Month: April 2016

The about-face is almost complete. Following earlier statements that Microsoft would "come out with new [Xbox One] hardware capability during a generation," Xbox chief Phil Spencer has said that he's not keen on releasing an upgraded version of the console.

His comments come despite strong rumours pointing to Sony unveiling an upgraded version of the PlayStation 4—currently dubbed PlayStation 4K—this October.

"I'm not a big fan of Xbox One and a half," Spencer told Game Informer. "If we're going to move forward, I want to move forward in big numbers. I don't know anything about any of the [PS4K] rumours that are out there, but I can understand other teams' motivations to do that. For us, our box is doing well. It performs, it's reliable, the servers are doing well. If we're going to go forward with anything, like I said, I want it to be a really substantial change for people—an upgrade."

(credit: Uber)

Last year, Uber was sued by two women who said they were sexually attacked by drivers. On Friday, an Uber lawyer tried to convince a US federal judge to throw out the lawsuit, but she was unconvinced.

"The job being performed has nothing to do with the act," Uber attorney Josh Cohen said, according to a report in Courthouse News. Cohen tried to walk a fine line, saying that Uber is merely a "facilitator of transportation" and not a transportation company.

US District Judge Susan Ilston brought up a 1956 case called Berger v. Southern Pacific, which involved a female passenger who was raped by a porter on a Pullman train car. It was a case brought up by neither the plaintiffs nor the defendants, and at the Friday hearing, both sides didn't even seem to be aware of the case, according to a report from The Recorder.

(credit: NASA)

Up to a certain point, the elements of the periodic table are largely formed in the hearts of stars. But for elements that are heavy enough (heavier than zinc typically), fusing two lighter nuclei just won’t do it. To form those elements, another process is needed: neutron capture.

Neutrons get captured when they collide with an atomic nucleus and get stuck together, creating a heavier nucleus. Neutrons can undergo these collisions at lower energies because they’re electrically neutral so they won’t be repelled, unlike protons. If the resulting nucleus is unstable, however, one of its neutrons can decay into a proton, creating a heavier element.

A lot of heavy elements are formed by neutron capture, but the details of how it happens haven't been well worked out. That's in part because there are two kinds of neutron capture processes: the slow process (s-process) and rapid process (r-process). Each of these accounts for about half of the elements produced by neutron capture in our Universe.