Author: admin

• US Air Force Measures Potato Cannon Muzzle Velocities

  Ever wondered what fuel fires potatoes out of a cannon the fastest? The US Air Force now has the answer

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Stephen Wolfram on Personal Analytics

  The creator of the Wolfram Alpha search engine explains why he thinks your life should be measured, analyzed, and improved.

  Don’t be surprised if Stephen Wolfram, the renowned complexity theorist, software company CEO, and night owl, wants to schedule a work call with you at 9 p.m. In fact, after a decade of logging every phone call he makes, Wolfram knows the exact probability he’ll be on the phone with someone at that time: 39 percent.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Honeypots Lure Industrial Hackers Into the Open

  Dummy water-plant control systems rapidly attracted attention from hackers who tinkered with their settings—suggesting it happens to real industrial systems, too.

  Just 18 hours after security researcher Kyle Wilhoit connected two dummy industrial control systems and one real one to the Internet, someone began attacking one of them, and things soon got worse. Over the course of the experiment, conducted during December 2012, a series of sophisticated attacks were mounted on the “honeypots,” which Wilhoit set up to find out how often malicious hackers target industrial infrastructure.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Pentagon Points Finger at Chinese Army Over Computer Attacks

  A Department of Defense report says that China’s military is infiltrating, and could attack, U.S. government computer networks.

  For years now security companies have described that attacks originating in China routinely infiltrate and steal data from U.S. corporate networks, and that similar activity targets U.S. government systems, too. But even as politicians and government officials have begun to speak more freely about the issue (see “U.S. Power Grids, Water Plants a Hacking Target”), they have stopped short of making specific accusations about who is responsible. In April, President Obama’s national security adviser Tom Donilon talked vaguely of attacks “emanating from China.”

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• The Cause of High Blood Pressure Revealed By Computer Modelling

  Computer simulations show that high blood pressure can be entirely explained by arterial stiffening as we age, say researchers

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Has Big Data Made Anonymity Impossible?

  As digital data expands, anonymity may become a mathematical impossibility.

  In 1995, the European Union introduced privacy legislation that defined “personal data” as any information that could identify a person, directly or indirectly. The legislators were apparently thinking of things like documents with an identification number, and they wanted them protected just as if they carried your name.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Wind Turbines, Battery Included, Can Keep Power Supplies Stable

  Advances like GE’s new hybrid wind turbines could make renewable energy more practical.

  GE recently sold the first of a new line of “hybrid” wind turbines that comes with a battery attached. The turbine’s battery can store the equivalent of less than one minute of the turbine operating at full power. But, by pairing the battery with advanced wind-forecasting algorithms, wind farm operators could guarantee a certain amount of power output for up to an hour.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Why It’s Okay that Tesla Makes Cars for Rich People

  Tesla’s innovations could make EVs more competitive.

  The U.S. Department of Energy has been criticized for loaning money to Tesla Motors because the company makes cars that only rich people can afford. That’s probably part of the reason Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, made such a big deal last week in saying that, with a new payment plan, and figuring in savings from gas prices, about 10 percent of the U.S. population can afford a new Model S, up from about 1 percent without the plan.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• How to Avoid Another Flash Crash

  How to monitor an incredibly complicated, increasingly automated system that thrives on secrecy.

  Today marks the three-year anniversary of the 2010 Flash Crash, when the U.S. stock market lost 1,000 points in a matter of minutes before recovering most of these loses a few minutes later.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Startup Taps Quantum Encryption for Cybersecurity

  GridCom Technologies says quantum cryptography can work to make the electricity grid control systems secure.

  The notion of harnessing the physics of quantum mechanics for a massive leap in computing power is firmly in the realm of science. But many people believe that applying these techniques to secure commercial communications is far more feasible.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Government Lab Reveals Quantum Internet Operated Continuously For Over Two Years

  A quantum internet capable of sending perfectly secure messages has been running at Los Alamos National Labs for the last two and a half years, say researchers

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Broadcast Video Will Soon Be Packed into Smartphone Signals

  Putting broadcast signals within LTE mobile network technology could open up bandwidth and disrupt business models.

  If you want to watch video on your phone or tablet, you’ll find that many networks can’t always serve up the data fast enough. So your choices are either to find a Wi-Fi hotspot, take your chances on congestion and high data charges on a cellular network, or plug in a special dongle that picks up TV broadcasts (see “Broadcast TV Aims for Your Smartphone”).

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• This Box Keeps Information Flowing During a Crisis

  The creators of Ushahidi, a crisis mapping platform, have developed hardware that keeps wireless communication going in the midst of chaos.

  The people behind Ushahidi, a software platform for communicating information during a crisis, have now developed what they are dubbing a “backup generator for the Internet”—a device that can connect with any network in the world, provide eight hours of wireless connectivity battery life, and can be programmed for new applications, such as remote sensing.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Other Interesting arXiv Papers This Week

  The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint server

  The Extragalactic Background Light (EBL): A Probe of Fundamental Physics and a Record of Structure Formation in the Universe

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A 3-D Printed Gun

  With 3-D printing poised to go mainstream, will we soon all be able to print a gun?

  I don’t particularly care for guns. The first and last one I fired was a .22 rifle when I was 12 years old, at Camp Friendship summer camp in Virginia. I happen to be the sort that believes the world would be safer with fewer guns, not more.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• How Today’s Sensors Could Make Tomorrow’s Cars Safer

  Sensors in cars today could do more to reduce traffic accidents, and costs are coming down.

  Driverless cars haven’t hit the roads yet, but computers are already helping to slow down or stop a car in situations when a crash is imminent. Still, just like people, these systems require time to react. Using sensor technology already in its vehicles today, Toyota is aiming to reduce the impact of accidents happening at faster speeds.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• NIMH Will Drop Widely Used Psychiatry Manual

  NIMH director says the DSM lacks biological validity in its diagnoses: “Patients with mental disorders deserve better.”

  Just weeks before the American Psychiatric Association is expected to publish its new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, the director of National Institute of Mental Health’s director announced via blog post that his institution will be “re-orienting its research away from DSM categories.”

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Facebook Will Make the Most Popular App for Google Glass

  Facebook’s CEO has signalled interest in Google’s wearable computer, and the social network’s app would likely be as popular as it is on other devices.

  There are lots of unknowns about Google Glass, the company’s wearable display-camera-computer gadget just trickling out to early testers. But one thing is fairly certain: Facebook will be the most popular app for Glass.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Twitter Tests a Toolkit That Puts the Internet in Things

  Platforms that combine networking with user interfaces will help companies test post-PC ideas.

  Why should only computers, smartphones, and tablets be able to send a tweet? In the hopes of challenging this idea, Twitter recently developed a whimsical tweet-enabled cuckoo clock. It uses a toolkit that could help other designers and engineers test ways for new products to contribute to, and feed on, the social network’s chatter. Twitter created the clock, called #Flock, last month in partnership with London-based technology consultancy Berg; the clock responds to incoming tweets, @-messages, and retweets by animating small wooden puppets.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Amount of Oil We Can Recover Keeps Growing

  The U.S. Geological Survey doubles its estimate for the size of a huge U.S. oil and gas resource.

  The U.S. Geological Survey keeps increasing its estimate for the amount of oil under North Dakota. In 2008, the organization estimated that oil deposits in part of the Williston Basin—an area that includes parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana—had 3.65 billion barrels of oil yet to be discovered. That was 25 times higher than its previous estimate, made in 1995, of about 150 million barrels. Now it’s increased its estimate by a similar amount, raising it 3.75 billion barrels to 7.4 billion barrels. The total is a little more than the amount the United States consumes in one year.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Will Utilities Embrace Distributed Energy?

  Disruptive technological changes are at work but utilities are hamstrung by outdates business models and regulations.

  A homeowner who puts solar panels on his roof immediately slashes his monthly electricity bill and gains a measure of independence from the utility. As more distributed energy technologies take hold, utilities in the U.S. are wondering out loud what their future holds.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Data Made Me Do It

  The next frontier for big data is the individual.

  Would you trade your personal data for a peek into the future? Andreas Weigend did.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Intel's New CEO Faces a Major Challenge

  Intel’s new chief executive must reverse the last decade of declining market share.

  Intel’s new CEO Brian M. Krzanich, elected by the board today to replace retiring chief executive Paul Otellini, is a longtime Intel insider whose vision must now guide the company through a time of tumult in the computing industry.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Qualcomm Proposes a Cell-Phone Network by the People, for the People

  Mobile network speeds in urban areas could dramatically increase if consumers connected small, public base stations to their home broadband.

  Mobile chipmaker Qualcomm and some U.S. wireless carriers are investigating an idea that would see small cellular base stations installed in homes to serve passing smartphone users. That approach is believed to be a more efficient way of meeting the rising demand for data and fixing patchy coverage than building more traditional cell-phone towers.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• First Tunguska Meteorite Fragments Discovered

  Nobody knows what exploded over Siberia in 1908, but the discovery of the first fragments could finally solve the mystery.

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• With Florida Project, the Smart Grid Has Arrived

  Smart grid technology has been implemented in many places, but Florida’s new deployment is the first full-scale system.

  The first comprehensive and large scale smart grid is now operating. The $800 million project, built in Florida, has made power outages shorter and less frequent, and helped some customers save money, according to the utility that operates it.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Google Glass and the Rise of POV

  Will Google Glass revive a controversial cinematographic technique?

  The other day I wrote about how I was skeptical about advertisements ever finding a home on Google Glass, largely for reasons of “screen real estate” (“reality real estate” may be more apt). I urged readers to take my argument with a grain of salt, having neither sampled Google Glass nor having seen a simulation of it. Yesterday, Google finally posted a video introduction to the Google Glass experience. Check it out here:

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Maker of World’s Most Boring Car Stops Making Cars

  Coda Automotive’s uninspired EV failed to rouse customer interest.

  The U.S. Department of Energy is being criticized for lending large sums of money to companies that went on to fail, like Solyndra, or appear to be on the cusp of failure, like Fisker Automotive (see “Why Tesla Survived and Fisker Won’t”). But here’s a company it turned down, and for good reason.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Twitter Account to Watch If You're Worried About Climate Change

  The planet’s rising atmospheric CO2 levels may hit a symbolic milestone this month.

  This May, the folks behind a Twitter account started four months ago are preparing to tweet an event that the planet has not seen in an estimated four million years.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Genomic Study Spots Which Tumors Are Deadliest

  Genomics signatures in uterine cancers could offer clues to prognosis.

  The first comprehensive genomic analysis of endometrial tumors divides the cancer into four subtypes and suggests potential changes to current treatment paradigms. The study, published on Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature, is the latest result of the Cancer Genome Atlas, a U.S.-funded effort to improve cancer treatment with better diagnoses and targeted drug treatments.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Anonymity of Personal Genome Project Broken by Privacy Experts

  Privacy experts have identified participants in the Personal Genome Project using “de-identified” data.

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Apps for Finding New Tunes, with a Little Help from Your Friends

  Twitter #music, EQuala, and Piki help you share and discover new music with friends, but they’re not all winners.

  I’ve been stuck in a music rut for a long time, listening to the same bands and songs over and over without adding many newcomers to the mix. It’s not that I don’t want new tunes; I’m just bad at discovering them.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Motherlode of Cell Phone Data-Mining Research

  At conference starting Wednesday, huge trove of research papers point to enormous possibilities, but privacy issues remain.

  Cell phones generate tremendous amounts of human mobility and other data that can be particularly useful in the developing world to redesign transportation networks (see “African Bus Routes Redrawn Using Cell-Phone Data”) and provide a boon to epidemiology (see “Big Data from Cheap Phones”).

  
  
  
  
  
  

• How a Cheap Plastic Film Can Give Your Smartphone a 3-D Screen

  A plastic smartphone screen cover patterned with tiny lenses could help mobile 3-D take off.

  Last week, a company in Singapore began shipping $35 plastic screen protectors for the iPhone 5. These are no ordinary screen protectors, though—each has half a million tiny lenses precisely patterned on its surface, which can turn an ordinary phone into a device capable of displaying 3-D images and video, no glasses required.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Ghost's Blogging Dashboard Doesn't Need to Exist

  Are dashboards really the best way to deliver analytics to people who want to “just blog”?

  I can’t make sense of website analytics at all. When I go to my personal blog, I want to just blog, not pore over dials and meters like a Con Ed repairman. Which made me curious about Ghost, a new open-source platform expressly designed as, as the creators put it, “just a blogging platform.” It’s pretty darn gorgeous. And right there in the middle of their pitch is their so-called “revolutionary” analytics dashboard, which also looks great: it’s flat (in 2013, you gotta be flat, yo), it’s got great typography, it’s got Feltron-esque infographics. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Why Big Companies Are Investing in a Service that Listens to Phone Calls

  A startup that converts conversations to text so it can offer instant information gets financing from Telefónica, Samsung, and Intel.

  Would you give your wireless carrier permission to listen in on your phone calls? Telefónica, one of the world’s largest mobile carriers, is testing a technology that can understand conversations and quickly pull up relevant information. If that info turns out to be useful, customers may want to invite it to listen in.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Carbon Nanotube Sensor Detects Glucose in Saliva

  Painful finger-prick blood tests for diabetics could become a thing of the past, say physicists who have built a sensor that measures glucose in saliva

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• African Bus Routes Redrawn Using Cell-Phone Data

  The largest-ever release of mobile-phone data yields a model for fixing bus routes.

  Researchers at IBM, using movement data collected from millions of cell-phone users in Ivory Coast in West Africa, have developed a new model for optimizing an urban transportation system.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Updating Nest: Smarter, Sexier, and Savvier than Ever

  Bringing ordinary consumers into the pro-environmental fold is Nest’s great achievement.

  Nest, the only company that has ever gotten journalists to use the words “sexy” and “thermostat” in the same sentence (see “A Smart, Sexy–Thermostat?!”), today announces a sexy thermostat software update for its sexy thermostat hardware. As the Verge and others report, Version 3.5 of Nest’s software brings data to solve a few basic problems. For one thing, the Nest thermostat is now smarter about knowing when its being directly hit by sunlight (which could lead it to think your house is hotter than it is). Nest is also getting smarter about fighting mold, automatically turning off the AC to keep things dry in periods of high humidity. And Nest’s Auto-away feature has reportedly grown stronger, too, so it’s better at saving power when you’re out of the house. Last week, Nest also announced some features that help reduce energy demand during peak periods (that only rolled out with a few partner grids).

  
  
  
  
  
  

• What Will Terms-of-Service Agreements Look Like in the Age of Brain-Computer Interfaces?

  As consumer tech companies bring neural interfaces ever closer to the mainstream, human-friendly legalese could become a crucial part of the user experience.

  The New York Times recently claimed that brain-computer interfaces (BCI) are headed for the mainstream market sooner rather than later. Whether these kinds of “think it and the computer does it” UIs will be practical and useful enough to achieve adoption outside the “glasshole” set is up for debate. But one thing’s for sure: consumer products mean legalese–a lot of it. Few of us read the Terms of Service (TOS) agreements associated with the bevy of networked technology we blindly rely on. We only tend to notice or care about TOS when something breaks or freaks us out after the fact (as Instagram found out last year). But when a consumer product claims to jack itself right into your mind? That might just make people want to actually read these contracts up front. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Google Now Finally Heads to the iPhone

  Google’s smart personal assistant hits iOS, but will users care?

  Google Now, which offers users automatically updated, personalized information via a series of on-screen “cards,” just made the jump from Android to the iPhone, hoping to woo fans of Apple’s Siri. iOS users can get Google Now as an update to Google’s existing Search app; you just swipe a finger upward on the app’s main screen to pull it up.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Cancer Drugs Should Cost Less, Say Doctors

  Doctors argue that some drug companies are charging too much for their cancer drugs, to the detriment of patients.

  A group of more than 100 cancer experts have called out drug companies for the high prices of cancer drugs. The doctors, all specialists in chronic myelogenous leukemia or CML,  published their opinion on what they call “astronomical” prices on Friday in the scientific journal Blood.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Fuel Cell That Runs on Fire

  Berkeley Labs spin-off Points Source Power develops fuel-cell charger for Kenya powered by cookstove fires.

  In trying to create a power source for off-grid villagers in Kenya, entrepreneur and scientist Craig Jacobson has picked a seemingly improbable technology–a fuel cell.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Simple Trick Turns Commercial Polymer Into World's Toughest Fibre

  A materials scientist has created the world’s toughest fibre using a mechanism based on a slip knot

   

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Social Media Censorship Offers Clues to China’s Plans

  What gets removed from China’s social networks shows how censorship strategies are advancing, and can even hint at the government’s plans.

  In February last year, political scandal rocked China when the fast-rising politician Bo Xilai suddenly demoted his top lieutenant, who then accused his boss of murder, triggering Bo’s political downfall.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Energy Department Backs New Way to Make Diesel from Corn

  A novel chemical pathway could address the high cost of transporting cellulosic materials to make diesel fuel.

  Within a year, a pilot plant in Indiana will start converting the stalks and leaves of corn plants into diesel and jet fuel. The plant will use a novel approach involving acid as well as processes borrowed from the oil and chemical industry, which its developers hope will make fuel at prices cheap enough to compete with petroleum.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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