Juul Labs was sued by California for allegedly targeting teenagers with ads for its e-cigarettes, after a series of lawsuits filed by schools, parents and others against the market leader as deaths and illnesses linked to vaping add up across the U.S. From a report: "Juul adopted the tobacco industry's infamous playbook, employing advertisements that had no regard for public health and searching out vulnerable targets," said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who announced the lawsuit at a news conference Monday in Los Angeles. "Today we take legal action against the deceptive practices that Juul and the e-cigarette industry employ to lure our kids into their vaping web." The San Francisco-based e-cigarette company has become a target of government regulators attempting to stem an epidemic of new nicotine users who have flocked to the sleek device even though many have never smoked cigarettes. Becerra alleges that Juul targeted young people in its advertising, failed to include required warnings, knowingly delivered tobacco products to consumers without verifying their age, kept the personal e-mails of minors who tried and failed to make a purchase, and proceeded to market Juul to them.

There are fastballs, and then there are cosmic fastballs. Now it seems that the strongest arm in our galaxy might belong to a supermassive black hole that lives smack in the middle of the Milky Way. From a report: Astronomers recently discovered a star whizzing out of the center of our galaxy at the seriously blinding speed of four million miles an hour. The star, which goes by the typically inscrutable name S5-HVS1, is currently about 29,000 light-years from Earth, streaking through the Grus, or Crane, constellation in the southern sky. It is headed for the darkest, loneliest depths of intergalactic space. The runaway star was spotted by an international team of astronomers led by Ting Li of the Carnegie Observatories. They were using a telescope in Australia for a study known as the Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey -- the S5. The star is about twice as massive as our own sun and ten times more luminous, according to Dr. Li. Drawing on data from the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft, which has charted the positions and motions of some 1.3 billion stars in the Milky Way, the astronomers traced the streaking star back to the galactic center. That is the home of a black hole known as Sagittarius A*, a gravitational monster with the mass of four million suns.

The authors of a 2017 study which found that reading science fiction "makes you stupid" have conducted a follow-up that found that it's only bad sci-fi that has this effect: a well-written slice of sci-fi will be read just as thoroughly as a literary story. From a report: Two years ago, Washington and Lee University professors Chris Gavaler and Dan Johnson published a paper in which they revealed that when readers were given a sci-fi story peopled by aliens and androids and set on a space ship, as opposed to a similar one set in reality, "the science fiction setting triggered poorer overall reading" and appeared to "predispose readers to a less effortful and comprehending mode of reading -- or what we might term non-literary reading." But after critics suggested that merely changing elements of a mainstream story into sci-fi tropes did not make for a quality story, Gavaler and Johnson decided to revisit the research. This time, 204 participants were given one of two stories to read: both were called "Ada" and were identical apart from one word, to provide the strictest possible control. The "literary" version begins: "My daughter is standing behind the bar, polishing a wine glass against a white cloth." The science-fiction variant begins: "My robot is standing behind the bar, polishing a wine glass against a white cloth."

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Germany's parliament has voted to make measles vaccinations compulsory for children, with parents who fail to immunize their children facing fines of €2,500 ($2,750). The Measles Protection Act, which the Bundestag approved on Thursday, requires all parents to provide evidence that their child has received two measles vaccinations before they are enrolled in school or kindergarten. Medical staff, daycare workers, teachers and workers at community facilities must also be vaccinated under the act, which is due to come into effect in March 2020, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health told CNN.

There has been a resurgence of measles -- a highly infectious viral illness that can spread through the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes -- across the globe... Almost 350,000 measles cases were reported globally in 2018, according to the United Nations children's agency UNICEF -- more than doubling from 2017.

"Samoa was finalising plans for a compulsory measles vaccination programme Monday, after declaring a state of emergency as a deadly epidemic sweeps the Pacific nation," reports the International Business Times: At least six fatalities, including five children, have been linked to the outbreak of the virus, which has also hit other island states such as Tonga and Fiji. Samoa is the worst affected with more than 700 cases reported from across all areas of the country, prompting the government on Friday to invoke emergency powers.

Declaring a state of emergency, the government said plans for compulsory measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) immunisations would be published on Monday. "MMR vaccinations for members of the public who have not yet received a vaccination injection is now a mandatory legal requirement for all of Samoa," it said... Samoa has closed all schools, kindergartens and the country's only university in a bid to halt the virus' spread... Neighbouring Tonga last week announced government primary schools and kindergartens would be closed until later this month as the number of measles cases in the kingdom approaches 200.

sciencehabit quotes Science magazine: A "happy accident" has yielded a new, stable form of pure carbon made from cheap feedstocks, researchers say. Like diamond and graphene, two other guises of carbon, the material seems to have extraordinary physical properties. It is harder than stainless steel, about as conductive, and as reflective as a polished aluminum mirror. Perhaps most surprising, the substance appears to be ferromagnetic, behaving like a permanent magnet at temperatures up to 125 degrees C -- a first for carbon. The discovery, announced by physicist Joel Therrien of the University of Massachusetts in Lowell on 4 November here at the International Symposium on Clusters and Nanomaterials, could lead to lightweight coatings, medical products, and novel electronic devices....

The magnetism adds to a suite of properties never before seen together in a form of pure carbon. They include tremendous hardness that presumably results from the bonds joining adjacent layers: "We've tried scratching it with steel wool, and it comes off clean," Therrien says. "The only thing we can say verifiably scratches it is a diamond scribe." Though the group has yet to measure the tensile strength of the material, the fact that vanishingly thin flakes hold together at millimeter size suggest it may be as strong as some metals, he says. Then there is the mirrorlike appearance, seen in photos Therrien showed at the meeting. The team's measurements indicate that the film, even when just 50 nanometers thick, reflects more than 90% of incoming light at wavelengths ranging from the far-ultraviolet to the midinfrared. That attribute could make it a useful reflective coating, more durable than the standard aluminum, for mirrors in cameras and telescopes.

Its electrical conductivity turned out to be just shy of that of stainless steel. But it can also display other electronic properties. Annealing the material by slowly heating it to 1000 degrees C dims its shine and turns it into a semiconductor with a band gap -- the energy required to liberate an electron -- similar to that of amorphous silicon, which can turn light into electricity. That makes it a candidate material for photovoltaic cells, Therrien suggests.

The New York-based biotech startup Ecovative wants to replace plastic with mycelium, the below-ground root-like structure of a mushroom, writes CNN Business.

pgmrdlm shared their report: The company says it has developed a way to grow mycelium into specific shapes and sizes. The method, according to Ecovative, involves taking organic plant waste and inoculating it with mycelium. After the mycelium grows through and around the agricultural materials, it binds them together, providing a natural alternative to packaging materials made out styrofoam.

It's a process that takes about a week with minimal water and electricity consumed to make the parts. At the end of the mycelium substance's useful life, you can break it up and you can put it in your own garden. "So it's a nutrient, not a pollutant," said Ecovative's CEO and co-founder Eben Bayer .

The company also believes mycelium could play a major role in construction, as mycelium building materials are both insulative and structural and can be used in the same ways as conventional building material, Bayer said. In fact, packaging materials may be just the start. The startup has its eyes on another audacious goal: building organs. "My dream is to one day grow a lung and seed it with lung cells and use the mycelium to create the capillary network and use the human cells to create the actual lung," said Bayer.
The company's vision "has helped Ecovative attract millions from investors like 3M Company, the conglomerate behind Post-it notes and Scotch tape, and even a $9.1 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense," reports CNN, adding that CEO Bayer believes the use of mycelium "really has boundless possibilities."

Ecovative is now even developing plant-based meats, including Mycelium bacon.

In 2005, the Cassini space probe orbited Saturn's frozen moon Enceladus to photograph "enormous jets of water ice and vapor emanating from four parallel slashes near its south pole," reports Science. "Since then, researchers have detected organic molecules and hydrogen in the jets -- potential food for microbes -- making Enceladus one of the top destinations in the search for life elsewhere in the Solar System."

But a new paper posted this week on the preprint server arXiv claims to finally understand the mystery of that moon's "tiger stripes": The stripes...are 130 kilometers long and are spaced roughly 35 kilometers apart -- rather large features on a moon only 500 kilometers in diameter. Nobody quite understood their origin, or why they were only seen at one pole...

As it orbits around Saturn, Enceladus experiences gravitational tidal forces that squeeze and heat it. Cassini data had already shown that a liquid water ocean sits underneath the outer ice shell, which is thinnest at the north and south poles. According to the new study, led by Douglas Hemingway of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., as the moon cooled over time and some of the ocean water refroze, the new ice generated strain that built up in the surface until it broke. "It's like your pipes freezing on a cold day," says planetary scientist Francis Nimmo of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the study... That first fissure, extending down to the ocean, allowed a geyser to spray snow on its two flanks. The weight of this extra material produced more strains. In their study, the researchers calculate that these forces should have cracked additional grooves on either side, roughly 35 kilometers from the original one...

The moon's low gravity means that fractures can bust all the way through its outer shell and persist. On a more massive moon, the researchers say in their study, the weight of heavier ice would tend to squeeze cracks shut.

Slashdot reader hackingbear shared this article from Scientific American: In the race to create a quantum computer that can outperform a classical one, a method using particles of light (photons) has taken a promising step forward. Jian-Wei Pan and Chao-Yang Lu, both at the University of Science and Technology of China, and their colleagues improved a quantum computing technique called boson sampling to achieve a record 14 detected photons in its final results. Previous experiments were capped at only five detected photons. The increase in the number of the particles is small, but it amounts to a 6.5-billion-fold gain in "state space," or the number of ways in which a computer system can be configured. The larger the state space, the less likely a classical computer can perform the same calculation.

The result was reported in a paper posted at the preprint server arXiv.org on October 22 and has yet to be peer-reviewed. But if it is confirmed, it would be an important milestone in the race for quantum-computational supremacy -- a fuzzy goalpost defined as the point where quantum computers outpace their best classical counterparts.... Pan and Lu argue in their paper that their technique is another possible route toward quantum supremacy... Part of the trouble is its limited utility. "A universal computer can solve any different type of problem," says Jonathan Dowling, a theoretical physicist at Louisiana State University, who was not involved with the research. "This can only solve one." But solving just one problem faster than a classical computer would count as a demonstration of quantum-computational supremacy...

Over the past few weeks, the race for quantum computational supremacy has reached a breakneck pace. Google's quantum computer performed an operation that its scientists claim would take a classical computer 10,000 years in just 200 seconds. IBM researchers, who are also working on a quantum computer, have expressed doubts, suggesting a classical computer could solve that problem in under three days... "Quantum supremacy is like a horse race where you don't know how fast your horse is, you don't know how fast anybody else's horse is, and some of the horses are goats," Jonathan Dowling, a theoretical physicist at Louisiana State University, says. But this result, he clarifies, is not a goat.

pgmrdlm quotes Futurism: Massive Structures
Galaxies millions of light years away seem to be connected by an unseen network of massive intergalactic structures, which force them to synchronize in ways that can't be explained by existing astrophysics, Vice reports. The discoveries could force us to rethink our fundamental understanding of the universe.

"The observed coherence must have some relationship with large-scale structures, because it is impossible that the galaxies separated by six megaparsecs [roughly 20 million light years] directly interact with each other," Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute astronomer Hyeop Lee told the site.

There have been many instances of astronomers observing galaxies that seem to be connected and moving in sync with each other. A study by Lee, published in The Astrophysical Journal in October, found that hundreds of galaxies are rotating in exactly the same way, despite being millions of light years apart. And a separate study, published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics in 2014, found supermassive black holes aligning with each other, despite being billions of light years apart.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Meetings at work should be seen as a form of "therapy" rather than about decision-making, say researchers. Academics from the University of Malmo in Sweden say meetings provide an outlet for people at work to show off their status or to express frustration. Professor Patrik Hall says they are becoming increasingly frequent -- as more managerial and "strategy" jobs generate more meetings. But he says despite there being more meetings "few decisions are made." Prof Hall has investigated an apparent contradiction in how people can have a low opinion of work meetings, yet their numbers keep increasing.

The political scientist says the rise in meetings reflects changes in the workforce -- with fewer people doing and making things and an increase in those involved in "meetings-intense" roles such as strategists, advisers, consultants and managers. "People don't do concrete things any more," he says. Instead he says there has been a rise of managerial roles, which are often not very well defined, and where "the hierarchy is not that clear." [...] Meetings can "arouse feelings of meaninglessness," he says. But he argues that is often missing their point. Once in a meeting -- particularly long ones -- their function can become "almost therapeutic." Prof Hall goes on to suggest booking rooms for shorter periods, as he says meetings will expand to fill whatever time is given to them. He also says that "equality" of participants is important, otherwise a "power struggle" will emerge when the meetings are dominated by different levels of status.

A new government agency report found that U.S. workers are failing to improve the skills needed to succeed in an increasingly global economy. Bloomberg reports: The National Center for Education Statistics asked 3,300 respondents ages 16-to-65 to read simple passages and solve basic math problems. What the researchers found is that literacy, numeracy and digital problem-solving ability in the U.S. have stagnated over the past few years. Some 19% of the test-takers ranked at the lowest of three levels for literacy and 24% lacked basic digital problem-solving abilities. Meanwhile, a shocking 29% performed at the lowest level for numeracy, the same as findings from the previous study conducted in 2012-2014. Almost one in three couldn't correctly answer "how much gas is in a 24-gallon tank if the gas gauge reads three-quarters full."

There were a few bright spots among the research. Latino adults saw their overall scores improve in both literacy and digital problem solving. Some 35% ranked at the highest of three levels for the latter, up from 24% during the 2012-2014 survey period. In addition, high school graduation rates climbed 2 percentage-points to 14%, while the percentage of people with more than a high school diploma jumped 3 percentage-points to 48%.

Earlier this week, a hydrogen-powered delivery drone managed to make a one-hour, 43-minute ocean crossing. New Atlas reports: The exercise was the result of a collaboration between Texas-based drone development company Guinn Partners, Georgia-based Skyfire Consulting, the U.S. Department of Health, and drone manufacturer Doosan Mobility Innovation -- the latter supplied the aircraft, a hydrogen fuel cell-powered DS30 octocopter. Utilizing its temperature-controlled payload system, the drone was used to transport live bacteria samples from a hospital on the Caribbean island of St. Croix to a testing facility on the neighboring island of St. Thomas. This involved crossing 43 miles (69 km) of open ocean. Upon successfully reaching its destination, the copter reportedly still had almost 30 minutes of flight time left on its fuel cell.

schwit1 shares a report from The Hill: The Trump administration on Friday unveiled new rules to require increased disclosure of health care prices, in a move officials said would drive down costs by increasing competition. One regulation would require hospitals to provide a consumer-friendly online page where prices are listed for 300 common procedures like X-rays and lab tests. A second regulation would require insurers to provide an online tool where people could compare their out-of-pocket costs at different medical providers before receiving treatment. The rule announced Friday affecting hospitals is a final rule, set to take effect Jan. 1, 2021. The rule for insurers is still a proposal that is not yet finalized. "Hospitals and insurers will fight this. The last thing they want is consumers price shopping," adds schwit1.

Physicists from the University of Bonn and the University of Cologne have succeeded in cooling photons down to a Bose-Einstein condensate, causing the light to collect in optical "valleys" from which it can no longer return. The findings have been published in the journal Science. Phys.Org reports: A light beam is usually divided by being directed onto a partially reflecting mirror: Part of the light is then reflected back to create the mirror image. The rest passes through the mirror. "However, this process can be turned around if the experimental set-up is reversed," says Prof. Dr. Martin Weitz from the Institute of Applied Physics at the University of Bonn. If the reflected light and the part of the light passing through the mirror are sent in the opposite direction, the original light beam can be reconstructed. The physicist investigates exotic optical quantum states of light. Together with his team and Prof. Dr. Achim Rosch from the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Cologne, Weitz was looking for a new method to generate optical one-way streets by cooling the photons: As a result of the smaller energy of the photons, the light should collect in valleys and thereby be irreversibly divided. The physicists used a Bose-Einstein condensate made of photons for this purpose, which Weitz first achieved in 2010, becoming the first to create such a "super-photon."

A beam of light is thrown back and forth between two mirrors. During this process, the photons collide with dye molecules located between the reflecting surfaces. The dye molecules "swallow" the photons and then spit them out again. "The photons acquire the temperature of the dye solution," says Weitz. "In the course of this, they cool down to room temperature without getting lost." By irradiating the dye solution with a laser, the physicists increase the number of photons between the mirrors. The strong concentration of the light particles combined with simultaneous cooling causes the individual photons to fuse to form a "super-photon," also known as Bose-Einstein condensate. "Perhaps quantum computers might one day use this method to communicate with each other and form a kind of quantum Internet," says Weitz.

At least two people in China are under close observation and are receiving treatment for infections of the same plague that devastated Europe in the mid-1300s. The two confirmed cases originated in north China and were confirmed by doctors in Beijing earlier this week. From a report: The pneumonic variant of the plague, which affects the lungs, can easily spread to others through the air. It is one of the three main forms of plague infection, alongside bubonic and septicemic, but it's believed that the pneumonic form was largely responsible for the rapid spread of plague during the Black Death pandemic that wiped out as much as half of Europe's population centuries ago. While it hasn't led to a full-scale pandemic for some time, plague -- a bacterial infection that is treated with antibiotics -- is known to persist in certain animal populations across Asia as well as the Americas and Africa. The pneumonic form, however, is rare and considered to be a more serious threat. It is almost always deadly if not promptly treated. China's Xinhua news agency didn't provide many details on the condition of the two patients or if they had contact with others. The report simply notes that "relevant disease prevention and control measures have been taken."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ExtremeTech: SpaceX has cleared a major hurdle on the way to launching manned missions with its Dragon spacecraft. The company had to push back its launch plans after the stunning explosion of a Crew Dragon capsule during testing earlier this year. Now, SpaceX has successfully tested the engines without incident, paving the way for a test flight next year. The SpaceX Dragon is one of two commercial spacecraft NASA hopes to use to launch manned missions to the International Space Station, the other being Boeing's CST-100 Starliner. SpaceX was on track to beat Boeing to launch before its April testing failure, but picking through the pieces of the demolished capsule pushed back the timetable.

After an investigation, SpaceX confirmed the craft's SuperDraco engines themselves were not at fault. These innovative launch abort engines use hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants, which mix together and ignite, but most launch abort systems use solid propellants. SpaceX went this way because it intends to do propulsive landings with the Dragon in the future, but NASA hasn't authorized that for crewed flights. Unfortunately, a leaky fuel valve in the abort propulsion system allowed nitrogen tetroxide to leak into the helium pressurization system. It was then driven back into the titanium check valve, which caused the explosion. The new and improved Dragon has a burst disk in the fuel lines that keeps propellant from leaking into the high-pressure lines before ignition. This week's test-firing demonstrates that the new system functions as intended, and SpaceX says it can now move forward with launch plans. The next step is to test the SuperDraco engines in-flight later this year. Then, once SpaceX can prove that its spacecraft can handle an in-flight abort, it'll prepare for the first crewed flight in early 2020.

China on Thursday successfully completed a crucial landing test in northern Hebei province ahead of a historic unmanned exploration mission to Mars next year. From a report: China is on track to launch its Mars mission, Zhang Kejian, head of the China National Space Administration, said on Thursday, speaking to foreign diplomats and the media before the test. The Mars lander underwent a hovering-and-obstacle avoidance test at a sprawling site in Huailai, northwest of Beijing. The site was littered with small mounds of rocks to simulate the uneven terrain on Mars which the lander would have to navigate on its descent to the planet's surface. "In 2016, China officially began the Mars exploration mission work, and currently all of the different development work is progressing smoothly," Zhang said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Researchers in Southampton have built a device that displays 3D animated objects that can talk and interact with onlookers. A demonstration of the display showed a butterfly flapping its wings, a countdown spelled out by numbers hanging in the air, and a rotating, multicolored planet Earth. Beyond interactive digital signs and animations, scientists want to use it to visualize and even feel data. While the images are similar, the device is not the sort of holographic projector that allowed a shimmering Princess Leia to enlist Obi-Wan Kenobi's help in Star Wars. Instead, it uses a 3D field of ultrasound waves to levitate a polystyrene bead and whip it around at high speed to trace shapes in the air.

The 2mm-wide bead moves so fast, at speeds approaching 20mph, that it traces out the shape of an object in less than one-tenth of a second. At such a speed, the brain doesn't see the moving bead, only the completed shape it creates. The colors are added by LEDs built into the display that shine light on the bead as it zips around. Because the images are created in 3D space, they can be viewed from any angle. And by careful control of the ultrasonic field, the scientists can make objects speak, or add sound effects and musical accompaniments to the animated images. Further manipulation of the sound field enables users to interact with the objects and even feel them in their hands. "The images are created between two horizontal plates that are studded with small ultrasonic transducers," reports The Guardian. "These create an inaudible 3D sound field that contains a tiny pocket of low pressure air that traps the polystyrene bead. Move the pocket around, by tweaking the output of the transducers, and the bead moves with it."

In the journal Nature, researchers describe how they've improved the display to produce sounds and tactile responses to people reaching out to the image.

Popular health websites are sharing private, personal medical data with big tech companies, according to an investigation by the Financial Times. From a report: The data, including medical diagnoses, symptoms, prescriptions, and menstrual and fertility information, are being sold to companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Oracle and smaller data brokers and advertising technology firms, like Scorecard and OpenX. The FT analyzed 100 health websites, including WebMD, Healthline, health insurance group Bupa, and parenting site Babycentre, and found that 79% of them dropped cookies on visitors, allowing them to be tracked by third-party companies around the internet. This was done without consent, making the practice illegal under European Union regulations. By far the most common destination for the data was Google's advertising arm DoubleClick, which showed up in 78% of the sites the FT tested.