If you thought Fukushima headlines were finally on their way out, think again. This past week, 30 years after the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, Ukrainian authorities the successful entombment of the damaged reactor — again. The Chernobyl reactor (hereafter, Chernobyl) has of course been buried in concrete and steel this entire time, but it’s also been 30 years since Russian authorities put that original “sarcophagus” into place. Even concrete and metal weather over decades, especially in the extreme conditions around the Chernobyl site. After all this time, mankind’s worst nuclear disaster is still so dangerous that the world has to complete an international mega-project just to keep it safe.
Samsung’s Note 7 release and subsequent is quickly becoming a in the smartphone industry. The Korean electronics giant is still conducting an internal investigation of the battery fires that plagued this device during its short life. But manufacturing technology company Instrumental has gotten its hands on a Note 7 to do a detailed third-party analysis. The verdict? Samsung’s aggressive design tolerances are the culprit, not the battery itself. The Note 7 was getting universally excellent reviews several months ago as it hit the market. However, it wasn’t long before Samsung’s fortunes took a turn for the worse. Reports of battery fires started accumulating by the dozen until had to admit there was something wrong with the Note 7.
Remember the commercial? This is your brain on drugs. One could hardly forget the stark image, the idea that using drugs literally fries your brain. And it’s true that the brain changes in response to drug use. How it changes depends on the substance, dose, frequency and duration, as well as on the factors surrounding and supporting its use or abuse. But not all the neurological changes have to be damaging. There’s a growing body of newly legitimized research on MDMA, which is often used as a recreational euphoric among club goers and at music festivals. In light of what we know, the FDA has just made a controversial decision to , using MDMA to treat PTSD.
The Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship has had a troubled design and deployment history. Development on the LCS began after the Cold War had ended and was intended to deliver a new, relatively small vessel capable of operating close to shore (hence the word “littoral”). Over time, the goals for the program expanded, until the LCS was expected to field advanced modules that could be swapped out in a matter of hours and allowed the ship to perform a variety of tasks. In theory, the LCS can tackle anti-submarine warfare, minesweeping, surface warfare, and special warfare missions, provided the proper hardware is installed first.
Somebody’s poisoned the water hole. — Woody the Cowboy, Disney’s Toy Story The news broke in January that federal agents had taken down Playpen, a notorious child porn site on the deep web, and run a huge 13-day sting on its users as part of the international Operation Pacifier. Newly uncovered court documents now reveal that the Playpen takedown extends far beyond its alleged operators. It was the largest law enforcement hacking campaign ever. The FBI seized the physical server hardware under a previous warrant, but that wasn’t enough to get the people involved. So they seized administrative control over the site under the auspices of a warrant issued by Federal Magistrate Judge Theresa C.
Electron imaging is an important tool of modern science, but producing the electrons has typically required a big, expensive, power-hungry setup. Now a team of researchers from MIT and Germany have built a device the size of a matchbox that could use electron imaging to make X-ray movies. The device uses a UV laser to excite electrons out of a 30nm-thick copper film contained between two plates, and then capitalizes on the right-hand rule by using a perpendicular burst of polarized terahertz radiation to fling those electrons into a focused beam. The key to the system is the way the containing plates are bent and shaped.
It has been more than a century since the RMS Titanic sank on its maiden voyage after colliding with an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. Has that been long enough to have some lighthearted fun with the ? A Chinese investment firm seems to think so. Seven Star Energy Investment Group has just started construction of a full-scale replica of the ocean liner as part of an amusement park in Sichuan province. The real Titanic sank on April 15 1912, taking 1,500 people down with it. This tragedy was the impetus for many of the maritime regulations that exist now, including significant reforms to how many lifeboats a ship must carry.
Few games have been through ten years of development hell, and come out the other side in good shape. Final Fantasy XV has been through numerous platforms, names, and directors in the last decade, but it’s finally made its way to store shelves this week. Final Fantasy XV began its life as Final Fantasy Versus XIII — a PS3 game in the same setting as Final Fantasy XIII. The dev team spun its wheels for years under the Versus XIII banner, but the game was eventually internally rebooted as the 15th numbered installment in the series. After a bit more turmoil, and some , we get to see for ourselves if all of this time and effort was worth it in the end.
Intel is buying into the world of self-driving cars in a big way. This week Intel joined Delphi and Mobileye in a partnership that would produce the sensor components and autonomous driving software, some of it embedded on Intel chips, that would let automakers create self-driving cars. The self-drive technology package would be turned over to automakers in 2019, with the expectation vehicles would go on sale a year or two later. Intel wants to be a bigger player in automotive, where 100 million cars are delivered worldwide each year. Earlier in November Intel its venture fund announced it was investing $250 million in startups developing autonomous driving technologies.
