Month: March 2020

Enlarge / US Microsoft founder, Co-Chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, poses for a picture on October 9, 2019, in Lyon, central eastern France, during the funding conference of Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. (credit: Jeff Pachoud | Getty Images)

Just over 20 years after stepping down as CEO of Microsoft and six years after relinquishing his position as Chairman of the Board, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has resigned from the Microsoft Board of Directors. Gates, 64, is leaving the board to spend more time on philanthropic ventures.

"I have made the decision to step down from both of the public boards on which I serve—Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway—to dedicate more time to philanthropic priorities including global health and development, education, and my increasing engagement in tackling climate change," Gates wrote in a post on LinkedIn announcing the decision. "The leadership at the Berkshire companies and Microsoft has never been stronger, so the time is right to take this step."

Gates founded Microsoft in 1975 with Paul Allen, and their first product was Altair BASIC. The company's breakout product was Windows, which became the world's most-used desktop operating system. Gates steered the company through a period of massive growth but also set the table for his successor, Steve Ballmer, to deal with antitrust issues. Microsoft was found by both US and European regulators to have abused its dominant market position for both Web browsers and operating systems in the 2000s, which resulted in fines and consent decrees.

Enlarge / Manning in 2019, when she was briefly free between two grand jury terms. (credit: ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images)

Virginia federal judge Anthony Trenga ordered the release of Chelsea Manning on Thursday after almost a year of confinement. The judge was holding Manning in contempt for refusing to testify before a grand jury about matters related to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. But now that the grand jury has wrapped up its work, there's no longer a legal basis to hold Manning.

In 2010, Manning was an army private with access to some of the US military's classified networks. Concerned about the conduct of America's wars in the Middle East, Manning leaked a vast trove of classified military documents to Wikileaks, hoping to spark a national debate.

But the US government quickly identified Manning and tried her before a military court. In 2013, she was sentenced to 35 years in prison. But just before leaving office in 2017, President Obama commuted Manning's sentence, allowing her to go free years early.

Enlarge / US President Donald Trump declared the novel coronavirus a national emergency on March 13, 2020. (credit: Getty | Saul Loeb)

The spread of the new coronavirus within the US is a national emergency, President Donald Trump declared Friday afternoon, March 13.

The declaration provides states and territories with access to up to $50 billion in funds to address the rapidly escalating pandemic. Generally, such funding could be used for emergency medical care, food, and medicine.

As of Friday afternoon, there were over 1,600 cases across 46 states and the District of Columbia. There have been 41 deaths reported.

Enlarge / A mass of stalactites in Italy's Corchia Cave, where the new record comes from. (credit: Linda Tegg)

The general outlines of the ice ages of the last several million years are pretty well understood. The timing of the glacial cycles has been controlled by cycles in Earth’s orbit, with the temperature swings amplified by feedbacks in the Earth system via raised and lowered greenhouse gas concentrations. But having a general outline doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting questions within that big picture.

Some of those questions relate to a remarkable change in the ice age rhythm that occurred around a million years ago. Prior to this transition, the glacial cycles came and went on a roughly 41,000-year beat. This matches a cyclical pattern that changes the tilt of Earth’s rotational axis, strengthening and weakening the contrast between summer and winter. But after the transition, glacial cycles stretched out to about 100,000 years. That’s roughly the same length as a cycle that alters the shape of Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

The latter cycle is known to be too weak to really run the show. But there's a third influence: a roughly 23,000-year “precession” cycle that changes which section of Earth’s orbit each season occurs in. So what combination of these cycles explains the 100,000 year-heartbeat? And how could something suddenly take over tilt’s dominant role in the previous 41,000-year heartbeat?

So-called "acoustic metamaterials" are specifically designed to control and manipulate sound waves, usually for the purpose of dampening or transmitting sound. But such an acoustic device can only perform the function for which it was created, such as dampening outgoing sound in a submarine for example. That same device could not be repurposed to communicate with another passing vessel should the situation aboard the submarine require it; a different acoustic device must be used, one developed expressly for that purpose.

Now a team of scientists from the University of Southern California have developed an acoustic metamaterial that can switch between different uses by applying carefully tailored magnetic fields, according to a new paper in the journal Research. The structure of these new metamaterials was inspired by the unusual structure of shark skin. They can be used to mimic the function of switches, logic gates, or diodes, raising the possibility of a sound "computer."

A "metamaterial" is technically defined as any material whose microscopic structure can bend light in ways it doesn't normally bend. That property is called an index of refraction, i.e., the ratio between the speed of light in a vacuum and how fast the top of the light wave travels.

Enlarge / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

Under pressure from the Federal Communications Commission, Internet service providers today pledged to waive late fees and keep customers connected when they miss payments due to the coronavirus pandemic. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced that many ISPs signed his "Keep Americans Connected Pledge." But while the pledge prevents disconnections and late fees, Pai was unwilling or unable to convince ISPs to waive data caps during the pandemic.

The full pledge reads as follows:

Given the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on American society, [Company Name] pledges for the next 60 days to:

(1) not terminate service to any residential or small business customers because of their inability to pay their bills due to the disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic;

(2) waive any late fees that any residential or small business customers incur because of their economic circumstances related to the coronavirus pandemic; and

(3) open its Wi-Fi hotspots to any American who needs them.

Home-Internet and mobile providers that signed the pledge include Altice, AT&T, CenturyLink, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Frontier, Mediacom, Sprint, T-Mobile, TracFone, US Cellular, Verizon, and Windstream. Dozens of others signed as well (see full list).