Month: January 2018

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Drew Angerer)

A congressional report released Wednesday lays out just how easy it is for Americans to buy the deadly opioid fentanyl from Chinese suppliers online and have it shipped to them via the government’s own postal service. The report also lays out just how difficult the practice will be to stop.

After Googling phrases such as “fentanyl for sale,” Senate investigators followed up with just six of the online sellers they found. This eventually led them to 500 financial transaction records, accounting for about $766 million worth of fentanyl entering the country and at least seven traceable overdose deaths.

The 100-page report was based on a year-long probe by a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee. Overall, it confirms that supplies of the powerful and addictive opioid along with other illicit drugs are pouring in from China, which the Drug Enforcement Administration has long suspected.

Enlarge / Not a lot to go on, but clearly human. (credit: Israel Hershkovitz, Tel Aviv University)

There’s not much left of this person who lived and died in a cave on the slopes of Israel’s Mt. Carmel between 177,000 and 194,000 years ago. All that remains is the left half of an upper jaw, with some fragments of palate, cheekbone, and the floor of the nasal cavity still attached, along with a complete set of upper left teeth. But those fragments of bone mean that modern humans probably found their way to southwest Asia about 40,000 to 50,000 years earlier than fossil evidence previously suggested.

For early humans, the Levant was the gateway to everything beyond Africa. When the newly discovered fossil human, dubbed Misliya-1, and its companions arrived in the area, they would have found themselves living alongside Neanderthals. Both species were living in spaces once occupied by Homo erectus, an early human ancestor that had reached southern Eurasia by 1.75 million years ago. Understanding which species lived here—and when—is crucial to reconstructing the story of our ancestors’ expansion.

Who, where, and when

And the Misliya-1 fossil is definitely human, not Neanderthal or an early hominin like Homo erectus. The shape of the jaw and the nasal floor look distinctly human, and so do the shape and arrangement of the teeth. Misliya-1’s presence brings the fossil evidence into line with genetic studies, which suggest that modern humans first interbred with Neanderthals around 200,000 years ago somewhere outside of Africa.

You can't beat the Heisenberg limit, but, with enough math, you can come close. (credit: Focus Features)

Quantum computing is all about controlling quantum states. Lately, news has been coming out about quantum computers computing stuff, with the underlying ability to control things taken for granted. But the truth is that control is still a limiting factor in the development of quantum computers.

At the heart of the matter is the qubit, a quantum object that is used to encode information. Part of the power of a quantum computer is that a qubit can be put into a superposition state—more on that below—that allows a kind of parallelism. The aim of a quantum algorithm is to manipulate the qubit's superposition state so that when we measure the qubit, it returns a bit value that corresponds to the right answer.

And that means controlling the superposition state, which involves quite a bit of high-precision (and high-price) equipment. Improvements usually involve even more expensive equipment. But new research suggests that we might be able to improve our control by a factor of 1,000 using existing equipment and clever thinking.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, the Dealmaster has another round of deals to share. Today's list kicks off with TCL's 55-inch S405 Roku TV down to $370 on Amazon. This model normally sits in the $400-450 range, meaning this isn't the deepest discount, but it is about as low as we've seen it on Amazon to date. While its colors aren't as vibrant as Roku's higher-end P series TVs—and while both sets will soon be replaced by newer models later this year—this is likely about as cheap as you'll find a decently-reviewed 55-inch 4K TV.

For those not interested in a new TV, we've also got deals on SSDs, laptops and monitors, Bluetooth headphones, and much more. You can take a look at the full list below.

(credit: TechBargains)

Note: Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

Mazda

IRVINE, Calif.—Despite rumors to the contrary, the internal combustion engine is far from dead. Recently we've seen several technological advances that will significantly boost the efficiency of gasoline-powered engines. One of these, first reported back in August 2017, is Mazda's breakthrough with compression ignition. On Tuesday, Mazda invited us to its R&D facility in California to learn more about this clever new Skyactiv-X engine, but more importantly we actually got to drive it on the road.

What's so special about this engine then?

(credit: Mazda)

The idea behind Skyactiv-X is to be able to run the engine with as lean a fuel-air mixture (known as λ) as possible. Because very lean combustion is cooler than a stoichiometric reaction (where λ=1 and there is exactly enough air to completely burn each molecule of fuel but no more), less energy is wasted as heat. What's more, the exhaust gases contain fewer nasty nitrogen oxides, and the unused air gets put to work. It absorbs the combustion heat and then expands and pushes down on the piston. The result is a cleaner, more efficient, and more powerful engine. And Skyactiv-X uses a very lean mix: a λ up to 2.5.