Month: December 2016

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NASA is helping Stephen Hawking get a tiny ship to Alpha Centauri

NASA is helping Stephen Hawking and Russian venture capitalist Yuri Milner with the monumental task of getting a tiny probe to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to Earth. Project Starshot aims to propel a lightweight silicon "StarChip" to one-fifth the speed of light by hitting it with lasers from Earth, getting it to the star within 20 years. The space agency will help solve one of the thorniest problems — the intense radiation of interstellar travel.

To accelerate it a chip with lasers to 134 million mph — 1000 times faster than a regular spacecraft could go — it has to be feather light. That means that radiation shielding is out of the question, as it would add too much additional weight, NASA believes. Another option, changing the chip’s route to Alpha Centauri to avoid radiation, would add time without significantly decreasing the radiation problem.

NASA and researchers from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) think that the best option might be "self-healing" transistors. The team tested an experimental gate-all-around nanowire transistor to see if it could self-heal from radiation damage. Such chips can be used for both flash memory and logic transistors, and would be ideal for the project, according to KAIST researchers. That’s because they have very small 20-nanometer features, making them both lightweight and relatively impervious to cosmic rays.

On such chips, the logic gate completely surrounds the nanowire channel, so by adding an extra contact, you can pass current through the gate and heat it up. That causes a heating and cooling "annealing" effect, restoring the functionality of a chip that has been damaged by ionizing radiation. "Therefore, the lifetime of devices can be extended, which opens an opportunity for nano-spacecraft sustainable for more than 20 years of deep space exploration," according to the paper.

There’s a lot more experimentation required to prove conclusively that it works, but it’s a step in the right direction. It’s also just one of a huge number of other potential problems that need to be solved before the chip can be laser-beamed on its way (see the animation video, above).

It’s worth the effort, however, as we’re lucky enough to have a three-star system (completely with a potentially habitable planet) so close to Earth. If they succeed, it would represent a huge breakthrough in space travel, and you might even get to see it in your lifetime.

Via: Independent

Source: Spectrum IEEE

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Google Dreams of Drone Food Delivery for Six Dollars

Google has been dreaming of hot pizzas and freshly-made coffee descending from the sky to your doorstep. The Google X technologies lab has already begun delivering burritos to Virginia Tech students using its Project Wing drones. But the truly bold part of the Google X plan may be the goal of offering drone food delivery for just a $6 fee.
Google’s delivery drone vision includes an online website called Wing Marketplace where customers could place orders with retailers and restaurants, ac

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Google’s new “Android Things” OS hopes to solve awful IoT security

The Raspberry Pi 3, one of Android Things-supported devices.

Raspberry Pi Foundation

Today Google is announcing a developer preview and rebrand of Project Brillo, Google’s Android-based Internet of Things initiative. The new name highlights the project’s Android base—it’s called “Android Things.”

“Android Things” joins the Android family alongside Android TV, Android Auto, and Android Wear. At its heart, Android Things is a stripped-down version of Android aimed at cheap, ultra-low-end IoT hardware. Today Google’s developer preview is offering “turnkey” support for the Intel Edison, NXP Pico, and the Raspberry Pi 3. If you remember the Raspberry Pi 3 showing up in Google’s AOSP repository earlier this year, now we know why.

Google has also partnered with these companies to create a smooth upgrade path from development hardware to a large-scale production run.

Android Things allows developers to build a smart device using Android APIs and Google Services. This takes the usual Android development stack—Android Studio, the official SDK, and Google Play Services—and applies it to the IoT. Developers will be able to use the Google Weave protocol to communicate between devices along with Google Cloud services like Google Cloud Vision.

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Wells Fargo scandal spreads to Prudential insurance

It may not have been just fake bank and credit card accounts. Now there are allegations that Wells Fargo customers were sold Prudential insurance products they didn’t want.

Wells Fargo employees appear to have signed up customers for a low-cost Prudential life insurance policy without their knowledge or permission, according to three former Prudential employees who filed a lawsuit last week against the insurance giant.

The allegations bear striking similarities to the scandal that has rocked Wells Fargo (WFC) for three months.

The lawsuit notes that some Prudential insurance products owned by Wells Fargo customers listed obviously-fake home addresses on their applications like “Wells Fargo Drive” or phony email addresses such as “noemail@wellsfargo.com.”

More alarming, the insurance premium payments may have come from dormant Wells Fargo accounts.

The three former Prudential (PRU) employees filed a Dodd-Frank whistleblower complaint with the SEC on Saturday alleging they were retaliated against after uncovering the misconduct. The employees were members of Prudential’s investigations division and had been tasked with reviewing the insurer’s relationship with Wells Fargo following the fake account scandal that emerged in September.

The employees say their review into the insurer’s Wells Fargo relationship turned up a number of red flags. They found a 70% lapse rate for MyTerm policies sold in 2014 (the first year they were sold in Wells Fargo); a spike in sales near the end of each quarter; policies were sold “predominately to individuals with Hispanic sounding last names.”

Related: Trump Cabinet pick made $1.2 million from Wells Fargo

The three Prudential employees were put on unpaid, administrative leave by Prudential and walked off the company’s premises on November 21, their attorney Christopher Chang told CNNMoney.

The employees allege they were punished over their refusal to participate in Prudential’s “cover-up of illegal and fraudulent business practices it has engaged in — and continues to engage in — with Wells Fargo Bank.”

One of the employees, Julie Han Broderick, was previously co-head of Prudential’s corporate investigations division.

Their lawyer said Prudential has not formally notified the three employees they have been fired, even though all three assume they have been let go. Prudential refers to them as “former” employees and said they have been “terminated.”

Shares of both Wells Fargo and Prudential fell more than 2% on Monday after The New York Times and other outlets reported on the news over the weekend.

Prudential announced on Monday it has suspended the distribution of its MyTerm policies through all Wells Fargo branches and website pending the results of a review.

Related: Wells Fargo fired 5,300 for over 2 million fake accounts

Lawyers representing an alleged victim of the insurance scheme filed a class action lawsuit against Prudential on Monday claiming “financial fraud.”

Prudential said Wells Fargo customers who have concerns about how the product was purchased may be eligible for refunds and can call the insurer’s customer hotline: 1-877-291-7193.

Prudential said the termination of the employees was “entirely unrelated to Prudential’s business with Wells Fargo” and were instead prompted by an “ethics complaint” filed against them. Prudential said it is “confident that the court will agree once the facts are revealed.”

The SEC complaint filed by the Prudential employees said they do not possess “any supporting materials” because they were escorted out of the office.

Wells Fargo said it is “deeply concerned about these allegations as they are completely counter to our values.” The bank said it’s working with Prudential to investigate and it will take action if “improper conduct is found.”

Related: Scandal-ridden Wells Fargo wants less regulation

The lawsuit claims the review turned up 99 customers who repurchased their policies after having allowed them to lapse or canceling them.

Prudential said the Wells Fargo settlement prompted a review that remains ongoing. The insurer also said it surveyed Wells Fargo customers last year but the responses “did not indicate potential fraudulent sales activity.”

It’s the latest allegation of retaliation linked to the Wells Fargo scandal. In September, CNNMoney uncovered half a dozen former Wells Fargo workers who say they were fired after calling the bank’s confidential ethics hotline over improper sales activity.

Wells Fargo has admitted some workers may have been mistreated and said it’s reviewing its ethics hotline procedures. The U.S. Labor Department is reviewing whistleblower complaints against Wells Fargo and Senator Elizabeth Warren has asked the SEC to investigate the allegations as well.

CNNMoney (New York) First published December 12, 2016: 12:45 PM ET

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U.S. Kids Far Less Likely To Out-Earn Their Parents, As Inequality Grows

Only 50 percent of kids born in the 1980s are earning more than their parents, according to a new study that puts most of the blame on the narrow distribution of economic gains.

Tony Dejak/AP


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Tony Dejak/AP

Only 50 percent of kids born in the 1980s are earning more than their parents, according to a new study that puts most of the blame on the narrow distribution of economic gains.

Tony Dejak/AP

The widening gap between rich and poor Americans has pushed the chances of children earning more money than their parents down to around 50 percent, economic researchers say. That’s a sharp fall from 1940, when 90 percent of kids were destined to move up the income ladder.

Describing an American Dream that for many has faded into a less plentiful reality, Stanford economics Professor Raj Chetty said in a news release, “It’s basically a coin flip as to whether you’ll do better than your parents.”

The downward trend held true across the U.S. — and the steepest declines were seen among middle class families, according to Chetty and his fellow researchers in the Equality of Opportunity Project.

The percent of U.S. children who go on to earn more than their parents has dropped sharply since 1940, when the rate topped 90 percent.

Equality of Opportunity Project


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Equality of Opportunity Project

The percent of U.S. children who go on to earn more than their parents has dropped sharply since 1940, when the rate topped 90 percent.

Equality of Opportunity Project

The study detailed “absolute income mobility” from one generation to the next by comparing the household income of 30-year-olds to what their parents made at the same age. The Stanford study used data from both the U.S. Census and anonymized Internal Revenue Service records to compile stats for people born between 1940 and 1984.

Over that period, it became less likely that children born in every U.S. state would out-earn their parents, with the largest drops in upward mobility seen in Michigan, Illinois and other parts of the industrial Midwest.

To unravel what caused the decline, the researchers tinkered with two variables — Gross Domestic Product and the distribution of economic growth. In simulations, both stronger growth and more broadly distributed gains had positive effects — but the broader gains were far more influential.

From the researchers’ news release:

“When the economic growth rate was raised to the higher levels experienced in the 1940s and 1950s but the economic distribution mirrored today’s highly uneven landscape, the estimated rate of absolute mobility rose to 62 percent.

“In contrast, when the economic growth rate was held at the low levels of 2 to 3 percent of recent decades, but the pieces of the economic pie were distributed more evenly as it was in the mid-20th century, then the fraction of children who ended up doing better than their parents climbed to 80 percent.”

“The finding of this study implies that if we want to revive the American Dream of increasing living standards across generations, then we’ll need policies that foster more broadly shared growth,” Chetty said.

A map of the U.S. shows children’s chances of moving from the bottom fifth of income levels to the top fifth.

Equality of Opportunity Project


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Equality of Opportunity Project

A map of the U.S. shows children’s chances of moving from the bottom fifth of income levels to the top fifth.

Equality of Opportunity Project

Results also vary depending on where children are raised. As their map of metro and rural areas in the U.S. shows, the researchers found large areas where kids had markedly better chances of moving from the bottom fifth of income levels to the top fifth.

The study also found that children who are moved to a better environment get a sharp boost in their chance to reach economic success — and that the earlier such a move takes place, the greater the effect.

Some cities have been able to buck the trend, with researchers citing Salt Lake City and Minneapolis as two places where children have a good chance to emerge from poverty. Such cities tend to share important qualities, the economists say: “lower levels of residential segregation, a larger middle class, stronger families, greater social capital, and higher quality public schools.”

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