Author: admin

• Death Test Reveals Strength of Social Interaction

  Social ties between humans are stronger than those between fruit flies or ants but weaker than those between bees, according to a cheerful new ranking based on how quickly creatures die when they become isolated

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Smarter Algorithm Could Cut Energy Use in Data Centers by 35 Percent

  Storing video and other files more intelligently reduces the demand on servers in a data center.

  New research suggests that data centers could significantly cut their electricity usage simply by storing fewer copies of files, especially videos.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Proceed with Caution toward the Self-Driving Car

  Completely autonomous vehicles will remain a fantasy for years. Until they’re here, we need technology that enhances human drivers’ abilities rather than making those abilities increasingly obsolete.

   

  
  
  
  
  
  

• With E-Book Lending, Simon & Schuster Takes It Slow

  Looking before you leap: a strategy that it might not hurt more publishers to adopt.

  Simon & Schuster will become the last of the Big Six publishers to make its e-books available to libraries, reports PaidContent. The publisher will begin a one-year trial with New York City’s public libraries. No titles are off limits, reportedly, but we don’t know the exact financial terms of the deal. (Other publishers have charged up to three times as much as retail for libraries to have e-loaning privileges).

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Already Efficient, LED Lights Get Smarter

  Digital convergence is rapidly coming to lighting as component makers pave the way for customizable, networked lamps.

  Now that we have smart phones, smart TVs, and smart thermostats, perhaps its not surprising that smart light bulbs are just around the corner.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Moore's Law and the Origin of Life

  As life has evolved, its complexity has increased exponentially, just like Moore’s law. Now geneticists have extrapolated this trend backwards and found that by this measure, life is older than the Earth itself.

   

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Interview with BRAIN Project Pioneer: Miyoung Chun

  
The trickiest thing about the brain mapping project might be that we don’t even know what we’re trying to learn.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Bitcoin Isn't the Only Cryptocurrency in Town

  Currencies designed to fix perceived flaws in Bitcoin could lead to competition that makes the idea of digital “cryptocurrency” stick.

  In recent weeks, the digital currency Bitcoin has soared and then dipped in value, along the way attracting more public attention than ever before and speculation as to whether it could become an established and widely accepted way to pay for goods and services.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Safe Texting While Walking? Soon, There May Be an App for That

  CrashAlert, created by University of Manitoba researchers, could make it easier to walk and text without smacking into things.

  The last time you saw someone walk into a lamppost while focusing intently on a smartphone, you probably thought, “That was dumb!” If you were Juan-David Hincapié-Ramos, though, you might have thought, “There should be an app for this.”

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Nanoparticle Disguised as a Blood Cell Fights Bacterial Infection

  Biomimetic nanoparticles could be an effective treatment against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

  A nanoparticle wrapped in a red blood cell membrane can remove toxins from the body and could be used to fight bacterial infections, according to research published today in Nature Nanotechnology.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Other Interesting arXiv Papers This Week

  The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint server

  How Does Group Interaction And Its Severance Affect Life?

  
  
  
  
  
  

• This Is Your Brain on E-Books

  When we read on dead trees, do we retain more?

  I don’t have the best of memories, but ever since I was young, I prided myself on a particular talent with respect to reading. Occasionally I’d be near the end of a book, and would recall a passage near the beginning that I wanted to revisit. I wouldn’t remember the page or chapter, but almost without fail, I would recall the location on the page where the passage in question was. I knew that that wondeful description of Mr. Pumblechook appeared on the bottom half of a right-hand page, perhaps 10 lines from the bottom, and a few lines after a paragraph break.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Soon Your Bird Can Sing: Twitter to Release Music App

  It sounds cool, but only a select few such as Ryan Seacrest get to play with Twitter’s music app for now.

  It’s not yet available to everyone, but Twitter’s giving a few hints about its forthcoming music app, which the social site is surely hoping will challenge music listening and sharing service Spotify.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Decade of Advances Since the Human Genome Project

  Despite breakthroughs in technology and medicine, there’s still a lot of work ahead for understanding and using the human genome.

  This Sunday, the National Institutes of Health will celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project. Since the end of the 13-year and $3-billion effort to determine the sequence of a human genome (a mosaic of genomes from several people in this case), there have been some impressive advances in technology and biological understanding and the dawn of a new branch of medicine: medical genomics

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Batteries: Cheapest Form of Grid Power?

  Using a wind energy and expensive lithium-ion batteries, AES Energy Storage is making money by stabilizing the grid.

  The conventional wisdom is that batteries, particularly lithium-ion batteries, are way too expensive to be used on the electricity grid in a financially viable way. Chris Shelton begs to differ and he has two years of data to make his case.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Last Year’s U.S. Drought Wasn’t Caused by Climate Change

  Those advocating limits on greenhouse gases can’t count on the weather to make their argument.

  Last summer, in response to an intense and prolonged drought in the U.S.—the worst, indeed, since 1895—we ran an interview with a climate scientist, Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina. He said that droughts in general will be exacerbated by climate change, while noting that it’s difficult to link any particular drought to greenhouse gases. “I suspect it will be really difficult to show how much these changing patterns contributed to the drought in the Midwest this year,” he said (see “Is Climate Change to Blame for the Current U.S. Drought?”).

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Foursquare Gets a Big Check

  The company known for check-ins is already a fundamental part of the app economy. Now it just has to make money.

  Foursquare built its brand as a social app for people to check in at locations, compete for badges, and maybe get some discounts at businesses they frequent. 

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• First Solar Shines as the Solar Industry Falters

  First Solar’s strong finances are helping fund innovation and drive down the cost of solar power.

  Innovation in solar cell technology has slowed as startups struggle to get a foothold in a tough market and solar panel manufacturers delay purchasing the equipment they need to manufacture more efficient cells. But First Solar, one of the world’s largest solar companies, continues to invest in boosting the efficiency of its solar cells.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Obama Wants Far More Money for Existing Technologies than for Developing New Ones

  Does it make sense to spend so much on already commercialized technology?

  According to the  Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, President Obama’s budget has nearly $13 billion set aside for energy-related spending–if you look just at the amount allocated for key R&D programs at the Department of Energy along with spending on tax incentives (there’s more if, for example, you include funding for Department of Defense related programs). Most of that money–$7.5 billion—is going to tax breaks of one sort of another. That is, money that goes to deploying technology we already have. The rest—about $5 billion–is for R&D and demonstration of new technology.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• How Wireless Carriers Are Monetizing Your Movements

  Data that shows where people live, work, and play is being sold to businesses and city planners, as mobile operators seek new sources of revenue.

  Wireless operators have access to an unprecedented volume of information about users’ real-world activities, but for years these massive data troves were put to little use other than for internal planning and marketing.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Big-Name Investors Back Effort to Build a Better Bitcoin

  Some of Silicon Valley’s best-known venture funds have backed OpenCoin, a startup with a new digital currency called Ripple.

  The value of a Bitcoin has grown in the four years since the digital currency was invented, but there’s been little interest from mainstream business or technology investors in using it.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Mermaids of Los Angeles: A Dumbphone in Exile

  On a desert journey, coffee-scented oases of WiFi.

  As loyal readers already know, a few months ago I embarked upon an experiment: I junked my iPhone. Surprising even myself, at the end of the appointed month, I decided not to go back to it. Currently, I make do with a very basic Alcatel phone, together with a hand-me-down dataless Verizon iPhone that I use as a de facto iPod Touch.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Wireless Micro LEDs Control Mouse Behavior

  Mice tap into their own neural reward circuits with the help of a new optogenetics device.

  A microscopic light-emitting diode device that controls the activity of neurons has given researchers wireless control over animal behavior. The tiny device, tested in mice, causes less damage than other methods used to deliver light into the brain, report researchers in Thursday’s issue of Science, and it does not tether mice to a light source, enabling scientists to study behaviors more naturally than is normally possible.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• First Demonstration of the Storage And Release of Light in a Metamaterial

  Nobody has been able to trap electromagnetic waves inside a metamaterial and then release them again. Until now

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Does a Tele-Robot Operator Need a Visa and W-2?

  Experts gathered this week at Stanford’s Law School to discuss the robot revolution.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• LED Lights to Cut 60-Watt Bulb to Five Watts

  Philips seeks to replace florescent tube light with an LED using technology planned for other types of bulbs.

  Philips has cut the amount of power of its overhead LED tube light in half, a sign of continuing improvements in LED lighting geared at displacing incumbent technologies.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Climate Change: The Moral Choices

  The effects of global warming will persist for hundreds of years. What are our responsibilities and duties today to help safeguard the distant future? That is the question ethicists are now asking.

  One of the defining characteristics of climate change is poorly appreciated by most people: the higher temperatures and other effects induced by increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will persist for a very long time. Scientists have long realized that carbon dioxide emitted during the burning of fossil fuels tends to linger in the atmosphere for extended periods, even for centuries. Over the last few years, researchers have calculated that some of the resulting changes to the earth’s climate, including increased temperature, are more persistent still: even if emissions are abruptly ended and carbon dioxide levels gradually drop, the temperature will stubbornly remain elevated for a thousand years or more. The earth’s thermostat is essentially being turned up and there are no readily foreseeable ways to turn it back down; even risky geoengineering schemes would at best offset the higher temperatures only temporarily.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The First Facebook Phone: A Little Too Much Information

  The HTC First, which features Facebook’s new Home interface, will appeal only to the most devoted of Facebook users.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Cleanweb or Deep Tech: Diverging Paths for Energy Startups

  Join the app economy or invent new energy technology? Two startup events reflect evolving ideas on energy entrepreneurship.

  Entrepreneurship in energy and the environment has been going on for years but its future direction is still a matter of debate.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Microbes Can Mass-Produce Malaria Drug

  Thanks to extensive genetic engineering, drugmakers can now brew large vats of the malaria drug artemisinin, stabilizing the world supply.

  For the first time, researchers have successfully engineered a strain of baker’s yeast capable of spewing out malaria drugs on an industrial scale. The French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi has already begun brewing the microbes and announced plans to generate 70 million doses this year.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Transparent Brains Reveal Hidden Microscopic Details

  To study the microscopic structures of the brain researchers have typically had to dissect the organ into amazingly thin slices that can then be viewed on a microscope. Without doing this, any structures more than a couple millimeters deep would be impossible to see. But besides being a pain-staking process, slicing the brain into thin slices can mess with the structure and make it difficult to follow the long paths of axons from one slice to the next.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• What if Facebook Went Freemium?

  A $20 annual subscription to see Facebook ad-free would preserve the company’s profits

  Facebook’s home page proclaims that the social network is “free and always will be.” But what if you could also choose to pay for it?

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Twitter Happiness Levels Soar As People Travel Further From Home

  Happiness levels caputred by Tweets rise logarithmically with distance from our average location, say computer scientists studying Twitter sentiment

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Startup’s Nanowire Ink Lifts Solar Cell Efficiency

  Sol Voltaics plans to make a nanowire-laden ink to boost solar panel efficiency using a rapid manufacturing process.

  Ink filled with microscopic semiconductors called nanowires could make solar power cheaper by boosting the efficiency of solar panels by 25 percent, without adding much cost to manufacturing, says Sol Voltaics, a startup that has raised $11 million, and which this week announced its intention to commercialize the ink.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• AT&T Researchers Set a Long-Haul Data Record

  New optical technology paves the way for more efficient ocean-spanning transmissions.

  Researchers at AT&T have devised a way to increase the distance that large amounts of data can travel through a fiber-optic connection. The technique should allow 400-gigabit-per-second signals to travel for a distance of 12,000 kilometers—four times the previous distance possible—and it promises faster ocean-crossing transmission without adding more equipment. The feat is like sending 170 HD movies 12,000 kilometers—half-again as far as the distance from San Francisco to Tokyo.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• One App’s iOS Debacle Shows Dangers of Betting It All on Apple

  A popular app gets yanked from Apple’s App Store, illustrating the danger of betting it all on one mobile OS.

  AppGratis, an iOS app that offers users a free app each day that they’d normally have to pay for, is having a rough week. On Friday, Apple removed AppGratis from its app store, saying it ran afoul of two store guidlines: one banning apps that promote other apps, and another banning use of push notifications to send ads or direct marketing.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• A Google Fiber Showdown in Lone Star State

  Google fiber promises competition for AT&T and Time Warner Cable in Austin

  New glimmers of competition are coming to the Internet fiber-to-the-home business in the United States: Google is branching out from its Kansas City experiment and staking a claim in Austin, Texas.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Brinicles and the Origin of Life

  Extraordinary tubes of ice that grow down into the ocean from ice sheets could be as significant for the origin of life as hydrothermal vents, say chemists

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Flexible Keyboard with Buttons That Feel Clickable

  Transparent, shape-changing plastics could make touch screens and keyboards that stimulate users’ sense of touch.

  A very thin keyboard that uses shape-changing polymers to replicate the feel and sound of chunky, clicking buttons could be in laptops and ultrabooks next year. Strategic Polymers Sciences, the San Francisco-based company that developed the keyboard, is working on transparent coatings that would enable this feature in touch screens.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Facebook’s Real “Home” May be the Developing World

  The new Facebook-centric Android app for smartphones builds on other efforts to court mobile users internationally.

  Facebook Home, a new collection of apps that makes the social network dominate Android phones, might have limited appeal to users already besieged with smartphone options—but it could fit nicely into Facebook’s efforts overseas, where the focus is on capturing first-time users.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Taser’s On-Body Cameras Could Make Cops Self-Policing

  While raising privacy concerns, Taser’s cop-cam should help enforce ethical police work.

  The Verge has a great report about an emerging trend in policing–cameras that cops wear on the their bodies while interacting with suspects. (The piece is worth reading in full, particularly for the little documentary in the middle, which gives a better sense of how this technology works, as well as an eerie and innovative design element that causes images to elude the viewer scrolling through the article.)

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Why a Botched IT Project Will Destroy a Major Corporation in the Near Future

  The risks associated with major IT projects are being vastly underestimated, according to the largest study of global IT projects ever undertaken.

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Will Vertical Turbines Make More of the Wind?

  A Caltech researcher thinks arrays of tiny wind turbines could produce cheaper power than big ones.

  The remote Alaskan village of Igiugig—home to about 50 people—will be the first to demonstrate a new approach to wind power that could boost power output and, its inventors say, just might make it more affordable.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Why Obama's Brain-Mapping Project Matters

  Obama calls for $100 million to develop new technologies to understand the brain.

  Last week, President Obama officially announced $100 million in funding for arguably the most ambitious neuroscience initiative ever proposed.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Other Interesting arXiv Papers This Week

  The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint server

  Felinic Principle And Measurement Of The Hubble Parameter

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Three Technologies Could Solve the Methane Leak Issue

  A World Resources Institute report recommends regulations to stop leaks, as we wait for data.

  No one really knows how much better natural gas is compared to coal, greenhouse-gas wise. That’s because no one knows how much natural gas leaks into the atmosphere during production and distribution. Although burning natural gas releases something like half the amount of carbon dioxide as burning coal, leaks of natural gas can offset that advantage since natural gas contains methane, itself a powerful greenhouse gas.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Cost of Dementia: Worse Than We Thought

  A new study shows that dementia will have a crippling impact on the U.S. economy.

  Dementia’s financial impact on the U.S. economy in 2010 was around $109 billion, reported researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday. That figure largely consists of the costs of nursing-home care and home-based care, and it will likely double by 2040 as the population ages, according to the study.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• A Sesame Street for Makers?

  Adafruit’s educational series is a brilliant, necessary corrective to our “magic box” tech culture.

  This week, Adafruit Industries launches an educational series aimed at kids, report Hackaday and others. And it’s about time.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Turning off the Power to Run the Grid

  Demand response—essentially dialing back power at key times—is quietly becoming a key technology for the electricity grid of the future.

  The off switch is a fast-growing source of power in some parts of the electricity grid.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Brazil Nut Effect Measured in Lunar and Martian Gravity Conditions

  Brazil nuts would rise to the top of a container of mixed nuts on Mars and the Moon, but more slowly than on Earth, say physicists

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Facebook Phone Is Finally Here, but Who Wants It?

  The appeal of Facebook’s new phone software may be limited to hardcore users.

  On Thursday morning, Mark Zuckerberg stood smiling in front of a crowd of journalists and employees at Facebook’s headquarters and put months of rumors to an end. “Today we’re finally going to talk about that Facebook phone,” he said, referring to long-swirling speculation that the social network was secretly developing a device to rival the iPhone. He immediately clarified, adding, “More accurately, we’re going to talk about how you can turn your Android phone into a great, simple, social device.”

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Do We Need Specialized Hardware for the Deaf?

  Companies that once made specialized hardware may soon be relegated to software and services.

  A company called Purple Communications this week unveiled a product called SmartVP. It’s a videophone with applications and features to help deaf people communicate. Purple says it’s the first videophone to feature “true HD quality.”

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Scientists Use MRI to Glimpse the Dreaming Mind

  Scientists use a computer model to predict dream imagery from MRI scans.

  MRI scans of a sleeping person’s brain can help predict what’s seen in the land of Nod.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Facebook Home: A Social Smartphone Makeover

  A modified version of Android puts social networking, and Facebook, at the heart of a device.

  MIT Technology Review editor Rachel Metz live-blogged Facebook’s announcement from its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Read her blow-by-blow account of the event below.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Digest powered by RSS Digest