Sci-Tech news

• This App Could Change How You Email

  01-12-2014 23:49
  
  It's the year of getting your mobile email inbox in order.
  
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• A home-brew observatory detects exoplanet

  01-12-2014 23:40
  
  David Schneider, a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum, was interested in exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than the sun, but figured this kind of exercise as a home-based project was going to need expensive telescopes; he stumbled across a project at Ohio State University, where resourceful astronomers had figured out a way to spot exoplanets using a device with a lens designed for high-end cameras. Schneider's wheels turned, thinking he might also be able to pull this off if he got his han
  
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• Clear out of Silicon Valley Homeless Camp Coming

  01-12-2014 23:38
  
  Authorities in heart of Silicon Valley to clear out large homeless camp known as 'The Jungle'
  
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• Cypress Semiconductor Buying Spansion for $1.59B

  01-12-2014 23:37
  Chipmaker Cypress buying flash memory device maker Spansion in all-stock deal worth $1.59B
  
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• 'Internet of Things' chipmakers to merge in $4 bn deal

  01-12-2014 23:36
  
  Chipmakers Cypress Semiconductor and Spansion announced plans to merge Monday in a $4 billion deal bringing together two key makers of components for "Internet of Things" devices.
  
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• Spacecraft Bound for Pluto Set to Awake Nine Years After Launch

  01-12-2014 23:08
  
  A spacecraft is set to awake from a long hibernation this week as it prepares for its upcoming encounter with Pluto.
  
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• Anonymous Targets City Website Over Homeless Ordinance

  01-12-2014 23:06 via feeds.nbcnews.com
  
  The collective group of computer hackers known as "Anonymous" has taken aim at the city of Fort Lauderdale's website Monday.
  
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• Anonymous Targets City Site Over Homeless Ordinance

  01-12-2014 23:06 via feeds.nbcnews.com
  
  The collective group of computer hackers known as "Anonymous" has taken aim at the city of Fort Lauderdale's website Monday.
  
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• FBI looking into hack of Sony Pictures' computers

  01-12-2014 23:02
  
  The FBI has confirmed it is investigating a recent hacking attack at Sony Pictures Entertainment, which reportedly caused major internal computer problems at the film studio last week.
  
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• Child poverty pervasive in large American cities, new report shows

  01-12-2014 23:02
  
  Years after the end of the Great Recession, child poverty remains widespread in America's largest cities. A paper just released by the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), a research center based at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, reports that nearly three children in five living in Detroit are poor, according to the most recent Census figures. This rate has grown by 10 percentage points since the onset of the Great Recession in 2007.
  
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• Predators and isolation shape the evolution of 'island tameness,' providing conservation insights

  01-12-2014 23:00
  
  Charles Darwin noted more than 150 years ago that animals on the Galapagos Islands, including finches and marine iguanas, were more docile than mainland creatures. He attributed this tameness to the fact that there are fewer predators on remote islands.
  
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• NASA's CATS eyes clouds, smoke and dust from the space station

  01-12-2014 22:51
  
  Turn on any local TV weather forecast and you can get a map of where skies are blue or cloudy. But for scientists trying to figure out how clouds affect the Earth's environment, what's happening inside that shifting cloud cover is critical and hard to see.
  
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• NASA's 2014 HS3 hurricane mission investigated four tropical cyclones

  01-12-2014 22:47
  
  NASA's Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel, or HS3, mission investigated four tropical cyclones in the 2014 Atlantic Ocean hurricane season: Cristobal, Dolly, Edouard and Gonzalo. The storms affected land areas in the Atlantic Ocean Basin and were at different stages during the investigations.
  
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• Microsoft buys email mobile app Accompli

  01-12-2014 22:42
  
  Microsoft said Monday it was buying the mobile email management application Accompli, in a deal reported to be worth more than $200 million.
  
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• Scientists create new tool for exploring cells in 3-D

  01-12-2014 22:41
  
  Researchers can now explore viruses, bacteria and components of the human body in more detail than ever before with software developed at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI).
  
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• Most of Earth's carbon may be hidden in the planet's inner core, new model suggests

  01-12-2014 22:40
  
  As much as two-thirds of Earth's carbon may be hidden in the inner core, making it the planet's largest carbon reservoir, according to a new model that even its backers acknowledge is "provocative and speculative."
  
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• UW team explores large, restless volcanic field in Chile

  01-12-2014 22:38
  
  If Brad Singer knew for sure what was happening three miles under an odd-shaped lake in the Andes, he might be less eager to spend a good part of his career investigating a volcanic field that has erupted 36 times during the last 25,000 years. As he leads a large scientific team exploring a region in the Andes called Laguna del Maule, Singer hopes the area remains quiet.
  
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• Why don't more minority students seek STEM careers? Ask them

  01-12-2014 22:36
  
  If decades of effort to bring more underrepresented minority students into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields were considered a grand chemistry experiment, then the modest results would suggest that while the formula may not be wrong, it may well be incomplete, according to a new article in the journal CBE-Life Sciences Education.
  
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• Smartphone expansion cooling, prices dropping

  01-12-2014 22:31
  
  The global smartphone market will see cooler growth in the next few years amid "cutthroat" competition that will bring down prices for many consumers, a market tracker said Monday.
  
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• NASA launching new Orion spacecraft on test flight (Update)

  01-12-2014 22:30
  
  NASA's quest to send astronauts out into the solar system begins this week with a two-laps-around-Earth test flight.
  
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• Ozone depletion is a major climate driver in the southern hemisphere

  01-12-2014 22:28
  
  When people hear about the dangers of the ozone hole, they often think of sunburns and associated health risks, but new research shows that ozone depletion changes atmospheric and oceanic circulation with potentially devastating effects on weather in the Southern Hemisphere weather.
  
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• Therapeutic bronchoscopy performed on a dolphin

  01-12-2014 22:20
  
  In a remarkable collaborative effort between human and veterinary clinicians, a 29-year-old bottlenose dolphin recently underwent therapeutic bronchoscopy to treat airway narrowing, or stenosis, that was interfering with her breathing. The dolphin, a therapy animal for mentally and physically challenged children at Island Dolphin Care in Key Largo, Florida, is doing well one year after the procedure.
  
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• The nutritionists within: Firebugs depend on gut bacteria for vitamin supply

  01-12-2014 22:10
  
  Microbial partners are important for the nutrition of many insects. They help detoxify and digest food, but also provide essential nutrients that insects need in order to survive. The European firebug Pyrrhocoris apterus and the African cotton stainer Dysdercus fasciatus feed mainly on plant seeds that are poor sources of essential B vitamins. Scientists of the Max Planck Research Group Insect Symbiosis at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, together with colleagues a
  
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• The human eye can see 'invisible' infrared light

  01-12-2014 22:07
  
  Any science textbook will tell you we can't see infrared light. Like X-rays and radio waves, infrared light waves are outside the visual spectrum. But an international team of researchers co-led by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found that under certain conditions, the retina can sense infrared light after all.
  
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• Sweet smell of success: Researchers boost methyl ketone production in E. coli

  01-12-2014 22:03
  
  Two years ago, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) engineered Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria to convert glucose into significant quantities of methyl ketones, a class of chemical compounds primarily used for fragrances and flavors, but highly promising as clean, green and renewable blending agents for diesel fuel. Now, after further genetic modifications, they have managed to dramatically boost the E.coli's methyl ketone production 160-fold.
  
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• Watch: Amazon Enlists Help of Robots to Fulfill Holiday Orders

  01-12-2014 22:03
  
  The online retailer will use 15,000 Kiva robots that can lift shelves weighing as much as 750 pounds.
  
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• A read head for quantum computers? Graphene layer reads optical information from nanodiamonds

  01-12-2014 22:01
  
  Nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamonds could be used to construct vital components for quantum computers. But hitherto it has been impossible to read optically written information from such systems electronically. Using a graphene layer, a team of scientists headed by Professor Alexander Holleitner of the Technische Universität München has now implemented just such a read unit.
  
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• Study shows way to design 'digital' metamaterials

  01-12-2014 21:59
  
  Metamaterials, precisely designed composite materials that have properties not found in natural ones, could be used to make light-bending invisibility cloaks, flat lenses and other otherwise impossible devices.
  
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• 'Smart dust' technology could reshape space telescopes

  01-12-2014 21:55
  
  Telescope lenses someday might come in aerosol cans. Scientists at Rochester Institute of Technology and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory are exploring a new type of space telescope with an aperture made of swarms of particles released from a canister and controlled by a laser.
  
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• Estimates of anthropogenic nitrogen in the ocean may be high

  01-12-2014 21:53
  
  Inundation of nitrogen into the atmosphere and terrestrial environments, through fossil fuel combustion and extensive fertilization, has risen tenfold since preindustrial times according to research published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles. Excess nitrogen can infiltrate water tables and can trigger extensive algal blooms that deplete aquatic environments of oxygen, among other damaging effects.
  
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• Fin24.com | Telkom launches fibre broadband in selected suburbs

  01-12-2014 21:17
  
  Several suburbs in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape now have access to fibre to the home (FTTH) broadband services from local telecoms player Telkom.
  
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• Digital Partner: Here's How Police Body Cameras Work

  01-12-2014 21:07 via feeds.nbcnews.com
  
  Next time a high-profile police shooting happens, it could be recorded with a wearable camera.
  
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• Different species share a 'genetic toolkit' for behavioral traits, study finds

  01-12-2014 21:00
  
  The house mouse, stickleback fish and honey bee appear to have little in common, but at the genetic level these creatures respond in strikingly similar ways to danger, researchers report. When any of these animals confronts an intruder, the researchers found, many of the same genes and brain gene networks gear up or down in response.
  
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• American mastodons made warm Arctic, subarctic temporary home 125,000 years ago

  01-12-2014 21:00
  
  Existing age estimates of American mastodon fossils indicate that these extinct relatives of elephants lived in the Arctic and Subarctic when the area was covered by ice caps—a chronology that is at odds with what scientists know about the massive animals' preferred habitat: forests and wetlands abundant with leafy food. In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of researchers is revising fossil age estimates based on new radio
  
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• Climate Change Impacts Heat up UN Talks in Lima

  01-12-2014 20:51
  
  Climate talks resume in Lima as record temperatures increase dangers and costs around world
  
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• Snowden Calls on UN to Protect Privacy, Rights

  01-12-2014 20:24
  
  Snowden calls on UN to propose new measures to foster privacy, human rights
  
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• Computer equal to or better than humans at indexing science

  01-12-2014 20:00
  
  In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue computer beat chess wizard Gary Kasparov. This year, a computer system developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison achieved something far more complex. It equaled or bested scientists at the complex task of extracting data from scientific publications and placing it in a database that catalogs the results of tens of thousands of individual studies.
  
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• Supreme Court Considers Facebook Threats Case

  01-12-2014 19:43
  
  Supreme Court considers free speech rights of threatening language on Facebook
  
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• Amazon's Secret Cyber Monday Weapon

  01-12-2014 19:37
  
  How Amazon's army of robots fill holiday shopping orders.
  
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• Former Google+ engineer: We f***ed up

  01-12-2014 19:21 via rss.cnn.com
  A developer who spent three years helping create Google+ has written a brutal blog post declaring the tech giant's social network a failure.
  
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• NASA Launching New Orion Spacecraft on Test Flight

  01-12-2014 19:05
  
  NASA launching new Orion spacecraft on test flight, Thursday debut paving way for Mars visits
  
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• Jurors to hear Steve Jobs testimony at Apple trial

  01-12-2014 18:40
  
  A billion-dollar class-action lawsuit over Apple's iPod music players heads to trial on Tuesday in a California federal court after nearly a decade in legal wrangling.
  
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• Microbullets Demonstrate Graphene’s Energy Absorbing Strength

  01-12-2014 18:39 via scitechdaily.com
  
  A newly published study from Rice University shows that graphene is 10 times better than steel at absorbing the energy of a penetrating projectile. Graphene’s great strength appears to be determined by how well it stretches before it breaks, according to Rice University scientists who tested the material’s properties by peppering it with microbullets. The […]
  The post Microbullets Demonstrate Graphene’s Energy Absorbing Strength appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• Institute of Food Research announces test for horse meat

  01-12-2014 18:29
  
  Scientists at the Institute of Food Research on the Norwich Research Park have teamed up with Oxford Instruments to develop a fast, cheap alternative to DNA testing as a means of distinguishing horse meat from beef. Because horses and cattle have different digestive systems, the fat components of the two meats have different fatty acid compositions, as the team report in the journal Food Chemistry. The new method looks at differences in the chemical composition of the fat in the meats, using sim
  
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• NASA satellites provide triple coverage on Tropical Storm Sinlaku

  01-12-2014 18:25
  
  Tropical Storm Sinlaku made landfall in east-central Vietnam bringing some moderate to heavy rainfall with it. NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's TRMM and GPM satellites analyzed the rainfall rates occurring in Sinlaku before it made landfall while NASA's Terra satellite spotted the storm as it came ashore in Vietnam.
  
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• Research confirms how global warming links to carbon emissions

  01-12-2014 18:20
  
  Research by the University of Liverpool has identified, for the first time, how global warming is related to the amount of carbon emitted.
  
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• Research finds clue to why females live longer than males

  01-12-2014 18:16
  
  A study from the University of Exeter has found that male flies die earlier than their female counterparts when forced to evolve with the pressures of mate competition and juvenile survival. The results could help researchers understand the mechanisms involved in ageing.
  
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• Can cockpit automation cause pilots to lose critical thinking skills? Research says yes

  01-12-2014 18:15
  
  In the wake of recent airline crashes, major news networks have aired concerns about pilots' ability to accurately fly "by hand" when the airplane's cockpit automation systems fail. Although many of these concerns have centered on manual skills such as operating the airplane's controls, new human factors/ergonomics research suggests that pilots' thinking skills, such as navigating, remaining aware of the status of the flight, and diagnosing troublesome situations, are most vulnerable in today's
  
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• Astronomers Develop a New Method to Evaluate the Turbulence of the Hot Intracluster Gas

  01-12-2014 18:15 via scitechdaily.com
  
  Using data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have pioneered a new method to evaluate the turbulence of the hot intracluster gas. Most galaxies lie in clusters, groupings of a few to many thousands of galaxies. Our Milky Way galaxy itself is a member of the “Local Group,” a […]
  The post Astronomers Develop a New Method to Evaluate the Turbulence of the Hot Intracluster Gas appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• Terra Satellite catches fast-developing Tropical Storm Hagupit

  01-12-2014 18:12
  
  Tropical Storm Hagupit was just a low pressure area on Nov. 30, but warm waters and good atmospheric conditions allowed the storm to develop rapidly. By Dec. 1 the low pressure area strengthened into a tropical storm when NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead.
  
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