Month: August 2018

Enlarge / One of the electronic voting machines used by the state of Georgia. (credit: Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

With worn-out clichés about the dead voting, Chicago used to be the poster child for voter fraud. But if any state is a poster child for terrible election practices, it is surely Georgia. Bold claims demand bold evidence, and unfortunately there's plenty; on Monday, McClatchy reported a string of irregularities from the state's primary election in May, including one precinct with a 243-percent turnout.

McClatchy's data comes from a federal lawsuit filed against the state. In addition to the problem in Habersham County's Mud Creek precinct, where 276 registered voters managed to cast 670 ballots, the piece describes numerous other issues with both voter registration and electronic voting machines.

Multiple sworn statements from voters describe how they turned up at their polling stations only to be turned away or directed to other precincts. Even more statements allege incorrect ballots, frozen voting machines, and other issues.

If you thought Nintendo's upcoming mascot-battler game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate couldn't get any bigger, its creators had a Konami-tinged surprise on Wednesday: Castlevania's Simon Belmont as a brand-new playable Smash fighter.

Belmont was arguably the biggest announcement to come in the latest news-filled Nintendo Direct video series. Smash Director Masahiro Sakurai confirmed that the character's classic whip gives him the longest standard melee attack ever seen in the series, at the cost of speed—and that it can be freely waved around, just like in the SNES classic Super Castlevania IV. His other attacks take advantage of classic "magical items" like the axe (complete with its thrown arc), ground-burning holy water, and straight-thrown blue cross.

Enlarge (credit: Missouri Department of Conservation)

Spider silk is a bit of a dream material, stronger than steel by some measures yet incredibly light and flexible. Obtaining spider silk, however, is a bit of a nightmare, as most spider species are both extremely territorial and prone to cannibalism. While we have managed to identify the genes that are needed to produce silk, inserting those into other species hasn't worked out especially well, since silk formation depends on fairly precise mixtures of several proteins, as well as how the spider extrudes the fiber.

A Chinese group is now reporting some progress in overcoming at least some of these challenges. Their trick was to insert the genes into a domesticated species that already makes something like spider silk—specifically, the species that gave us the term silk. The new bit of genetic engineering has resulted in a silkworm that produces a hybrid silkworm/spider material that's not as tough but is a bit stretchier than native spider silk.

More than meets the eye

If you've ever watched a spider spinning a web, silk production seems remarkably simple. But there's enough going on there to make a materials scientist dizzy. Most spiders make more than one kind of silk, as the properties that might make a good web might not be the same as the ones that would effectively arrest a fall after a spider has leapt off a tree branch. The differences come in part because silk is composed of multiple proteins, and some spiders have genes for different versions of these proteins. If they have some control over which starting materials go into their silk, a spider species can adjust its properties.

Enlarge / Algorithms, a complicated work in progress. (credit: Getty Images)

During family dinner, we have a tradition. Everyone has to summarize their day by describing three good events and, if necessary, one bad event. When my turn arrived at a recent dinner, I turned to my two eldest children and told them that my bad event was discovering that their math grades should have been higher.

I explained that I had just read a paper that claimed that people who enjoyed and were good at systemizing were also good at math. According to the paper, this was most strongly seen in people on the autism spectrum. “Hence, spawn-o-mine, I expect things to improve by at least one grade point.”

The paper in questing, entitled “Systemisers are better at maths,” represents the first attempt to try to test an old hypothesis and extend it to the general population. The hypothesis is that our brain uses two modules to try to make sense of the world. One systemizes: it looks for patterns and order and uses them to explain and predict the world. The second system is empathetic: it tries to predict and understand the world by walking in its shoes. One characteristic of autism spectrum disorder is the desire for order and patterns. This is often misinterpreted by saying that people on the spectrum lack empathy. This is simply wrong. 

Enlarge (credit: Francisco Antunes)

A new perk is coming to Whole Foods for Amazon Prime members: grocery pickup. Amazon announced today that it will roll out a new grocery pickup service at Whole Foods locations, starting with stores in Sacramento and Virginia Beach. Prime members can order groceries at Whole Foods through the Prime Now app or website and choose to pick them up at their nearest Whole Foods location that same day.

Customers can order produce, baked goods, dairy products, meat, seafood, flowers, and other everyday items for pickup. Customers choose the pickup option at checkout before placing their order. They can even use the Prime Now app to alert the store when they are heading over, so employees can have their groceries ready to load into their cars when they arrive. Orders of $35 or more can be filled in as little as an hour, or customers can pay an extra $4.99 for the 30-minute pickup option.

Grocery pickup is a service available exclusively to Prime members, like many other perks Amazon has instituted over the past few years. When the retailer bought Whole Foods for $13.7 billion last year, it promised a slew of discounts, savings, and benefits for Prime members. Currently, Prime members receive 10 percent off sale items at Whole Foods in addition to special deals on specific items, as well as 5 percent cash back for Amazon Prime Rewards Visa cardholders and two-hour delivery with Prime Now.