Month: February 2016

Comparison of Modern Human and Neanderthal skulls from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. (credit: hairymuseummatt)

WASHINGTON—Around 50,000 years ago, anatomically modern humans shacked up with some Neanderthals—and the genetic consequences are still doing a walk of shame through our generations.

The questionable interbreeding left traces of Neanderthal DNA that are linked to mood disorders, mostly depression, as well as tobacco-use disorders, skin conditions, and hypercoagulation (excessive blood clotting), according to a new study published Thursday in Science. The findings lend support to the theory that our past hominin hook-up has had a lasting influence on modern humans’ health. The data also offers hints at genetic adaptations of our ancient ancestors and, potentially, new insights into the diseases they help cause in modern humans, the authors suggest.

Having these traces of Neanderthal DNA doesn’t “doom us” to having these diseases, cautioned John Capra, bioinformaticist at Vanderbilt University and coauthor of the study. The genetic traces linked to disease in modern humans doesn’t mean that Neanderthals were stricken with those diseases either, he added. In fact, some of them could have been advantageous.

(credit: Qualcomm)

Qualcomm's lead in the mobile SoC and modem market is no longer as unassailable as it once was, but the company continues to be out in front when it comes to pushing new LTE technologies. Case in point: its new Snapdragon X16 modem, which together with the WTR5975 transceiver boasts Category 16 LTE download speeds of up to 1Gbps. Most of today's phones top out at 300Mbps or 450Mbps, and the upcoming Snapdragon 820 will only go up to 600Mbps. The X16 will also support upload speeds of up to 150Mbps, which is equal to or only slightly higher than upload rates supported by current LTE modems.

Most recent LTE speed increases have come via carrier aggregation, which essentially combines multiple chunks of spectrum across multiple antennas to improve bandwidth. Most of today's high-end phones use two or three chunks of 20MHz spectrum to achieve download speeds of up to 300 or 450Mbps, respectively. The Snapdragon X12 achieves its 600Mbps speeds by using three chunks of 20MHz spectrum plus a higher 256-QAM rather than 64-QAM, increasing the amount of data that can be transmitted over the same link from 75Mbps to 100Mbps (albeit at the cost of higher interference). The X16 uses a combination of technologies to hit its 1Gbps theoretical peak. From the press release:

The Snapdragon X16 LTE modem is designed to reach Gigabit Class LTE speeds using the same amount of spectrum as Category 9 LTE devices. By using carrier aggregation and 4x4 MIMO, the Snapdragon X16 LTE modem can receive 10 unique streams of data using only three 20 MHz carriers. Its support for 256-QAM boosts the peak throughput of each stream from ~75 Mbps to ~100 Mbps, with additional gains possible with modem data compression.

To increase the number of 20MHz chunks of spectrum available for use, the modem can also use licensed and unlicensed LTE spectrum simultaneously.

Harrison Ford broke his leg at Pinewood studios. Now the production company is getting sued by UK authorities.

On Thursday, the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) announced that it is pressing charges against Foodles Production, a UK-based Disney subsidiary that produced Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, over an incident that left actor Harrison Ford with a broken leg.

According to the HSE press release, Ford was "struck by a heavy hydraulic metal door on the set of the Millennium Falcon” on June 12, 2014, leaving him with a broken leg among other injuries. The accident occurred at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire.

Ford was 71 at the time of the accident.

Jonathan Gitlin

This might be the X5's best angle.

16 more images in gallery

It's no secret that we're big fans of BMW's i3 and i8 hybrids here at Ars. Now the Bavarian company is starting to apply that same technology to the models in its regular production range, starting with the (deep breath) BMW X5 xDrive40e. There's no more funky styling and carbon fiber to distract you, just a good-old X5 with an up-to-date powertrain. The idea is to maintain the BMW driving experience but with an added dose of efficiency. So we put an X5 through its paces for a week to find out if that's the case.

BMW's decision to choose the X5 as its first "regular" model to hybridize was a smart one. The SUV is its second-best seller here in the US, and it stands to benefit from the electric vehicle treatment more than the cheaper, lighter 3 Series (although a plug-in hybrid version is coming, too). Under the hood is a 2.0 L, four-cylinder turbocharged gasoline internal combustion engine (ICE) and an electric motor, which together give the X5 a respectable 308ph (230kW) and 332lb-ft (450Nm). The batteries—9kWh of lithium-ion cells—live underneath the luggage compartment, an added bonus of the SUV's size and shape.

That power and torque gets fed to the road through the same eight-speed automatic gearbox as the rest of the X5 range. As with the i3 and i8, the X5 gives you three different modes: Comfort, Sport, and Eco Pro. You pick your mood and the electronic control units and their clever software does the rest. Eco Pro is a bit of a hair shirt. It limits the energy drain from the climate control and seat heaters and lets the car coast with the ICE turned off. Both Eco Pro and Comfort let you drive on electric power alone as long as there's sufficient battery, with the ICE firing up and kicking in as needed (or above 75mph/120km/h).

A Nest video screen grab of a November 22 burglary led to one teen's arrest—and the online hunt for others. (credit: @BaconisFruit)

On November 22, 2015, a group of teenagers broke into the house of a Baltimore man, stealing his bicycle and finding a spare key to his Jeep Renegade. They then took off, stealing the Jeep and taking it for a multiday joyride before abandoning it with an empty gas tank and some minor damage.

In Baltimore (as I can sadly say from personal experience), the story would usually end there with an insurance claim and a shrug. But the group of young men involved in the burglary and theft were all captured on a Nest camera as they rifled through drawers. And some of them left more potential digital evidence when they paired their phones over Bluetooth with the Jeep's UConnect system.

One of the thieves was identified from a head shot from the camera footage a few weeks later by a school police officer, and has already pleaded guilty in juvenile court. But the apprehended youth wouldn't give police the identities of the others involved in the theft. Because he's a juvenile, he'll likely be released soon in any case.

(credit: Netflix)

Netflix has been moving huge portions of its streaming operation to Amazon Web Services (AWS) for years now, and it says it has finally completed its giant shift to the cloud. “We are happy to report that in early January of 2016, after seven years of diligent effort, we have finally completed our cloud migration and shut down the last remaining data center bits used by our streaming service,” Netflix said in a blog post that it plans to publish at noon Eastern today. (The blog should go up at this link.)

Netflix operates “many tens of thousands of servers and many tens of petabytes of storage” in the Amazon cloud, Netflix VP of cloud and platform engineering Yury Izrailevsky told Ars in an interview.

Netflix had earlier planned to complete the shift by the end of last summer.