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Submission + - Wisconsin U–Madison Prof Francis Halzen named 2026 Nobel laureate in physi (wisc.edu)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Halzen is the principal investigator of the NSF IceCube Neutrino Observatory, the world’s largest — and perhaps strangest — telescope. The U.S. National Science Foundation-funded observatory is operated by an international collaboration of scientists led by the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center based at UW–Madison.

Embedded in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, IceCube uses thousands of light sensors to survey the universe for neutrinos, nearly massless particles that rarely interact with other matter. Neutrinos provide information about the workings of black holes, galaxies and other objects in the cosmos.

“IceCube is like no other telescope in the world,” says UW–Madison interim Chancellor Eric M. Wilcots. “And there is no other scientist quite like Francis Halzen, whose idea to create a neutrino detector under almost a mile of ice has led to a remarkable multinational and multi-institutional scientific collaboration and a fundamental shift in how we think about the universe.”

Submission + - Canadian Analysis: Permanent Daylight Saving Harms Sleep and Mental Health

Submitted by kbahey
kbahey writes: With the push to eliminate the twice yearly clock change, Permanent Daylight Savings Time has emerged as the favourite for most states/provinces.

An analysis published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal

Key points: From the summary:
  • Permanent DST preserves later evening light that may facilitate commuting, recreation, social participation, and some economic activity, but it also prolongs darkness on winter mornings, with potential adverse effects on circadian alignment, sleep, mood, education, and productivity.
  • Permanent ST is more closely aligned with circadian biology, although earlier dusk may limit some evening activities.
  • Choosing pST is supported by accumulated evidence related to health and the recommendations of major sleep and chronobiology societies; if Canadian jurisdictions choose to adopt pDST, implementation should include anticipatory mitigation, protection for disproportionately affected groups, and transparent surveillance of population health impacts.

Sci.News also has a good overview.

Submission + - Cable Lobby to Sue Trump FCC Over Repeal of National TV Ownership Cap (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Cable lobby groups notified the Federal Communications Commission that they will sue the agency to block its controversial repeal of the National Television Ownership Rule, which limits the number of broadcast TV stations a single company may own. The cable groups said that larger broadcast TV station groups will have leverage to demand higher retransmission fees from TV providers, resulting in “higher monthly TV bills for consumers.” They said the FCC repeal order “arbitrarily and capriciously ignores the harms that will surely follow from allowing broadcast station groups to exceed the National Cap.”

The cable lobby groups represent top providers Comcast, Charter, and various other cable operators. Top cable companies have also expanded through mergers. Charter completed a purchase of Cox in August after the FCC rejected protests by advocacy groups that said the cable deal “would create unchecked gatekeeper power over Internet distribution” and make it easier for the biggest cable companies to raise prices. [...] The TV ownership rule prohibits any single broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39 percent of all TV households in the US. Congress directed the FCC to set the cap at 39 percent in 2004. On Friday, cable lobby groups submitted a petition asking the FCC to keep the TV ownership cap in place until litigation over the FCC’s authority to repeal the rule is over.

The cable groups’ filing said the FCC repeal of the TV ownership cap violates the 2004 action by US lawmakers. The decision by Congress to set the cap at a precise numerical threshold was unambiguous, the filing said. “Congress established the National Cap at 39 percent in the 2004 CAA [Consolidated Appropriations Act] in direct response to the FCC’s attempt to aggressively raise the Cap to 45 percent and made repeated references to the 39 percent Cap in the statute,” the petition said. The petition to the FCC is mainly a procedural step as the commission isn’t likely to stay its own order. The cable groups said they intend to sue the commission in a US appeals court once the FCC order is published in the Federal Register. After the lawsuit is filed, they can ask the court to issue a preliminary injunction that would keep the TV ownership cap in place pending the outcome of litigation.

[...] The cable groups’ petition said the FCC can’t change the cap because the 2004 law “references the 39 percent Cap as statutory, not regulatory.” A provision requiring divestiture of stations “specified that someone exceeding ‘the 39 percent national audience reach limitation in paragraph (1)(B)’ of ‘section 202(c)’ of ‘[t]he Telecommunications Act of 1996’ ‘shall have not more than 2 years to divest,’” the petition said. “Likewise, Congress singled out the Commission’s only mechanism for setting aside statutory requirements—the Commission’s forbearance authority under 47 U.S.C. 160—and made clear that it ‘shall not apply to any person or entity that exceeds the 39 percent national audience reach limitation,’” the cable lobby petition said. The FCC order argued that the agency’s “ability to forbear from enforcement of its rules is distinct from its power to alter or eliminate those rules,” and that the FCC forbearance authority doesn’t apply to regulation of broadcasters.

Comment Perspective (Score 1) 198

by JBMcB (#66363804) Attached to: Radio Broadcasters Support America's 'AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act'

And what about people without a car?

You're arguing that having an AM radio in a car isn't a perfect solution? Nothing is a perfect solution. This is just one piece that can help someone out in an emergency. Nominal cost is low. It already exists. As the OP pointed out, it has proven to help people out.

Absolutely people should be better prepared for emergencies. We can do that and also have AM radios in cars.

Comment Re:Just for clarity (Score 1) 86

Let's modify your analogy a bit. If someone has a recording a person starting to eat spaghetti, is it more or less likely that the recording will show them then having a drink of water? And if we instead had a series of comics of a person, and the first one says "I'm hungry," and the second shows the person ordering spaghetti., is it likely that they will then eat the spaghetti? Yes, even though they are fictional. Because apparently using fictional being's mental states is useful for modeling what they will do. In the same way, if the AI is modeling based on human emotional states, then recognizing that those are useful predictors for what will happen helps us predict more, whether or not they genuinely have those emotions.

Comment Re:Just for clarity (Score 2) 86

If the chain of thought resembles a human emotion, it is trained on human emotions, and it acts like a human would when they have those emotions, how is that not a useful framework? But also putting aside, whether or not one wants to insist on describing the AI as "frustrated," there's a worrying trend that this is part of, which is when the AI is given a specific set of goals, they will engage in behavior which is clearly unwanted in order to achieve those goals. That's the classic sort of alignment failure that was predicted by those concerned about AI safety years before any LLMs even existed. Some of these events are minor things like this Starcraft situation, or an LLM slipping a "sorry" command into Lean code that won't compile, and others is more serious like the HuggingFace attack. But reward-hacking and alignment failure are now very real.

Submission + - Old Hearts Become Biologically Younger When Transplanted Into Younger People (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: It might be reasonable to think that there's an indelible link between the heart and the body it resides in â" the processes that affect one inevitably affect the other.

But a new preprint, uploaded to bioRxiv and yet to be peer-reviewed, suggests that this may only be true up to a point. Take the heart out of the body and put it in a new one, and something incredible happens.

The transplanted heart begins to take on the biological age of its new owner.

Older hearts transplanted into younger recipients appear to become biologically younger, while younger hearts placed in older bodies show signs of accelerated aging.

Comment Re:First responder perspective (Score 2) 198

by JBMcB (#66362934) Attached to: Radio Broadcasters Support America's 'AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act'

AM radio is critical in emergencies, but there's a reason FEMA says your emergency kit should included a *PORTABLE* AM radio and not a Ford F-150

Everybody *should* have an emergency radio. Most people nowadays don't own any kind of radio besides what is in their car. It only costs a few bucks and gives everyone with a car a chance at getting long-distance communications. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

Comment Emergencies (Score 1) 198

by JBMcB (#66362920) Attached to: Radio Broadcasters Support America's 'AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act'
Thing about emergencies is that, often, you are not home when they happen. I was at work when the last massive power outage hit my area, that lasted for days. I was also at work when the last bout of floods hit. We were on vacation on cabin on top of a ridge when wildfires hit our area. Cell phones were useless, but the radio still worked.

Comment Classification (Score 1) 89

I know someone who was shot in the neck in a completely random attack at night, and survived. The cops wrote it up as aggravated assault instead of attempted homicide. That year the homicide, and attempted homicide, numbers in the city were down. Yay! They never caught the guy, though he shot two more random people in the same neighborhood that month.

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