Category: Tech News

• The Algorithm That Automatically Detects Polyps in Images from Camera Pills

  Analysing the footage from camera pills is a time-consuming task for medical professionals. Now computer scientists are attempting to automate the process

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• With Personal Data, Predictive Apps Stay a Step Ahead

  Apps that proactively help people with their lives represent a significant departure from earlier approaches to software.

  A new type of mobile app is departing from a long-standing practice in computing. Typically, computers have just dumbly waited for their human operators to ask for help. But now applications based on machine learning software can speak up with timely information even without being directly asked for it. They might automatically pull up a boarding pass for your flight just as you arrive at the airport, or tell you that current traffic conditions require you to leave for your next meeting within 10 minutes.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• How to Mine Cell Phone Data Without Invading Your Privacy

  Researchers use phone records to build a mobility model of the Los Angeles and New York City regions with new privacy guarantees.

  Researchers at AT&T, Rutgers University, Princeton, and Loyola University have devised a way to mine cell-phone data without revealing your identity, potentially showing a route to avoiding privacy pitfalls that have so far confined global cell-phone data-mining work to research labs.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• New Kind of LED Could Mean Better Google-Glass-Like Displays

  Micro-display LED tech could light up the next generation of face-wearable gadgets.

  A tiny head-mounted display, like the one in Google Glass, will only be useful if you can see on-screen alerts and information clearly. And that’s tricky to achieve, especially without draining battery life—as Google notes, it can be hard to use Glass’s projected display in bright sunlight.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Reserchers Create "Hate Map" of the U.S. With Twitter Data

  The same researchers previously mapped racist Tweets about President Obama. In both cases there’s reason to be a little skeptical.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Other Interesting arXiv Papers This Week Ending 12-5-13

  The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint server

  The MASTER-II Network of Robotic Optical Telescopes. First Results

  
  
  
  
  
  

• New Milestone for CO2 Levels: Mauna Loa Observatory Records 400 PPM

  We’ve hit 400 ppm of carbon dioxide, but we won’t know what that means for decades.

  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Scripps Institution of Oceanography say that the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere hit the symbolic milestone of 400 parts per million yesterday, up from about 280, the level it was at for thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Bacteria-killing Viruses Could Make Medical Implants Safer

  Researchers attach “viral hitmen” to surfaces to demonstrate a possible antibacterial defense for catheters and other medical devices.

  Medical implants like catheters and pacemakers can be a hotspot for bacteria, which grow in hard-to-treat films on the surface of such devices. Scientists and engineers are taking different approaches to changing the surface of implants so bacteria can’t take hold. For example, some groups are developing polymer films with structures that prevent bacterial growth (see “Pillowy Antibacterial Polymers”), while others are developing coatings that slowly release antibiotic compounds over time (see “Safer Joint Replacements” and “Innovators Under 35, 2007: Christopher Loose”). And now, researchers from Clemson University in South Carolina and the University of Southern Mississippi have described how a layer of bacteria-killing viruses could help prevent bacterial infections.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Facebook's Latest Data Science Insight

  In new study, Facebook’s science team says the company killed automatic sharing on “Offers” because the science said active sharing works better.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Memoto Camera Logs Your Life

  A clip-on camera that snaps a picture every 30 seconds.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Logging Life with a Lapel Camera

  A startup believes people will want a photographic record of their lives, taken at 30-second intervals.

  “We want to provide people with a perfect photographic memory,” says Martin Källström, CEO of Memoto. His startup is creating a tiny clip-on camera that takes a picture every 30 seconds, capturing whatever you are looking at, and then applies algorithms to the resulting mountain of images to find the most interesting ones.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Facebook Reacts to Criticisms of “Home” App; Promises Upgrades

  A month after the release of Home, Facebook is working to answer criticisms with improvements.

  Facebook Home—an app for Android smartphones that provides users with a constant stream of images, messages, and updates from friends on the social network—launched with fanfare a month ago along with the promise that additional features would be added shortly (see “The Facebook Phone Is Finally Here, but Who Wants It?”). Now, as some users level poor reviews at the app, the team behind it is focused on making those upgrades happen—and fast.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Glimpses of a World Revealed by Cell-Phone Data

  An examination of simple cell-phone records reveals maps of poverty levels, ethnic divides, and the movements of sports fans.

  Around the world, some mobile carriers have been releasing anonymized records of cell-phone data to researchers.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• How to Make a Cognitive Neuroprosthetic

  Enhancing the flow of information through the brain could be crucial to making neuroprosthetics practical.

  The abilities to learn, remember, evaluate, and decide are central to who we are and how we live. Damage to or dysfunction of the brain circuitry that supports these functions can be devastating, leading to Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, PTSD, or many other disorders. Current treatments, which are drug-based or behavioral, have limited efficacy in treating these problems. There is a pressing need for something more effective.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• First Quantum-Enhanced Images of a Living Cell

  Biologists have used “squeezed light” to create the first images of a living cell that beat the diffraction limit

  

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Can Artificial Retinas Restore Natural Sight?

  Artificial retinas give the blind only the barest sense of what’s visible, but researchers are working hard to improve that.

  Elias Konstantopoulos gets spotty glimpses of the world each day for about four hours, or for however long he leaves his Argus II retina prosthesis turned on. The 74-year-old Maryland resident lost his sight from a progressive retinal disease over 30 years ago, but is able to perceive some things when he turns on the bionic vision system.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Can Carbon Capture Clean Up Canada’s Oil Sands?

  Alberta will serve as a test bed for large-scale carbon capture and sequestration.

  Canada is betting that carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that is fairly well understood but unproven at the scale needed to significantly decrease greenhouse gas emissions, can reduce the environmental footprint associated with making fuel from oil sands—its fastest-growing source of greenhouse-gas emissions. (See “Alberta’s Oil Sands Heat Up.”)

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Even Without Accounting Gimmicks, Electric-Car Maker Tesla is Now Profitable

  To stay profitable, Tesla needs to keep cutting costs and selling more cars.

  As expected, Tesla Motors, the maker of the luxury Model S electric sedan, announced today that it was profitable for the first time in its ten-year history. During the first quarter of 2013 it had profits of $11 million. Total revenues were $562 million.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Yet Another Alzheimer’s Treatment Fails in Large Trial

  A mixed-antibody treatment does not protect patients from cognitive decline.

  More bad news from drugmakers trying to develop treatments for Alzheimer’s disease: Yesterday, Baxter announced that its mixed-antibody therapy failed to reduce cognitive decline in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. As I reported back in July 2012, the company saw positive results in a small four-patient trial of the treatment. None of these patients showed any cognitive decline, leading some experts to hope that the disease can be stopped or slowed (see “Study Suggests Alzheimer’s Disease Can be Stabilized”). But when Baxter tested its potential treatment—a complex mixture of antibodies harvested from healthy donated blood—in nearly 100-times as many Alzheimer’s patients, the company did not find a rate of decline slower than patients given a placebo.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Preventing Migraines with a New Kind of Antibody

  A biopharmaceutical company will know this year whether an antibody produced using a unique technique can prevent chronic migraines.

  For many who suffer from chronic migraines, nothing can reliably prevent or dull the debilitating headaches that may strike as often as every other day.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• Want to See What it's Like to Wear Google Glass?

  You can’t wear Google Glass–yet–but you can get a glimpse of what it will look like.

  If, like most of us peons, you haven’t gotten a chance to try out Google Glass, there’s now a way to get a sense of what it’s like to take it–and its virtual display–for a spin.

  
  
  
  
  
  

• D-Wave’s Quantum Computer Goes to the Races, Wins

  Tests suggest that a CIA-backed quantum computing technology can be very powerful for some kinds of problems.

  When I visited D-Wave last year I saw some spectacular hardware and heard of significant backing for the company (see “The CIA and Jeff Bezos Bet On Quantum Computing”). But no one was able to show me results from pitting one of D-Wave’s unusual computers directly against a conventional one to prove how much faster they could be.

  
  
  
  
  
  

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• 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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