#Facebook says drones could help extend internet access around the world A fleet of solar-powered drones could help provide high-speed internet to people around the world who currently live without it,
Facebook says of a project in development. The company's chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer unveiled the plans during a keynote speech on Thursday at the F8 conference in San francisco. The drones,
code-named Aquila, have a wingspan about as wide as a Boeing 767, yet weigh about as much as a compact car.
From an altitude of 18,000 to 27 000 metres, the drones are designed to beam down internet connectivity to regions of the world where wireless internet access is unavailable,
while staying in the air for about three months at a time.""Today, I'm excited to share that we've successfully completed our first test flight of these aircraft in the U k,
."Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on Thursday, paired with a photo of an early prototype drone soaring over Palo alto,
Calif. Test flights are set to continue in the summer. In early stages of development The drones are currently being developed by Ascenta,
a U k.-based company that Facebook acquired in 2014. Despite Facebook's obvious enthusiasm for the project, it's still in the early stages of development.
The social media giant told the New york times it hopes to have a fleet of 1 000 drones,
but it will probably be years before it becomes a reality. And that's to say nothing of the red tape Facebook would have to manoeuvre to get a fleet of remotely controlled aircraft in the skies around the world.
The Aquila project is part of Facebook's Internet. org initiative, which it says aims to extend internet access to people around the world who live outside of mobile networks."
"Aircraft like these will help connect the whole world, because they can affordably serve the 10 per cent of the world's population that live in remote communities without existing internet infrastructure,
"wrote Zuckerberg g
#India's top court upholds free speech online or via cellphone India's top court affirmed people's right to free speech in cyberspace Tuesday by striking down a provision that had called for imprisoning people who send"offensive"messages by computer or cellphone.
The provision, known as Section 66a of the 2008 Information technology Act, had made sending such messages a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.
In its ruling, the Supreme court said the provision was"clearly vague"in not clarifying what should be construed as offensive.
It also said the provision violates people's freedom of speech and their right to share information."
"The public's right to know is affected directly, "the judges said in deeming the provision unconstitutional.
A law student who filed the challenge in 2012, Shreya Singhal, applauded the court's rejection of a provision she said was"grossly offensive to our rights, our freedom of speech and expression.""
In 2012, a chemistry professor and his neighbour in Kolkata were arrested for forwarding a cartoon that made fun of West Bengal's top elected official, Mamata Banerjee.
Police arrested a man last year for saying on Facebook that Prime minister Narendra Modi, then still a candidate, would start a holocaust in India
And last week, police in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh arrested a teenage student for posting comments on Facebook he attributed to a top state minister.
The student jailed for two days before being released on bail, told reporters he was happy the provision was scrapped,
"Former finance and home minister P. Chidambaram welcomed the court's ruling, although his son had filed a police complaint in 2012 against a businessman for allegedly disparaging him in Twitter messages."
"The section was drafted poorly and was said vulnerable, "Chidambaram of the law, which was passed while his Congress party was in power."
"Cyber analysts said the ruling marked a positive step in ensuring that the Internet would be governed by the same norms and laws as newspapers, TV commentary and other forms of communication as India's Internet users increase from today's 100 million online."
It tells us that arbitrary executive infringements of the constitution will be struck down.""He and other analysts said,
however, that there was still more work to be done in guaranteeing the Internet was governed fairly, including a provision that allows the government to block websites without announcing
or explaining its decision to do so. The Supreme court on Tuesday upheld that part of the law."
#Gluten free wheat quest undertaken by farmers Kansas farmers are paying for genetic research to figure out exactly why some people struggle to digest wheat.
when the gluten free industry is worth nearly a billion dollars a year in the U s. alone.
which is meant to identify everything in wheat's DNA sequences that can trigger a reaction in people suffering from celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder in
The only known treatment for celiac disease is a gluten free diet free of any foods that contain wheat, rye, and barley."
"If you know you are producing a crop that is not tolerated well by people, then it's the right thing to do,
Though celiac disease is four to five times more common now than 50 years ago, only about 1 per cent of the world's population is believed to suffer from it,
But the gluten free food business has skyrocketed in the last five years driven in part by non-celiac sufferers who believe they are intolerant to gluten
Sales of gluten free snacks, crackers, pasta, bread and other products reached $973 million in the U s. in 2014, up from $810 million the previous year,
and marketed gluten free products and brands at supermarkets, drugstores, and mass merchandisers. Understanding the causes of celiac disease
and gluten intolerance is the goal of a lot of research around the world; Some focuses on human diagnosis and treatment,
and others have identified about 20 of the protein fragments in wheat that causes celiac reactions.
A later step will be combining the proteins with antibodies produced by the human immune system to test for reactions.
and will tap into a Kansas wheat variety repository that dates back to the 1900s in hopes of finding a variety perhaps one that fell out of favour among commercial farmers that might already be low in reactivity for celiac sufferers.
Researchers hope to use that variety to develop a gluten free wheat using traditional breeding methods.
An expert on celiac disease who reviewed Miller's plan online worries that it may prove"too simplistic,
"and fail to identify all the toxic sequences that can trigger a celiac reaction. Armin Alaedini, assistant professor of medical sciences at Columbia University and a researcher at the New york-based school's Celiac disease Center, said the project may end up with a less toxic wheat product that isn't completely safe for all celiac disease patients."
"After all this effort, this product that is coming out...is unlikely to be superior in terms of nutritional value
or baking properties and taste to the gluten free products that are already on the market,
The medical advisory board for the Celiac disease Foundation, a nonprofit based in Woodland Hills, California, could not reach a consensus on the viability of Miller's research.
Her son had been sick his entire life before being diagnosed with celiac disease at age 15, Geller said,
If these research efforts can keep celiac disease in the public eye, more doctors will be aware of it and more federal research dollars may flow,
she said. Many people with the disease would like to"eat actual wheat, with the properties of wheat that make the bread nice and fluffy,
"she said.""The idea of having a variety of wheat that they could eat that has those wonderful wheat-like properties would certainly be very interesting for them
#Mount Polley spill leads to new rules for tailing ponds The disastrous collapse of the Mount Polley mine tailings pond in B c.'s Interior last year
Developed in collaboration between the ministries of environment and mines, the new rules say mining firms must consider the possibility of a tailings disaster
Environment minister Mary Polak said Thursday that companies currently under environmental assessment have been anticipating the changes.""I think there's an understanding within the industry that after Mount Polley,
spilling 24 million cubic metres of mine waste and water into nearby lakes and rivers. Polak said the new requirements apply to all mining companies with applications currently under environmental assessment
and are an interim measure while the Ministry Of mines completes a review of mining regulations.
The changes mean companies must include in their tailing management applications the best-available technologies
Potential risks The Environmental assessment Office will evaluate tailings management options and decide whether each mining company's plan adequately addresses potential risks.
Polak said the new requirements won't change the application process, but that most applicants will need to provide significantly more information
prepared by a panel chaired by Norbert Morgenstern and released in January. The investigation started weeks after the mine's tailings pond dam collapsed.
The report concluded the construction of the mine's tailings dam foundation on a sloping glacial lake deposit amounted to loading a gun and pulling the trigger.
Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett immediately ordered inspectors to check on similar dam foundations throughout the province.
Mining in B c. There are 98 permitted tailings storage facilities at 60 B c. mines. A spokesperson for Imperial Metals was unavailable for comment.
Karina Brino president of the Mining Association of British columbia, said her industry knew the investigation into the dam's collapse would inevitably mean regulatory
and permitting changes.""We are, obviously, as an industry, anxious to sit down with government and define how the whole package is going to be implemented,
Horse poop yields antibiotic-laced mushrooms European biologists have discovered a bacteria-killing compound in common mushrooms that grow in horse dung.
which had assumed long that antibiotics would always be available to cure bacterial illness. The scientific community hopes to be able to develop a new range of antibiotics to replace those that are increasingly losing their ability to work against infections like tuberculosis.
A research team led by Markus Aebi Professor of Mycology at ETH Zurich (The swiss Federal Institute of technology in Zurich), believes it may have found the answer.
They discovered copsin in the common inky cap mushroom Coprinopsis cinerea that grows on manure, while researching how the fungus
therefore very likely to find potent antibiotics in such an environment, which are used by the different organisms to inhibit the growth of the competitors."
"Essig and his colleagues from ETH Zurich and the University of Bonn cultivated the fungus in a laboratory,
"Now copsin kills bacteria by binding to an essential cell wall building block, "said Essig.""The cell wall you can consider like the Achilles heel of bacteria,
The binding pattern of copsin on this building block is very unique and therefore copsin is active against bacteria resistant to conventional antibiotics."
a class of small proteins produced by numerous organisms to counter disease-causing microorganisms. In fact, the human body produces defensins in the skin
and mucous membranes to protect itself against infections. Patent pending To yield larger amounts of the antibiotic,
and that is why we are using bioreactors which then provides controlled and sterile environment for copsin production."
"Kallio says the cultivation process takes five days, before cells can be harvested and copsin extracted.
and that it could be useful in the food industry, because it kills pathogens such as Listeria, a type of bacteria that can cause severe food poisoning."
"Copsin is an exceptionally stable protein, so you can for example boil it at 100 degrees,
also to go into applications in food industry, food preservation, productions where strong acids in high temperatures are very common."
while antibiotics used in medicine by humans have developed resistance in just 70 years. The team has registered copsin for patent approval l
#Ubisoft offers new video game it says can treat lazy eye The Montreal-based gaming company Ubisoft has developed a video game it says could be used to treat amblyopia, also known as lazy eye.
Amblyopia is a condition in children where vision in one eye does not develop properly.
The company says it's the first video game based on a patented method for the treatment of amblyopia.
Ubisoft developed the game in collaboration with researchers from Mcgill University and Amblyotech, an Atlanta, Ga.-based company that develops therapies for eye diseases.
Game meant to be said engaging Ferland the game involves controlling moles on the tablet screen.
The moles are digging for gold in mines. The treatment involves training both eyes, not just the weak eye,
and Drug Administration in the United states to market this therapy. The company says it will look to receive approval from Health Canada once Dig Rush has been approved by the FDA g
#The internet is almost out of IP ADDRESSES It turns out even the internet operates within finite dimensions.
The web is about to exhaust its supply of Internet Protocol (IP ADDRESSES. Now, technology companies are scrambling to get onto a new system to route internet traffic to the right place.
IP ADDRESSES are like the internet's phone numbers. Under the web's current system, there are billions of them. 3 billion to be exact.
But as more of us do more and more online, those addresses are being gobbled up. And soon, very soon, that supply will run out."
"The second half of 2015, maybe if we're lucky we could stretch it to early 2016,
"Over time, you'll realize you wont be able to reach half the internet. You won't be able to watch the video you want to watch.
At issue is one of the weirdest quirks of the internet's history. In 1981, as the internet was being built,
volunteers created a system to direct traffic and make sure people landed on the page they were looking for.
They called it IPV4 (though they didn't build versions 1 2 or 3). They made 4. 3 billion IP ADDRESSES to handle all that traffic.
But in 1981, the internet was a mere shadow of what it is today. Now, everything on the internet has an IP ADDRESS:
laptops, mobile phones, tablets, cameras, even coffee makers and thermostats. By 2020, there will be an estimated 50 billion devices online.
And that old system is running out of room. So, a new system was built. The sheer size of IPV6 is staggering.
It has more than 340 undecillion IP ADDRESSES. That's 340 trillion trillion trillion or 340 followed by 36 zeros.
The Wall street journal claims that's enough to assign an IP ADDRESS to every atom On earth. But not everyone is rushing to adapt to the new technology.
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) says the transition to IPV6 has been slow at least in part because the changes are all happening behind the scenes"Nobody really knows about it.
No consumer is calling their ISP and saying, 'Damn it, give me IPV6 today,'"says Byron Holland, CIRA's president and CEO."
"Therefore they're not in any rush to do it. And like so often is the case with human behaviour,
it'S'i'll do my homework at the last minute.'"'"But he says we are quickly approaching the last minute."
But really IPV4 as a resource in any meaningful way is exhausted. And you can see that in that there is a secondary market that has sprung up,
the price per IP ADDRESS will only grow. In 2011, Microsoft bought up more than 660,000 IP ADDRESSES from Nortel for $7. 5 million US ($11. 36 each.
Today, each address sells for as much as $14. At this point, just about everybody is working toward getting their systems IPV6 capable.
Rogers said in a statement that it is"in the process of upgrading to be IPV6 capable and will have more details to share later."
"Bell says it can't comment at this time as its transition plans have not yet been announced. For its part, Telus says"our work in transitioning is well underway
and Telus remains committed to Canada's part in the global transition to IPV6.""You can test your own connection to see
if it's IPV6 enabled or not here u
#India orders clampdown on internet porn websites India has ordered Internet service providers to block access to more than 850 adult websites in
what the government has described as a way to protect social decency. N. N. Kaul, a spokesman for India's department of telecom, said Monday that the government was trying to control easy access to pornography following a directive from the country's top court.
Kaul said that while Internet service providers in India will have to bar access, users may still view the sites through virtual private networks and proxy servers.
He said the move would protect children. The leaked government order dated last Friday, orders Internet service providers to block access to the 857 sites on grounds of morality and decency.
The Supreme court said earlier in July that ordering a ban on adult websites was not its job
but was an issue for the government. That followed an order from the court last year that suggested the government needed to monitor access to pornography.
Many Indians are accusing the government of moral policing and infringing on personal freedoms.""Don't ban porn.
Not sex,"popular Indian author Chetan Bhagat said on Twitter.""Porn ban is anti-freedom, impractical, not enforceable.
In the past, India has tried to control social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and ask them to take down offensive material.
It had blocked briefly several Twitter accounts in 2012 citing security and law and order fears.
It also blocked access to a homegrown soft-porn website in 2009. Kaul said more websites may be added to the list of those to be blocke e
#Airbus patents plane that could fly from New york to London in 1 hour A rocket-plane that could fly from Vancouver to Tokyo in three hours instead of 10 has been patented by Airbus. The U s. patent for an"ultra-rapid air vehicle
and related method for aerial locomotion"was awarded to Airbus, also known as the European aeronautic defence and space company, in July. Airbus said the plane would be targeted mainly at business travel
and VIP passengers"who require transcontinental return journeys within one day, "and at the military.
The document states that the supersonic plane could carry 20 passengers or two to three tonnes and reach up to 4. 5 times the speed of sound (Mach 4. 5) around 5 500 kilometres per hour.
That would allow it to fly about 9, 000 kilometres from Paris to San francisco (currently an 11-hour flight) or Tokyo to Los angeles (currently a 10-hour flight) in three hours,
the patent says. Observers such as Deepak Gupta, founder of the Gurgaon, India-based intellectual property drafting service Patent Yogi, have remarked that at Mach 4. 5,
The plane would achieve its extreme speed with a combination of three sets of engines turbojets for taxiing, takeoff and landing;
The Concorde, built by Aerospatiale and British Aircraft Corp. The Tupolev tu-144 or"Charger"built by Voronezh Aircraft Production Association.
No sonic boom on ground But the patent says its main improvement over those two is that it reduces the noise of the sonic boom a loud bang caused by shockwaves created by an object moving faster than the speed of sound."
if not the only one, preventing the opening of lines other than transatlantic ones for the Concorde aircraft,
"The sound energy dissipates in a ring around the plane, parallel to the ground, so that no shockwave hits the ground.
Airbus said it files for hundreds of patents a year.""These patents are often based on R&d concepts and ideas in a very nascent stage of conceptualization,
"Airbus has filed other unusual aircraft patents in the past. For example, last summer, it filed a patent to bicycle-style seats on planes that would make it possible to cram more passengers in the same amount of space.
And last fall, it patented an aircraft cabin shaped like a giant flying saucer n
#Mars simulation project: 6 people start 1 year of isolation in Hawaii dome Six people will spend the next year living in a dome in Hawaii in the name of science.
The crew is part of the University of Hawaii's fourth Hawaii space exploration analog and simulation (HI-SEAS) mission,
body movement trackers and other devices will monitor them, according to a University of Hawaii statement.
gathering data on a wide range of cognitive, social and emotional factors that may impact team performance."
In the dome, the crew will share a kitchen, a dining space, an exercise area, an office and a lab on the first floor.
The only full bathroom, with a shower, is on the first floor. The second floor is a loft space with six bedrooms, each with a bed, desk and chair.
There is a powder room on the second floor. There is also a workshop attached to the dome.
lead author of the study published Monday in the journal BMC Evolutionary biology.""This is the first real big predator,
"Technically, this creature named Pentecopterus decorahensis, after an Ancient greek warship is not a bug by science definitions,
The Dane told a preflight news conference on Tuesday that he had shaved his right leg to allow Volkov to better apply electrodes during scientific experiments in space.
The Danish exercise bikes with no seats as none is needed in gravity-free conditions were launched in 2001
Aimbetov, the third ethnic Kazakh in space, said he was taking dried mare's milk and traditional Kazakh cheese to orbit.
Fermented mare's milk, or"kymyz",is popular among nomadic cultures of Central asia. While in space, he will wear a special dosimeter to study the effects of space radiation on the brain.
#Porsche, Audi unveil all-electric models to challenge Tesla Tesla will soon face competition in the luxury all-electric car segment after Porsche
and Audi unveiled new all-electric models at the Frankfurt Auto Show. Audi unveiled the concept car for its"e-tron quattro"vehicle, a sporty SUV, with a range of more than 500 km.
Porsche showed the prototype of its first battery-powered sports car, titled"Mission E."Similar in appearance to its iconic 911,
it has an 800-volt electric powertrain with 600 horsepower that can accelerate to 100 km per hour in 3. 5 seconds."
"When we designed this car, we knew it had to be a real Porsche, "chief executive Matthias Müller said in an interview on the eve of the Frankfurt Motor Show."
"It had to feel like a 911.""Neither Porsche or Audi will have these models to market until 2018.
Tesla's first luxury electric crossover, the Model X, starts delivery on Sept. 29, giving it a head start.
But with such high-profile names, with established reputations as luxury automakers, entering the all-electric market, they could pose competition for Tesla down the road.
Both Porsche and Audi are owned by Volkswagen, the world's biggest automaker, and the move to all-electric could boost the credibility of the concept and thus help Tesla."
"It will certainly sharpen the public focus on electric vehicles and raise overall awareness. Consumers are also set to gain from growing offerings of electric cars, especially in the performance segment,
"Commerzbank analyst Sascha Gommel told Reuters. Tesla's Elon musk put his electric-car patents into the public domain last year in the hope of boosting development of competing electric car technology.
One of the most closely watched design elements will be how far the cars can travel without having to be recharged.
Tesla is at work developing a network of charging stations across North america and Europe. That could help open doors for Volkswagen as many consumers are waiting for suitable infrastructure to be developed.
It's not known how the new cars will be priced Tesla's Model X starts around $77, 000 US 0
#Robot revolution sweeps China's factory floors In China's factories, the robots are rising.
For decades, manufacturers employed waves of young migrant workers from China's countryside to work at countless factories in coastal provinces,
churning out cheap toys, clothing and electronics that helped power the country's economic ascent.
Now, factories are rapidly replacing those workers with automation, a pivot that's encouraged by rising wages and new official directives aimed at helping the country move away from low-cost manufacturing as the supply of young, pliant workers shrinks.
It's part of a broader overhaul of the economy as China seeks to vault into the ranks of wealthy nations.
But it comes as the country's growth slows amid tepid global demand that's adding pressure on tens of thousands of manufacturers.
With costs rising and profits shrinking, Chinese manufacturers"will need all to face the fact that only by successfully transitioning from the current labour-oriented mode to more automated manufacturing will they be able to survive in the next few years,
"said Jan Zhang, an automation expert at IHS Technology in Shanghai. Shenzhen Rapoo Technology Co. is among the companies at ground zero of this transformation.
At its factory in the southern Chinese industrial boomtown of Shenzhen, orange robot arms work alongside human operators assembling computer mice and keyboards."
"What we are doing here is a revolution"in Chinese manufacturing, said Pboll Deng, Rapoo's deputy general manager.
Rapoo installed 80 robots made by Sweden's ABB Ltd. to assemble mice, keyboards and their sub-components.
and tax incentives over the past three years to encourage industrial automation as well as development of a homegrown robotics industry.
Some provinces have set up their own"Man for Machine"programs aimed at replacing workers with robots.
China relied on a seemingly endless supply of cheap labour for decades to power its economic expansion.
and more Chinese graduate from university, resulting in a dwindling supply of unskilled workers, annual double-digit percentage increases in the minimum wage and rising labour unrest.
"Frontline workers, their turnover rate is really high. More and people are unwilling to do repetitive jobs.
China's auto industry was the trailblazer for automation, but other industries are rapidly adopting the technology as robots become smaller, cheaper and easier to use.
It now only takes on average 1. 3 years for an industrial robot in China to pay back its investment, down from 11.8 years in 2008,
according to Goldman sachs. Companies such as electronics maker TCL Corp. are using robots to produce higher-value goods. At one factory in Shenzhen,
TCL uses 978 machines to produce flat screen TV panels. At another TCL plant in Hefei, near Shanghai, steel refrigerator frames are bent into shape before being plucked by a blue Yasakawa robot arm that stacks them in neat rows for further assembly.
China held the title of world's biggest market for industrial robots for the second straight year in 2014, with sales rising by more than half to 56,000, out of a total of 224,000 sold globally, according to the International Federation
There's plenty more room for explosive sales growth. China has about 30 robots for every 10
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