canopic jug writes:The magazine Logic has an article about the durability of COBOL, which has been reliably running mission critical systems for over 60 years.
hubie writes:For many, one of the early signs that they are transitioning in life from a codger to an old codger is the onset of presbyopia. This is also known as "farsightedness" and is caused by loss of elasticity of the lens of the eye. Children can typically handle vision of 10 D or smaller, which is to say they can focus from infinity down to 10 cm away or less from their face. However, as a person ages that minimum distance increases until they get into their 50s and realize their arms are too short to hold their book any longer. Typical corrections are bifocal or progressive spectacles, as well as multifocal contact lenses and intra-ocular lenses. There are inherent trade-offs in all of these solutions, such as trading near or far vision enhancement at the expense of image contrast.As reported in a Nature Scientific Report paper, researchers from Spain have built a "smart glasses"-style real-time prototype presbyopia correction system:
upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Frequent, rapid testing could cripple COVID-19 within weeks, study shows: Research shows test turnaround-time, frequency far more important than sensitivity in curbing spread:
DannyB writes:See this page Dev Fonts.Which one of these fonts, or alternately, what other font not appearing on that page is "the true one and only" programming font?Let the (friendly!) battles begin!(Please include, if possible, a link from which it can be downloaded.--Ed.)Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
[2020-11-20 02:51:10 UTC; Had used worldwide daily death count (10,970); correct value for US single-day deaths was 2,065.--martyb][How many Soylentils personally know of someone who has contracted or died from COVID-19? Please accept my condolences for your loss. --martyb]The terrorist attacks of 9/11 — the deadliest in world history — killed 2,977 people:
NASA's Hubble Sees Unexplained Brightness from Colossal Explosionaristarchus writes:NASA announces the Hubble Space Telescope captured images of the source of a Gamma-ray Burst.
MostCynical writes:The Guardian has a story detailing the firing of Christopher Krebs, who served as the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa)President Trump made the announcement on Twitter on Tuesday, saying Krebs "has been terminated" and that his recent statement defending the security of the election was "highly inaccurate".CISA last week released a statement refuting claims of widespread voter fraud. "The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history," the statement read. "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."Krebs, is a former Microsoft executive, and was appointed by President Trump after allegations of Russian interference with the 2016 election.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
Rocky Mudbutt writes:Grace Mitchell Tada writes for the Hakai Magazine of Coastal Science and Societies about the damaging effects of rising groundwater due to changing sea levels. From the article
hubie writes:Mechanoluminescence, also known as triboluminescence, is the production of light as the result of mechanical action taken on a solid, such as by squeezing or bending it. It was first discovered in 1605 by Sir Francis Bacon when he saw light given off as he was scraping a lump of sugar with a knife (and you may have seen it yourself if you've seen the green spark given off when biting into a Wint-O-Green Lifesaver in the dark). If you stress a solid elastically, meaning that it recovers its original shape when you remove the stress, and it gives off light, this is known as elasto-mechanoluminescence. There are very few materials known with this behavior and they are a topic of interest because there are some useful things one could imagine making with such a material, such as visual stress sensors and other specialty lighting.Researchers in France found that a certain kind of glass containing mechanoluminescent crystalline particles not only gives off light when subject to mechanical stress, but it behaves in a manner suggestive of a photonic sponge. If the glass is initially charged with exposure to UV light, it emits green light as a stress is applied to it. When the applied pressure stops changing and reaches a steady-state, the light disappears. The authors call this a photonic sponge because it is analogous to after one fills a sponge with water, the water only comes out while you are squeezing it to wring it out. What was also surprising in their results was that as they removed the stress, additional light was emitted as the stress was released. The total amount of light emitted didn't depend upon the total static force applied, but rather on the change in the force, known as the deviatoric part of the stress. They used a Li,Na metaphosphate glass embedded with SrAlO particles. Provided with the paper is a video showing the experiment in action.Dubernet, M., Bruyer, E., Gueguen, Y. et al. Mechanics and physics of a glass/particles photonic sponge. Sci Rep 10, 19495 (2020). (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-75504-9)Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.