Month: May 2018

Enlarge (credit: Johny SYSEL via Wikimedia Commons)

Buried beneath the snow on Greenland’s surface, ancient layers of ice hold deposits of lead that originated at mines and foundries in ancient Rome. Fluctuations in the amount of ancient lead pollution that reached Greenland turn out to be a remarkably accurate way to trace the economic impact of wars, plagues, and imperial expansion in Classical Europe.

Lead might seem unexciting, but the classical world’s economy ran on it. “The Romans made extensive use of lead for water pipes and other elements of plumbing, weights, soldering clamps between ashlar blocks or columns in architectural construction, sheathing the hulls of some ships, etc.,” classical archaeologist Andrew Wilson of the University of Oxford told Ars.

The lead economy

In a much more direct way, the economy ran on silver: Roman currency was minted in silver coins called denarii. When smelting silver, adding lead to the crushed ore helps concentrate the silver. High-temperature smelting at around 1,200ºC, along with the process of separating lead from silver after the fact, released a lot of lead into the air over Southern Europe during Roman times.

Enlarge (credit: Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)

For years now, the saga of bitcoin has been a tangled tale. Now, a new court filing has thrown a wrench into a recent high-stakes lawsuit that attempts to shed light on the mysterious origins of the cryptocurrency.

The new amended complaint submitted late Monday in the ongoing case of Kleiman v. Wright (which is underway in a West Palm Beach, Florida, federal court) makes a bombshell claim.

The lawsuit now argues that Craig Wright recently lied about his supposed lack of connections to a Florida-based bitcoin-related company. Wright apparently co-founded and co-owned the company with a now-deceased Florida man who had a significant role in the early days of bitcoin: Dave Kleiman. (Gizmodo outlined the links between the men in a substantive May 2016 article.)

Enlarge / With collagen-packed powders, anti-aging enthusiasts are adding the face cream ingredient to smoothies. (credit: Getty | The Washington Post)

For decades, consumers have lined up for injections and creams that promise to plump, refresh, and smooth aging skin. But now, that same anti-aging crowd is dumping the shots and salves and going for snacks and smoothies instead.

A staple of skin care products—collagen—has moved to the newly trendy “functional foods,” as The Wall Street Journal recently pointed out. Instead of the standard anti-wrinkle creams and injectable fillers, people can try everything from collagen-packed powders to pre-made energy bars, chocolates, teas, shakes, and coffee creamers. The edibles tout all the same benefits of old stand-by cosmetics containing collagen—which is an abundant structural protein in the body, found in connective tissue. As we age, our bodies naturally produce less of the elastic, thread-like molecule that keeps our skin from sagging. Boosting and restoring your collagen levels with supplements “enhances” or “promotes” supple, youthful-looking skin, according to product labels and makers.

So far, the cosmetic-inspired consumables have been a hit. There are nearly 300 collagen-containing snacks now available, and sales reached more than $60 million in the past year. But scientists have been less eager to spoon up the food fad.

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. We're leading today's list with a deal that's less straightforward than usual, but useful nonetheless: from now through May 20, eBay will throw in a free (or "free") Google Home Mini if you spend at least $150 on other items across the site and use the code "PFREEMINI."

Now, the Dealmaster won't pretend this will work for everyone—these sort of "spend X and get Y for free" deals are designed to goad people who wouldn't normally shop on a given site to start doing so. And you should note that neither the Home Mini itself, which costs $49 on its own, nor a small handful of items like gift cards will count toward the $150 threshold. 

Still, if there's a big purchase you've been planning to make—a monitor, game console, soundbar, etc.—and you're at all interested in jumping on the smart home speaker bandwagon, this could be a good way to check both things off. It's also worth noting that bigger names like Best Buy have dedicated shops on eBay, so you don't have to use some random seller here. 

Enlarge / We need your help to produce a new newsletter to chronicle the dynamic launch industry. (credit: Aurich Lawson/background image United Launch Alliance)

Note: This post has been bumped to remind readers that this newsletter launches Thursday. We've had a tremendous response so far, and we really appreciate it.

I have covered the space beat at Ars Technica for 2.5 glorious years, and during that time, I have made a couple of observations about the community of readers here. One, you like rockets. And two, many readers here know as much, if not more, than I do about those rockets—both their history and what is happening today.

The volume and diversity of new launch vehicles under development with private and public money today is both inspiring and daunting. After a lull in innovation during the 1980s and 1990s, the launch industry has undergone a renaissance in new technology and concepts, such as rapid reusability, 3D printing of engines and even entire boosters, micro-rockets, and commercial heavy lift.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Comcast is making it difficult for many new customers to avoid paying installation fees—even if they purchase their own modems and are willing to set them up themselves.

Based on our tests, signing up for standalone Internet or TV service on Comcast.com often requires payment of a $59.99 or $89.99 installation fee, depending on where you live. (The fee was $60 in two Massachusetts suburbs and $90 at homes in Houston, Texas, and Seattle, Washington.) In cases where the $60 or $90 fee is charged, the fee is required whether you purchase your own modem or rent one from Comcast for another $11 a month.

The installation fee might be charged even if the home you're buying service at has existing Comcast service, and even if you order Internet speeds lower than those purchased by the current occupant. That means the fee is charged even when Comcast doesn't have to make any upgrades at the house or apartment you're moving into. Internet speed makes no difference, as the fee may be charged whether you purchase 15Mbps downloads or gigabit service.

Enlarge / A multi-walled carbon nanotube. (credit: NASA)

A carbon nanotube is tough—by some measures, more than 30 times more robust than Kevlar. As they're only a few atoms thick, however, that toughness isn't especially useful. Attempts have been made to bundle them together, but nothing has worked out especially well; the individual nanotubes are typically short, and it's difficult to get them to all line up in the same direction. As a result, these attempts have resulted in bundles that are filled with structural defects, often perform worse than Kevlar, and are only a few micrometers long.

Now, a group at Beijing's Tsinghua University seems to have found a way around many of these problems. It was able to synthesize nanotubes that are centimeters long and bundle them together to make a fiber that's nearly as strong as an individual nanotube. It's not quite time to start booking rides on a space elevator, but this work at least hints that nanotubes might eventually break out of the realm of the microscopic.

Go long

The biggest problem with assembling nanotubes into a useful fiber is the length of the individual nanotubes. It's what keeps the fibers short, and the loose ends probably contribute to the defects that weaken the end product. So the first step in building better ones was finding a way to make longer carbon nanotubes in the first place. This was accomplished through a variant of a standard technique called chemical vapor deposition, in which the reactants that generate the nanotube are present in the atmosphere of the reaction chamber. In this case, the researchers flow the reactants through the chamber in a single direction, and the nanotubes grow along the same direction as that flow.