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• Other Interesting arXiv Papers This Week

  The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint server

  The Potential For Photosynthesis In Hydrothermal Vents: A New Avenue For Life In The Universe?

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A QWERTY Keyboard for Your Wrist

  Zoomboard—a miniscule keyboard that zooms when you tap it—could make it easier to type on smart watches.

  It seems like everyone is building a smart watch lately. Pebble ran a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year for its e-paper watch; Samsung has confirmed it is making one; and both Apple and Microsoft are thought to be developing their own versions, too (see “Smart Watches”).

  
  
  
  
  
  

• How to Make Gas-Guzzling Vans into Efficient Hybrids

  A Boston-based company shows how it converts delivery trucks and other commercial fleet vehicles into hybrids.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Internet Everywhere–But on Your Terms

  I hate feeling tethered to the internet. So why do I love FreedomPop?

  Rarely do I, even in casual conversation, refer to something as the “best thing ever.” And yet I’m fairly certain I’ve used that epithet a few dozen times in gushing to friends, acquaintances, and strangers about my latest toy: the Freedom Stick 4G from FreedomPop. “Go ahead!” I dare them, as they scatter to the edge of the sidewalk. “Try and name a better thing!”

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Incompleteness of the Harm Principle

  A response to Jason Pontin’s essay on free speech.

  Jason Pontin has written a perceptive analysis of a timeless question:  what changes in law need to be adopted in order to account for technological advances (see “Free Speech in the Era of Its Technological Amplification”)? In answering that question, he takes the right approach by taking up John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, which at its core makes this claim:

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A New Computer Screen Reaches Out to Touch You

  An experimental new touch screen, the Obake, has a stretchable surface that to reacts user interaction in new ways.

  An inexpensive new prototype device called the Obake adds a new dimension to touch screen technology. The surface of the device, developed by Dhairya Dand and Rob Hemsley of the MIT Media Lab, can react to how it’s being used by reaching out toward the user. It was relatively simple to make: the researchers used an open source software framework to enable the screen to react; the hardware costs between $50 and $60, Dand says.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Yahoo's Weather App Has No "Cool" Interactions–and That's Amazing

  It’s pretty, yes. But more importantly, it doesn’t force you to interact with it.

  I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but Yahoo’s new weather app for iOS is great. Is it “innovative”? No. Well, actually it is. Its innovation is in being as non-“innovative” in its interaction design as possible. No fussy gestures, no neato animations, no infographics to “explore”. No “interactivity” at all, really. It’s more a piece of graphic design than interactive design–and my God, I wish more apps were just like it. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Think Gestural Interactions Suck? Design Your Own

  Creating your own gestural patterns could make these interactions easier to remember, researchers say.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Another Thin-Film Solar Casualty?

  Niche provider SoloPower, which received state aid, is seeking an investor to keep operating.

  Need a reminder of how brutal the solar provider industry is? Consider the recent history of SoloPower. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Two Ways To Fix The Typing-on-Touchscreens Problem

  One asks us to change our behavior; the other changes its behavior to fit us.

  Considering how much typing on a glass touchscreen blows in comparison to using hard keys, it’s easy to imagine how Blackberry saw the first iPhone back in 2007 and thought, “Bah, this isn’t a threat.” We all know how that turned out. But typing on glass still blows, and voice dictation on mobile devices (while pretty awesome) isn’t a good fit for every situation. So how can we un-blowify touchscreen typing? Two interesting software-design approaches have recently emerged: one rethinks how the keyboard looks, while the other rethinks how the keyboard acts. (Spoiler alert: I think the latter has more potential.) 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Google Fiber’s Ripple Effect

  The threat of superfast Google Fiber is causing other Internet providers to crank up their own offerings.

  As Google plans to expand its ultrafast Internet service from a fledging effort in Kansas City to Austin, Texas, and Provo, Utah, evidence is emerging that the company has forced broadband competitors into offering dramatically better service.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• What Happened When One Man Pinged the Whole Internet

  A home science experiment that probed billions of Internet devices reveals that thousands of industrial and business systems offer remote access to anyone.

  You probably haven’t heard of HD Moore, but up to a few weeks ago every Internet device in the world, perhaps including some in your own home, was contacted roughly three times a day by a stack of computers that sit overheating his spare room. “I have a lot of cooling equipment to make sure my house doesn’t catch on fire,” says Moore, who leads research at computer security company Rapid7. In February last year he decided to carry out a personal census of every device on the Internet as a hobby. “This is not my day job; it’s what I do for fun,” he says.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Why Tech Companies May Really Want All Those Extra Visas

  The shortage of workers in the IT industry may be overblown, a new study claims.

  Internet and software executives are heavily lobbying for immigration reform legislation that would increase the pool of high-skilled foreign citizens who can work in the U.S., many receiving what are known as H-1B visas. They argue that a U.S. skills shortage is slowing growth in the industry. For example, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a recent a Washington Post editorial, says that each H-1B employee creates “two or three more American jobs in return.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Bird Flu: On the Move and Hard to Track

  The H7N9 virus is deadly to humans but does not present symptoms in birds, which makes it more difficult to control.

  A 53-year-old Taiwanese man has contracted the H7N9 influenza virus, most likely while on a business trip to China, reported the New York Times on Wednesday. This is the first time the virus has been reported outside of China, where that country’s Health and Family Planning Commission says the new strain has infected more than 100 people, 23 fatally, according to CNN.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Google Trends Could Predict Stock Market Moves, Study Shows

  A paper found that trading based on search query volumes for the term “debt” could yield large returns.

  This week’s fleeting stock market crash prompted by a false report from the Associated Press’s hacked Twitter account has focused attention again on the growing Wall Street practice of mining news and social data to make trades.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Nanoscale Pressure Sensors Mimic Human Skin

  New research shows how arrays of tiny electronic devices can achieve human-skin-like sensitivity to mechanical force.

  Arrays of transistors made of nanowires could form the basis of a new class of devices nearly as sensitive to mechanical force as human skin is, according to research published today in Science.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Physicists Build World's First "Magnetic Hose" For Transmitting Magnetic Fields

  Magnetic fields decay rapidly and so have never been transmitted over long distances. Until now …

   

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Solution to Solar Power Intermittency

  Converting methane to an alternative fuel using energy from the sun could reduce carbon-dioxide emissions.

  Burning natural gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide as burning coal, but it still produces large amounts of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. A novel device being developed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) could reduce those emissions by 20 percent by using heat from the sun to convert natural gas to an alternative fuel called syngas, a lower carbon fuel.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Life's Trajectory Seen Through Facebook Data

  Data donated by Facebook users to Stephen Wolfram yields interesting patterns that may reveal how people change over time.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Simple Way to Turn Any LCD into a Touch Screen

  Electromagnetic interference can turn a plain LCD into a touch screen on the cheap.

  Electromagnetic interference can screw up cell phone and radio reception. But it may also be the key to cheaply transforming regular LCD screens into touch- and gesture-sensing displays, according to recent research.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Why We Don’t Need Fisker

  The failing maker of luxury hybrids is in the spotlight in DC, but technologically speaking, who cares if Fisker fails?

  Congress is trying answer some important questions today about whether the government made mistakes in handling a loan to Fisker Automotive, a company that’s now teetering on the edge of bankruptcy—the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is holding a hearing on the subject. But when looked at from the perspective of innovation, Fisker doesn’t really matter much.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Wanted: A Print Button for 3-D Objects

  A lack of accessible design tools is holding back 3-D printing.

  The largest companies in 3-D printing are racing to simplify design software so that it can become as easy to make an object as it is to send a document to a printer.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• How Tumblr Forces Advertisers to Get Creative

  What the blog network’s monetization plans say about the future of publishing.

  Tumblr, sometimes unfairly shorthanded as the “hipster blogging service,” is now the ninth most visited site in the U.S. It’s a favorite of mobile phone users–to wit, Tumblr has even put out a dedicated app on Windows Phone 8, just this week. And yet Tumblr still isn’t profitable, six years in.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Nano-scale Optical Antennas Could Have a Big Impact

  A lab at Harvard is developing materials with potentially revolutionary optical characteristics.

  The antenna, a century-old technology, is everywhere. Listening to the radio? Making a call on your cell phone? Surfing the web over Wi-Fi? The antenna made it all possible.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• More Reasons to Clean Up Tweets

  Stock plunge another reminder of social media’s power – and the need for fact-checking

  Yesterday saw the most extreme example possible of why rapid crowdsourced corrections of Tweets and other social media (see “Preventing Misinformation From Spreading Through Social Media”) are critically needed– an issue that came to the fore last week as misinformation spread about the Boston bombings.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Your Body Does Not Want to Be an Interface

  Have you heard that Google Glass will let you snap photos by winking? Why that’s still going to feel weird.

  The first real-world demo of Google Glass’s user interface made me laugh out loud. Forget the tiny touchpad on your temples you’ll be fussing with, or the constant “OK Glass” utterances-to-nobody: the supposedly subtle “gestural” interaction they came up with–snapping your chin upwards to activate the glasses, in a kind of twitchy, tech-augmented version of the “bro nod”–made the guy look like he was operating his own body like a crude marionette. The most “intuitive” thing we know how to do–move our own bodies–reduced to an awkward, device-mediated pantomime: this is “getting technology out of the way”? 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• First Enzyme-Based Memory Created in the Lab

  Some clever biochemistry has led to the world’s first enzyme-based memory capable of learning, say biochemists

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Questions over Gene Patents Shake Diagnostics Industry

  The impending Supreme Court ruling on gene patents is creating uncertainty in the molecular diagnostics sector.

  At this week’s Biotechnology Industry Organization show in Chicago, a panel of law experts bemoaned the recent Supreme Court hearings on whether individual genes can be patented, saying there was no sign that anyone involved in the case truly understood the technology or the business implications of their arguments. That’s disturbing, because the decision could have important effects on industries including the developing field of molecular diagnostics.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Apple’s R&D Spending Rises, But It’s Still Small Change

  Apple plans to keep inventing new product categories without much of a boost from its cash reserves.

  As its gross margins shrink and the company casts about for its next hit product categories, Apple is continuing to spend more on research and development than it has in the past (see “Can Apple Still Innovate on a Shoestring?”).

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Preventing Misinformation from Spreading through Social Media

  New platforms for fact-checking and reputation scoring aim to better channel social media’s power in the wake of a disaster.

  The online crowds weren’t always wise following the Boston Marathon bombings. For example, the online community Reddit and some Twitter users were criticized for pillorying an innocent student as a possible terrorist suspect. But some emerging technologies might be able to help knock down false reports and wring the truth from the fog of social media during crises.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Software Predicts Which Companies Are an Easy Sell

  A former Yahoo search engineer raises funds to bring sophisticated data mining and modeling to the business world.

  A startup called Infer, led by a former Yahoo search engineer, plans to help salespeople identify potential business customers by gathering useful information from news sites and the Web. For example, marketing department job postings online might be one clue of a company’s readiness to buy marketing software.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Google Joins PayPal-Backed Effort to Kill the Password

  The search giant has signed up to a consortium that wants hardware to have a role in authenticating people.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• BeagleBone Black: A Maker's Dream?

  If Arduino is too underpowered and Raspberry Pi doesn’t have enough hardware inputs for you, BeagleBone’s $45 microcontroller board will let you have your cake and eat it too.

  [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciX08ysl6LE]

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Fertilizer You Can’t Make Bombs Out Of

  A cheap way to alter ammonium nitrate fertilizer renders it unusable in IEDs.

  Mixing iron sulfate, a waste product from steel foundries, with ammonium nitrate fertilizer leads to changes in its chemical composition that keep it from detonating in homemade bombs, say researchers at Sandia National Lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The researchers devised the formula in response to a request from the Department of Defense for ways to combat the use of improvised explosive devices.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• "12 Hours of Separation" Connect Individuals on Social Networks

  Social networks can be used to track random individuals in just 12 hours provided the right incentives are on offer, say computer scientists.

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Data Sources

  Mobile phones are great sources of data—but we must be careful about privacy.

  Anyone who has worked with mobile-phone data knows how incredibly useful such information can be, even when it’s anonymous. It is amazing—but at the same time frightening—what massive quantities of spatio-temporal data points from mobile phones can tell us about ourselves, our lives, and our society in general.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Ultra-Efficient Solar Power

  Doubling the efficiency of solar devices would completely change the economics of renewable energy. Here is a design that just might make it possible.

  Harry Atwater thinks his lab can make an affordable device that produces more than twice the solar power generated by today’s panels. The feat is possible, says the Caltech professor of materials science and applied physics, because of recent advances in the ability to manipulate light at a very small scale.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Regaining Lost Brain Function

  How do you make an electronic brain prosthesis that could restore a person’s ability to form long-term memories? Recent experiments by Theodore Berger and his colleagues, including Sam Deadwyler at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and researchers at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, have begun to describe how it might be done.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Beating Cancer at Its Own Game

  Some cancer cell mutations can slow or halt tumor growth

  A typical cancer cell has hundreds of mutated genes, but only a handful, known as drivers, are responsible for cancerous traits such as uncontrolled growth. Biologists have largely ignored the other mutations, believing they had little or no impact on cancer progression.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Introduction to the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2013

  MIT Technology Review identifies the 10 most important technology milestones of the past year.

  Our definition of a breakthrough is simple: an advance that gives people powerful new ways to use technology. It could be an intuitive design that provides a useful interface (see “Smart Watches”) or experimental devices that could allow people who have suffered brain damage to once again form memories (“Memory Implants”). Some could be key to sustainable economic growth (“Additive Manufacturing” and “Supergrids”), while others could change how we communicate (“Temporary Social Media”) or think about the unborn (“Prenatal DNA Sequencing”). Some are brilliant feats of engineering (“Baxter”). Others stem from attempts to rethink longstanding problems in their fields (“Deep Learning” and “Ultra-Efficient Solar Power”). As a whole, we intend this annual list not only to tell you which technologies you need to know about, but also to celebrate the creativity that produced them.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Prenatal DNA Sequencing

  Reading the DNA of fetuses is the next frontier of the genome revolution. Do you really want to know the genetic destiny of your unborn child?

  Earlier this year Illumina, the maker of the world’s most widely used DNA sequencing machines, agreed to pay nearly half a billion dollars for Verinata, a startup in Redwood City, California, that has hardly any revenues. What Verinata does have is technology that can do something as ethically fraught as it is inevitable: sequence the DNA of a human fetus before birth.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• How To Carbon Date a Web Page

  If a web page lacks a timestamp, how do you know when it was created? A new web application could help

  Ever needed to know the age of a webpage only to discover that it lacks a timestamp saying when it was published?

  
  
  
  
  
  

• IBM Solar Dish Does Double Duty

  IBM Researchers build solar concentrator that generates electricity and enough heat for desalination or cooling.

  Cooling a supercomputer can provide clues on how to make solar power cheap, says IBM.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Enduring Technology of Coal

  Despite the need to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, the burning of coal has only been accelerating.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Multifunctional Drugs May Offer Better-Than-Additive Effects

  A startup called Catabasis is developing drugs that hit diseases at multiple targets.

  Sometimes a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The startup Catabasis Pharmaceuticals is hoping that will hold true for the multifunctional drugs it’s developing.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Novel Heating System Could Improve Electric Car’s Range

  A prototype system can heat and cool without draining battery power.

  Buyers considering an electric car must bear in mind that using battery-powered heating and air conditioning can decrease the car’s range by a third or more (see “BMW’s Solution to Limited Electric-Vehicle Range: A Gas-Powered Loaner”). A New York Times reviewer recently ran into this problem on a test drive, ending up stranded with a dead battery (see “Musk-New York Times Debate Highlights Electric Cars’ Shortcomings”).

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Other Interesting arXiv Papers This Week

  The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint server

  Tracking of Fingertips and Centres of Palm using KINECT

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Ads on Google Glass Will Never Work

  An ad delivered straight to the eyeball feels like a violation.

  Some curious information came to light this week about Google Glass. For a company that owes its solvency to advertising–95% of its revenue comes from it–remarkably, Google is planning an ad-free experience for its on-eye computing experiment. At least, for now.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Building a Picture of the Bomb Suspects through Social Network Analysis

  Police can obtain huge quantities of social network data, but must sort out the junk to glean useful information.

  Within hours of obtaining identifications of the Boston marathon bombing suspects, police likely obtained search warrants and extensive digital records from mobile phone networks and social media and e-mail providers.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• DOE to Push Development of Huge Potential Source of Greenhouse Gas Emissions

  The Department of Energy and the Alaskan Government are speeding up development of oil sands and methane hydrates.

  Many environmentalists are protesting the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline because it would help facilitate the delivery of oil from Canada’s oil sands and, they argue, increase carbon dioxide emissions. They may have more reason to worry about what’s happening in Alaska. The state’s Department of Natural Resources is teaming up with the U.S. Department of Energy to speed up production of natural gas from a resource—methane hydrate deposits–that’s far larger than the oil sands in Canada, and could in theory lead to far greater greenhouse gas emissions.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Google Floats Renewable Energy Data Center Plan

  Google tries to use its buying clout to prod utilities to offer renewable energy option.

  Google has spent more than $1 billion in solar and wind energy projects but it ultimately has no control over the fuel that produces the electricity that powers its data centers. Google today is proposing a new tariff to buy renewable energy directly from utilities, a model it hopes will help scale renewable energy for data centers and other big energy consumers.
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Samsung Demos a Tablet Controlled by Your Brain

  An easy-to-use EEG cap could expand the number of ways to interact with your mobile devices.

  One day, we may be able to check e-mail or call a friend without ever touching a screen or even speaking to a disembodied helper. Samsung is researching how to bring mind control to its mobile devices with the hope of developing ways for people with mobility impairments to connect to the world. The ultimate goal of the project, say researchers in the company’s Emerging Technology Lab, is to broaden the ways in which all people can interact with devices.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Longer Lasting Phone? Google's Larry Page Says It's Coming

  Improved battery life and durability could be big selling points for new phones from Motorola.

  In his January earnings call, Google CEO Larry Page complained that our phones died too quickly and broke too easily. On Google’s next quarterly earnings call today, he cited the same concerns and said new products being cooked up at Motorola Mobility would address them. Google acquired for $12.5 billion last May (see “What Ideas Does Google Have Brewing at Motorola?”).

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Digital Public Library of America Opens its Doors

  A new website is the start of a bold project to digitize America’s cultural heritage.

  The Digital Public Library of America, an ambitious, troubled effort to make the America’s entire literary heritage universally accessible, opened its doors today.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Solar Cooling With Photonic Reflector Panel

  Stanford researchers conceive of panel that ejects building heat into space.

  Stanford researchers are developing rooftop panels that cool buildings by sending heat back into space, a technique that could be more efficient than running an air conditioner from solar panels. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• How Facial Recognition Tech Could Help Trace Terrorism Suspects

  The FBI could use software to help identify suspects, and more advanced techniques are around the corner.

  The FBI appealed to the public Thursday for help identifying two men shown in pixilated photos and video footage who are suspected of involvement in Monday’s bomb attacks in Boston.

  The two men, now identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, brothers originally from Chechnya, were involved in a dramatic shootout with police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Thursday night. The pair robbed a 7/11 and killed an MIT police officer before hijacking a car and engaging police in pitched battles in the suburb of Watertown. The older of the two men, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed during a shootout with police while his younger brother, Dzhokhar, remains on the run as of Friday morning.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• uBiome Will Catalog Your Microbes, Again and Again

  Your genome may not change, but your microbiome will.

  Sequencing startup uBiome marked its next phase today with the launch of its new sales site where customers can order a swab kit for checking on the bacteria living in their gut, mouth, nose, genitals, or behind the ear.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Steve Jobs Patented an Ad-Supported Operating System – Facebook Built One

  In 1999, Steve jobs toyed with the idea of launching a free, ad-supported version of the Mac operating system, and in 2008 he filed a patent on a version of the idea. Microsoft considered making an ad-supported version of Windows in both 2004 and 2005. Neither company tried that tactic, but the idea of pushing ads in return for an operating system is soon to get a real try out, in Facebook’s new app for Android phones, Home.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Pearls And The Puzzle of How They Form Perfect Spheres

  Physicists have finally solved the problem of how pearls form almost perfect spheres–they rotate as they grow

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Intel’s Dubious Plan to Take Over TV

  Slumping PC sales and a changing server market are maiming Intel. But its plan to sell services for the home’s biggest screen is a long shot.

  When Intel lifted the veil from its stealthy media division in February, many outsiders scratched their heads. Why was the chip manufacturer, which has tried and failed to sell consumer products before, trying to launch a TV service, one of the trickiest consumer markets of all?

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Have You Embarrassed Yourself Online?

  Many web services offer an accidental megaphone. They need to protect us from ourselves.

  I haven’t used Facebook’s Groups feature, but today brings news that the company is boosting its visibility by adding the section to users’ Timeline pages. On some intuitive level, this bothers me: Groups is about having private conversations among friends and colleagues, reportedly. Yet the Timeline is one of the most visible, public parts of a Facebook user’s page. So what gives?

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Renewables Can’t Keep Up with the Growth in Coal Use Worldwide

  An International Energy Agency report calls for more research, carbon price, to help renewables compete.

  Despite remarkable growth, solar and wind power aren’t making a dent in carbon emissions, says a new report from the International Energy Agency. Coal consumption is growing too fast to offset any gains from renewables.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Social Networking Technology Born Female

  Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s push to put more women in leadership roles has spawned a new social software tool.

  To the extent that a company has a personality, much of Facebook’s can be traced back to the fact that its creator and most of its early team were nerdy Harvard programmers. As an undergraduate at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg started Facemash, the very first version of Facebook, as a tool that upset many campus women (and men) by comparing their looks in online photos that he did not have permission to repost. At the time, the Harvard Crimson cited campus groups Fuerza Latina and the Association of Black Harvard Women voicing their anger to a familiarly apologetic Zuckerberg. He took the site down under pressure, but the rest is history.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Cracking Rock to Get More from Geothermal Fields

  An enhanced geothermal project fractures hot rocks at unproductive wells, an approach with low financial risk.

  Growth in conventional geothermal power last year was a tepid five percent. A recently-demonstrated enhanced geothermal method could squeeze more usable energy from existing wells. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Surfing Logs Reveal Global Eating Patterns

  The way we view online recipes reveals how our eating habits change over time, say computational sociologists.

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Better Computer Models Needed for Mega Wind Farms

  Interactions between hundreds of wind turbines make power output difficult to predict.

  With wind power getting cheaper, wind farm developers are drawing up plans for farms an order of magnitude bigger than anything around today, some with more than 1,000 turbines. But there’s one big problem: the economics of wind farms depends on accurate predictions of power output, and it is far more difficult to model how such large wind farms will behave.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Ads That Know Too Much

  Ads that follow you from one website to another are increasingly common, but in the rush for more tailored advertising, age-old wisdom may be lost.

  All over the Web, ads are getting more personal. They follow you from one site to the next and know your browsing history. But are such ads really effective? The answer may not be as obvious as digital marketers assume.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Will Robots Create New Jobs When They Take Over Existing Ones?

  A new class of smarter robots is being readied for the workplace.

  A new class of industrial robot is appearing. These robots are smart, affordable, and safe enough to work alongside humans, and they can do many tasks that human workers perform today (see “This Robot Could Transform Manufacturing”). But does that necessarily mean there will be fewer jobs left for humans to do?

  
  
  
  
  
  

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