Genetically-Modified Human Embryos One Step From Reality

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The Independent: IVF: First genetically-modified human embryos 'could be created in Britain within weeks'

Scientists are about to learn whether their research proposal has been approved by the fertility watchdog.

The first genetically-modified human embryos could be created in Britain within weeks according to the scientists who are about to learn whether their research proposal has been approved by the fertility watchdog.

Although it will be illegal to allow the embryos to live beyond 14 days, and be implanted into the womb, the researchers accepted that the research could one day lead to the birth of the first GM babies should the existing ban be lifted for medical reasons.

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CSN Editor: Welcome to the Brave New World.

The Scramble To Save The World’s Chocolate Supply

Cocoa beans are pictured in Ghana's eastern cocoa town of Akim Akooko September 6, 2012. REUTERS/KWASI KPODO

Market Watch: The $1 billion scramble to save the world’s chocolate supply

ABANKROM, Ghana -- Yaa Amekudzi bounces along dirt roads in a sport-utility vehicle from one village to the next as part of a $1 billion scramble by the world’s top chocolate makers to fix the industry’s most vexing problem.

Demand for chocolate is stronger than ever, especially now that more consumers in China and India are buying bars and bonbons long considered an unaffordable luxury. But cocoa production is down, including a steep slide last year in Ghana, the second-largest cocoa-growing country. Cocoa prices have jumped nearly 40% since the start of 2012.

As a result, the pressure is on Amekudzi and her team of five employees at Mondelez International Inc. MDLZ, +1.55% , the maker of Cadbury Dairy Milk bars and Oreo cookies, to help cocoa farmers boost their dwindling crop yields.

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CSN Editor: I saw how high the prices for chocolate were this past Christmas. Sighhh .... the days of cheap chocolate appear to be coming to an end.

This Is What It Is Like To Have 8,000,000 Instagram Followers

Daily Mail: Ever wondered what it's like to have 8m followers on Instagram? Former Holland midfielder Demy de Zeeuw posts video of non-stop notifications

* Demy de Zeeuw posted a 20-second video of notifications on his iPhone
* Hundreds of push notifications roll in from his Instagram page
* De Zeeuw is a free agent after leaving NAC Breda last summer
* The 32-year-old midfielder played for Ajax and won 27 caps for Holland

If anything was needed to illustrate how much of an effort is required by footballers to keep up with their social media notifications, then this video from Demy de Zeeuw should do it.

Former Ajax and Holland midfielder De Zeeuw has shown what happens when he switches on push notifications on his iPhone for the Instagram account of his social sports community, 433.

During the 20-second video, hundreds of notifications come through with photos and videos on the page which has more than eight million followers.

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CSN Editor: People definitely love following their soccer stars.

Report: Global Warming Has Postponed The Next Ice Age

Reuters: Global warming could stave off next ice age for 100,000 years

OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming is likely to disrupt a natural cycle of ice ages and contribute to delaying the onset of the next big freeze until about 100,000 years from now, scientists said on Wednesday.

In the past million years, the world has had about 10 ice ages before swinging back to warmer conditions like the present. In the last ice age that ended 12,000 years ago, ice sheets blanketed what is now Canada, northern Europe and Siberia.

In a new explanation for the long-lasting plunges in global temperatures that cause ice ages, scientists pointed to a combination of long-term shifts in the Earth's orbit around the sun, together with levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

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Update: Climate change could delay the next ICE AGE by 100,000 years, researchers find in 'mind boggling' discovery (Daily Mail)

CSN Editor: I always laugh at these forecasts. They cannot predict the weather next year .... let alone 100,000 yeasr from now.

People Are Losing Interest In Buying Personal Computers

REUTERS/NACHO DOCE

CNET: PC shipments continued their downward spiral in 2015

With the exception of Apple, worldwide shipments of personal computers continued to tumble in the final months of 2015.

Personal computers wheezed their way to the end of 2015, even as Apple managed to gain ground.

Buffeted by consumer infatuation with tablets and phones, worldwide shipments of PCs continued spiraling lower in the final three months of 2015, according to research firms IDC and Gartner. Consumer interest in PCs was so weak, shipments for the year fell to the lowest point since 2008, according to IDC.

In addition to mobile devices, which are well suited to posting videos and photos to social sites, an array of hardware options, like touchscreens and detachable keyboards prompted consumers to hesitate before making purchases. Wearables, like connected watches and health trackers, also attracted consumers during the holiday shopping season.

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CSN Editor: Everyone is into smart phones and tablets.

Google Forms A Virtual Reality Division

USA Today: Google forms virtual reality division as Facebook rivalry heats up

SAN FRANCISCO — Google has formed a division to focus on virtual reality, a move that comes in the face of growing competition from Facebook and its subsidiary Oculus.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has appointed one of his deputies, Clay Bavor, to run the division. Google declined further comment.

The development was first reported by technology news outlet Re/code.

Bavor, vice president for product management, ran Google apps such as Gmail and Drive. Responsibility for apps will now fall to Diane Greene, the enterprise software veteran and Google board member who now runs Google's cloud computing business.

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CSN Editor: Google is a little late in the game .... but they have the resources to catch up quick.

".cn" Is The World's Most Commonly Used Country Domain Name

Xinhuanet: ".cn" is world's largest country domain name

Other news on China’s Internet development. China’s country code domain 'dot-C-N', is now the world’s most commonly used. According to the domain’s manager, China Internet Network Information Center, there were over 16.4 million users of the domain name by 2015, overtaking Germany’s “dot-D-E”.

The domain is widely used by Chinese institutions and companies. All central and provincial governments in China, as well as most telecom companies and commercial banks are the users. Many multi-nationals have also registered their domain names in “dot-cn”, in a move to facilitate their business with Chinese consumers.

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CSN Editor: A prediction .... India's ".in" domain will surpass the .cn domain name in a  few years.

Hydrogen Bomb vs. Atomic Bomb: What’s The Difference?

Tesla Elon Musk: Apple Is Making An Electric Car

BBC: Tesla chief Elon Musk says Apple is making an electric car

Tesla's owner, Elon Musk, has said it is an "open secret" that Apple is making a rival electric car.

He also predicted vehicles that could not drive themselves would become a "strange anachronism" before too long.

The tech entrepreneur's comments were made during an exclusive interview with the BBC at his design studio near Los Angeles.

Tesla vies with Nissan and BMW to be the world's bestselling electric-car brand, but currently runs at a loss.

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Update: Elon Musk says Apple has hired a thousand engineers to make an electric car (Next Big Future)

CSN Editor: Elon Musk must have some inside information. And yes .... Apple does have a lot to offer (see above video).

Airplane Manufacturer Airbus Has Revealed A 'Drone Killer' System That Can Disable UAVs

Airbus has revealed a new 'drone killer' system that can automatically monitor an area - and disable the drone by jamming its signals if it spots one.

Daily Mail: Airbus reveals 'drone killer' camera system that can automatically detect and disable UAVs

* Cameras and sensors can scan large areas
* Signals can be 'spoofed' to allow operators to hijack it
* Drone can also be jammed to stop in functioning
* System can work out exactly where it is being controlled from

They have begun a growing threat to airports, power stations and even public events.

Now, Airbus has revealed a new 'drone killer' system that can automatically monitor an area - and disable the drone by jamming its signals if it spots one.

The system can even analyse signals from the drone to work out exactly where it is being controlled from.

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CSN Editor: I suspect that the market for this is going to be huge.

The Evolution Of Robots In Movies and TV

From Gizmodo: Science fiction movies and TV shows don’t really count unless they have iconic robot characters. That’s a completely true statement, by the way. Nobody cares how good a story is unless they can pretend living in a reality where sentient robots, awesome droids, and fun little machine pals exists. We want to live in the future where Roombas go on adventures with us! Artist Scott Park illustrated all our favorite robots from movies and TV shows—think R2-D2 and HAL 9000 and Optimus Prime and Johnny Five—to show the evolution of these synthetic characters.

What Are Those Bright Spots On The Dwarf Planet Ceres

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Gizmodo: There's Something Surprising Lurking in Ceres' Mysterious Bright Spots

Dwarf planet Ceres’ bright spots are perhaps the strangest of all its features. Now we’re finally in a low-enough altitude to get an unprecedented close-up look—and what we’re seeing may only have deepened the mystery.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft swung into its lowest orbit yet—a cool cruising height of 240 miles and started snapping pictures of a variety of features of the dwarf planet. Most of the shots are detailed images of things we’d already caught in broad-stroke versions, but there’s also a clue to something perhaps bigger.

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Update: New images of dwarf planet Ceres (Space Daily)

CSN Editor: So typical of space exploration .... find an answer to a mystery, but then a bigger one shows up. For more on Ceres go to Wikipedia .... the link on Ceres is here.

This 11-Year-Old Scored the Highest IQ Score Possible

#Indian -Origin girlTops Mensa Test in UK, Beats #Einstein and #Hawking In IQ https://t.co/qySfj3xURv #KashmeaWahi pic.twitter.com/KbAehrPWv0

— Latest News India (@latestnewsind) January 11, 2016

Mental Floss: An 11-Year-Old Just Earned the Highest IQ Score Possible

Kashmea Wahi, an 11-year-old student from the UK, just earned a place among the world’s intellectual 1 percent by getting a perfect score on her IQ test. The test’s maximum score is 161 for adults and 162 for test-takers below the age of 18. To make her achievement even more impressive, her score of 162 puts her two points higher than the likes of Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein.

After stumbling upon the Mensa test while surfing on her iPad, Wahi decided to test herself as a way of proving a point to her parents, both IT management consultants at the Deutsche Bank in London. She figured an impressive score might be an effective way to stop her parents from nagging her to study.

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CSN Editor: A perfect score .... wow.

Inside The Mind Of A Hacker (Video)

David Bowie's Favourite 100 Books

Anyone else remember this Bowie poster from your library as a kid? pic.twitter.com/HsY8srwrwv

— Eric Smith (@ericsmithrocks) January 11, 2016

L.A. Times: Remembering David Bowie through his 100 favorite books

Although David Bowie was best known for his music, he also made countless contributions to the worlds of art, fashion and film.

But the singer, who died Sunday, was also devoted to literature. In 2013, Bowie left the world something other than his groundbreaking albums to remember him by — a list of his 100 favorite books. Bowie's favorite books list was featured in an exhibit honoring the musician at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

Bowie's list is as eclectic and surprising as he was. He paid tribute to the classics, including Homer's "Iliad," F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," George Orwell's "1984" and D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover."

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CSN Editor: This artist was doing everything. Not many sci-fi/speculative fiction books in his list.

Why Are Amazon's Data Centers In The 'Heart' Of Spy Country?

Amazon Data Center CNN

The Atlantic: Why Amazon's Data Centers Are Hidden in Spy Country

The company powers much of the Internet, but its cloud facilities are difficult to find.

Once in a while—not quite often enough to be a crisis, but just often enough to be a trope—people in the United States will freak out because a huge number of highly popular websites and services have suddenly gone down. For an interminable period of torture (usually about 1-3 hours, tops) there is no Instagram to browse, no Tinder to swipe, no Github to push to, no Netflix to And Chill.

When this happens, it usually means that Amazon Web Services is having a technical problem, most likely in their US-East region. What that actually means is that something is broken in northern Virginia. Of all the places where Amazon operates data centers, northern Virginia is one of the most significant, in part because it’s where AWS first set up shop in 2006. It seemed appropriate that this vision quest to see The Cloud across America which began at the ostensible birthplace of the Internet should end at the place that’s often to blame when large parts of the U.S. Internet dies.

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CSN Editor: Convenience, an existing infrastructure, lower costs, the U.S. government not far away .... all of these are good reasons on why Amazon has its centers in northern Virginia. But what I found even more interesting after reading this report was this sobering statistic .... Today, up to 70 percent of Internet traffic worldwide travels through this region.

After Ebola Two Tropical Diseases Pose New Threats

Reuters: After Ebola, two other tropical diseases pose new threats

LONDON (Reuters) - A little-known bacterial disease may be killing as many people worldwide as measles, scientists said on Monday, while a mosquito-borne virus known as Zika is also raising global alarm.

The spread of Ebola in West Africa last year shows how poorly-understood diseases can emerge and grow rapidly while researchers race to design and conduct the scientific studies needed to combat them.

Researchers in the journal Nature Microbiology called for a bacterial infection called meliodosis, which is resistant to a wide range of antibiotics, to be given a higher priority by international health organizations and policy makers.

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CSN Editor: I know about the Zika virus .... a nasty outbreak in Brazil. But Melioidosis .... this is something new. The above video is on the Zika virus. The video below is on Melioidosis.

Google Chairman: Artificial Intelligence Can Help Solve World's ‘Hard Problems’

Eric Schmidt, chairman of Alphabet Inc. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg

Bloomberg: Google Chairman Thinks AI Can Help Solve World's ‘Hard Problems’

* AI could help with population growth, education, Schmidt says
* Field getting crowded with Facebook, Microsoft also investing

Google’s chairman thinks artificial intelligence will let scientists solve some of the world’s "hard problems," like population growth, climate change, human development, and education.

Rapid development in the field of AI means the technology can help scientists understand the links between cause and effect by sifting through vast quantities of information, said Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc., the holding company that owns Google.

“AI will play this role to navigate through this and help us.”

It can also aid companies in designing new, personalized systems. In the future, Schmidt would like to see “Eric and Not-Eric,” he said at a conference in New York, where “Eric” is the flesh-and-blood Schmidt and“not-Eric is this digital thing that helps me.”

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CSN Editor: We are far away from what he is envisioning.

Scientific Breakthroughs In 2015

Nature 

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

The Independent: Scientific breakthroughs in 2015 that could change the world

Advances in biology and cosmology have dominated the science year.

Growing a “brain in a dish”, the prospect of creating designer babies, and the possibility of detecting the first signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence – these are just some of the most important scientific news stories of 2015, according to some of the world’s leading scholars celebrating the year’s achievements.

The question posed to the top thinkers was this: what do you consider the most interesting recent scientific news and what makes it important? Back came a smorgasbord of essay-length answers from more than 100 contributors to Edge.org, the online salon for scientists, philosophers and followers of the “third culture” merging science and the humanities.

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The Pace Of Scientific Innovation Is Speeding Up

Image from Atelier

Wall Street Journal: Science Is Stepping Up the Pace of Innovation

Big advances in astronomy and genetics.

Every year on the website Edge, scientists and other thinkers reply to one question. This year it’s “What do you consider the most interesting recent news” in science? The answers are fascinating. We’re used to thinking of news as the events that happen in a city or country within a few weeks or months. But scientists expand our thinking to the unimaginably large and the infinitesimally small.

Despite this extraordinary range, the answers of the Edge contributors have an underlying theme. The biggest news of all is that a handful of large-brained primates on an insignificant planet have created machines that let them understand the world, at every scale, and let them change it too, for good or ill.

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CSN Editor: Are we in a new age of scientific discovery .... it looks like it.