Boeing has unveiled a new autonomous fighter jet plane that's designed to be a sidekick for piloted planes and could take to the skies as soon as 2020.

The unmanned drone, dubbed the 'Loyal Wingman,' is 38 feet long, has a 2,000 nautical mile range and is equipped with onboard sensors that enable it to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, as well as electronic warfare.  It's particularly suited for long-distance surveillance missions that humans can't typically perform, according to the firm.

Wingman may also be able to carry missiles or bombs at some point in the future.  Boeing hopes to sell the planes to customers around the world, though for now it remains a prototype design.

The aerospace giant revealed the drone, which it says is part of a new unmanned platform, called the Boeing Airpower Teaming System, at the Australian International Airshow on 26 February.  It's being developed in Australia as part of a classified program and marks the country's first domestically developed combat aircraft since World War II.

Boeing claims that the fighter jet will cost a 'fraction' of a typical manned fighter, but declined to share what it will be priced at, noting that the number will vary depending on the jet specifications chosen by each buyer.

Kristin Robertson, vice president and general manager of Boeing Autonomous Systems, said: 'It is operationally very flexible, modular, multi-mission.  It is a very disruptive price point.  Fighter-like capability at a fraction of the cost.'

She declined to specify whether it could reach supersonic speeds, common for modern fighter aircraft.

Robertson described the Wingman as a 'force multiplier' for military units around the world that may need the extra manpower.

'With its ability to reconfigure quickly and perform different types of missions in tandem with other aircraft, our newest addition to Boeing's portfolio will truly be a force multiplier as it protects and projects air power,' she said.

Four to six of the new aircraft can fly alongside a F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, said Shane Arnott, director of Boeing research and prototype arm Phantom Works International.

Not only can the jets fly for longer periods than humans, but they're also capable of withstanding higher g-forces and have high-powered computers that can process large amounts of data quickly.

'To bring that extra component and the advantage of unmanned capability, you can accept a higher level of risk.  It is better for one of these to take a hit than for a manned platform, ' he said.

Further details of the 'Loyal Wingman' project remain scant but it's understood the primary purpose of the drone is to conduct electronic warfare and reconnaissance missions in 'risky' terrain.

The UAV is said to be capable of flying up to several thousand kilometres, and can also carrying sensors or electronic warfare equipment on its underside.

The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in the United States said last year that the US Air Force should explore pairing crewed and uncrewed aircraft to expand its fleet and complement a limited number of 'exquisite, expensive, but highly potent fifth-generation aircraft' like the F-35.

The policy paper said: 'Human performance factors are a major driver behind current aerial combat practices.  Humans can only pull a certain number of G's, fly for a certain number of hours, or process a certain amount of information at a given time.'

The precise amount of investment the US firm has pumped into the endeavor remains unknown but it's believed to be the largest investment in UAVs outside the US.

The Australian government is investing $28.75 million (A$40 million) in the prototype program due to its 'enormous capability for exports,' Minister for Defence Christopher Pyne told reporters at the Australian International Airshow.

The drones could be used alongside existing Royal Australian Air Force aircraft such as the P-8A Poseidon.

Extracted from: www.dailymail.co.uk

People tend to feel strongly about matters of sexual morality, such as premarital sex or gay marriage.  Some sources of these differences are obvious.  Religion, media portrayals and parents and peers are big social forces that shape attitudes about sex.  But could something as innocuous as the way we look spark these different outlooks, too?  In a recently published article, I studied this question.

Beauty and opportunity

Compared with the rest of us, most beautiful people lead charmed lives.  Studies show that pretty people tend to get favorable treatment.  They secure better jobs and earn higher salaries.  Others are friendlier toward them.

With this extra money and social support, they’re better equipped to fend off any consequences of their actions.  For instance, the better-looking can get more benefit of the doubt from juries.  Their lives are most charmed, though, in matters of sex and romance.  While many benefits of beauty are small – a slightly higher salary offer here, a better performance evaluation there – the romantic benefits are larger and more consistent.

Good-looking people on average have more sexual opportunities and partners.  Could this create a sense, among attractive people, that anything goes when it comes to sex?  Could it make them less inclined to value sexual purity?

And might sexually experienced people belittle the moral costs of sex in order to feel better about their own past conduct?  If so, we would expect good-looking people to be the most tolerant ones where sex is concerned.  They would have less restrictive views on issues like premarital sex, abortion or gay marriage.

A link to conservatism?

But you could also argue the opposite.  Higher salaries and greater success in the job market might pull good-looking people toward more conservative views when it comes to taxes or economic justice.

Since conservatives, on average, dislike sexual freedom more than liberals do, identifying with conservatives for economic reasons – or simply moving in conservative social circles – might make the beautiful less, not more, tolerant where sex is concerned.

Along these lines, studies have found that good looks are associated with conservatism among politicians.  Attractiveness could then plausibly associate with higher or lower standards for what sexual activities are morally acceptable.  Or the two arguments could cancel each other out, as one study of college students suggested.

Digging into the surveys

To further explore this issue, I turned to two large, prominent surveys of Americans’ views: the General Social Survey from 2016 and the American National Election Studies from 1972.

Both surveys were administered face-to-face.  And, unusually, both studies asked the person administering the survey to evaluate the respondent’s looks on a one-to-five scale.

(The respondent doesn’t see the score.  The study’s designers weren’t that heedless of social awkwardness.)

This measure of beauty isn’t rigorous.  But it does resemble quick personal judgments made in everyday life.  Moreover, the decades-long gap between the studies gives some sense of whether effects persist across a generation’s worth of cultural change.

The surveys also asked about legal and moral standards relevant to sex, such as how restrictive abortion laws should be, whether gay marriage should be legal and about the acceptability of premarital, extramarital and gay sex.

In both studies, the better-looking seem more relaxed about sexual morality.  For instance, in the data from 2016, 51 per cent of those whose looks were rated above average said a woman who wants an abortion for any reason should legally be allowed to have one.

Only 42 per cent of those with below-average looks said the same.  This nine-point difference increases to 15 points when accounting for factors like age, education, political ideology and religiosity.

This pattern repeated for almost all questions.  The one exception was a question that asked when adultery was morally acceptable.  Almost all respondents said “never” to that, washing out differences between the more and less attractive.

Are morals opportunistic?

If past experience is what makes beautiful people more tolerant toward issues like abortion and gay marriage, we would not expect them to be notably more tolerant about matters in which looks don’t apply.  This proves to be true.  Good-looking respondents in these surveys aren’t detectably more open, for example, to a legal right to die or to accepting civil disobedience.

These results are consistent with other findings showing that getting away with violating norms can make you more casual about those norms in the future.

Whether in white-collar crime or police violence or international human-rights violations, those who pull off one questionable action often become more willing to justify doing the same, or perhaps even a little more, in the future.

The same could be said for sex.  If you’ve have a lot of sexual experiences in the past, it may color your attitudes toward the vast range of sexual possibilities – even those that don’t directly apply to your own sexuality or personal experience.

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If you crave peace and quiet, it could be the ultimate destination.  Deep within Microsoft’s Redmond campus is the quietest place on the planet – and Dailymail.com was able to step inside.

The record-breaking room is used by the tech giant to do everything from tuning its headphones to making your mouse clicks sound perfect.  However, the firm has found is it too quiet for most people - and nobody has been able to spend more than 45 minutes inside.

The few outsiders who have entered it have complained of everything from becoming disturbed by the loudness of their own breathing to ringing in the ears and deafening stomach gurgles.

Hundraj Gopal, Microsoft’s principal human factors engineer, and the man who led the team that built the anechoic chamber, told Dailymail.com: ‘Some people come in for a minute and want out immediately.  People cannot handle it, it rattles their brains, it is sensory deprivation.’

Gopal said the record for staying in the room, recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the quietest on Earth, is short.

‘This is the quietest place on the planet, and the most someone has been able to stay in is 45 minutes.  Just the chamber cost us $1.5m, which shows you how serious we are about audio.’

Known as an anechoic chamber, it is a small room measuring 21ft (6.36m) in each direction.  It is designed to be as perfectly quiet as possible, to allow engineers to tune audio devices and sound in perfect conditions.

The chamber is within six concrete layers, each up to 12 inches thick, which help to block out sounds from the outside world.  The walls, floor and ceiling are covered in giant wedges of fiberglass foam to eradicate any echoes.  The chamber floats on 68 vibration damping springs and is mounted on its own separate foundation slab to cut it off from the rest of the building.

Inside the chamber, the floor is made from the same steel cables used to stop fighter jets as they land on aircraft carriers, arranged like a net above the foam wedges underneath.

Gopal said: ‘This chamber blocks 120db, so if you had a jet engine taking off just outside, you would barely hear it.  We work with engineers on everything from mouse clicks to the sound your laptop makes when the latch closes, those sounds are very important to us.  We obsess over these minutiae other companies ignore.  We have seven sound chambers in this building, and over 25 in the company.'

Chris Kujawski, Principal Designer in Microsoft’s Device Team, said the audio chamber was crucial to the firm’s hardware, and it showed ‘the level of craftsmanship and nuance in our products very few people know about.’

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Tesla has finally added a $35,000 sedan to its Model 3 line-up.

CEO Elon Musk has been promising the mass market price tag since the firm first unveiled the Model 3 back in 2016, but has struggled to hit that goal in the time since.  But, just last month Musk said he hoped the lowest price version would be here before the end of the year.

After the CEO teased an announcement in a series of cryptic tweets earlier this week, the electric car-maker quietly added a Standard Range Model to its online shop, starting at $35,000 before savings.  The firm suspended orders on its website ahead of its mysterious announcement this evening, and promised 'great things are launching.'

And just yesterday, the company’s eccentric CEO sent his Twitter followers into a frenzy when he posted that he would be sharing ‘some Tesla news’ on Thursday.  Rather than a well-publicized announcement, however, Tesla simply re-opened its Model 3 orders at 5 p.m. ET to reveal a new option: a $35,000 standard range vehicle, which tops out at about 220 miles.  With the standard interior, this works out to be just $24,950 after savings, according to the firm.  The base model will achieve a top speed of 130 miles per hour, with 0-60mph acceleration in 5.6 seconds.  Pre-orders are now open.

Tesla is also offering the Model 3 Standard Range Plus, which boasts a 240-mile range and a top speed of 140mph.  It will also include ‘most premium features,’ starting at $37,000 before incentives.

‘Although lower in cost, it is built to achieve the same perfect 5-star safety rating as the longer-ranged version, which has the lowest probability of injury of any car ever tested by the U.S. Government,’ the firm said in the announcement Thursday evening.

Tesla has been working to get the price of the Model 3 down to the promised $35,000 since its 2016 reveal.  In effort to keep costs low, the firm now says it will be shuttering many of its US brick-and-mortar locations.  Instead, all orders will be taken online.

Tesla said: ‘Shifting all sales online, combined with other ongoing cost efficiencies, will enable us to lower all vehicle prices by about 6% on average, allowing us to achieve the $35,000 Model 3 price point earlier than we expected.  Over the next few months, we will be winding down many of our stores, with a small number of stores in high-traffic locations remaining as galleries, showcases and Tesla information centers.’

In addition, the firm had some news for its existing customers.  Tesla on 28 February unveiled firmware upgrades that will bring the range of the Long Range Rear-Wheel Drive Model 3 to 325 miles and increase the top speed of Model 3 Performance to 162 mph.  The updates will add roughly 5 per cent peak power to all Model 3 vehicles.

Tesla also says it’s beefing up its service system, ‘with the goal of same-day, if not same-hour service, and with most service done by us coming to you, rather than you coming to us.’

The Model 3 announcement followed a series of cryptic tweets from CEO Elon Musk this week, along with unusual changes to his profile, including a brief tweak to his display name in which he became Elon Tusk, and a short-lived cameo from an alien emoji.

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A 300-year-old British coin has sold at auction for a world-record price of £845,000.

The five guinea 'Vigo' coin dates to 1703 and was made using gold seized by the British from a Spanish treasure ship at the Battle of Vigo Bay.  Just 20 of the coins were struck, in celebration of the victory, and they are now among the most collectable pieces of coinage in the world.

The Queen Anne Vigo coin was sold by London auctioneers Baldwin's of St. James's.  It was eventually bought by a phone bidder for a hammer price of £703,000.  With fees added on the total price paid for it was £845,000.

The whopping price is the highest ever shelled out for a British coin, smashing the previous record of £630,000 for an 1817 George III silver crown.

The series of Vigo coins were made out of 7.5lbs of gold captured from a Spanish galleon.  After the British failed to capture Cadiz in October 1702, the fleet intercepted Spanish treasure ships laden with Aztec and Inca gold, coming back from America.  The British attacked the Spanish fleet in Vigo Bay and captured the gold and silver on board.  The booty was then returned to Britain where, desperate for gold, the Bank of England had it melted down and turned into coins.

The pieces feature a bust of Queen Anne on one side and coats of arms on the other.  Of the 20 coins struck 16 are known of.  This coin spent many years with a private collector who decided it was the right time to sell it.

Stephen Fenton, director of Baldwin's said: 'We figured it would get a very high price like this because the market is so strong the moment.  These English five guinea coins are among the most desirable coins about and we had a lot of interest.  The history of the Vigo coins really appeals to collectors and even brings in a whole different market from Spain.  Because of the price there will always be a slight limit to how many people can buy them but on this occasion interest was incredibly strong.'

Mr Fenton added: 'The coin is in amazing condition and has been given the highest grading possible by an expert.  It had been with a private collector but with the market as strong as it is at the moment, he decided it was the right time to place it in our auction.'

The price is vastly higher than similar sales in recent years.  Two years ago a similar coin was sold at for just £225,000.

That ‘Vigo’, sold at Boningtons in November 2016 was at the time only the sixth example of its type to be offered for sale in the last 50 years.  Another example sold for £240,000 in Lewes in December 2012.  And auctioneers Spink sold one in 2005 for £130,000 and an inferior example for £82,000 two years later.  The 'Vigo' coins are incomparably more valuable than equivalent coins from a similar period.  A two-guinea Queen Anne gold coin dating from 1713, which was similarly struck but without the ‘Vigo’ mark, sold for just £5,400 in 2016.

Extracted from: www.dailymail.co.uk

Left-handed people are better fighters than their right-handed counterparts because they catch them off guard, new research has found.

Researchers studied data on the careers of 10,000 professional boxers and mixed martial arts fighters.  They found that left-handed males and females do better in fights supporting the ‘fighter hypothesis’, which suggests they have a greater chance of winning fights due to a ‘surprise effect’.

Researchers from the University of Manchester found that when a left-handed fighter fought a right-handed competitor, around 54 per cent of the time the left-handed fighter got a higher rating.

There was also an over-representation of left-handed boxers in the ring.  As many as 17.3 per cent of male boxers were left-handed, higher than expected as just 12.6 per cent of males are left-handed in the general population.

The same was seen in female boxers.  The study said 12.6 per cent of them were left-handed, compared to 9.9 per cent of females in the general population.

Thomas Richardson told The Times: ‘In boxing it can be a whole different game if your opponent is left-handed.  It is even more difficult if a person switches stance, which left-handed fighters can do.’

The results could provide an explanation for the success of several boxers that use the 'southpaw' position.

The greatest boxer in Welsh history, Joe Calzaghe, who held a WBO title for 10 years, stood with his right hand and right foot forward before a match.  This could have been key to his success, allowing him to make ‘surprise’ moves that right-handed boxers were not as able to defend.

Manny Pacquiao, or Pac-Man, from the Philippines, is also a left-handed boxer who has enjoyed enormous success.  He has won boxing titles in more weight classes than any other boxer in history.  He won the World Boxing Association and IBF featherweight titles, and became The Ring's Fighter of the Year in 2006 and 2008.

The Roman Emperor Commodus, who famously enjoyed fighting in the Roman arena, was also left-handed, and proud of it.  According to Dio Cassius, he had the head of the Colossus of Nero replaced with his own, and added an inscription saying he was ‘the only left-handed fighter to conquer twelve times one thousand men.’

The full findings of the study were published in the online pre-print repository BioRxiv and have yet to be peer reviewed.

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It seems not even next-generation 5G networks are safe from security flaws.

A team of researchers have discovered three new vulnerabilities in both 4G and 5G networks that could allow anyone to intercept your phone calls, fake text messages and track your location.  The study comes as carriers and phonemakers are preparing for 5G networks, which promise faster speeds, to launch around the world.

Researchers from Purdue University and University of Iowa conducted the study and will present their findings at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium in San Diego on 26 February.

'Any person with a little knowledge of cellular paging protocols can carry out this attack,' Syed Rafiul Hussain, one of the paper's co-authors, told TechCrunch.

The worst of the three attacks, called Torpedo, takes advantage of a flaw in a network's paging protocol.  Paging protocols comprise the system that notifies phones of incoming calls and texts.

The researchers discovered that if they placed and cancelled a flurry of phone calls over a short time period, it would send a paging message without alerting the phone owner to an incoming call.  In doing so, the attacker is able to track the victim's location.

To carry out the Torpedo attack, all it takes is a $200 device to place the calls, according to the Telegraph.

All four major U.S. carriers - AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, are reportedly affected by the Torpedo flaw.

Hussain told TechCrunch that one major carrier is also affected by the second flaw, called Piercer.  It's unclear if Torpedo affects mobile providers in the UK as well.

The Piercer flaw allows the attacker to associate a victim's phone number with their international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI), or a device's 'persistent identity.'  By learning their IMSI, it enables the attacker to further keep track of the user's location.

The final vulnerability, called IMSI-Cracking, is achieved via a brute force attack, wherein automated software is used to decode encrypted data.  It allows attackers to crack the device owner's IMSI on a 5G network and enables all kinds of snooping, including those used by 'stingrays,' or tracking devices used by police to monitor someone's real-time location.

What's more, researchers said that more advanced devices can even send fake messages, listen in on phone calls and intercept text messages.

The flaws were reported to the GSMA, which sets the telecom industry's cellular standards, according to TechCrunch.  GSMA is able to fix the Torpedo and IMSI-Cracking vulnerabilities, while the Piercer flaw can only be fixed by carriers.

Extracted from: www.dailymail.co.uk

The telecoms industry is gearing up for 5G, the next generation wireless networks which could enable new technologies such as self-driving cars and robot surgeons.  But it may be raising expectations too early.

As industry leaders gather at the Mobile World Congress trade fair in Barcelona recently, some warn consumers risk disappointment because the benefits 5G's much faster speeds and vast data capacity can provide are still a long way from becoming reality.

For example while 5G will bring near-instantaneous connectivity for smartphones and can virtually eliminate latency -- the lag-time when data is sent or received -- this 'will only be a reality in 2023-2025.  We are still in the early stages,' said Yannick Sadowy, the director for telecoms and media and consulting firm Accenture.

Before 5G becomes a reality for consumers, two transitions need to take place.  Mobile operators have to upgrade their networks with 5G gear made by companies such as China's Huawei and Finland's Nokia, and phone makers need to make handsets with built-in 5G radios that can hook up to these networks.  But analysts don't expect 5G compatible smartphones to be become widely available until the second half of 2019 and the first models will be expensive.

And it will take even longer for the geographical reach of the 5G networks which are starting to be rolled out this year to be extensive enough to let you use your 5G phone without having to rely on current 4G wireless standards for most of the time.

Mobile communications industry body GSMA, which represents nearly 800 operators, forecasts 4G will still account for 45 per cent of worldwide mobile subscriptions in 2025, while 5G would only be at 15 per cent.

'5G will still be a reasonably small technology in 2025 but it will have a good pickup.  One needs to be patient,' GSMA director general Mats Granryd told AFP.

GSMA estimates capital expenditure on mobile networks worldwide would be $500 billion over the three years between 2018 to 2020.

To get the new technologies which 5G promises to unlock 'you first need a network which will cost a fortune to deploy and has an uncertain return on investment.  The risk of disappointment exists,' said IHS Markit analyst Stephane Teral.

Expectations are high.  More than half of consumers in developed countries, 54 per cent, expect 5G networks to deliver faster speeds, and one in four expect it to deliver 'innovative new services', according to a survey carried out by the GSMA last year.

5G 'will be a revolutionary technology but in the long term, it will take time to see everything which it will allow one to do with a smartphone but it will surprise us,' said Dexter Thilien, an analyst at Fitch Solutions.

Telecoms operators in Europe appear to have learned from the mistake of overpromising when 3G networks were first introduced in the continent in the early 2000s and have not played up 5G, although the same cannot be said for operators in the United States, he added.

At the time there was much hype around 3G but the first iPhone, compatible with the third-generation cellular network, only came out in 2008.

The main benefit for telecom operators in the short term will come from the surge in data consumption on the part of their consumers which 5G networks will spark, said Thomas Coudry, a telecoms analyst at Bryan, Garnier & Co.

As wireless speeds have increased over the past decade, consumers' data usage has soared.  And 5G could usher in a world of ultra-high definition video on smartphones and a host of apps which will lead to even higher data usage.

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Digital came into play in 1991 with 2G and SMS and MMS capabilities were launched.

Since then, the capabilities and carrying capacity for the mobile network has increased massively.

More data can be transferred from one point to another via the mobile network quicker than ever.

5G is expected to be launched in 2020 and will be up to 1,000 times faster than the currently used 4G.

Whilst the jump from 3G to 4G was most beneficial for mobile browsing and working, the step to 5G will be so fast they become almost real-time.

That means mobile operations will be just as fast as office-based internet connections.

Potential uses for 5g include:

• Simultaneous translation of several languages in a party conference call
• Self-driving cars can stream movies, music and navigation information from the cloud
• A full length 8GB film can be downloaded in six seconds.

5G is expected to be so quick and efficient it is possible it could start the end of wired connections.  By the end of 2020, industry estimates claim 50 billion devices will be connected to 5G.

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Scientists are closely monitoring a series of cracks running through Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf as they prepare for it to release an iceberg roughly 30 times the size of Manhattan.

Satellite images captured at the end of January show a rift that’s steadily been cutting northward is now nearing the edge of the shelf.  Once it reaches this point, an area of ice estimated to be at least 1700 square kilometers will break free – or, enough to envelope all five boroughs of New York City more than two times over.

According to NASA, the crack in the Brunt Ice Shelf was stable for nearly 35 years before it recently began accelerating at staggering rates, hitting up to 4 kilometers per year.

While it won’t be the largest iceberg to split off from Antarctica by a long shot, it’s the biggest chunk the Brunt Ice Shelf has lost since observations began over 100 years ago in 1915.  And, the ice shelf is the site of year-round research operations at the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley Station, sparking concerns for the humans who work there.

Close-up views of the satellite images show the centre rift is stretching across the ice shelf where it will soon meet perpendicularly with two other features: McDonald Ice Rumples and the Halloween Crack.

As of now, the researchers say it’s unclear what exactly will happen.  But, comparisons of images captured by Landsat 8 this year and Landsat 5 in 1986 show just how dramatically the situation has changed.

Joe MacGregor, a glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center said: ‘The near-term future of Brunt Ice Shelf likely depends on where the existing rifts merge relative to the McDonald Ice Rumples.  If they merge upstream (south) of the McDonald Ice Rumples, then it’s possible that the ice shelf will be destabilized.’

The calving event will affect both the remaining ice shelf and potentially the scientific infrastructure at the remote site.  And, the recent changes in the rift’s activity only add to the questions.

Despite a long period of slow evolution, the past few years have seen significant acceleration.

NASA/UMBC glaciologist Chris Shuman said: ‘We don’t have a clear picture of what drives the shelf’s periods of advance and retreat through calving.  The likely future loss of the ice on the other side of the Halloween Crack suggests that more instability is possible, with associated risk to Halley VIa.’

Extracted from: www.dailymail.co.uk