronto.AI, did not immediately reveal anything to contradict his claim. But Levandowski has little store of trust on which to draw.

Kroger is launching its unmanned grocery delivery service in Scottsdale, Arizona. The company first announced the pilot with robotics company Nuro in June, and since August, "they have tested an autonomous fleet of 'a handful of' Priuses with safety drivers just in case someone needed to intervene," reports Adweek. "Together, they have completed nearly 1,000 deliveries in Scottsdale." From the report: Now, Kroger is adding two R1 unmanned vehicles to its fleet, which Nuro designed to transport goods on public roads without passengers and marks the first deployment of its technology for the general public. (The Priuses will continue to have safety drivers.) To start, deliveries are available from a single store in the "Kroger Family," the Fry's Food Store at 7770 East McDowell Road. A Kroger rep said customers who live within the store's zip code -- 85257 -- will have access to the service. Customers place orders online or via the Fry's app. An announcement said same- and next-day delivery is available. All orders have a $5.95 fee, but there is no minimum for order total.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: We seem to be on the cusp of a revolution in storage. Various technologies have been demonstrated that have speed approaching that of current RAM chips but can hold on to the memory when the power shuts off -- all without the long-term degradation that flash experiences. Some of these, like phase-change memory and Intel's Optane, have even made it to market. But, so far at least, issues with price and capacity have kept them from widespread adoption. But that hasn't discouraged researchers from continuing to look for the next greatest thing. In this week's edition, a joint NIST-Purdue University team has used a material that can form atomically thin sheets to make a new form of resistance-based memory. This material can be written in nanoseconds and hold on to that memory without power. The memory appears to work via a fundamentally different mechanism from previous resistance-RAM technologies, but there's a small hitch: we're not actually sure how it works. The two mechanisms used to change the resistance have been reported in the journal Nature Materials.

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you often find yourself needing to remove the backgrounds from photos but don't have the time to manually do it, you might want to bookmark Remove.bg. It's a simple free website that automatically removes the backgrounds from photos in just 5 seconds with a single click. Simply use the button on the homepage to select a photo from your computer (or you can also enter a photo's URL on the Web). The website then processes the photo and shows the result in moments. Under the result is a button that lets you download it as a PNG image with a transparent background.