Month: March 2016

Antarctica wasn't always the barren ice world that we now know. In the distant past, plate tectonics placed it at warmer latitudes. But more recently, even after it adopted its southern location, high global temperatures severely limited the ice on Antarctica. That started to change as the period known as the Eocene came to a close and global temperatures dropped. But the precise details of how the continent went white are a challenge to determine.

Now, a large international team of researchers has obtained a sediment core from just offshore of the East Antarctic ice sheet that captures key events in the glaciation of the continent. And because it provides relatively precise indications of when things happened, it's possible to line it up with other global records. Combined, the records indicate that there were two key transitions: one where an ice cap began to form and a second when it expanded to meet the ocean.

Both of these events appear to have been tied to the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide. And in each case, we've been on a path toward reversing them before the century is out.

In a Skype interview with Ars Technica, Frontier Developments founder and CEO David Braben was finally able to make the formal announcement he’s been waiting to make. "We’re going to be on the Oculus store," he confirmed. "We’re supporting [the Oculus Rift runtime] one point naught and the consumer release at launch, which is March 28."

There has been quite a lot of discontent brewing in the Elite: Dangerous fan community when it comes to VR support. Though Elite was one of the first big titles to fully support the developer kit versions of the Oculus Rift, that support has gotten muddy in the last year—Frontier Developments hasn’t kept Elite directly compatible with the fast-evolving prerelease Oculus Rift SDK, forcing Rift DK1 and DK2 owners to go through some contortions to play the game in VR.

The company has added SteamVR support, and it’s currently possible to play Elite via SteamVR with Rift DK2 and Vive/Vive Pre headsets. Until today, however, Frontier hasn’t issued any formal, clear statements on exactly what is and is not going to work as of the March 28 launch day for the Oculus Rift.

Undercover officers have arrested a 63-year-old Chicago man on accusations that he used a handheld jamming device to disrupt mobile phone service on the subway.

The lawyer for the financial analyst at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System said his client just wanted peace and quiet on his commute. "He's disturbed by people talking around him," Chicago attorney Charles Lauer said of defendant Dennis Nicholl. "He might have been selfish in thinking about himself, but he didn't have any malicious intent."

The Chicago Tribune also said that a local judge, when setting $10,000 bail after the Tuesday arrest, dubbed the defendant "the cellphone police." Lauer did not immediately respond to Ars' request for comment.

As microbes continue to build immunity to antibiotics, researchers are scrambling to design new therapies and figure out ways to restore the killing power of the once-potent medicines. Without such efforts, health experts fear a “post-antibiotic” era in which garden variety illnesses could turn deadly and much-needed surgical procedures might be skipped to avoid infection risks.

While brand-new antibiotics are in the works, a new study reports on two promising molecules that can transform menacing drug-resistant microbes into sitting ducks.

In mice with systemic, lethal infections of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a combo of one of the small molecules and a standard antibiotic knocked back the infection. Mice treated with just the antibiotic, on the other hand, remained riddled with MRSA. The findings, reported in Science Translational Medicine, suggest that the small molecules could reverse drug resistance in MRSA and treat infections without toxic side effects.

Apple has just sent out invitations for a press event on March 21st, as expected. The invitation, pictured above, provides few hints about what is coming, but it does use the standard iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and MacBook finish colors (space grey, silver, gold, and rose gold). The event will take place at Apple's Cupertino campus and will get going at 10:00am PDT (5pm GMT).

The company is expected to make a handful of small announcements. One is a new 4-inch iPhone, which to date has been called the "iPhone 5SE" or simply "iPhone SE" in rumors. It's expected to include specs similar to the iPhone 6S (minus the pressure-sensitive 3D Touch screen) and to replace the iPhone 5S in the iPhone lineup. The second expected announcement is a new 9.7-inch iPad with updated internals and some features imported from the iPad Pro, including the Smart Connector and Apple Pencil support. The iPad Air 2 was introduced in October of 2014, and this is the longest Apple has gone without updating the standard iPad's hardware since the first model was introduced in 2010.

The event is also expected to usher in some more minor hardware and software updates, including some new Apple Watch band options, iOS 9.3, WatchOS 2.2, OS X 10.11.4, and tvOS 9.2. The timing is about right to introduce some new Skylake-based MacBooks and MacBook Pros, too, but we haven't heard anything specific about Mac refreshes. That doesn't mean it won't happen; it just means it's less likely to happen.

In an episode of CBS' techno-procedural series CSI:Cyber that aired in January, pilots were forced to power off and power back on an airliner's flight computer to regain control from a hacker. As preposterous as that cold-boot of avionics sounds, it's something that test pilots have had to do with the F-35A "Lightning II" Joint Strike Fighter's radar system—not because of a hack but because of a software problem that causes the radar to degrade or stop working entirely.

IHS Jane's reports that an issue arose in late 2015 with the F-35's AN/APG-81 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar system, built by Northrop Grumman for the Lockheed Martin-led F-35 program. The software planned to be used in the F-35A when the Air Force declares its "initial operational capability" (IOC) with the fighter later this year—revision 3i—has a major flaw. As Air Force F-35 Integration Office Director Major General Jeffrey Harrigian told Jane's, that flaw affects "radar stability—the radar's ability to stay up and running. What would happen is they'd get a signal that says either a radar degrade or a radar fail—something that would force us to restart the radar."

Harrigan said that Lockheed Martin has discovered the cause of the problem and has diverted developers who were working on the next increment of the F-35's code to fix it. A patch is expected by the end of March. But if the fix is delayed, it could push back the Air Force's IOC declaration, which is currently expected some time after August of this year.

New York Yankees fans opening the newspaper this week may see an unusual full-page advertisement urging them to "Drop Comcast today and find another TV provider." The ad points fans to a website that suggests DirecTV, Frontier, and Verizon as alternatives.

It's the latest punch thrown in a fight between Comcast and the YES Network, which broadcasts about 130 Yankees games per season and is owned by Fox and Yankee Global Enterprises. When negotiations for a new carriage deal broke down in November, Comcast dropped the regional sports network, affecting about 900,000 homes in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, the New York Post reported at the time.

Since there's still no deal and regular season baseball starts in less than a month, the YES Network took out the full-page ads in The New York Times and other newspapers and is also urging fans to drop Comcast with "radio and TV spots, outdoor placements, and an aggressive social media strategy," Variety reported this week.