Sci-Tech news

• Google to expand Waze carpooling service in San Francisco

  30-08-2016 23:44
  
  Google is set to expand a San Francisco carpooling program that could morph into a showdown with its one-time ally, the popular ride-hailing service Uber.
  
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• EU Rules Apple Must Pay up to $14.5B in Back Taxes

  30-08-2016 23:18
  
  The EU's investigation found Ireland granted lavish tax breaks to Apple.
  
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• Reconstructing the sixth century plague from a victim

  30-08-2016 23:00
  
  Before the infamous Black Death, the first great plague epidemic was the Justinian plague, which, over the course of two centuries, wiped out up to an estimated 50 million (15 percent) of the world's population throughout the Byzantine Empire—and may have helped speed the decline of the eastern Roman Empire.
  
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• Report of Possible Alien Signal Sets SETI Community Abuzz

  30-08-2016 22:44
  
  "Not a significant discovery," SETI researcher says of mysterious signal.
  
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• WATCH: Report of Possible Alien Signal Sets SETI Community Abuzz But Few Are Phoning Home

  30-08-2016 22:10
  
  "Not a significant discovery," one SETI researcher says of mysterious signal.
  
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• Alaska agency turns to crowdfunding for park project

  30-08-2016 22:10
  
  With Alaska's fiscal crisis drying up funding for a number of state projects, officials hope a crowdfunding campaign will raise $50,000 toward shoring up a crumbling riverbank creeping toward century-old buildings at a state park.
  
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• Obama to guest-edit issue of Wired magazine

  30-08-2016 22:06
  
  Is President Barack Obama already thinking about his next job? In the coming months, he will guest-edit an issue of tech-focused Wired magazine.
  
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• Theorists solve a long-standing fundamental problem

  30-08-2016 22:04
  
  Trying to understand a system of atoms is like herding gnats - the individual atoms are never at rest and are constantly moving and interacting. When it comes to trying to model the properties and behavior of these kinds of systems, scientists use two fundamentally different pictures of reality, one of which is called "statistical" and the other "dynamical."
  
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• Researchers show that when it comes to climate change and stream flow, plants play an important role

  30-08-2016 21:55
  
  In California's Sierra Nevada mountains, as more precipitation falls in the form of rain rather than snow, and the snowpack melts earlier in spring, it's important for water managers to know when and how much water will be available for urban and agricultural needs and for the environment in general.
  
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• Multi-billion Apple windfall puts Ireland in unusual bind

  30-08-2016 21:00
  
  The European Commission's demand for Apple to pay Ireland some 13 billion euros in back taxes has put the country in the strange position of refusing the windfall for fear of scaring away valuable investment.
  
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• Ghost HQ and Double Irish: Apple's tax deals

  30-08-2016 20:50
  
  Take one set of European profits, one phantom headquarters and two companies and there you have it: Apple's recipe for avoiding tax.
  
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• NASA's Terra satellite spies tropical storm weakening Lionrock over Hokkaido

  30-08-2016 20:39
  
  Tropical Storm Lionrock moved over Honshu, the big island of Japan and then proceeded over the Hokkaido, the northernmost island, when NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead and analyzed the storm's cloud top temperatures.
  
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• Satellite sees large Tropical Depression 9 in the Gulf of Mexico

  30-08-2016 20:37
  
  Although the center of Tropical Depression 9 moved away from Cuba and into the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, western Cuba was still getting drenched from the system. A visible image from NOAA's GOES-East satellite showed the reach of the large depression.
  
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• France Wants Halt to 'Imbalanced' EU-US Trade Deal Talks

  30-08-2016 19:38
  
  French President Francois Hollande says that talks on a landmark trade deal between the U.S. and European Union are bogged down, unbalanced and cannot be completed this year
  
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• Oklahoma Woman Accused of Killing Daughter With Crucifix

  30-08-2016 19:19
  An Oklahoma woman accused of killing her 33-year-old daughter by forcing a crucifix down her throat told police she believed her daughter had been possessed by the devil
  
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• NASA satellite catches major Hurricane Madeline as Hawaii braces

  30-08-2016 18:56
  
  NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP and NOAA's GOES satellites showed major Hurricane Madeline nearing the Hawaiian Islands. An animation of satellite imagery showed the movement of Madeline and nearby Hurricane Lester over a two day period.
  
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• NASA looks at Eastern Pacific's Category 3 Hurricane Lester

  30-08-2016 18:56
  
  NASA satellites provided forecasters with infrared and visible imagery of Major Hurrricane Lester as it continued to move through the Eastern Pacific Ocean. After peaking as a Category 4 hurricane on Aug. 29, Lester weakened to a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale today, Aug. 30.
  
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• Defend or grow? These plants do both

  30-08-2016 18:56
  
  From natural ecosystems to farmers' fields, plants face a dilemma of energy use: outgrow and outcompete their neighbors for light, or defend themselves against insects and disease.
  
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• Diamonds and quantum information processing on the nano scale

  30-08-2016 18:53
  
  A City College of New York led-team headed by physicist Dr. Carlos Meriles has successfully demonstrated charge transport between Nitrogen-Vacancy color centers in diamond. The team developed a novel multi-color scanning microscopy technique to visualize the charge transport. The breakthrough experiment could potentially lead to room-temperature quantum information processing in diamond and optical data storage in three dimensions.
  
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• The rise and fall of galaxy formation

  30-08-2016 18:49
  
  An international team of astronomers, including Carnegie's Eric Persson, has charted the rise and fall of galaxies over 90 percent of cosmic history. Their work, which includes some of the most sensitive astronomical measurements made to date, is published by The Astrophysical Journal.
  
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• Satellites see Tropical Depression 8 off the North Carolina coast

  30-08-2016 18:48
  
  ASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP and NOAA's GOES satellites showed Tropical Depression 8 nearing the North Carolina coast. An animation of satellite imagery showed the development and movement of the depression toward the coast over a two day period.
  
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• Plants found to regulate leaf temperature to boost carbon uptake

  30-08-2016 18:47
  
  A new study has found that plants regulate their leaf temperature with some independence from the surrounding air temperature, a trait that increases carbon uptake through photosynthesis. The research offers promise for refining Earth system models that help predict climate change impacts and feedbacks.
  
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• A nonet of new plant species from Africa emphasizes the importance of herbaria in botany

  30-08-2016 18:45
  
  Combining modern molecular methods, with more traditional morphological ones, a recent revision of the custard apple genus Monanthotaxis has revealed a nonet of new species.
  
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• Fertigation strategies improve production of Hippeastrum

  30-08-2016 18:41
  
  Recent studies have demonstrated that a priority for the floriculture industry is identifying environmentally friendly production strategies that result in marketable ornamental plants. The authors of a report in the June 2016 issue of HortScience say that implementing recommended nutrient management strategies in soilless culture production offers multiple benefits for growers.
  
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• Light treatments inhibit intumescence injury of tomato

  30-08-2016 18:40
  
  Intumescence injury, also known as edema or oedema, is a nonpathogenic physiological disorder that can cause blister- or callus-like tumor growths to develop on the surface of leaves, petioles, and stems of plants. Problematic intumescence injury has been observed in many different plant species. Researchers from the School of Plant Sciences at The University of Arizona published a study in the June 2016 issue of HortScience in which they report on recommended light treatments to mitigate the di
  
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• Video: What if humans could photosynthesize?

  30-08-2016 18:39
  
  The sun shines a massive amount of energy onto the Earth's surface every day. What if humans could take a cue from plants and use sunlight to make their own food?
  
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• SpaceX gets taker for 1st flight of recycled rocket

  30-08-2016 18:36
  
  SpaceX has a taker for the first flight of one of its recycled rockets.
  
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• The Latest: White House Worries Apple Deal to Cost Taxpayers

  30-08-2016 18:12
  
  The White House says the Obama administration is concerned that American taxpayers will ultimately bear the brunt of the European Union's decision requiring Apple to pay billions of dollars in back taxes
  
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• Why Ireland Doesn't Want to Take Billions From Apple

  30-08-2016 17:44
  Ireland finds itself in a perverse position of arguing that it doesn't want a multi-billion windfall from Apple
  
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• Tasmanian devils evolve to resist deadly cancer

  30-08-2016 17:00
  
  Tasmanian devils are evolving in response to a highly lethal and contagious form of cancer, a Washington State University researcher has found.
  
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• Quest to find the 'missing physics' at play in landslides

  30-08-2016 17:00
  
  During the 1990s, Charles S. Campbell, now a professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Southern California, began exploring why large landslides flow great distances with apparently little friction, and the larger the volume of flowing rock the lesser the friction.
  
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• New research shows how songbirds island-hopped out of Australia

  30-08-2016 17:00
  
  While it is widely accepted that songbirds originated from the Australian continent, how and when they diversified and colonized the rest of the globe has remained a mystery.
  
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• New instrument improves studies of explosions, helps control hot spots

  30-08-2016 17:00
  
  Testing explosions is epic science. The most detailed studies of explosive charges have been conducted at national laboratories using a gun as big as a room to fire a flat bullet—the flyer plate, typically 100 millimeters in diameter—into an explosive charge inside a thick-walled chamber that contains the fierce blast. The tests require enormous facilities.
  
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• High seas fisheries management could recoup losses due to climate change

  30-08-2016 17:00
  
  Closing the high seas to fishing could increase fish catches in coastal waters by 10 per cent, helping people, especially the most vulnerable, cope with the expected losses of fish due to climate change, new UBC research finds.
  
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• Anomalous grooves on Martian moon Phobos explained by impacts

  30-08-2016 17:00
  
  Some of the mysterious grooves on the surface of Mars' moon Phobos are the result of debris ejected by impacts eventually falling back onto the surface to form linear chains of craters, according to a new study.
  
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• New optical material offers unprecedented control of light and thermal radiation

  30-08-2016 16:51
  
  A team led by Nanfang Yu, assistant professor of applied physics at Columbia Engineering, has discovered a new phase-transition optical material and demonstrated novel devices that dynamically control light over a much broader wavelength range and with larger modulation amplitude than what has currently been possible. The team, including researchers from Purdue, Harvard, Drexel, and Brookhaven National Laboratory, found that samarium nickelate (SmNiO3) can be electrically tuned continuously betw
  
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• Colors from darkness: Researchers develop alternative approach to quantum computing

  30-08-2016 16:48
  
  Researchers at Aalto University have demonstrated the suitability of microwave signals in the coding of information for quantum computing. Previous development of the field has been focusing on optical systems.
  
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• Single women with personal wealth more likely to become entrepreneurs than men

  30-08-2016 16:47
  
  A new economic study by the University of Stirling and Royal Holloway, University of London has found evidence that there is a big difference in cash flow problems faced by men and women in the UK. They found single women face more severe constraints to their incomings and outgoings, but that those single women whose personal wealth increases unexpectedly through an inheritance are more likely to start a new business than their male counterparts.
  
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• Why the EU's tax probe of Apple and others is raising US ire

  30-08-2016 16:40
  
  The European Union's crackdown on corporate tax avoidance has landed on Apple ; its antitrust regulator is demanding that the U.S. tech giant pay Ireland up to 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) plus interest in back taxes.
  
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• People enhanced the environment, not degraded it, over past 13,000 years

  30-08-2016 16:38
  
  Human occupation is usually associated with deteriorated landscapes, but new research shows that 13,000 years of repeated occupation by British Columbia's coastal First Nations has had the opposite effect, enhancing temperate rainforest productivity.
  
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• Trapped in a nuclear weapon bunker wood ants survive for years in Poland

  30-08-2016 16:36
  
  Having built their nest over the vertical ventilation pipe of an old nuclear weapon bunker in Poland, every year a large number of wood ants fall down the pipe to never return back to their colony.
  
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• Comey: FBI wants "adult conversation' on device encryption

  30-08-2016 16:34
  
  FBI Director James Comey is again warning about the bureau's inability to access digital devices because of encryption.
  
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• Dog brains process both what we say and how we say it, study shows

  30-08-2016 15:58
  
  The first study to investigate how dog brains process speech shows that our best friends in the animal kingdom care about both what we say and how we say it. Dogs, like people, use the left hemisphere to process words, a right hemisphere brain region to process intonation, and praising activates dog's reward center only when both words and intonation match, according to a study in Science.
  
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• Millions at risk from rising water pollution: UN

  30-08-2016 15:53
  
  Increasingly polluted rivers in Africa, Asia and Latin America pose a disease risk to more than 300 million people and threaten fisheries and farming in many countries, a UN report warned Tuesday.
  
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• Two-photon imaging of Meissner's corpuscle mechanoreceptors in living tissue

  30-08-2016 15:51
  
  When a fingertip explores the surface of a material, mechanoreceptors called Meissner's corpuscles (MCs) near the surface of the skin mainly respond to low-frequency vibration stimuli such as fluttering or slipping on the skin. Thus they are responsible for sensitivity to light touch.
  
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• Female fiddler crabs want protection not sex

  30-08-2016 15:49
  
  New research has resolved a mystery over why female fiddler crabs visit and leave many males during mating season, and found the females aren't just being picky.
  
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• Flywheel technology could create new savings for light rail transit

  30-08-2016 15:46
  
  (Edmonton) University of Alberta mechanical engineering professors Pierre Mertiny and Marc Secanell are looking to make an old technology new again and save some money for transit train operators such as the Edmonton LRT while they do it.
  
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• What's hiding behind the trapdoor? Spiders, of course

  30-08-2016 15:33
  
  Australia is known as a country full of deadly creatures - now people have trapdoor spiders hiding in their backyards.
  
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• Creative mathematical tasks contribute to deeper learning in mathematics

  30-08-2016 15:29
  
  Working with creative mathematical tasks is important for pupils both to reflect on mathematics as well as for their subsequent test results. Being faced with creative tasks during exercise has evident effects on all pupils, both on weak and high performers. This according to studies at Umeå University in Sweden.
  
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• Changes in the immune system lead to success

  30-08-2016 15:28
  
  The sequencing of the Atlantic cod genome in 2011 demonstrated that this species lacks a crucial part of its immune system. In a follow-up study, Kjetill S. Jakobsen and collaborators have investigated a large number of additional fish species and found that this is a trait that Atlantic cod have in common with its close relatives, the codfishes. Further analyses show that the alternate immune system observed is associated with increased speciation rates, and a key to the success of this group o
  
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