Sci-Tech news

• Sore—but no taller—astronaut Scott Kelly adjusts to Earth

  04-03-2016 23:50
  
  US astronaut Scott Kelly said Friday he is battling fatigue and super-sensitive skin, but is back to his normal height after a year spent testing the effects of long-term spaceflight ahead of a future mission to Mars.
  
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• Google tweaks 'right to be forgotten' in EU searches - Phys.Org

  04-03-2016 23:40 via
  Phys.Org
  Google tweaks 'right to be forgotten' in EU searches
  Phys.Org
  Google said Friday it would implement changes in how it applies the so-called right to be forgotten for online searches made in Europe. The changes, to be implemented next week, would close a loophole that allowed Europeans to find deleted entries by ...
  Google Agrees To Complicated Worldwide “Right To Be Forgotten” Censorship PlanSearch Engine Land
  Google will apply the 'right to be forgotten' to all EU sea
  

• Google tweaks 'right to be forgotten' in EU searches

  04-03-2016 23:40
  
  Google said Friday it would implement changes in how it applies the so-called right to be forgotten for online searches made in Europe.
  
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• Revamped satellite data shows no pause in global warming

  04-03-2016 23:33
  
  Climate change doubters may have lost one of their key talking points: a particular satellite temperature dataset that had seemed to show no warming for the past 18 years.
  
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• Construction of Sacramento Kings arena using drone monitoring system developed at Illinois

  04-03-2016 23:25
  
  A University of Illinois team has developed predictive visual data analytics tools, called "Flying Superintendent" to automate and streamline today's time-consuming practices for construction progress monitoring. Their award-winning solution utilizes both images and videos taken with camera drones and four-dimensional Building Information Modeling (BIM) to quickly identify and visually communicate the actual and potential performance problems during execution of construction projects via smartph
  
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• What's Next for Twins Study After Scott Kelly's Return to Earth

  04-03-2016 23:01 via abcnews.go.com
  
  The Kelly twins are reunited on Earth but there is still work to be done on their pioneering NASA Twins Study.
  
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• New Windows 10 preview build brings Cortana to new countries - PCWorld

  04-03-2016 22:40 via
  PCWorld
  New Windows 10 preview build brings Cortana to new countries
  PCWorld
  Microsoft is bringing its virtual assistant Cortana to Brazil, Mexico, and French-speaking Canadians with a major update to the Windows 10 beta on Friday. The new build will allow people in those countries to take Cortana for a spin and test not only ...
  Microsoft issues Windows 10's lucky 7 previewComputerworld
  Microsoft releases new Windows 10 preview for PCs with Cortana in 3 more languagesVentureBeat
  Windows 10 Red
  

• For Amazon, security is an inconvenience - ZDNet

  04-03-2016 22:08 via
  ZDNet
  For Amazon, security is an inconvenience
  ZDNet
  amazon-fire-hd-10-0454-007.jpg Amazon's Fire HD, no longer encrypted. (Image: CNET/CBS Interactive). If you ever needed a definition of hypocrisy, Amazon just served one up hot on a plate. Amazon has removed device encryption from its tablets and ...
  Amazon's Decision to Reduce Tablet Security Comes at a Bad TimeBloomberg
  Seriously, Amazon? Fire tablets drop encryption, are less secure video - CNETCNET
  Amazon Silently Drops Encryption In
  

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• Scientists Find Ocean Floor Noisier Than Expected - Newsweek

  04-03-2016 21:54 via
  Newsweek
  Scientists Find Ocean Floor Noisier Than Expected
  Newsweek
  Challenger Deep Mic Deploy A team led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) deployed a hydrophone seven miles down into Challenger Deep, a depression in the Mariana Trench near Micronesia. The mic was retrieved in ...
  Deep-Sea Audio Recordings Reveal A Noisy Mariana Trench, Surprising ScientistsKSUT Public Radioall 158 news articles »
  

• Uber gives Pakistan drivers classes to deter sex harassment

  04-03-2016 21:30
  
  Uber is teaching its drivers in Pakistan how not to sexually harass women, a spokeswoman said Friday, after the popular transport app launched in the conservative country where women are often hassled on public transport.
  
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• NIST invents fleet and fast test for nanomanufacturing quality control (w/ Video)

  04-03-2016 21:30
  
  Manufacturers may soon have a speedy and nondestructive way to test a wide array of materials under real-world conditions, thanks to an advance that researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have made in roll-to-roll measurements. Roll-to-roll measurements are typically optical measurements for roll-to-roll manufacturing, any method that uses conveyor belts for continuous processing of items, from tires to nanotechnology components.
  
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• How the A.I. Behind Twitter's Odd @DeepDrumpf is Making Donald Trump Great Again - Inverse

  04-03-2016 21:23 via inverse.com
  
  Inverse
  How the A.I. Behind Twitter's Odd @DeepDrumpf is Making Donald Trump Great Again
  Inverse
  An MIT robotics researcher crafted a recurrent neural network to emulate the presumptive Republican nominee. Joe Carmichael; March 4, 2016. share; tweet. Bradley Hayes, a postdoctoral associate at MIT who does robotics research, just turned Donald ...
  AI Twitterbot Sounds A Lot Like TrumpDiscovery News
  How An A.I. Donald Trump Is Making Twitter Great AgainPopular Science
  This wacky Twitterbot u
  
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• Woodpecker drumming signals wimp or warrior

  04-03-2016 21:20
  
  Animal behavior researchers at Wake Forest University have found that the highly territorial downy woodpecker interprets drumming intensity from adversaries to figure out who is or isn't a threat.
  
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• System may forecast tornadoes weeks away; Test it next week

  04-03-2016 21:10
  
  Researchers say they've come up with a way to predict the likelihood of tornadoes two or three weeks in advance—a step toward better warnings of storms that kill an average of 80 Americans each year.
  
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• New national initiative to preserve the future of horticulture

  04-03-2016 21:00
  
  Today, Longwood Gardens and the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) announced the launch of the Seed Your Future initiative, a multi-year effort to combat declining awareness of horticulture among U.S. audiences and promote horticulture as a vital and viable career path for the nation's youth. More than 150 partner organizations, including leaders in horticultural industries, horticultural associations, public gardens, public agencies, K-12 and higher education have already signed
  
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• Marine protected areas intensify both cooperation and competition

  04-03-2016 20:50
  
  Marine protected areas generate both extreme cooperation and extreme competition among fishers.
  
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• Fungal pathogen sheds gene silencing machinery and becomes more dangerous

  04-03-2016 20:50
  
  For more than a decade, a rare but potentially deadly fungus called Cryptococcus deuterogatti has taken up residence in the Pacific Northwest and Vancouver Island. Unlike its cousin Cryptococcus neoformans, which mostly infects patients with compromised immune systems, this fungus has sickened hundreds of otherwise healthy people.
  
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• HP Enterprise shares surge 14 percent after strong report

  04-03-2016 20:42
  
  Hewlett Packard Enterprise's stock rose more than 14 percent on Friday, a day after the commercial technology vendor reported solid earnings in its first quarter as an independent company.
  
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• Women file lawsuit arguing New York tampon tax is unlawful

  04-03-2016 20:40
  
  A group of women has filed a lawsuit accusing New York of unlawfully taxing tampons and other feminine hygiene products.
  
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• More Sumatran orangutans than previously thought

  04-03-2016 20:31
  
  Sumatran orangutans, one of the two existing species of orangutans, live exclusively in the North of the Indonesian island Sumatra and are critically endangered. This great ape is threatened by poaching and forest loss, as its habitat is being converted for agricultural purposes. An international team of researchers has now conducted an extensive series of surveys to estimate the number of Sumatran orangutans. They discovered that about 14,600 of these animals still live in the wild today - 8,00
  
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• Deep-Sea Audio Recordings Reveal A Noisy Mariana Trench, Surprising Scientists - NPR

  04-03-2016 20:27 via
  NPR
  Deep-Sea Audio Recordings Reveal A Noisy Mariana Trench, Surprising Scientists
  NPR
  Anyone looking for a little peace and quiet on this Earth might think they'd find some at the bottom of the ocean. They'd be wrong. And so were researchers who didn't expect to hear much when they dropped a microphone 6 miles down into the Mariana ...
  Scientists Find Ocean Floor Noisier Than ExpectedNewsweekall 152 news articles »
  

• Cosmochemists find evidence for unstable heavy element at solar system formation

  04-03-2016 20:26
  
  University of Chicago scientists have discovered evidence in a meteorite that a rare element, curium, was present during the formation of the solar system. This finding ends a 35-year-old debate on the possible presence of curium in the early solar system, and plays a crucial role in reassessing models of stellar evolution and synthesis of elements in stars. Details of the discovery appear in the March 4 edition of Science Advances.
  
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• A proposed superconductivity theory receives exclusive experimental confirmation

  04-03-2016 20:26
  
  Superconductivity - a quantum phenomenon in which metals below a certain temperature develop flow of current with no loss or resistance - is one of the most exciting problems in physics, which has resulted in investments worldwide of enormous brain power and resources since its discovery a little over a century ago. Many prominent theorists, Nobel laureates among them, have proposed theories for new classes of superconducting materials discovered several decades later, followed by teams of exper
  
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• Watch: This Is What the Deepest Part of the Ocean Sounds Like

  04-03-2016 20:24 via abcnews.go.com
  
  Researchers used a hydrophone to capture these haunting noises 7 miles under the sea in the Mariana Trench.
  
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• Building a better mouse trap, from the atoms up

  04-03-2016 20:24
  
  For most of human history, the discovery of new materials has been a crapshoot. But now, UConn researchers have systematized the search with machine learning that can scan millions of theoretical compounds for qualities that would make better solar cells, fibers, and computer chips. The search for new materials may never be the same.
  
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• Pint-Sized Lizards Trapped in Amber Give Clues to Life 100 Million Years Ago - Smithsonian

  04-03-2016 20:07 via
  Smithsonian
  Pint-Sized Lizards Trapped in Amber Give Clues to Life 100 Million Years Ago
  Smithsonian
  Collection of Lizards in Amber. These ancient amber fossils from Burma in Southeast Asia help complete the patchy record of lizard evolution. (David Grimaldi). By Maya Wei-Haas. smithsonian.com. March 4, 2016 2:00PM. 0 0 0 0 0 0 0. 0 0 0 0 0 0. Nearly ...
  Rare Amber-Entombed Lizards Preserved in Amazing DetailLive Science
  Oldest Chameleon Found in AmberDiscovery News
  World's oldest chameleon fou
  

• Deepest Part of the Ocean Proves to Be Hauntingly Noisy

  04-03-2016 19:50 via abcnews.go.com
  
  The deepest part of the ocean -- the Mariana Trench -- is eerily noisy.
  
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• Understanding differences within species is critical to conservation efforts

  04-03-2016 18:14
  
  A new study published in the journal Ecological Applications shows that differences within a species across geographically distinct ranges should be taken into account during conservation planning as the climate changes.
  
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• Fin24.com | Facebook to pay more taxes in Britain

  04-03-2016 18:00
  
  Facebook said it would declare advertising revenue from its top British clients in Britain instead of Ireland, meaning it will have to pay more tax.
  
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• R2-D2 Creator Tony Dyson Dies at 68

  04-03-2016 17:51 via feeds.nbcnews.com
  
  Dyson built the R2-D2 models designed by illustrator Ralph McQuarrie with special effects artist John Stears.
  
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• R2D2's next assignment: hospital orderly

  04-03-2016 17:30
  
  Meet the Tugs - a team of 27 robots now zooming around the hallways of the new University of California, San Francisco hospital at Mission Bay. They look a bit like R2D2, dragging a platform around behind them. Instead of drones, think of them more as little flatbed trucks, ferrying carts of stuff around the vast hospital complex - food, linens, medications, medical waste and garbage. And they do it more efficiently than humans.
  
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• S.African gold firms to pay $32 million to sick ex-miners

  04-03-2016 17:15
  
  Former goldmine workers have won a $32 million settlement from South African mining giants Anglo American and AngloGold Ashanti over respiratory diseases contracted underground, lawyers said Friday.
  
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• Amazon confirms local data encryption gone on Fire tablets

  04-03-2016 17:15
  
  Amazon has confirmed it removed the ability to encrypt locally stored data on its Fire tablets, saying that customers weren't using the service.
  
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• Amazon confirms encryption change

  04-03-2016 17:15
  
  Amazon has removed the ability to encrypt locally stored data on its Fire tablets, saying that customers weren't using the service.
  
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• Photos: Baby Monkey Strikes a Pose

  04-03-2016 17:14 via abcnews.go.com
  
  Absolutely adorable baby animals!
  
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• Cubans embracing the digital age

  04-03-2016 17:12 via rss.cnn.com
  
  Cuba's communist-run government has gradually welcomed technology that makes the nation more open to the world.
  
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• Astronaut Scott Kelly back home after year in space

  04-03-2016 16:54 via rss.cnn.com
  
  Astronaut Scott Kelly arrived in Houston to hugs, beer and apple pie after nearly a year in space.
  
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• Overall fluidity of US labor market has been declining

  04-03-2016 16:50
  
  The decline in the fluidity, or dynamism, of the U.S. labor market has been occurring along a number of dimensions—including the rate of job-to-job transition, hires and separations, and geographic movement across labor markets—since at least the 1980s, and these declines are all related, according to a new paper to be presented next week at the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity. Less fluidity in the labor market leads to fewer opportunities for workers to renegotiate their curren
  
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• Feds: Pennsylvania man pirated movie audio at drive-in

  04-03-2016 16:37
  
  A man accused of pirating audio of the Cameron Diaz movie "Sex Tape" at a Pennsylvania drive-in was arraigned Thursday on charges stemming from what prosecutors said was part of a broader conspiracy to sell bootleg movies online.
  
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• Collaborative project to help save the UK's declining pollinators launched

  04-03-2016 16:31
  
  The University of Stirling is working with Polli:Nation, a UK-wide biodiversity project, to get schools across Britain to help save and protect the dwindling pollinating insect population by transforming their grounds and community spaces.
  
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• Technological breakthrough for cheaper lighting and flexible solar cells

  04-03-2016 16:29
  
  In November 2012, the TREASORES project (Transparent Electrodes for Large Area Large Scale Production of Organic Optoelectronic Devices) started with the aim of developing technologies to dramatically reduce the production costs of organic electronic devices such as solar cells and LED lighting panels. Funded with 9 million Euro from the European Commission and an additional 6 million Euros from the project partners, the project has since then produced seven patent applications, a dozen peer-rev
  
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• Star Trek's vision becomes reality

  04-03-2016 16:28
  
  "Beam me up, Scotty" - even if Captain Kirk supposedly never said this exact phrase, it remains a popular catch-phrase to this day. Whenever the chief commander of the television series starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) wanted to go back to his control centre, this command was enough to take him back to the control centre instantly - travelling through the infinity of outer space without any loss of time.
  
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• Octopus-Like 'Skin' Could Be Used For 'Mood Robots'

  04-03-2016 16:22 via feeds.nbcnews.com
  
  Graduate students have developed a stretchy, light-up fabric that mimics an octopus skin, and say they want to adapt it to make "mood robots".
  
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• Why Copying Campaigns Between Search Engines Misses Opportunities - Search Engine Land

  04-03-2016 16:13 via searchengineland.com
  
  Search Engine Land
  Why Copying Campaigns Between Search Engines Misses Opportunities
  Search Engine Land
  Are you making the most of the unique characteristics of each search engine? Contributor John Cosley explains paid search opportunities you may be missing. John Cosley on March 4, 2016 at 10:13 am. More. no-copy-paste-ss-1920. Each month, users ...
  F-Patterns No More: How People View Google & Bing Search ResultsBusiness 2 Community
  Google confirms it will extend EU right-to-be-forgot
  
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• Google car crash—who's to blame when a driverless car has an accident?

  04-03-2016 16:10
  
  Luckily no one was injured when one of Google's self-driving cars recently crashed itself into a bus as it pulled out at a junction. The car was only travelling at 2mph, after all. The company has admitted it bore "some responsibility" for the accident because the test driver (and presumably the car) thought the bus would slow down to allow the car to pull out.
  
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• Fin24.com | Thousands of rands lost in ‘FNB, MTN scam’

  04-03-2016 15:28
  
  A forensic investigator has alleged an inside job at First National Bank and MTN in a SIM-swap scam that pilfers customers of hundreds of thousands of rands.
  
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• Researchers conduct first comprehensive study of NH oyster farming

  04-03-2016 15:25
  
  University of New Hampshire scientists have conducted the first study of oyster farming-nitrogen dynamics in New Hampshire, providing the first solid research on the state's oyster farming industry and the role oyster farms play with nitrogen removal. The research, which was funded in part by the NH Agricultural Experiment Station, contributes to a growing body of research on how oysters affect the nitrogen content of estuaries such as Great Bay.
  
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• Farthest Galaxy Yet Smashes Cosmic Distance Record

  04-03-2016 15:25 via feeds.nbcnews.com
  
  The Hubble Space Telescope just calculated the distance to the most far-out galaxy ever measured.
  
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• Airlines slow to adopt safety technologies after MH370

  04-03-2016 15:20
  
  Airline-safety standards are changing in the wake of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 nearly two years ago, but the head of one of the world's top air crash investigation agencies says it's not happening fast enough.
  
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• Sealing the bonds between mother and child

  04-03-2016 15:10
  
  Observations of mothering seals by scientists at the University of St Andrews has shed new light into the mother-child bond.
  
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