Category: Science &Technology

{Death in May and subsequent federal probe fuel debate on safety of autonomous driving software and self-driving cars.}

The US government has launched an investigation into the safety of automaker Tesla’s autonomous driving system after what may be the world’s first known death involving “self-driving” technology.

A driver of a Tesla Model S car operating the system, which is called Autopilot, was killed in a collision with a truck two months ago, prompting the probe, which was disclosed on Thursday.

The investigation comes as Tesla and other automakers are gearing up to offer systems that allow vehicles to drive themselves under certain conditions across a wide range of vehicles over the next few years.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it was now investigating 25,000 Model S sedans that were equipped with Autopilot.

The accident, according to a report from the Florida Highway Patrol, killed Joshua Brown on a clear, dry roadway on May 7 in the state of Florida.

The crash will add fire to a debate within the auto industry, and in legal circles, over the safety of systems that take partial control of steering and braking from drivers.

Sky too bright

The NHTSA said preliminary reports indicated the crash happened when a tractor-trailer made a left turn in front of the Tesla at an intersection.

The luxury electric car maker said in a blog on Thursday that “neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied.”

Tesla shares fell as much as 3 percent in after-hours trading, on news of the crash and investigation.

The company emphasised the unusual nature of the crash and said it was the first fatality in more than 130 million miles of use.

Tesla said in a statement on Thursday that customers were required to give “explicit acknowledgement” that they realize Autopilot is new technology still under development, otherwise the system would stay off.

“When drivers activate Autopilot, the acknowledgment box explains, among other things, that Autopilot ‘is an assist feature that requires you to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times,’ and that ‘you need to maintain control and responsibility for your vehicle’ while using it.”

The NHTSA said the crash called “for an examination of the design and performance of any driving aids in use at the time of the crash.”

The agency said it had opened a preliminary investigation, which it said was the first step before it could seek to order a recall if it was to find the vehicles were unsafe.

{Fossils unearthed on the Indonesian island of Flores may resolve one of the most intriguing mysteries in anthropology.}

Newly uncovered fossils on an Indonesian island dating back hundreds of thousands of years might just resolve the mystery of the diminutive human species nicknamed the “Hobbit”.

Scientists on Wednesday described bone fragments and teeth retrieved from an ancient riverbed that appear to belong to the extinct Hobbit species.

The fossils are about 700,000 years old, extending the Hobbit story far backward from the original remains, which date to just 50,000 years ago, according to two studies published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Known to scientists as Homo floresiensis, the Hobbits stood about 106cm, possessing a small, chimpanzee-sized brain and was previously known only from fossils and stone tools from a cave in Flores island.

The new fossils, which were dug up in 2014, in grasslands nearly 70km east of the cave where the first Hobbit bones were discovered in 2003, bolster the theory that the Hobbits arrived on Flores island as a different, larger species of hominin, or early man, probably about a million years ago.

And then, something very strange happened.

These upright, tool-wielding humans shrank, generation after generation, until they were barely half their original weight and height.

The process, called “island dwarfism,” was well known in animals, with some species shrinking as much as six fold in adapting to an environment with fewer resources.

This is the first hard evidence of humans becoming smaller after being marooned on a spit of land transformed into an island by rising seas.

“The Hobbit was real,” said Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at the Research Centre of Human Evolution at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, and lead author of one of the studies.

“It was an ancient human species that is separate to ours and that no longer exists on the planet today.”

Gerrit van den Bergh, leader of the excavation and a palaeontologist from Australia’s University of Wollongong, said the new Flores fossils bear similarities to the Homo erectus fossils originally found on the Indonesian island of Java.

The fossils included four adult and two baby teeth, a piece of jawbone and a cranial fragment from two children and either one or two adults who may have died in a volcanic eruption.

The jawbone’s size suggested that the individual was even a bit smaller than the later cave remains.

“It now appears that the Flores ‘Hobbit’ is indeed a dwarfed Homo erectus,” said Brumm.

‘Huge surprise’

One theory that can now be set aside, the researchers said, is that Flores’ Hobbits were actually modern humans diminished by disease or genetic disorders.

“This find quashes once and for all any doubters that believe Homo floresiensis was merely a sick Homo sapiens,” said van der Bergh.

Most surprising was that the recently exhumed specimens were no larger than those still living on the island more than 600,000 years later.

“I was stunned when I first saw these new fossils,” said co-author Yousuke Kaifu, a scientist at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.

Anything that old, he said, had been expected to resemble the bigger Homo erectus, or some other more primitive species.

“What we found was a huge surprise,” added Brumm.

“This suggests that H floresiensis is an extremely ancient species that evolved its small size on Flores at a very early period, possibly soon after it arrived on the island about a million years ago.”

{Taxing antibiotics and reducing use in animals among ideas in global report on deadly drug-resistant bacteria.}

A report of the global rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria or superbugs has called for dramatic changes to the way antibiotics are used both by humans and animals.

The result of a two-year investigation by former Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill, the report warns that without action superbugs could cause 10 million deaths a year by 2050 and cost governments $100 trillion a year.

“We’ve all got to change how we are behaving, all 7 billion of us,” O’Neill told Al Jazeera.

“Because of the connectivity of the world and how people travel and how animals travel, unless the whole world does something we won’t solve it as a problem.”

The report details ten steps governments around the world can take to address the issue.
These include requiring doctors to do tests confirming that antibiotics are required, before they are prescribed, developing and using more vaccines as an alternative to antibiotics, and reducing the use of antibiotics in animals.

The prolific use of antibiotics use in farming, especially in developing countries, is known to drive the development of resistance in bacteria, a problem that then translates to human health.

“The animal problem is massive,” said O’Neill.

“In some parts of the world it is clearly a bigger problem than in humans, especially in the United States, probably also in China and India. We need to have specific dramatic changes taking place in the misuse in agriculture.”

The report also said public awareness needs to be raised on a global scale, especially in countries where there is little regulation around the use of antibiotics.

O’Neill estimates a global public awareness campaign would cost between $40m and $100m a year but would be good value when compared with the long-term cost to health systems.

“In order for it to be truly effective you would need to make it tailor-made to the specific dilemmas and cultural habits of many different countries around the world,” he said.

Taxes and rewards

O’Neill also suggested governments may consider taxing the use of antibiotics, both to raise funds for research and to discourage their use.

One issue that experts say has compounded the problem of drug resistance is that drug companies are not coming up with enough new drugs to replace those that are no longer working.

The last antibiotic came to market almost 30 years ago, a gap in research and development that reflects the fact that big pharmaceutical companies see the hunt for new drugs as too expensive and are slow to make the investment.

O’Neill suggests this could be addressed by investing more in research and establishing a reward system that could give drug companies a billion dollars for each new antibiotic they bring to market.

The report concludes that the cost of taking global action would amount to $40bn over ten years.

“This is tiny in comparison to the cost of inaction,” it said. “It is also a very small fraction of what the G20 countries spend on healthcare today: about 0.05 percent.”

{Tech giant reports first quarterly drop in revenue in 13 years after selling 10 million fewer iPhones than last year.}

Apple has reported its first drop in revenue in 13 years after the tech giant sold 10 million fewer iPhones in the first three months of this year than during the same quarter a year ago.

It is the first-ever year-over-year decline in iPhone sales.

The slide is putting more pressure on Apple and CEO Tim Cook to come up with its next big product.

Cook, of course, has problems many corporate bosses would kill to have. Despite the decline in sales, Apple managed to rack up $10.5bn in profit for the quarter.

“The future of Apple is very bright,” Cook told analysts on a conference call on Tuesday.

But Apple is battling perceptions that its latest iPhones aren’t that different from previous models, at a time when overall smartphone sales are slowing around the world.

Apple also sells iPads, Mac computers and other gadgets, but nearly two-thirds of its $50.6bn in quarterly revenue came from iPhones.

“They need to come out with that next great product,” said Angelo Zino, a financial analyst with S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Zino said that while he is optimistic about the company’s future, “Apple absolutely needs to start diversifying their revenue base.”

Overall, the company’s revenue in the January-March quarter was down 13 percent from a year earlier. And the company surprised analysts by forecasting another revenue drop of 13 percent or more in the current quarter.

The forecast, which was announced after Apple had closed for the day at $104.35 a share, drove its stock price down 8 percent in extended trading.

Apple hasn’t reported a year-over-year sales decline since 2003, when the iPod was still relatively new and the iPhone didn’t exist.

Since then, the iPhone and other products have propelled the company’s stock value from $5bn to $579bn, making it the most valuable public company in the world.

Analysts are expecting Apple’s performance to improve in the fall, when it’s expected to release the next generation of iPhones with as-yet undisclosed new features.

For now, Apple is finding it difficult to match the blockbuster sales it racked up last year, when shoppers flocked to buy the first iPhones with larger screens – similar to models that Samsung and other competitors were already selling.

{US investigators use technique without Apple’s help to hack into phone of dead gunman behind mass California shooting.}

The FBI says it has successfully used a technique without Apple’s help to hack into the iPhone used by a gunman in a mass shooting in California .

Monday’s announcement effectively ended a pitched court battle between the Obama administration and one of the world’s leading technology companies.

The government asked a federal judge to vacate a disputed order forcing Apple to help the FBI break into the iPhone, saying it was no longer necessary.

The court filing in US District Court for the Central District of California provided no details about how the FBI did it or who showed it how.

The FBI is reviewing the information on the iPhone, the Justice Department said in a statement.

The case drew international attention and highlighted a growing friction between government authorities and the tech industry.

Apple and other tech companies have said they feel increasing need to protect their customers’ data from hackers and unfriendly intruders. But the police and other government authorities have warned that encryption and other data-protection measures are making it more difficult for investigators to track criminals and dangerous extremists.

“From the beginning, we objected to the FBI’s demand that Apple build a back door into the iPhone because we believed it was wrong and would set a dangerous precedent,” Apple said in a statement.

“As a result of the government’s dismissal, neither of these occurred. This case should never have been brought.”

The brief court notice left important questions unanswered: Who showed the FBI how to break into iPhones? How did the government bypass the security features that Apple has invested millions of dollars to build into its flagship product? Are newer iPhones vulnerable to the same hacking technique?

“With this vulnerability in existence, people that have similar version of iPhone are at risk of attacks from malicious people that could use the same vulnerability,” Drew Mitnick, a Policy Counsel at Access Now, told Al Jazeera.

“[Following the hacking], there is at least a moral obligation on behalf of the FBI to close the vulnerability.”

The surprise development also punctured the temporary perception that Apple’s security might have been good enough to keep consumers’ personal information safe even from the US government – with the tremendous resources it can expend when it wants to uncover something.

The FBI used the technique to access data on an iPhone used by gunman Syed Farook, who died with his wife in a gun battle with police after they killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, in December.

The iPhone, a work phone issued to Farook by his employer, the county health department, was found in a vehicle the day after the shooting; two personal phones were found destroyed so completely that the FBI couldn’t recover information from them.

US magistrate Sheri Pym of California last month ordered Apple to provide the FBI with software to help it hack into Farook’s work-issued iPhone.

The order touched off a debate pitting digital privacy rights against national security concerns.

“People often have a sense that they are being surveilled by the government and it tends to limit their ability to express themselves,” Mitnick added.

“The mere possibility that the government is surveilling is a limitation on freedom of expression.”