People are big polluters, on the land, in the sea and even in outer space, that can include anything from a hammer that floats away from the space station, to radiation from a nuclear weapons test in the atmosphere.

“This can range from little chips of paint all the way up to spent rocket bodies and things like that,” said Dan Baker, director of the Laboratory of Atmosphere and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “We’ve been trying to figure out how can we most effectively eliminate this debris without causing more of a problem.”

Space debris travels so fast, even an orbiting chip of paint can poke a hole in a satellite. But Baker says something tinier, and natural, is a bigger hazard: It’s the highly charged “killer electrons” of the magnetized zone above the earth called The Van Allen Belts.

“We’ve observed them to cause very significant problems for spacecraft,” Baker said.

Electro-magnetic planetary blanket

The doughnut-shaped Van Allen Belts around our planet protect life on earth from solar winds and cosmic rays. But their highly energetic charged particles can damage the circuitry in space stations, weather satellites and other machines that travel through that region of space.

Baker notes that “killer electrons” can also come from some human activities, like the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

“Back in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, there were nuclear explosions that put huge amounts of radiation into space that caused many satellites to ‘die’ because of radiation damage,” he said. “And if that were to happen today, we know that there are over 1,400 satellites operating in space around the earth and all of those could be subject to very severe consequences.”

Most nations adhere to treaties that prohibit atmospheric weapon testing. But Baker says that’s no guarantee.

“What is worrisome to us from a political standpoint today is that there are nations, for example, North Korea and others, that may be thinking once again, and who may not be adherent to such treaties, that this might be an interesting way to mess with modern technology,” Baker said.

Mysterious space shield

Radiation particles in the Van Allen Belts already “mess” with modern technology. So when satellites must spend time in that region, they are built with thicker materials. That armor makes them heavier, and more expensive. Fortunately, spacecraft and satellites that orbit just under the Van Allen Belts don’t need this heavy shielding. Baker says that’s because, at the lower edge of the Van Allen Belts, the killer electrons abruptly stop.

He compares it to the shields that protected Captain Kirk’s ship, the Enterprise, from phasers and asteroids on Star Trek.

Scientists have known for years that something here on the earth creates an invisible bubble that clears killer electrons from the lower edge of the Van Allen Belts. Just what makes that shield has been a mystery.

But recently, Baker’s teams figured out its source. The “bubble maker” is very low frequency radio transmissions, also known as VLF. Militaries use VLF to communicate with submarines underwater. It turns out those radio waves also travel up, through the atmosphere, to the Van Allen Belts.

“So the VLF bubble is made up of these intense waves. These waves act to sort of scatter and scrub the inner part of the Van Allen Belts,” Baker said, admitting, “I would prefer that we not be messing with nature. However, in this particular case I would say that there is some evidence that this is beneficial.”

John Bonnell, a researcher at the University of California Berkeley’s Space Sciences Lab, agrees that VLF “pollution” is probably benign, and he points to the high-energy radiation emitted by lightning bolts as evidence.

“We’ve had natural clearing of the radiation Belts with lightning, for as long as we’ve had lightning. So in essence, you’ve had a long-running experiment that you can look at and say, ‘Well, if we’re going to do things on sort of a sporadic basis, whereas lightning’s been doing it daily for hundreds of millions of years, the likelihood of there being a bad side effect is pretty minimal,'” he said.

Bonnell says that discovering a man-made way to clear killer electrons from the Van Allen Belt does not mean we will soon create “shields up” devices that use magnetics or radio transmissions. At least, he says, we’re not making them yet.

“It’s a fascinating possibility and it’s a fascinating technology that could enable us in the future, to explore more of the solar system with people, with robots. And so it’s definitely something that people pick away at slowly over time,” he said.

Bonnell says scientists, engineers and astronomers have teamed up to make amazing discoveries about how to study, and travel through, outer space. And while the future shape of space exploration is a mystery, our new understanding about the man-made “pollution” that shields satellites may be an important part of it.
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Stores watching Amazon take a larger share of clothing sales are trying to solve one of the most vexing issues for online shoppers: finding items that fit properly.

The retailers are unleashing tools that use artificial intelligence to replicate the help a salesperson at a store might offer, calculate a shopper’s most likely body shape, or use 3-D models for a virtual fitting room experience. Amazon, which some analysts say will surpass Macy’s this year as the largest U.S. clothing seller, is offering some customers an Alexa-powered device that doubles as a selfie-stick machine and a stylist.

Retailers want to reduce the rate of online returns, which can be up to 40 percent, and thus make customers happier — and more likely to be repeat shoppers. And the more interaction shoppers have with a brand, the more the technology will learn about shoppers’ preferences, said Vicky Zadeh, chief executive of Rakuten Fits Me, a tech company that works with QVC and clothing startup brands.

“It’s all about confidence,” she said. “If they have the confidence to buy, they will come back to the retailer time and time again.”

The push is coming from big names like Levi’s and The Gap and startups like Rhone and Taylrd.

Levi’s new Virtual Stylist texts back and forth with online customers to offer recommendations, based on their preferences. Marc Rosen, Levi’s president of global e-commerce, said early tests show the chatbot is driving more browsers to become buyers.

Reliance on body shape

Rakuten Fits Me, which works with QVC and other companies, fine-tuned its fitting technology this summer and said its retail partners now offer garments that should fit shoppers’ body shapes when the customer first does the initial search. Shoppers provide three measurements — height, weight and age — and then it calculates a person’s most likely body shape, not size, to determine the fit for any garment and offer more accurate recommendations.

And Gap Inc. has an augmented reality app in collaboration with Google and startup Avametric that allows shoppers to virtually try on clothes. Shoppers enter information like height and weight and then the app puts a 3-D model in front of them. However, the tool only works on Google Tango smartphones.

Sebastian DiGrande, executive vice president and strategy and chief customer officer at Gap, said the augmented reality app had produced good feedback, but the company is still determining whether shoppers really want a virtual 3-D model.

Clothing brand Tommy Hilfiger similarly has built its mobile app around the camera and image recognition. It has an augmented reality feature enabling shoppers to see what the clothes look like on a virtual runway model — but not their own body type.

And men’s online clothier Bonobos, now owned by Wal-Mart, launched an app that offers customers a virtual closet to see items they bought and saved. The app is converting browsers to buyers at a faster rate, said Andy Dunn, founder of Bonobos.

Companies are smart to offer new tools, but many are too “gimmicky,” said Sapna Shah, principal at Red Giraffe Advisors, which makes early-stage investments in fashion tech.

“If it’s not Amazon, will brand-specific apps be the way for people to shop in the future?” she said. “How many apps are people going to have on their phone?”

And all the companies need to win over customers who prefer to touch and see things in person.

“It’s great that they’re busting their tail with all these apps, but I am skeptical,” said Doug Garnett of Portland, Oregon. Garnett said he buys some clothes online when he knows and understands the brands, but otherwise, “I really need to see them on my body before I act, and really prefer that to be in a store.”

Personalized offers

As Amazon dives further into fashion, it could use its base of data to spur trends and personalize offers for its customers. Its Echo Look features a built-in camera that photographs and records shoppers trying on clothes and offers recommendations on outfits. It works with its Style Check app, using machine learning and advice from experts. The potential: Learn shoppers’ styles and recommend outfits to buy. Amazon reportedly is exploring the idea of quickly fulfilling online orders for custom-fit clothing.

The company also reportedly acquired Body Labs, which creates true-to-life 3-D body models.

“We’re always listening to our customers, learning and innovating on their behalf and bringing them products we think they will love,” said Amazon spokeswoman Molly Wade. She wouldn’t comment on the prospect of custom-fit or the reports about Body Labs.

Steve Barr, the U.S. retail and consumer sector leader at consultants PwC, said that Amazon was trying for a curated experience based on massive data analytics. But he said he thought such an approach had limitations.

“No matter how great Amazon is with artificial intelligence and predictive behaviors,” Barr said, “they can’t put a red tab on a pair of a jeans or a swoosh on a pair of shoes.”
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Under pressure in advance of hearings on Russian election interference, Facebook is moving to increase transparency for everyone who sees and buys political advertising on its site.

Executives for the social media company said Friday they will verify political ad buyers in federal elections, requiring them to reveal correct names and locations. The site will also create new graphics where users can click on the ads and find out more about who’s behind them.

More broadly, Rob Goldman, Facebook’s vice president in charge of ad products, said the company is building new transparency tools in which all advertisers, even those that aren’t political, are associated with a page, and users can click on a link to see all of the ads any advertiser is running.

Users also will be able to see all of the ads paid for by the advertisers, whether those ads were originally targeted toward them.

3,000 Russia-linked ads

The move comes after the company acknowledged it had found more than 3,000 ads linked to Russia that focused on divisive U.S. social issues and were seen by an estimated 10 million people before and after the 2016 U.S. elections.

Facebook, Twitter and Google will testify in Congress Tuesday and Wednesday on how their platforms were used by Russia or other foreign actors in the election campaign. The Senate and House intelligence committees and the Senate Judiciary Committee are all holding hearings as part of their investigations into Russian election interference.

Facebook’s announcement comes a day after Twitter said it will ban ads from RT and Sputnik, two state-sponsored Russian news outlets. Twitter also has said it will require election-related ads for candidates to disclose who is paying for them and how they are targeted.

Federal election ad archive

Facebook’s Goldman said the company also will build a new archive of federal election ads on Facebook, including the total amount spent and the number of times an ad is displayed, he said. The archive, which will be public for anyone to search, would also have data on the audience that saw the ads, including gender and location information. The archive would eventually hold up to four years of data.

Goldman said the company is still building the new features. They plan to test them in Canada and roll them out in the United States by next summer ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

“This is a good first step but it’s not at all the last step, there’s a lot to learn once we start testing,” Goldman said in an interview.

Facebook already had announced in September that the platform would require an advertiser to disclose who paid for the ads and what other ads it was running at the same time. But it was unclear exactly how the company would do that.

​Heading off legislation

The moves are meant to bring Facebook more in line with what is now required of print and broadcast advertisers. Federal regulations require television and radio stations to make publicly available the details of political ads they air. That includes who runs the ad, when it runs and how much it costs.

It is also likely meant to head off bipartisan legislation in the Senate that would require social media companies to keep public files of election ads and try to ensure they are not purchased by foreigners. Though Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, a Democratic co-sponsor of the legislation, has said his bill would be “the lightest touch possible,” social media companies would rather set their own guidelines than face new regulation.

Facebook has responded swiftly to the attention it has received in recent months on Capitol Hill, boosting staff and lobbying efforts. The company has spent more than $8.4 million in lobbying Congress and the rest of the government through the third quarter of this year, according to federal records.

Some analysts have warned that policing such online election ads can be difficult. It’s one thing to enforce advertising rules for a print newspaper or a TV station, where real humans can vet each ad before it is printed or aired. But that is much more complicated when automated advertising platforms allow millions of advertisers, basically anyone with a credit card and internet access, to place an ad.
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The ever expanding field of consumer technology just got several dozen new specimens, showcased at the Netherlands’ first Consumer Electronics Show. None are expected to spectacularly change our lives … but at least some of them may prove to be truly useful. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election nearly a year ago, there has been increasing scrutiny of how Russian-backed operatives used accounts on Facebook, Google and Twitter to try to influence its outcome.

Executives from those companies appear before at least three congressional hearings starting Tuesday, facing questions from lawmakers about what happened and how they plan to respond.

What happened on the internet companies’ services during the 2016 election “was the undermining of our political process,” said Ann Ravel, a lecturer at the University of California-Berkeley’s law school and a former chair at the Federal Election Commission, the federal agency that enforces campaign finance law.

The congressional spotlight on the internet marks a shift in how lawmakers and the public think of the global communications network, observers say. 

View of the internet

For years, the internet was viewed as “an egalitarian force, basically giving voice to the voiceless,” said Nate Persily, a Stanford University law professor.

The 2016 election, with Russian-backed operatives reportedly placing political ads on social networks or posing as Americans talking about hot-button issues, changed that utopian view of the internet.

“We realized that once you allow anyone to speak to as many people as they want no matter when they want, that enables certain types of speakers who hold undemocratic speech,” Persily said.

On the streets of San Francisco, people interviewed echoed frustrations heard around the country that little is known yet about how and why Russian-backed actors used internet firms.

But some say tech companies should take responsibility for what happens on their services and play more of a monitoring role than they have done.

“Social media is accessible to everyone,” peer counselor Moinnette Harris said. “People can engage in it or put whatever they want on there, whether it’s true or false.”

Lia McLoughlin, a stay-at-home parent, said, “I think Facebook has a responsibility. … If you know that there’s something that is affecting our democracy, and if you have any idea that it might be fake, there is a reason to stand in there. It’s our democracy.”

Facebook and other companies share responsibility if their services were used by foreign agents, said Christian Simonetti, an administrative assistant. But any new rules or penalties the internet companies face should be done “without infringing on people’s democratic rights to express themselves,” he said.

Proposed legislation

Law lecturer Ravel said that congressional leaders and regulators should require that internet companies be transparent about who is using their services for political ads, something that billboards, TV stations and newspapers have to do.

In recent weeks, some of the companies have vowed to make changes in reaction to the scrutiny. Twitter and Facebook have said they will do more to make political advertisements more transparent.

Twitter also banned RT and Sputnik, two Russian-backed media companies, from advertising on its site.

But almost everyone agrees it would be harder to regulate — for the government and internet firms — so-called “issue-based ads,” which are about hot topics such as gun rights and gay marriage. Those ads may not be tied to a specific candidate or ballot measure.

Even harder would be fake Facebook or Twitter accounts created overseas but purporting to have been created by people living in a targeted community.

“There is currently no clear industry definition for issue-based ads,” Twitter said in a blog post.

How the U.S. navigates these issues will matter to the rest of the world, Ravel said.

“It’s important for the United States to be a leader to balance innovation we want from the internet for people to speak openly on the internet,” Ravel said, “yet to do something to prevent the intervention in the election.”
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Automakers from around the world take the stage this weekend at the 45th annual Tokyo Motor Show. Designers will showcase electronic cars with advanced artificial intelligence and at least one concept car with safety features for the world around it. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Twitter is reporting a loss of $21.1 million in its third quarter, but turned in a better-than-expected profit when one-time charges and benefits are removed.

Shares of Twitter Inc. soared almost 9 percent before the opening bell Thursday.

The San Francisco company had a loss of 3 cents, but a gain of 10 cents if those non-re-occurring events are removed.  That’s 2 cents better than industry analysts had predicted, according to a survey by Zacks Investment Research.

Revenue was $589.6 million in the period, in line with expectations.
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Twitter is enacting new policies around hate, abuse and ads, but creating new rules is only half the battle – the easy half.

The bigger problem is enforcement, and there the company has had some high-profile bungles recently. That includes its much-criticized suspension of actress Rose McGowan while she was speaking out against Harvey Weinstein, and the company’s ban, later reversed, of a controversial ad by a Republican Senate candidate.

The twists and turns suggest that Twitter doesn’t always communicate the intent of its rules to the people enforcing them. The company says it will be clearer about these policies and decisions in the future.
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Robert Salazar has been playing with origami, the Japanese art of paper folding, since he was 8 years old. When he sees a sheet of paper, his imagination takes over and intricate animals take shape.

“Seeing the single uncut sheet, it has everything you need to create all of the origami that have ever been folded. It is all in the single sheet so there is endless potential,” Salazar said.

The endless potential of origami, folding a single sheet of paper into an intricate sculpture, reaches all the way to space.

Salazar’s 17-year experience with origami is appreciated at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As a contractor and intern, Salazar is helping create objects that may one day be used in space exploration.

“Origami offers the potential to take a very large structure, even a vast structure, and you can get it to fit within the rocket, go up, then deploy back out again. So it greatly magnifies what we are capable of building in space,” Salazar said.

Folding a large object into a relatively small space is not a simple task.

“A big challenge in origami design in general is that because all of these folds share a single resource, which is a single sheet … everything is highly interdependent, so if you change just one feature it has an impact on everything else,” Salazar said.

“One of our guide stars really is keep it as simple as can be,” said Manan Arya, a technologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Don’t add unnecessary complexity because every piece of complexity, every piece of hardware you add, that ends up being another potential point of failure.”

Starshade

Folding an object the size of a baseball diamond so that it could fit into a rocket is the goal of a NASA project called Starshade.

Once it opens in space, Starshade would allow a space telescope to better see the planets around bright stars.

“Seeing an exoplanet next to its parent star is like trying to image a firefly next to a search light, the searchlight being the star,” said Arya, who is  working on the Starshade project. “Starshade seeks to block out that starlight so you can image a really faint exoplanet right next to it.”

Origami robot

Origami is also used in designing a robot called the Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robot, or PUFFER. It has a body that can fold itself flat and roll under small spaces. PUFFER has been tested on desert terrains and snowy slopes. It may one day end up on a mission to another planet.

“It [PUFFER] is to explore environments otherwise inaccessible to a robot that could not fold itself to fit inside these cracks, [to] explore cave systems, could be other planets, even on our own,” Salazar said.

Origami antenna

Another application for space origami design is to pack an antenna into satellites the size of a briefcase, called CubeSats.

“The bigger the antenna you have, the more gain your antenna has, so it is useful to have a big antenna that gets packaged into this tiny space that unfolds out to be a large antenna. The biggest CubeSat antennas right now are about half a meter,” Arya said.

Unexplored territory

There are also largely unexplored surfaces that can utilize origami concepts in designing new technologies.

“So often, origami design has been tailored toward materials that are already lying flat,” Salazar said. “But there is actually a vastly, a much larger field of application for which the surfaces are not flat, so they could be parabolic. They could be spherical. They could be many combinations of doubly curved surfaces coming together. All of these things can also be folded.”

In the current origami-inspired technologies being developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, there is a graceful beauty to the folding and unfolding of designs such as the Starshade, which unfurls into what looks like a sunflower. In origami, Salazar said, art, science and engineering are only superficially different.

“Really, when it comes down to it, you’re looking at the world,” he said. “You’re making observations. You’re finding patterns in these observations. [You’re] developing an understanding of what you see, then using that understanding to create. And when you’re creating, [it] can either be creating with the intention of solving a physical problem or it could be nonphysical. It could be aesthetic. You’re trying to find a particular impact on people when they see your work. So really, the practice is the same.”

In origami, Salazar said art, science and engineering are quite similar. They draw on making observations and creating something that produces an impact.
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Facebook is partnering with a developer to build a wind power farm in northeast Nebraska that will supply energy for the company’s planned data center.

The social media giant announced last week that it has partnered with Trade Winds Energy to build the Rattlesnake Creek Wind Project in rural Dixon County.

Facebook plans to use energy from the wind farm to power its upcoming data center in Papillion, a suburb of Omaha. Of the 320 megawatts of power the wind farm will create, 200 of them will be allocated to the data center while the remaining will be available for other buyers.

Officials said the project will produce the second-largest wind farm in Nebraska, behind the 400-megawatt Grande Prairie project in Holt County. Officials also said the new wind farm will generate enough energy to power 90,000 homes.

Both projects are examples of the state’s rich wind resource being acknowledged, said David Bracht, director of the Nebraska Energy Office.

“The wind projects that have been installed [in Nebraska] have shown themselves to be very, very productive,” Bracht said.

A new electric rate structure rolled out in January by the Omaha Public Power District means Facebook can power its data center with 100 percent clean energy. The company also aims to get at least 50 percent of its total electricity consumption from clean and renewable energy sources in 2018.

Neither Facebook nor Trade Winds provided a timeline or cost for the wind farm.

 
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A university engineering department has developed what amounts to a Tinder app for criminals — a computer program that matches inmates with suitable prisons.

The software, unique in the corrections field, has saved the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections about $3 million in its first year. It’s resulted in fewer prison assaults, shortened wait times for treatment programs by nearly two months, reduced the number of prison transfers and lightened the workload of corrections staff.

Corrections officials marvel that nobody thought of it sooner.

“It’s pretty amazing, and what we’ve seen so far is the outcomes are a lot better,” said Major William Nicklow of the state prison in Camp Hill, who oversaw the project as the prison system’s director of population management.

On Tuesday, the Lehigh University team that developed the software accepted the Wagner Prize, the top international prize in the field of operations research practice.

Their work has dramatically simplified the job of assigning inmates to prisons.

Previously, corrections staff handled prisoner assignments one at a time, a laborious and inefficient process that meant inmates farther down the list were at a disadvantage when it came to placement in high-demand treatment programs.

The software, in contrast, can assign hundreds of inmates simultaneously, taking into account dozens of factors including age and other inmate demographics, criminal history, mental illness, and educational and vocational interests to come up with the most appropriate placement for each inmate. It also identifies gang members as well as inmates most likely to be violent and separates them, reducing the threat at individual prisons.

The software can finish in minutes what it took a staff of seven an entire week to do.

“This very complex problem is mathematically modeled, put in the system and the system is advising where the inmate has to be assigned,” said Tamas Terlaky, one of the program’s developers and a professor in Lehigh’s industrial and systems engineering department. “The benefits are quite obvious.”

Other corrections departments have taken note. At least three other states as well as the federal prison system have made inquiries about the software, Terlaky said.
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Twitter Inc said on Tuesday it would add labels to election-related advertisements and say who is behind each of them, after a threat of regulation from the United States over the lack of disclosure for political spending on social media.

Twitter said in a blog post the company would launch a website so that people could see the identities of the buyers, targeting demographics and total ad spending by election advertisers, as well as information about all ads currently running on Twitter, election-related or otherwise.

Silicon Valley social media firms and the political ads that run on their websites have generally been free of the disclaimers and other regulatory demands that U.S. authorities impose on television, radio and satellite services.

Calls for that to change have grown, however, after Twitter, Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google said in recent weeks that Russian operatives used fake names on their platforms to spread divisive messages in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Russia has denied interfering in the election.

Twitter plans to make changes first in the United States and then roll them out globally.

Changes would appear within Twitter feeds, where election ads would have a label like “promoted by political account,” the company said.

“To make it clear when you are seeing or engaging with an electioneering ad, we will now require that electioneering advertisers identify their campaigns as such,” Bruce Falck, Twitter’s general manager of revenue product, said in the blog post.

Twitter also said it would limit the targeting options for election ads, although it did not say how, and introduce stronger penalties for election advertisers who violate policies.

Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Warner said from his Twitter account that the moves by the company were a “good first step” but he added that Congress should make the disclosures mandatory by approving legislation he is co-sponsoring.

Policing difficult

Separately, Twitter has long been criticized by users and lawmakers as lax in policing fake or abusive accounts. Unlike Facebook, Twitter allows anonymous accounts and automated accounts, or bots, making the service more difficult to police.

Twitter said last month it had suspended about 200 Russia-linked accounts as it investigated online efforts to influence last year’s U.S. election.

The general counsels for Facebook, Google and Twitter are scheduled to testify next week before public hearings of the Senate and House intelligence committees.
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Human-caused space pollution can range from a hammer that floats away from a space station, to a nuclear weapons test in the atmosphere, and could damage nearby spacecraft. But one unexpected source of “pollution” helps many satellites. The special pollution protects spacecraft from “killer electrons,” in a region above the earth called the Van Allen belts. Reporting from Boulder, Colorado, Shelley Schlender reports.
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After a deadly earthquake in 1985, authorities in Mexico City decided they must start constructing houses that can withstand strong shakes. Government buildings, hospitals and schools are now built according to stricter rules, while architects are pushing for their application to other structures too, especially high rise apartment buildings. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Facebook Inc said on Monday it was testing the idea of dividing its News F eed in two, separating commercial posts from personal news in a move that could lead some businesses to increase advertising.

The Facebook News Feed, the centerpiece of the world’s largest social network service, is a streaming series of posts such as photos from friends, updates from family members, advertisements and material from celebrities or other pages that a user has liked.

The test, which is occurring in six smaller countries, now  offers two user feeds, according to a statement from the company: one feed focused on friends and family and a second dedicated to the pages that the customer has liked.

The change could force those who run pages, everyone from news outlets to musicians to sports teams, to pay to run advertisements if they want to be seen in the feed that is for friends and family.

The test is taking place in Bolivia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Serbia, Slovakia and Sri Lanka, and it will likely go on for months, Adam Mosseri, the Facebook executive in charge of the News Feed, said in a blog post.

Mosseri said the company has no plans for a global test of the two separate feeds for its 2 billion users.

Facebook also does not currently plan to force commercial pages “to pay for all their distribution,” he said.

Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California, frequently tests changes big and small as it tries to maximize the time people spend scrolling and browsing the network. Sometimes it makes changes permanent, and other times not.

Depending on how people respond, two news feeds could mean that they see fewer links to news stories. News has proved to be a tricky area for Facebook, as hoaxes and false news stories have sometimes spread easily on the network.

The test has already affected website traffic for smaller media outlets in recent days, Slovakian journalist Filip Struharik wrote over the weekend in a post on Medium.

Publishers might need to buy more Facebook ads to be seen, he wrote: “If you want your Facebook page posts to be seen in old newsfeed, you have to pay.”

 
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Amazon said Monday that it received 238 proposals from cities and regions in the United States, Canada and Mexico hoping to be the home of the company’s second headquarters.

The online retailer kicked off its hunt for a second home base in September, promising to bring 50,000 new jobs and spend more than $5 billion on construction. Proposals were due last week, and Amazon made clear that tax breaks and grants would be a big deciding factor on where it chooses to land.

Amazon.com Inc. said the proposals came from 43 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, three Mexican states and six Canadian provinces. In a tweet, the company said it was “excited to review each of them.”

Besides looking for financial incentives, Amazon had stipulated that it was seeking to be near a metropolitan area with more than a million people; be able to attract top technical talent; be within 45 minutes of an international airport; have direct access to mass transit; and be able to expand that headquarters to as much as 8 million square feet in the next decade.

Generous tax breaks and other incentives can erode a city’s tax base. For the winner, it could be worth it, since an Amazon headquarters could draw other tech businesses and their well-educated, highly paid employees.

The seven U.S. states that Amazon said did not apply were: Arkansas, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.

Ahead of the deadline, some cities turned to stunts to try and stand out: Representatives from Tucson, Arizona, sent a 21-foot tall cactus to Amazon’s Seattle headquarters; New York lit the Empire State Building orange to match Amazon’s smile logo.

The company plans to remain in its sprawling Seattle headquarters, and the second one will be “a full equal” to it, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in September. Amazon has said that it will announce a decision sometime next year.
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Electric cars are steadily gaining ground in the global auto market, but it’s a slow process. Along with their high price, one of the main reasons for the consumers’ reluctance is the scarcity of infrastructure needed for charging the cars’ batteries. VOA’s George Putic looks at efforts to remove one of the obstacles on the road towards the electric future.
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The bumper sticker on the back of Scott Wilson’s car reads, “This is what the end of gasoline looks like.”

And what does that car look like? A sleek, sci-fi experimental vehicle? A $100,000 Tesla luxury car? 

Nope. It’s just a Kia Soul EV, the battery-powered version of the Korean automaker’s boxy hatchback.

Once the domain of concept cars and hobbyists, electric vehicles are no longer so exotic. And sales are picking up. A record 150,000 of them sold last year in the United States.

“It used to be I knew everyone I saw that was driving an electric car,” said Wilson, the vice president of the Electric Vehicle Association of Greater Washington, D.C. “Now, I don’t.”

There are about to be a lot more strangers in EVs on the roads, many experts say.

Big carmakers, big plans

Volvo says every car it makes in 2019 and beyond will have an electric motor. General Motors says the company “believes in an all-electric future.” Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) predicts that in just over two decades, EVs will make up more than half of all vehicles sold.

Other analysts have more modest expectations. But even Exxon Mobil sees EVs topping 10 percent of the market by 2040.

Automakers hit a significant milestone in the past year. In December, General Motors launched the Chevrolet Bolt EV, the first car with a price tag under $40,000 and a range of more than 320 kilometers.

Automakers hit a significant milestone in the past year. In December, General Motors launched the Chevrolet Bolt EV, the first car with a price tag under $40,000 and a range of more than 320 kilometers.

That range is “basically double anything else that’s available at a comparable price,” said Chevrolet spokesman Fred Ligouri. Those figures “do wonders for getting beyond” what’s known as range anxiety, potential buyers’ fear of draining the battery before reaching their destination.

One-third of buyers have never owned an electric vehicle before.

“They went from (an) internal combustion engine vehicle right into pure electric,” an encouraging sign, Ligouri said.

The Bolt’s performance has impressed critics as well. Motor Trend magazine named the Bolt the 2017 Car of the Year.

The Bolt beat industry upstart Tesla to the mid-priced market. A modest 15,000 or so have been sold so far. But nearly a half-million people have ordered the Tesla Model 3, the company’s entrant into the mass market, despite long waits and slow production.

“Those are signals that there’s unmet demand for some of these new technologies,” said the World Resources Institute’s Eliot Metzger.

Electrification is cheaper than ever as the price of lithium ion batteries plummets faster than analysts expected. As costs come down, experts are moving up the date when electric vehicles can compete with internal combustion engines on price. BNEF puts that date in the second half of the next decade.

“We’re much further along than most researchers (and) industry insiders would have projected just two or three years ago,” said Nic Lutsey at the International Council on Clean Transportation.

China syndrome

Another reason the industry is moving fast: China.

Officials in the world’s biggest auto market will require carmakers to meet an electric vehicle quota starting in 2019.

Beijing aims to increase EVs’ share of the market from 1 to 2 percent today to around 4 percent in 2020.

“That’s a very large scale up within just several years,” Lutsey noted, but automakers say they can do it.

The push for electric vehicles is part of the government’s plan to clean up the toxic air in China’s major cities. Chinese officials are considering a ban on gas- and diesel-powered cars.

But it’s not just China. Pollution concerns in France, the United Kingdom, and India have officials there considering bans, too.

In the United States, the Trump administration aims to relax vehicle emissions standards, though state policies will likely complicate those efforts.

Without a push from government, experts say electric vehicles will have a hard time making major gains as long as gas prices are relatively low.

But as electric vehicle driver Wilson points out, that can change at any time.

“After the next crisis, when gas is $5 a gallon, then there will be waiting lists for cars like this,” he said.
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Electric cars have been a futuristic promise for decades. And electric vehicles finally appear poised to enter the mainstream. Major carmakers, from Volvo to General Motors, are proclaiming the future is electric. VOA’s Steve Baragona has a look at how soon that future may arrive.
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The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation warned in a report distributed by email late on Friday that the nuclear, energy, aviation, water and critical manufacturing industries have been targeted along with government entities in attacks dating back to at least May.

The agencies warned that hackers had succeeded in compromising some targeted networks, but did not identify specific victims or describe any cases of sabotage.

The objective of the attackers is to compromise organizational networks with malicious emails and tainted websites to obtain credentials for accessing computer networks of their targets, the report said.

U.S. authorities have been monitoring the activity for months, which they initially detailed in a confidential June report first reported by Reuters. That document, which was privately distributed to firms at risk of attacks, described a narrower set of activity focusing on the nuclear, energy and critical manufacturing sectors.

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Scott McConnell declined to elaborate on the information in the report or say what prompted the government to go public with the information at this time.

“The technical alert provides recommendations to prevent and mitigate malicious cyber activity targeting multiple sectors and reiterated our commitment to remain vigilant for new threats,” he said.

The FBI declined to comment on the report, which security researchers said described an escalation in targeting of infrastructure in Europe and the United States that had been described in recent reports from private firms, including Symantec Corp.

“This is very aggressive activity,” said Robert Lee, an expert in securing industrial networks.

Lee, chief executive of cyber-security firm Dragos, said the report appears to describe hackers working in the interests of the Russian government, though he declined to elaborate. Dragos is also monitoring other groups targeting infrastructure that appear to be aligned with China, Iran, North Korea, he said.

The hacking described in the government report is unlikely to result in dramatic attacks in the near term, Lee said, but he added that it is still troubling: “We don’t want our adversaries learning enough to be able to do things that are disruptive later.”

The report said that hackers have succeeded in infiltrating some targets, including at least one energy generator, and conducting reconnaissance on their networks. It was accompanied by six technical documents describing malware used in the attacks.

Homeland Security “has confidence that this campaign is still ongoing and threat actors are actively pursuing their objectives over a long-term campaign,” the report said.

The report said the attacker was the same as one described by Symantec in a September report that warned advanced hackers had penetrated the systems controlling operations of some U.S.

and European energy companies.

Symantec researcher Vikram Thakur said in an email that much of the contents of Friday’s report were previously known within the security community.

Cyber-security firm CrowdStrike said the technical indicators described in the report suggested the attacks were the work of a hacking group it calls Berserk Bear, which is affiliated with the Russian Federation and has targeted the energy, financial and transportation industries.

“We have not observed any destructive action by this actor,” CrowdStrike Vice President Adam Meyers said in an email.
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Parents of small children have long been hearing about the perils of “screen time.” And with more screens, and new technologies such as Amazon’s Echo speaker, the message is getting louder.

And while plenty of parents are feeling guilty about it, some experts say it might be time to relax a little.

Go ahead and hand your kid a gadget now and then to cook dinner or get some work done. Not all kids can entertain themselves quietly, especially when they are young. Try that, and see how long it takes your toddler to start fishing a banana peel out of the overflowing trash can.

“I know I should limit my kid’s screen time a lot, but there is reality,” said Dorothy Jean Chang, who works for a tech company in New York and has a 2-year-old son. When she needs to work or finds her son awake too early, “it’s the best, easiest way to keep him occupied and quiet.”

Screen time, she says, “definitely happens more often than I like to admit.”

She’s not alone. Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group focused on kids’ use of media and technology, said in a report Thursday that kids ages 8 and younger average about 2 hours and 19 minutes with screens every day at home. That’s about the same as in 2011, though it’s up from an hour and a half in 2013, the last time the survey was conducted, when smartphones were not yet ubiquitous but TV watching was on the decline.

While the overall numbers have held steady in recent years, kids are shifting to mobile devices and other new technologies, just as their parents are. The survey found that kids spend an average of 48 minutes a day on mobile devices, up from 15 minutes in 2013. Kids are also getting exposed to voice-activated assistants, virtual reality and internet-connected toys, for which few guidelines exist because they are so new.

​Mixed message

Some parents and experts worry that screens are taking time away from exercise and learning. But studies are inconclusive. 

The economist Emily Oster said studies have found that kids who watch a lot of TV tend to be poorer, belong to minority groups and have parents with less education, all factors that contribute to higher levels of obesity and lower test scores. For that reason, it’s “difficult to draw strong conclusions about the effects of television from this research,” Oster wrote in 2015.

In fact, the Common Sense survey found that kids whose parents have higher incomes and education spend “substantially less time” with screens than other children. The gap was larger in 2017 than in previous years.

Rules relaxed

For more than a quarter century, the American Academy of Pediatrics held that kids under 2 should not be exposed to screens at all, and older kids should have strict limits. The rules have relaxed, such that video calls with grandma are OK, though “entertainment” television still isn’t. Even so, guidelines still feel out of touch for many parents who use screens of various sizes to preserve their sanity and get things done.

Jen Bjorem, a pediatric speech pathologist in Leawood, Kansas, said that while it’s “quite unrealistic” for many families to totally do away with screen time, balance is key.

“Screen time can be a relief for many parents during times of high stress or just needing a break,” she said.

Moderation

Bjorem recommends using “visual schedules” that toddlers can understand to set limits. Instead of words, these schedules have images — dinner, bed time, reading or TV time, for example. 

Another idea for toddlers? “Sensory bins,” or plastic tubs filled with beads, dry pasta and other stuff kids can play around with and, ideally, be just as absorbed as in mobile app or an episode of “Elmo.”

Of course, some kids will play with these carefully crafted, Pinterest-worthy bins for only a few minutes. Then they might start throwing beans and pasta all over your living room. So you clean up, put away the bins and turn on the TV.

In an interview, Oster said that while screen time “is probably not as good for your kid as high-quality engagement” with parents, such engagement is probably not something we can give our kids all the time anyway.

“Sometimes you just need them to watch a little bit of TV because you have to do something, or you need (it) to be a better parent,” Oster said.
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Environmental pollution, from filthy air to contaminated water, kills at least 9 million people a year, according to a new study published by the medical journal The Lancet. Two entrepreneurs from Georgia have invented a wearable filter they say can produce clean, fresh air. Faith Lapidus reports.
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The Group of Seven industrialized nations threw their support behind a new technology industry alliance aimed at detecting and blunting online propaganda, saying Friday it had a “major role” to play in combating extremism on the internet.

G-7 interior ministers meeting in Italy invited representatives from Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter to a session Friday dedicated to the fight against terrorism. In a final communique, the ministers pressed the industry as a whole to do more.

“Internet companies will continue to take a proactive role and ensure decisive action in making their platforms more hostile to terrorism, and will support actions aimed at empowering civil society partners in the development of alternative narratives online,” the statement said.

Social media companies have long seen themselves as neutral platforms for other people to share information, and have traditionally been cautious about taking down objectionable material. But as social media platforms have increasingly been used to recruit jihadis, radicalize young people, share fake news and incite extremism, they have come under pressure from governments to take action.

Facebook, Google, Twitter and YouTube in June created the Global Internet Forum to Combat Terrorism, which got an early boost when British Prime Minister Theresa May used a speech to the U.N. General Assembly to applaud the initiative and demand internet companies develop technology to more quickly identify and remove terrorist content.

The alliance says it is committed to developing new content detection technology, to helping smaller companies combat extremism and to promoting “counter-speech,” content meant to blunt the impact of extremist material.

The G-7 endorsed the aims and pledged to work collaboratively across the industry to counter the “misuse of technology” by terrorist organizations.

Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti said “a great alliance” had been formed between world governments and major internet providers. While stressing the internet has been an important tool for promoting freedom, “at the same time we all together have agreed that al-Qaida and Islamic State are enemies of our freedoms.”

Several ministers said that while the industry had made progress to quickly remove extremist content, more needed to be done, and faster.

“Our enemies are moving at the speed of a tweet, so we have to counter them just as quickly,” said acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke.
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An aquatic robot, small and nimble enough to fit inside the smallest of openings, is being tested in Japan ahead of being deployed into the damaged core of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Faith Lapidus reports.
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