Sci-Tech news

• Jawing away: Bahama pupfish study identifies candidate genes driving food-niches

  27-12-2016 23:00
  
  Within the salty lakes of the Bahama's San Salvador Island is an amazing diversity of fishes that may rival Charles Darwin's finches in the Galapagos.
  
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• 'Profitable' Washington Post will expand newsroom

  27-12-2016 21:47
  
  The Washington Post, purchased three years ago by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, will turn a profit in 2016 and expand its newsroom, defying the downward trend in the newspaper industry.
  
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• Cell service at Rainier: Do you want to hear me now?

  27-12-2016 21:47
  
  On a recent snowshoeing trip on Mount Rainier, Nancy Spears brought along her cellphone but was happy not to have coverage: It gave her time to connect with her snowy surroundings rather than her social media accounts.
  
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• Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan cars investigated for brake issue

  27-12-2016 21:46
  
  The U.S. government is investigating some Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan cars because the brake pedal may lose pressure, making it hard for drivers to stop the vehicle.
  
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• Fusion May Pave the Way to Safer Nuclear Power

  27-12-2016 21:20 via nbcnews.com
  
  As tremendous increases in energy demand are expected this century, our society has a strong need for clean unlimited energy and the best hope for a clean, renewable energy source is likely fusion.
  
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• Google Scrubs Neo-Nazi Site from Holocaust Search Results

  27-12-2016 20:57 via nbcnews.com
  
  It's not the first time Google has altered its search algorithm, which uses different methods to determine which pages rank high up in the results.
  
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• Genome study reveals 'gray zone' of animals transitioning from one species to two

  27-12-2016 20:00
  
  There is usually no ambiguity about species delineation when distant lineages are compared. For instance, there is no doubt that dogs and cats belong to two different species. However, such distinction becomes less clear-cut when comparing recently diverged groups of individuals, between which interbreeding is still to some extent possible. This is the paradox of speciation: a gradual, continuous process that ultimately leads to distinct biological entities.
  
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• Antibiotic resistance just became more complex

  27-12-2016 20:00
  
  Bacteria that are susceptible to antibiotics can survive when enough resistant cells around them are expressing an antibiotic-deactivating factor. This new take on how the microbial context can compromise antibiotic therapy was published by a team of microbiologists from the University of Groningen microbiologists, together with colleagues from San Diego, in the journal PLOS Biology on 27 December.
  
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• New Material Provides an Elastic “Second Skin”

  27-12-2016 18:55 via scitechdaily.com
  A team of researchers has developed a “second skin” polymer that can provide a barrier, cosmetic improvement, and potentially deliver drugs. Scientists at MIT, Massachusetts General Hospital, Living Proof, and Olivo Labs have developed a new material that can temporarily protect and tighten skin, and smooth wrinkles. With further development, it could also be used […]
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• Suomi NPP satellite spots Tropical Storm Nock-ten weakening

  27-12-2016 18:54
  
  NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite flew over the South China Sea and captured a visible image of Tropical Storm Nock-ten elongating as it continued getting weaker from wind shear.
  
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• The Interstellar Medium: Crossing the Cosmic Void

  27-12-2016 18:43 via scitechdaily.com
  Humanity’s great leap into the space between the stars has, in a sense, already begun. NASA’s Voyager 1 probe broke through the sun’s magnetic bubble to touch the interstellar wind. Voyager 2 isn’t far behind. New Horizons shot past Pluto on its way to encounters with more distant dwarf worlds, the rubble at the solar […]
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• Astronomers Release the Largest Digital Sky Survey

  27-12-2016 18:30 via scitechdaily.com
  The Pan-STARRS project is publicly releasing the world’s largest digital sky survey from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). “The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys allow anyone to access millions of images and use the database and catalogs containing precision measurements of billions of stars and galaxies,” said Dr. Ken Chambers, Director of the Pan-STARRS Observatories. “Pan-STARRS has […]
  The post Astronomers Release the Largest Digital Sky Survey appeared first on
  
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• Tech We Loved, Loathed, and Lost in 2016

  27-12-2016 18:09 via nbcnews.com
  
  Pay your respects inside the tech graveyard of 2016.
  
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• Female Astronomer Who Pioneered Research on Dark Matter Dies

  27-12-2016 17:52
  
  Vera Rubin was the second female astronomer in the National Academy of Sciences.
  
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• Growing number of Americans are retiring outside the US

  27-12-2016 17:36
  
  Newly widowed, Kay McCowen quit her job, sold her house, applied for Social Security and retired to Mexico. It was a move she and her husband, Mel, had discussed before he passed away in 2012.
  
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• Amazon sold 'millions' of Alexa speakers for holiday

  27-12-2016 16:52
  
  Amazon said Tuesday its connected Echo speakers infused with artificial intelligence were the top-selling products over the holiday season for the online giant.
  
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• High-intensity light promotes anthocyanin accumulation in rough bluegrass

  27-12-2016 16:09
  
  Anthocyanins, plant pigments known for their health-promoting properties, are in demand for medicinal and industrial uses. Anthocyanins have become sought-after natural products, but the small number of plants that naturally produce anthocyanins has limited their widespread use. Researchers at The Ohio State University say the results of their recent study (HortScience, September 2106) can help to increase the environmental and economic sustainability of anthocyanin extract production in turfgra
  
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• Campus composting programs effective in educating students

  27-12-2016 16:09
  
  As food waste becomes a growing concern on college campuses, colleges and universities across the US are introducing integrated composting programs to collect food waste while educating students about environmental stewardship. A new study shows that campus composting programs can be effective in raising students' awareness of composting and environmental issues.
  
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• Cool-season vegetable rotation effective, sustainable practice

  27-12-2016 16:08
  
  Issues with weeds, insects, and disease make certified organic production of vegetables challenging in the southeastern United States. Maintaining and building soil organic carbon in midscale organic production systems can also be difficult due to the warm, moist conditions that promote decomposition. The authors of a new study in HortTechnology say that cool-season cash crops paired with warm-season cover crops may help alleviate these concerns for organic production.
  
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• Video: This is your brain on alcohol

  27-12-2016 16:07
  
  It's almost time to ring in 2017. And since most New Year's celebrations include alcohol, Reactions' latest episode explains the chemistry behind its effects - drunkenness, frequent bathroom breaks and occasionally poor decision-making.
  
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• Nano system operates with interacting electrons, but no electric current

  27-12-2016 15:30
  
  (Phys.org)—Illustrating the unusual way things work on the nanoscale, scientists have designed a new nanoelectromechanical system (NEMS) that produces mechanical motion due to the interactions between electrons—yet unlike similar systems, this system does not require any electric current. Instead, the electron-electron interactions couple two electron reservoirs of different temperatures, which generates a heat flow between them that causes a suspended carbon nanotube to vibrate.
  
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• How safe is seafood?

  27-12-2016 14:54
  
  Seafood is the main component of European Christmas menus. But with rising concern about chemical pollution in the marine environment, is seafood safe to eat?
  
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• Speech signal processing—enhancing voice conversion models

  27-12-2016 14:00
  
  Altering a person's voice so that it sounds like another person is a useful technique for use in security and privacy, for example. This computational technique, known as voice conversion (VC), usually requires parallel data from two speakers to achieve a natural-sounding conversion. Parallel data requires recordings of two people saying the same sentences, with the necessary vocabulary, which are then time-matched and used to create a new target voice for the original speaker.
  
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• What Cool Tech Products Will We See in 2017?

  27-12-2016 13:52 via nbcnews.com
  
  Some of the hottest tech to put on your radar for 2017.
  
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• Improvements to a decision-making algorithm

  27-12-2016 13:50
  
  In fields such as engineering, economics or finance, highly complex decisions must be made, often incorporating multiple, at times contradictory, objectives. Highly specialised computer algorithms can help find the best possible solutions to these multi-objective problems (MOPs).
  
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• Coding theorem defines decoding error capacity for general scenarios

  27-12-2016 13:40
  
  The rate at which information can be coded so that it can be decoded within a particular error probability constraint is one of the "major research topics in information theory" as Hideki Yagi at the University of Electro-Communications, Te Sun Han at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, and Ryo Nomura at Senshu University in Japan explain in their recent report. In this latest work they formulate a theorem for a general class of coding theorems that gives a formu
  
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• WATCH: Music Fans Can't Get Enough of George Michael

  27-12-2016 13:38
  
  The pop icon's streaming numbers jumped over 3,100 percent since his death.
  
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• Network traffic anomaly detection

  27-12-2016 13:32
  
  "Diagnosing unusual events (called "anomalies") in a large-scale network like Internet Service Providers and enterprise networks is critical and challenging for both network operators and end users," explain Hiroyuki Kasai from The University of Electro-Communications in Japan, and co-authors Wolfgang Kellerer Martin Kleinsteuber at the Technical University of Munich in Germany in a recent report. In their latest work they devise a computationally efficient and effective algorithm to identify ne
  
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• Quarter of a million tonnes of food could be saved with better logistics

  27-12-2016 13:31
  
  Each year, nearly a quarter of a million tonnes of food is discarded in industry and retail in Sweden – quite unnecessarily. This is something that Chalmers researcher Kristina Liljestrand wants to do something about. She is now giving companies in the food supply chain specific tools that can reduce both food waste and the environmental impact of food transport.
  
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• Investigations of the skyrmion Hall effect reveal surprising results

  27-12-2016 13:31
  
  Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have made another important breakthrough in the field of future magnetic storage devices. Already in March 2016, the international team investigated structures, which could serve as magnetic shift register or racetrack memory devices. This type of storage promises low access times, high information density, and low energy consumption. Now, the research team achieved the billion-fold repro
  
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• Why connecting all the world's robots will drive 2017's top technology trends

  27-12-2016 13:30
  
  If you want to make predictions for the future, you need to find the trajectory of events in the past. So to work out what shape digital technology will likely take next year, we should look back to the major developments of 2016. And the past year's developments point to a 2017 shaped by the next phase of virtual and augmented reality, the emergence of an internet for artificial intelligence and the creation of personalised digital assistants that follow us across devices.
  
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• The biggest technology failures of 2016

  27-12-2016 13:20
  
  2016 has been a watershed year for technology. There has been some spectacular fails that have brought a more realistic perspective to the fundamental belief that technology improves with time. In part, this is because we have now pushed hardware and software to its limits, and certainly beyond our ability to guarantee that it will work as promised, or even secretly hoped. 2016 was the year that technology hit a wall, with significant challenges that will need to be overcome before it can pick u
  
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• Stability without junctions—cadherin prevents cortical deformation

  27-12-2016 13:16
  
  Scientists from the Mechanobiology Institute, Singapore (MBI) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have discovered that cadherin clusters, which are well known for forming junctions between cells, also play a role in stabilising the cell cortex. The study was published in the scientific journal Current Biology on 15 December 2016.
  
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• Calcium aids chromosome condensation prior to cell division

  27-12-2016 13:16
  
  Osaka University-led Japanese research reveals role for calcium ions in chromosome condensation during mitosis; high-resolution imaging of living cells reveals compact, globular chromosomes in the presence of calcium that became fibrous and expand in its absence.
  
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• Rampant narcissism and social cheating – the importance of teaching social evolutionary mechanisms

  27-12-2016 13:14
  
  As socioeconomic inequality grows,  the publicly acknowledged importance of traits such as honesty, loyalty, self-sacrifice, and reciprocity appears to have fallen out of favor with some of our socio-economic and political elites. How many people condemn a person as dishonest one day and embrace them the next? Dishonesty and selfishness no longer appear to be taboo, or a source of shame that needs to be expurgated (perhaps my Roman Catholic upbringing is bubbling to the surface here).&
  
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• Team discovers way to pinpoint 'words' in genetic book of life

  27-12-2016 13:10
  
  The development of the embryo into trillions of specialized cells is an intricate genetic dance orchestrated by precisely timed expression of genes. Now a team led by Yale scientists have discovered a way to track the precise bits of RNA that that control this crucial process in a living animal.
  
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• Scientists develop novel assay to decode functional elements of genome

  27-12-2016 13:10
  
  One of the most profound changes in the life of an organism is what Antonio Giraldez calls "embryonic puberty": the stage when an early embryo stops taking instructions from its mother on how to develop and activates its own genome to kick out those instructions instead. This critical stage, called the maternal-to-zygote transition, happens in all embryos, from sea anemones to humans. Yet how it is regulated in the embryo is not yet known.
  
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• Hack-proofing RFID-equipped personal devices

  27-12-2016 13:04
  
  Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags have become almost ubiquitous – look carefully, and you'll notice them in passports, credit cards, library books, office access passes, and even pet cats.
  
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• Rumor: 5-inch iPhone With Vertical Dual Cameras Planned - PC Magazine

  27-12-2016 13:03 via pcmag.com
  
  PC Magazine
  Rumor: 5-inch iPhone With Vertical Dual Cameras Planned
  PC Magazine
  If Apple is true to form, then 2017 will see the release of the iPhone 7s and 7s Plus. Typically, the "s" models are a tweak to the handsets that preceded them, with the exteriors remaining the same while there are improvements internally. However, a ...
  Apple rumored to introduce 5" 'iPhone 7s' in 2017 with vertical dual-lens arrayAppleInsider (press release) (blog)
  Rumor Says Apple Will Introduce New 5-Inch 'iPhon
  
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• Control algorithms could keep sensor-laden balloons afloat in hurricanes for a week

  27-12-2016 13:03
  
  Controls engineers at UC San Diego have developed practical strategies for building and coordinating scores of sensor-laden balloons within hurricanes.
  
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• Oxytocin enhances social affiliation in chimpanzee groups

  27-12-2016 12:52
  
  The high costs of individuals going to war is perplexing. Individuals are willing to suffer costs in order to benefit their own group, through cooperating and supporting their fellow group members and acting with hostility towards the out-group. Although aggressive, these conflicts are also known to enhance the sense of group belonging and promote social cohesion and affiliation among group members, essential aspects of successful competition with out-groups. Researchers of the Max Planck Instit
  
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• New atom interferometer could measure inertial forces with record-setting accuracy

  27-12-2016 12:52
  
  Atom interferometry is the most sensitive known technique for measuring gravitational forces and inertial forces such as acceleration and rotation. It's a mainstay of scientific research and is being commercialized as a means of location-tracking in environments where GPS is unavailable. It's also extremely sensitive to electric fields and has been used to make minute measurements of elements' fundamental electrical properties.
  
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• Scientists design complete computer simulation of human artery

  27-12-2016 12:51
  
  Researchers from the Netherlands and Russia presented a concept of a virtual artery. According to the scientists, a new multiscale computer model of the human artery will combine several sub-models of the cardiovascular system at different complexity levels. The developers believe that such a detailed model can lay a foundation for deeper study of vessel pathologies and become an alternative to animal tests in pharmacology. The study appeared in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A.
  
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• Busting myths about the metric system

  27-12-2016 12:43
  
  This week is the 41st anniversary of the Metric Conversion Act, which was signed on December 23, 1975, by President Gerald R. Ford. Normally, we celebrate by sharing metric education resources, but this year I want to use the occasion to dispel some common misconceptions about the U.S. relationship with the metric system.
  
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• Gloomy start to year of rooster as bird flu hits South Korea

  27-12-2016 12:35
  
  The year of the rooster looks set for a gloomy start. Egg prices are soaring and new year's festivals are being canceled as South Korea fights its worst bird flu outbreak in a decade.
  
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• Peru brain museum puts most complex organ on display

  27-12-2016 12:34
  
  It powers everything we do, yet remains one of our biggest mysteries.
  
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• Avatar-style S. Korean manned robot takes first baby steps

  27-12-2016 12:34
  
  A giant South Korean-built manned robot that walks like a human but makes the ground shake under its weight has taken its first baby steps.
  
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• Tesla, Panasonic agree to make PV cells in Buffalo, New York

  27-12-2016 12:29
  
  Japanese electronics company Panasonic and U.S. electric car maker Tesla said Tuesday they plan to begin production of photovoltaic cells and modules at a factory in Buffalo, New York.
  
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• Japan culling 90,000 more birds for avian flu

  27-12-2016 12:29
  
  Japan began killing some 90,000 chickens on Tuesday to contain another outbreak of a highly contagious strain of avian flu, officials said.
  
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• China Could Become First Country To Land Probe On Far Side Of The Moon - Tech Times

  27-12-2016 11:40 via techtimes.com
  
  Tech Times
  China Could Become First Country To Land Probe On Far Side Of The Moon
  Tech Times
  China aims to soft land a probe on the far side of the moon by 2018, a feat that was not yet done by other countries. What does China want to achieve? ( Joe Raedle | Getty Images ). Advertisement. China could become the first country to soft land a ...
  China's Ambitious Space Program: White Paper Reveals Plans To Send Probe To Far Side Of Moon In 2018International Business Times
  China Sets Ambitious Fiv
  
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