New on MIT Technology Review

Tesla Wires Half a Billion Dollars to the Government

Wed, 22 May 2013 20:46:59 +0000

Tesla Motors’ loan repayment is a bright spot for the DOE loan program.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk hinted it would happen, and now it’s happened. Tesla, the electric car maker, has paid off the DOE loan that allowed it to build a factory and start building and selling its Model S electric car. And it’s done so nine years ahead of schedule, according to the company (see “Musk Says Tesla Will Pay Off Its Loans in Half the Time”).

Bitcoin Hits the Big Time, to the Regret of Some Early Boosters

Wed, 22 May 2013 19:30:26 +0000

The first major conference for the digital currency suggests it is gaining legitimacy, but in a manner disappointing to some early enthusiasts.

This past Sunday, Doug Scribner took out five $100 bills and began feeding them into what looked like a small, white ATM in San Jose Conference Center in California. The machine swallowed the bills smartly and credited him with an equivalent value in bitcoins, an intangible, digital currency that is backed by not gold or any government, but by math.

In a Data Deluge, Companies Seek to Fill a New Role

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:05:00 +0000

A job invented in Silicon Valley is going mainstream as more industries try to gain an edge from big data.

The job description “data scientist” didn’t exist five years ago. No one advertised for an expert in data science, and you couldn’t go to school to specialize in the field. Today, companies are fighting to recruit these specialists, courses on how to become one are popping up at many universities, and the Harvard Business Review even proclaimed that data scientist is the “sexiest” job of the 21st century.

What 5G Will Be: Crazy-Fast Wireless Tested in New York City

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:00:00 +0000

Samsung’s technology for ultrafast data speeds currently requires a truckload of equipment.

The world’s biggest cell-phone maker, Samsung, caused a stir last week by announcing an ultrafast wireless technology that it unofficially dubbed “5G.” And the technology has, in fact, been tested on the streets of New York.

The Phosphorous Atom Quantum Computing Machine

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:40:51 +0000

An Australian team unveils the fundamental building block of a scalable quantum computer that could be embedded in today’s silicon chips.

Back in the late 90s, a physicist in Australia put forward a design for a quantum computer. Bruce Kane suggested that phosphorus atoms embedded in silicon would be the ideal way to store and manipulate quantum information.

How Apple Avoids Taxes through R&D Spending

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:42:34 +0000

In Washington, CEO Tim Cook defended Apple’s R&D cost-sharing arrangements.

Apple CEO Tim Cook came under fire in Washington today at a U.S. Senate hearing focused on the elaborate strategies Apple used to avoid paying tens of billions of dollars in corporate taxes.

What Will Hackers Do with the New Kinect?

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:17:14 +0000

Upgraded robot vision will be just one of the uses for the new version of Microsoft’s gesture control camera.

Microsoft announced a new version of the Xbox One today, and with it an improved and essentially reinvented version of Kinect, the company’s body- and gesture-control sensor. That bodes well for Xbox gamers, but also for the community of hackers that have found so many original uses for the first Kinect, from robot vision to 3-D doodling (see “Hackers Take the Kinect to New Levels”). It seems likely that a new wave of Kinect hacking activity will begin as soon as the new device becomes available.

Playing the Odds on Tornado Warnings

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:24:39 +0000

Pinpoint predictions are a long way off, but taking daily odds into account might help make the public more alert.

The devastation in Moore, Oklahoma, shows the limits of sensing, modeling, and warning technologies. While some technologies promise somewhat more accurate hurricane tracks and thus sharper evacuation orders (see “A Model for Hurricane Evacuation”), tornado warnings are another story altogether (see “The Limits of Tornado Predictions”).

How the Great Firewall of China Shapes Chinese Surfing Habits

Tue, 21 May 2013 06:34:23 +0000

Can cultural factors be more important than censorship in shaping Chinese surfing habits? Two researchers argue that a new study of the way global websites cluster together supports this idea.

Home Tweet Home: A House with Its Own Voice on Twitter

Tue, 21 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

A techie’s San Francisco home has its own Twitter feed. Will yours be next?

At first glance, you’d never guess there’s anything unusual about Tom Coates’s San Francisco home. Nestled at the end of a narrow passageway on a side street, it’s a peaceful, sunny house decorated with modern furniture and bright posters that say things like “Machines help us work” and “Make your own path.”

Clawing From the Wreckage of Nokia Research

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:26:00 +0000

Jolla Mobile, formed by Nokia refugees, launches a phone with interchangable back panels and the Sailfish OS.

Almost one year after Nokia’s bloodletting, in which it cut 10,000 jobs and closed research and manufacturing facilities (see “Nokia Forced to Take Drastic Measures”), we’re starting to see new fruits of the startup culture that rose from the wreckage.

Second Life Founder's New Virtual World Uses Body-Tracking Hardware

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:32:42 +0000

Hardware that tracks your head, eyes, and hands will make the follow up to Second Life very different from the pioneering virtual world.

The founder of the once-popular virtual world Second Life, Philip Rosedale, is working on a new 3-D digital world that looks like it will be operated using gestures and body-tracking hardware. Rosedale declined to talk about his new company, called High Fidelity, just yet. But videos and other material posted online by the company suggest it is working on an impressively immersive virtual-reality experience where you control an avatar using head and hand movements.

Exxon Takes Algae Fuel Back to the Drawing Board

Mon, 20 May 2013 20:48:29 +0000

A $300 million project seems to have failed to produce a cheap way to make fuel from algae.

In 2009, ExxonMobil announced that it would pay Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics up to $300 million to develop algae-based fuels.

One-Time Pad Reinvented to Make Electronic Copying Impossible

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:21:00 +0000

The ability to copy electronic code makes one-time pads vulnerable to hackers. Now engineers have found a way round this to create a system of cryptography that is invulnerable to electronic attack.

One-time pads are the holy grail of cryptography—they are impossible to crack, even in principle.

Liquefied Air Could Power Cars and Store Energy from Sun and Wind

Mon, 20 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

A 19th-century idea might lead to cleaner cars, larger-scale renewable energy.

Some engineers are dusting off an old idea for storing energy—using electricity to liquefy air by cooling it down to nearly 200 °C below zero. When power is needed, the liquefied air is allowed to warm up and expand to drive a steam turbine and generator.

Intel Fuels a Rebellion Around Your Data

Mon, 20 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

The world’s largest chip maker wants to see a new kind of economy bloom around personal data.

Intel is a $53-billion-a-year company that enjoys a near monopoly on the computer chips that go into PCs. But when it comes to the data underlying big companies like Facebook and Google, it says it wants to “return power to the people.”

Other Interesting arXiv Papers (Week Ending 18 May 2013)

Sat, 18 May 2013 04:29:55 +0000

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv preprint server

Performance of a Remotely Located Muon Radiography System to Identify the Inner Structure of a Nuclear Plant

From Our Archive: Wearable Computing, Long Before Google Glass

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:05:00 +0000

What was it like to use a wearable computer back in 1999?

SAP Makes Big Data Real– And Real-Time

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:15:00 +0000

The following View from the Marketplace was provided by SAP, the sponsor of our Big Data Gets Personal Business Report.

The Impending Headache of Google Glass Apps

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:47:06 +0000

Glass apps will require people to create new content filters. Maybe that’s just a losing battle.

Would you want your daily horoscope beamed to your right eye? That’s the vision of the future I saw when I tried out the fashion magazine Elle’s app for Google Glass yesterday, one of several apps announced at the extravagant software developer love-fest the internet company puts on every year.

The Latest Hardware Hacking Tool: A Machine that Carves Custom Circuit Boards

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:00:40 +0000

Otherfab’s Kickstarter project offers an easy way to make custom circuit boards at home.

Building Solar in Spain Instead of Germany Could Save Billions

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:58:41 +0000

Building solar and wind projects in the wrong place is wasting billions of dollars in Europe.

Siemens says it would make sense to build solar power plants in sunny countries in Europe rather than in cloudy ones. And wind turbines should be built in windy places.

Brain Training May Help Clear Cognitive Fog Caused by Chemotherapy

Fri, 17 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

The mental fuzziness induced by cancer treatment could be eased by cognitive exercises performed online, say researchers.

Cancer survivors sometimes suffer from a condition known as “chemo fog”—a cognitive impairment caused by repeated chemotherapy. A study hints at a controversial idea: that brain-training software might help lift this cognitive cloud.

Smartphone Tracker Gives Doctors Remote Viewing Powers

Fri, 17 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Here’s the smartphone technology that alerts a doctor when patients are headed for trouble.

At the Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, nurses can see into the lives of some diabetes patients even when they’re not at the clinic. If a specific patient starts acting lethargic, or making lengthy calls to his mom, a green box representing him on an online dashboard turns yellow, then red. Soon, a nurse will call to see if he is still taking his medication.

Cheap Magnetic Helmet Detects Some Kinds of Brain Damage

Thu, 16 May 2013 19:45:36 +0000

Prototype spots swelling and bleeding in a pilot study—but the novel technique employed is relatively unproven.

A helmet that sends a magnetic field through the wearer’s head might someday offer a quick way to reveal whether the brain is swelling or bleeding as the result of an injury.

Seven Must-Read Stories from the Past Week (May 11-17)

Thu, 16 May 2013 19:41:51 +0000

Another chance to catch the most interesting, and important, articles from the previous week on MIT Technology Review.

Terahertz Image Reveals Goya's Hidden Signature in Old Master Painting

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:40:34 +0000

Darkened varnish obscures Goya’s signature in a 1771 masterpiece, according to a new analysis using terahertz waves

Google and NASA Launch Quantum Computing AI Lab

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:00:00 +0000

The Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab will use the most advanced commercially available quantum computer, the D-Wave Two.

Quantum computing took a giant leap forward on the world stage today as NASA and Google, in partnership with a consortium of universities, launched an initiative to investigate how the technology might lead to breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.

Novel Material Shows Promise for Extracting Uranium from Seawater

Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

A so-called metal-organic framework could offer a better way to get at the vast uranium resource dissolved in the ocean.

A new material could potentially be used to extract uranium from seawater more efficiently, new research suggests.

Google’s Social Network Gets Smarter

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:22:00 +0000

With dozens of new features, Google’s social network is becoming more like a photo service and a news site.

Despite the 190 million people that Google says use its social network every month, Google Plus has always struggled to escape Facebook’s shadow and seem like a hopping social destination.

Human Embryonic Stem Cells Cloned

Wed, 15 May 2013 21:07:23 +0000

Scientists produced embryonic stem cells from the DNA of one person combined with a human donor egg.

Scientists from Oregon Health and Science University reported on Wednesday in the scientific journal Cell that they had created embryonic stem cells from a cloned human embryo. This is the first time that human stem cells have been produced using nuclear transfer, a cloning technique in which the nucleus of one person’s cell is transferred into an egg that has had its nucleus removed. The technique could be used to create patient-specific human embryonic stem cells, which could be used to study genetic diseases, aid drug development, and for therapeutic transplantation back into a patient.

Google Wants to Help Apps Track You

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:19:21 +0000

Google will help people who build Android apps follow their users around without draining too much battery life.

Google is giving mobile app creators more ways to tap into people’s activities and locations without draining too much phone battery power.

Aereo's on a Roll

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:58:48 +0000

Aereo CEO says he’s boosted by winning a round in court—and that “lines are very, very long” for his Internet TV offering, despite ABC’s new competing streaming service.

The legal battles are not over for Internet TV startup Aereo. But for now CEO Chet Kanojia, whom I had a chance to interview yesterday, says things couldn’t be better—with “very, very long” lines in markets across the United States for his streaming local TV service that has the broadcast industry in full battle cry.

First Quantum Memory That Records The Shape of a Single Photon Unveiled in China

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:02:26 +0000

The world’s first quantum memory that stores the shape and structure of single photons has been built in a Chinese lab

Treading Carefully, Google Encourages Developers to Hack Glass

Wed, 15 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Breaking its own restrictions, Google will show developers how to build any kind of app for Google Glass.

Google has set plenty of restrictions on the functionality of apps for Glass, the head-mounted display it is now shipping out to early adopters. At the company’s annual developer conference, I/O, which kicks off today, it will show app creators how to break those rules.

Augmenting Social Reality in the Workplace

Wed, 15 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

A new line of research examines what happens in an office where the positions of the cubicles and walls—even the coffee pot—are all determined by data.

Can we use data about people to alter physical reality, even in real time, and improve their performance at work or in life? That is the question being asked by a developing field called augmented social reality.

High Oil Prices Help Oil Production, But Not Biofuels

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:38:59 +0000

An International Energy Agency report says investments in oil technology will lead to a worldwide supply boom.

High oil prices were supposed to make biofuels and other oil alternatives more competitive. If only oil would stay above $80 a barrel (or $70 or $60), biofuels companies often say, then they’d have a market. Their technology for turning weeds into alcohol or pond scum into crude oil could really take off.

Share-Your-Car Startup RelayRides Acquires New Hardware

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:13:32 +0000

Making it easier for people to rent their own cars could lead to growth in car sharing.

With peer-to-peer car sharing, it is getting easier and easier to get away without owning a car in a city. But one barrier to growth of these kinds of marketplaces is the need to transfer the key.

Synthetic Biology Could Speed Flu Vaccine Production

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:21:58 +0000

Advanced genetic engineering is already changing vaccine development and could make inroads into other branches of medicine.

Synthetic biology is breathing new life into the old-fashioned world of vaccine production, raising hopes that manufacturers could release vaccines much more quickly when outbreaks occur.

It’s Time to Talk about the Burgeoning Robot Middle Class

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

How will a mass influx of robots affect human employment?

In the book Race Against the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of MIT’s Sloan School of Management present a chart showing U.S. productivity, GDP, employment, and income from 1953 to 2011. The chart looks as you would expect from 1953 until the mid-1980s, with every one of the measures rising together: employees work more productively, companies make more money, and more hires occur as the middle class swells.

Game Theory and the Treatment of Cancer

Tue, 14 May 2013 04:17:59 +0000

Thinking about cancer as an ecosystem is giving biologists access to a new armoury of mathematical tools for tackling it, such as evolutionary game theory

Sharper Computer Models Clear the Way for More Wind Power

Tue, 14 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

New prediction models can allow utilities to rely more heavily on wind and save millions.

The utility with the most wind power capacity in the United States, Xcel Energy, is relying more on this power source and saving millions of dollars thanks to new forecasting models similar to those used to predict climate change.

China Comes to Silicon Valley at One Startup Accelerator

Tue, 14 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

A year after launch, a startup program is helping U.S. companies reach China—and vice versa.

When Jon Bonanno, chief commercial officer of the clean-tech startup Empower Micro Systems, got up to face a small, packed room in Santa Clara, California, last week, it wasn’t like the polished “demo days” run by the highest-profile Silicon Valley startup accelerators. There was no stage, not even a screen for the projector. The sound system buzzed with painful feedback. The 100 or so guests stood or sat in folding chairs under bright fluorescent lights in a space adjoining a large startup workplace that contained a distinct no-no of Silicon Valley office culture: cubicles.

A More Efficient Jet Engine Is Made from Lighter Parts, Some 3-D Printed

Tue, 14 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Composite and 3-D-printed components will mean jet engines that use 15 percent less fuel.

A new generation of engines being developed by the world’s largest jet engine maker, CFM (a partnership between GE and Snecma of France), will allow aircraft to use about 15 percent less fuel—enough to save about $1 million per year per airplane and significantly reduce carbon emissions.

The Algorithm That Automatically Detects Polyps in Images from Camera Pills

Mon, 13 May 2013 04:49:39 +0000

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

How to Mine Cell-Phone Data Without Invading Your Privacy

Mon, 13 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

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

Mon, 13 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

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.

With Personal Data, Predictive Apps Stay a Step Ahead

Mon, 13 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

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.

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

Sun, 12 May 2013 21:13:16 +0000

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

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

Sat, 11 May 2013 04:14:53 +0000

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

Fri, 10 May 2013 21:04:33 +0000

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

Fri, 10 May 2013 20:49:28 +0000

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

Fri, 10 May 2013 18:55:28 +0000

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

Memoto Camera Logs Your Life

Fri, 10 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

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

Logging Life with a Lapel Camera

Fri, 10 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

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

Thu, 09 May 2013 20:24:00 +0000

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

Thu, 09 May 2013 17:35:00 +0000

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.

How to Make a Cognitive Neuroprosthetic

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000

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

Thu, 09 May 2013 09:51:53 +0000

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

Brooklyn Developer Offers Up His Personal Data on Kickstarter

Thu, 09 May 2013 08:13:39 +0000

A man data mined himself to fund an app that helps others sell their own personal data.

Software developer Federico Zannier has data-mined himself, and now he’s raising money on Kickstarter to build an iPhone app and Chrome browser extension so that others can easily do the same.

Can Carbon Capture Clean Up Canada’s Oil Sands?

Thu, 09 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

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.”)

Can Artificial Retinas Restore Natural Sight?

Thu, 09 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

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.

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

Wed, 08 May 2013 22:52:24 +0000

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

Wed, 08 May 2013 21:24:42 +0000

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

Wed, 08 May 2013 20:17:00 +0000

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?

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:20:49 +0000

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

Wed, 08 May 2013 17:57:10 +0000

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.

US Air Force Measures Potato Cannon Muzzle Velocities

Wed, 08 May 2013 11:14:03 +0000

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

Wed, 08 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

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

Wed, 08 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

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

Tue, 07 May 2013 17:45:08 +0000

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.”

The Cause of High Blood Pressure Revealed By Computer Modelling

Tue, 07 May 2013 10:05:18 +0000

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?

Tue, 07 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

As the amount of data expands exponentially, nearly all of it carries someone’s digital fingerprints.

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

Tue, 07 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

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

Mon, 06 May 2013 20:15:07 +0000

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

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:57:29 +0000

A clever new approach could help 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 losses a few minutes later.

Startup Taps Quantum Encryption for Cybersecurity

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:00:00 +0000

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

Mon, 06 May 2013 06:11:41 +0000

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

One of the dreams for security experts is the creation of a quantum internet that allows perfectly secure communication based on the powerful laws of quantum mechanics.

Broadcast Video Will Soon Be Packed into Smartphone Signals

Mon, 06 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

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”).

This Box Keeps Information Flowing During a Crisis

Sun, 05 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

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.

Other Interesting arXiv Papers This Week

Sat, 04 May 2013 04:15:47 +0000

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

Fri, 03 May 2013 21:38:09 +0000

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

Fri, 03 May 2013 21:30:00 +0000

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

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:16:43 +0000

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

Fri, 03 May 2013 17:47:00 +0000

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.

Twitter Tests a Toolkit That Puts the Internet in Things

Fri, 03 May 2013 14:58:00 +0000

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

Fri, 03 May 2013 14:35:39 +0000

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?

Fri, 03 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

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

Fri, 03 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

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

Thu, 02 May 2013 22:40:32 +0000

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

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:25:00 +0000

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.

First Tunguska Meteorite Fragments Discovered

Thu, 02 May 2013 10:26:09 +0000

Nobody knows what exploded over Siberia in 1908, but the discovery of the first fragments could finally solve the mystery.

With Florida Project, the Smart Grid Has Arrived

Thu, 02 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Smart grid technology has been implemented in many places, but Florida’s new deployment is the first full-scale system.

The first comprehensive and large scale smart grid is now operating. The $800 million project, built in Florida, has made power outages shorter and less frequent, and helped some customers save money, according to the utility that operates it.

Google Glass and the Rise of POV

Wed, 01 May 2013 22:11:10 +0000

Will Google Glass revive a controversial cinematographic technique?

The other day I wrote about how I was skeptical about advertisements ever finding a home on Google Glass, largely for reasons of “screen real estate” (“reality real estate” may be more apt). I urged readers to take my argument with a grain of salt, having neither sampled Google Glass nor having seen a simulation of it. Yesterday, Google finally posted a video introduction to the Google Glass experience. Check it out here:

Maker of World’s Most Boring Car Stops Making Cars

Wed, 01 May 2013 21:00:17 +0000

Coda Automotive’s uninspired EV failed to rouse customer interest.

The U.S. Department of Energy is being criticized for lending large sums of money to companies that went on to fail, like Solyndra, or appear to be on the cusp of failure, like Fisker Automotive (see “Why Tesla Survived and Fisker Won’t”). But here’s a company it turned down, and for good reason.

The Twitter Account to Watch If You're Worried About Climate Change

Wed, 01 May 2013 19:38:10 +0000

The planet’s rising atmospheric CO2 levels may hit a symbolic milestone this month.

This May, the folks behind a Twitter account started four months ago are preparing to tweet an event that the planet has not seen in an estimated four million years.

Genomic Study Spots Which Tumors Are Deadliest

Wed, 01 May 2013 19:15:00 +0000

Genomics signatures in uterine cancers could offer clues to prognosis.

The first comprehensive genomic analysis of endometrial tumors divides the cancer into four subtypes and suggests potential changes to current treatment paradigms. The study, published on Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature, is the latest result of the Cancer Genome Atlas, a U.S.-funded effort to improve cancer treatment with better diagnoses and targeted drug treatments.

Participants in Personal Genome Project Identified by Privacy Experts

Wed, 01 May 2013 09:58:41 +0000

Privacy experts have identified participants in the Personal Genome Project using “de-identified” data.

Apps for Finding New Tunes, with a Little Help from Your Friends

Wed, 01 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Twitter #music, EQuala, and Piki help you share and discover new music with friends, but they’re not all winners.

I’ve been stuck in a music rut for a long time, listening to the same bands and songs over and over without adding many newcomers to the mix. It’s not that I don’t want new tunes; I’m just bad at discovering them.

A Motherlode of Cell Phone Data-Mining Research

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:56:00 +0000

At conference starting Wednesday, huge trove of research papers point to enormous possibilities, but privacy issues remain.

Cell phones generate tremendous amounts of human mobility and other data that can be particularly useful in the developing world to redesign transportation networks (see “African Bus Routes Redrawn Using Cell-Phone Data”) and provide a boon to epidemiology (see “Big Data from Cheap Phones”).