Month: January 2017

Enlarge (credit: Spencer Platt, Getty Images)

Weeks ago, Apple was sued on accusations that its FaceTime app contributed to the highway death of a young girl in Texas. The girl's family claims that the iPhone maker should have deployed technology to prohibit motorists from using the app.

Now there's another lawsuit targeting Apple's decision not to deploy a lock-out mechanism. This one—from an injured Southern California motorist—concerns locking out drivers from texting.

This lawsuit from accident victim Julio Ceja, who was rear-ended by a texting driver, does not seek any monetary damages. Instead, it demands that a Los Angeles Superior Court judge block Apple from selling iPhones in the Golden State until the devices are updated to include Apple's patented technology to lock drivers out of their phones while driving.

Enlarge (credit: Killer Instinct / Aurich)

In the tight-knit community of competitive fighting games, it's not rare for specific characters, stages, or moves to be banned because they throw off the game's competitive balance. In the Killer Instinct community, though, players in one major tournament are faced with a ban on "teabagging," which has nothing to do with competitive balance and everything to do with taunting, sportsmanship, and "professionalism."

Teabagging involves crouching on top of a prostrate opponent repeatedly, humiliating them by sticking your character's virtual crotch in their face when they're powerless to stop it (mature, we know). While the taunt is most popular in online first-person shooters, the act has found some traction in the fighting game community as well. Killer Instinct gives more opportunities for teabagging than most other fighting games, because winning players can continue to move and teabag opponents in between rounds.

The Killer Instinct World Cup first instituted a ban on teabagging last year, and that ban is being extended after debate over the issue got particularly heated in a private Facebook group. Fighting game tournament organizer and team manager Rotendo Camarena described the Facebook discussion to PVPLive:

Exhaust fumes blown into the sky. (credit: MIT News)

With the swearing in of a new administration, the federal government and California, the most populous state in the union and the only state currently allowed to set emissions standards different from the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA), seem set to go separate ways on policy governing greenhouse gases.

Last week, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) issued a proposed plan (PDF) to get California’s greenhouse gas emissions down to 40 percent below what they were in 1990 by 2030. The plan expands California’s current goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to parity with 1990 levels by 2020. CARB says the state is on its way to meeting the latter goal and suggests the former goal will be reached by continuing the state’s cap-and-trade market and pushing for millions of zero-emissions vehicles on California's roads.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration issued a freeze on grants and contracts under the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last night, which ProPublica reports could hold up toxic cleanups and water-quality testing. Myron Ebell, a climate change denier and the Trump transition team's EPA lead, told ProPublica that the freeze was not unusual. "They’re trying to freeze things to make sure nothing happens they don’t want to have happen, so any regulations going forward, contracts, grants, hires, they want to make sure to look at them first," Ebell said.

Enlarge / A nerve cell, with small features of dendrites highlighted in red. (credit: Shelley Halpain, UC San Diego)

REM sleep is known to help solidify memories, but the mechanism for making memories more permanent is not well-understood. A recent study published in Nature Neuroscience shows that, during REM sleep, some of the structures neurons use to make connections with each other are pruned, while others are maintained and strengthened. The findings indicate that sleep's role in solidifying memories comes through allowing the brain time to selectively eliminate or maintain newly formed neural connections.

Dendritic spines are small outgrowths on a neuron’s dendrite, which is the portion of the neuron that receives chemical signals from other neurons. These spines enhance the strength of connections between neurons so they can play an important role in strengthening new neural circuits and solidifying new memories. These spines aren't permanent structures; instead, nerve cells can create new ones or get rid of existing ones (a process called pruning) as the importance of different connections shifts.

The new memories in this case were formed in mice, which were trained to complete a treadmill-like motor task. Then, the mice were either deprived of REM sleep or allowed to experience this form of sleep. The mice that were allowed REM showed significantly higher pruning of new dendritic spines compared to the mice that were REM sleep deprived. This difference in pruning was only seen for new dendritic spines, and previously existing dendritic spines were pruned at the same rate.

Enlarge / Devices running iOS 10. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

As predicted yesterday, now that Apple has the iOS 10.2.1 and macOS 10.12.3 releases out the door, it's turning its attention to larger updates. Apple is releasing the first betas of iOS 10.3 and macOS 10.12.4 to the public today and has given us a broad overview of the biggest changes that people will see when these are released to the public in a couple of months.

The iOS 10.3 update is the more significant of the two. For starters, it adds AirPods to Find My iPhone to make them easier to find if you lose them, which, given how small they are, is bound to happen to AirPod owners eventually.

Most of the other changes come in the form of small additions to existing features. SiriKit, which can already hook into compatible payment and ride-sharing apps, can now be used to pay bills and check on the status of payments. You'll also be able to schedule a ride with Siri—calling an Uber to come at 2pm rather than "right now," for instance. The weather icon in Maps can be 3D Touched on compatible devices (the iPhone 6S and 7 series, as of this writing) to show hourly forecasts and other information. The CarPlay UI picks up shortcuts for launching the two most recently used apps and can display EV charging stations in Maps. HomeKit now supports programmable light switches. Facemarks on the Chinese and Japanese keyboards have been shuffled around to make it easier to type, and the Conversation View that Mail picked up in iOS 10 has gotten some "navigation improvements."

Enlarge / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee in September 2016. (credit: Getty Images | Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

Comcast, AT&T, and industry lobbyist groups representing ISPs are heaping praise on Ajit Pai, who was appointed Federal Communications Commission chairman by President Donald Trump yesterday. Pai, a Republican commissioner and former lawyer for Verizon, has vowed to undo net neutrality rules and opposed numerous consumer protection regulations passed under his predecessor Tom Wheeler. With Republicans taking control of the commission, Pai has promised "to remove outdated and unnecessary regulations" imposed on ISPs.

"We commend [Pai's] tireless efforts to develop and support policies that benefit American consumers and spur greater investment and innovation in broadband technologies to connect all Americans and drive job creation," Comcast Senior Executive VP David Cohen said in a statement yesterday. "This is a terrific appointment for the American consumer and the companies the FCC regulates and we look forward to continuing to work with Chairman Pai in his new role.”

AT&T Senior Executive VP Bob Quinn concurred, saying that "No one is more prepared to reframe the agency to address the needs of this rapidly changing marketplace. Chairman Pai will work with his fellow Commissioners to quickly and decisively put back in place the commonsense regulatory framework necessary to support the President’s agenda for job creation, innovation and investment."

Enlarge / Pumping station for an oil pipeline in rural Nebraska. (credit: shannonpatrick17)

Following up on promises to advance fossil fuels, President Trump signed an executive action today to push forward the Dakota Access pipeline as well as the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Keystone XL pipeline was intended to connect oil (technically diluted bitumen) from the oil sands of Alberta, Canada to refineries and ports on the Gulf of Mexico. The pipeline was strongly opposed by advocates for action on climate change because the processing required to extract useful oil from the thick bitumen makes it an even bigger source of CO₂ emissions than usual.

In November 2015, the Obama administration rejected the pipeline after a long period of uncertainty, citing the contribution to climate change and a lack of significant benefits in terms of jobs and US energy prices.