What’s the number one reason we riot? Hunger — food becoming too scarce or too expensive. So argues a group of complex systems theorists in Cambridge, and it makes sense, Motherboard reports.
In a 2011 paper, researchers at the Complex Systems Institute (CSI) unveiled a model that accurately explained why the waves of unrest that swept the world in 2008 and 2011 crashed when they… read more
Researchers at Stanford University’s School of Engineering and the University of Delaware have used what they call the “most sophisticated weather model available” to meet many times the world’s total power demand by 2030 — in fact, enough to exceed the total demand by several times, even after accounting for reductions in wind speed caused by turbines.
In related news today, Lawrence Livermore and Carnegie Institute researchers have found… read more
There is enough power in the Earth’s winds to be a primary source of near-zero emission electric power for the entire world, but some scientists have been concerned they would substantially affect climate.
In related news today, Stanford University and University of Delaware researchers found that there’s plenty of wind over land and near to shore, using 4 million turbines, to supply 7.5 terawatts of power without significant negative affect on… read more
Researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Northwestern University have devised a simple, inexpensive system based on nanoparticles, a kind of nano-velcro, to detect and trap mercury dumped in lakes and rivers.
The particles are covered with tiny hairs that can grab onto toxic heavy metals such as mercury and cadmium. This technology makes it possible to easily and inexpensively test for these… read more
Researchers at the Long Beach Veterans Affairs Medical Center in California have built and tested the first prosthetic lower limb that can be controlled in real time by EEG (electroencephalogram) signals.
An EEG signal is fed to brain-computer interface (BCI) computer, which then controls a robotic gait orthosis (RoGO), which stimulates leg muscles.
The experimental setup showed the subject suspended in the RoGO, while donning an EEG cap, surface EMG… read more
University of Pennsylvania researchers have made an important advance in photonics, creating the first all-optical photonic switch out of cadmium sulfide nanowires and combining these photonic switches into a logic gate, a fundamental component of computer chips that process information.
The research team’s innovation built upon their earlier research, which showed that their cadmium sulfide nanowires exhibited extremely strong light-matter coupling, making them especially efficient… read more
As part of an update to the national fingerprint database, the FBI has begun rolling out facial recognition to identify criminals, New Scientist reports.
It will form part of the bureau’s long-awaited, $1 billion Next Generation Identification (NGI) program, which will also add biometrics such as iris scans, DNA analysis, and voice identification to the toolkit. A handful of states began uploading their photos as… read more
QBotix has developed a dual-axis tracking system that uses rugged, intelligent mobile robots to dynamically operate solar power plants and maximize energy output.
The QBotix Tracking System (QTS) increases energy production of ground-mounted solar power plants by up to 40 percent over existing fixed mount systems and lowers the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) by up to 20 percent,. the company claims.
QTS utilizes a pair of… read more
Can a computer “read” an online blog and understand it? Several Concordia University computer scientists believe so, and are helping get closer to that goal.
Leila Kosseim, project lead and associate professor in Concordia’s Computational Linguistics Laboratory, and recently graduated doctoral student Shamima Mithun have developed a natural-language-processing system called BlogSum that allows an organization to pose a question and then… read more
Personal assistants such as Apple’s Siri may be useful, but they are still far from matching the smarts and conversational skills of a real person.
Researchers at the University of Rochester have demonstrated a new, potentially better approach that creates a smart artificial chat partner from fleeting contributions from many crowdsourced workers, Technology Review reports.
When people talk to the new crowd-powered chat system,… read more
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is one of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics: it’s impossible to measure anything without disturbing it.
For instance, any attempt to measure a particle’s position must change its momentum.
But never mind all that. It’s wrong, University of Toronto physicists say they have just proven.
(This has important implications for quantum information and especially quantum cryptography, where it is fundamental to the security of certain protocols.)… read more
Science fiction author Charlie Stross announced Friday on his blog that The Rapture of the Nerds: A Tale of The Singularity, Posthumanity, and Awkward Social Situations, a new science fiction novel co-authored by Cory Doctorow, has been published by Tor Books.
The book is available now from Amazon and will soon be available for free download under a Creative… read more
Negotiators from the U.S. and eight other Pacific Rim countries are meeting at a seclude resort in Leesburg, Viriginia, working out deals in the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that could hamper free speech on the Internet, Common Dreams reports.
The negotiations began in 2007 and have been carried through by the Obama administration and several Pacific nations under conditions of “extreme secrecy” without press, public, or policymaker oversight.
Leaked information… read more
Amazon has announced five new tablets, including an updated Kindle Fire for $159, a new e-reader called the Paperwhite for $119, and three models of the new Kindle Fire HD, all garnering widespread positive press reviews so far.
The Kindle Fire HD models feature slimmed down designs, improved displays, more powerful processors, and dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus optimization.
Their unique software features include “X-Ray,” which lets you easily… read more
Researchers have used computational modeling to precisely simulate how a drug inhibits a target enzyme known to spur cancer’s spread, capturing the interaction at the quantum-mechanical level, Technology Review reports.
They hope their work will uncover a way to specifically inhibit members of a whole class of cancer-linked proteins without causing as many side effects as existing drugs.
The authors showed that a buckyball molecule, which… read more