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  • Mladic inflames old wounds at start of war crimes trial

    Twenty years after his troops began brutally ethnically cleansing Bosnian towns and villages of non-Serbs, Gen. Ratko Mladic went on trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal accused of 11 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

  • Assad claims Syria has captured foreign mercenaries

    In his first interview since December, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad insisted his regime is fighting back against foreign mercenaries who want to overthrow him, not innocent Syrians aspiring for democracy in a yearlong uprising.

  • Canadian wave heads to Cannes Film Festival

    A strong Canadian contingent is heading to La Croisette for the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, which will screen new movies from both established names like David Cronenberg and budding directors invited to the French fest for the first time.

  • Shops revive Irish pound amid economic woes

    Shop owners in Clones, a small town in Ireland, are embracing a currency that's been out of circulation for a decade in a bid to boost business.

  • Vermont becomes 1st state to ban fracking

    Vermont's governor has signed into law the first state ban on a hotly debated natural gas drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing.

  • Nuclear emergency plans in U.S. pared back

    U.S. nuclear power regulators overhaul community emergency planning for the first time in more than three decades, requiring fewer drills for major accidents and recommending that fewer people be evacuated right away.

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  • People with paralysis control robotic arms to reach and grasp using brain computer interface
    Two people with tetraplegia were able to reach for and grasp objects in three-dimensional space with robotic arms that they controlled directly with brain activity. They used the BrainGate neural interface system, an investigational device currently being studied under an IDE. One participant used the system to serve herself coffee for the first time since becoming paralyzed nearly 15 years ago.
  • Internet usage patterns may signify depression
    In a new study analyzing Internet usage among college students, researchers have found that students who show signs of depression tend to use the Internet differently than those who show no symptoms of depression.
  • Elusive capacity of networks: Calculating data network's total capacity notoriously difficult, but theorists making some headway
    In its early years, information theory was dominated by research on error-correcting codes: How do you encode information so as to guarantee its faithful transmission, even in the presence of the corrupting influences engineers call "noise"? Recently, one of the most intriguing developments in information theory has been a different kind of coding, called network coding, in which the question is how to encode information in order to maximize the capacity of a network as a whole. For information theorists, it was natural to ask how these two types of coding might be combined: If you want to both minimize error and maximize capacity, which kind of coding do you apply where, and when do you do the decoding?
  • Statistical analysis projects future temperatures in North America
    For the first time, researchers have been able to combine different climate models using spatial statistics -- to project future seasonal temperature changes in regions across North America.
  • New research could mean faster computers and better smart phones
    Graphene and carbon nanotubes could improve the electronics used in computers and mobile phones, reveals new research.
  • Dip chip technology tests toxicity on the go
    Researchers have developed a portable "dip chip" that detects water toxicity quickly and accurately. Once perfected, the chip might be plugged into ordinary smartphones or PDA devices to provide a toxicity alert.
  • Drug kills cancer cells by restoring faulty tumor suppressor
    New research uses a novel, computer based strategy to identify potential anti-cancer drugs, including one that targets the third most common p53 mutation in human cancer, p53-R175H. The number of new cancer patients harboring this mutation in the United States who would potentially benefit from this drug is estimated to be 30,000 annually.
  • Floating robots use GPS-enabled smartphones to track water flow
    A fleet of 100 floating robots took a trip down the Sacramento River on May 9, in a field test. The devices, equipped with GPS-enabled smartphones, demonstrated the next generation of water-monitoring technology, promising to transform the way government agencies track one of the state's most precious resources.
  • New ultra-thin electronic films have greater capacity
    The development of a new combination of polymers associating sugars with oil-based macromolecules makes it possible to design ultra-thin films capable of self-organization with a 5-nanometer resolution. This opens up new horizons for increasing the capacity of hard discs and the speed of microprocessors.
  • Greater insight into earthquake cycles
    For those who study earthquakes, one major challenge has been trying to understand all the physics of a fault -- both during an earthquake and at times of "rest" -- in order to know more about how a particular region may behave in the future. Now, researchers have developed the first computer model of an earthquake-producing fault segment that reproduces the available observations of both the fault's seismic and aseismic behavior.
  • New twist on ancient math problem could improve medicine, microelectronics
    A hidden facet of a math problem that goes back to Sanskrit scrolls has just been exposed by nanotechnology researchers.
  • Helping Hands reaches out to patients with cerebral palsy
    A student-made invention, Dino-Might, was designed to help children with cerebral palsy restore strength and flexibility to their hands and wrists.
  • Smart phones are changing real world privacy settings
    Smartphone users have a radically different conception of behavior in public spaces than their conventional phone counterparts. They are more likely to reveal private information in public spaces, and less likely to believe that their digital conversations are irritating to those around them.
  • Self-adapting computer network that defends itself against hackers?
    Cybersecurity experts are researching the feasibility of building a computer network that could protect itself against online attackers by automatically changing its setup and configuration.
  • Optimal planning of solar power plants
    The photovoltaics industry is booming, and the market for solar farms is growing quickly all over the world. Yet, the task of planning PV power plants to make them as effi cient as possible is far from trivial. Researchers have now developed software that simplifies conceptual design.
  • Hard drives: A bit of progress
    A modified approach to fabrication of magnetic memory elements may lead to a new generation of stable, ultra-high-capacity hard drives.
  • Privacy law expert warns of the perils of social media and social reading
    The Internet and social media have opened up new vistas for people to share preferences in films, books and music. Services such as Spotify and the Washington Post Social Reader already integrate reading and listening into social networks, providing what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls ?frictionless sharing.? ?But there?s a problem. A world of automatic, always-on disclosure should give us pause,? says a privacy law expert.
  • Virtual reality allows researchers to measure fish brain activity during behavior at unprecedented resolution
    Researchers have developed a new technique which allows them to measure brain activity in large populations of nerve cells at the resolution of individual cells. The technique has been developed in zebrafish to represent a simplified model of how brain regions work together to flexibly control behavior.
  • Computer scientists show what makes movie lines memorable
    Researchers who applied computer analysis to a database of movie scripts think they may have found the secret to a memorable movie line - use familiar sentence structure but incorporate distinctive words or phrases, and make general statements that could apply elsewhere.
  • Quantum dots brighten the future of lighting
    Researchers have boosted the efficiency of a novel source of white light called quantum dots more than tenfold, making them of potential interest for commercial applications.
  • It's official: Physics is hard
    Scientists have conducted scientific research on the difficulty ?- from a computational complexity theory perspective -- of addressing some of the challenges of physics.
  • The electronic 'Pavlov's Dog'
    Nanotechnology scientists and memory researchers have redesigned a mental learning process using electronic circuits.
  • Best websites balance self-expression and functionality
    Giving people the freedom -- but not too much freedom -- to express themselves may help designers build more interactive web portals and online communities, according to researchers.
  • Home computer data usage: Bandwidth caps create user uncertainty, risky decisions
    A new study shows that capped broadband pricing triggers uneasy user experiences that could be mitigated by better tools to monitor data usage through their home networks.
  • Picking the brains of strangers helps make sense of online information
    People who have already sifted through online information to make sense of a subject can help strangers facing similar tasks without ever directly communicating with them, researchers have demonstrated.
  • Kids with cerebral palsy may benefit from video game play
    Like their healthy peers, children with disabilities may spend too much time in front of a video screen. For children with cerebral palsy (CP), this leads to an even greater risk of being overweight or developing health issues such as diabetes or musculoskeletal disorders. A group of scientists has found that video games such as Nintendo's Wii offer an enjoyable opportunity to promote light to moderate physical activity in children with CP, and may have a role to play in rehabilitation therapy.
  • Are you a Facebook addict?
    Are you a social media enthusiast or simply a Facebook addict? Researchers have developed a new instrument to measure Facebook addiction, the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale.
  • Robot reveals the inner workings of brain cells: Automated way to record electrical activity inside neurons in the living brain
    Researchers have developed a way to automate the process of finding and recording information from neurons in the living brain. The researchers have shown that a robotic arm guided by a cell-detecting computer algorithm can identify and record from neurons in the living mouse brain with better accuracy and speed than a human experimenter.
  • 'Game-powered machine learning' opens door to Google for music
    Engineers have shown that a computer can be taught to automatically label every song on the Internet using sets of examples provided by unpaid music fans. The researchers report that their solution, "game-powered machine learning," would enable music lovers to search every song on the web.
  • First light: Researchers develop new way to generate superluminal pulses
    Researchers have developed a novel way of producing light pulses that are "superluminal" -- in some sense they travel faster than the speed of light. The new method could be used to improve the timing of communications signals and to investigate the propagation of quantum correlations.
  • Simulating reality: Less memory required on quantum computer than on classical computer, study shows
    Simulations of reality would require less memory on a quantum computer than on a classical computer, new research has shown. The study demonstrates a new way in which computers based on quantum physics could beat the performance of classical computers.
  • Next-generation nanoelectronics: A decade of progress, coming advances
    Nano-electromechanical switch technology could change the future of electronics. In two recent articles, researchers have explored the progress and future applications of the burgeoning technology.
  • 'Smart doorknobs' and gesture-controlled smartphones: Revolutionary technology enables objects to know your touch
    A doorknob that knows whether to lock or unlock based on how it is grasped, a smartphone that silences itself if the user holds a finger to her lips and a chair that adjusts room lighting based on recognizing if a user is reclining or leaning forward are among the many possible applications of Touché, a new sensing technique.
  • Thanks for the (computer) memory: More room for data in 'phase-change' material
    Engineers have discovered previously unknown properties of a common computer memory material, paving the way for new memory drives, movie discs and computer systems that absorb data more quickly, last longer and allow far more capacity than current data storage media.
  • Fast, low-power, all-optical switch
    A new solid-state device uses one beam of light to switch another beam of light from one direction to another. It uses one-fifth the power -- only 90 atto-joules -- than the previous all-optical switch.
  • Life-size 3-D hologram-like telepods may revolutionize videoconferencing in the future
    Imagine a Star Trek-like human-scale 3-D videoconferencing pod that allows people in different locations to video conference as if they are standing in front of each other. "Why Skype when you can talk to a life-size 3-D holographic image of another person?" says one of the inventors.
  • Atomic-scale visualization of electron pairing in iron superconductors
    By measuring how strongly electrons are bound together to form Cooper pairs in an iron-based superconductor, scientists provide direct evidence supporting theories in which magnetism holds the key to this material's ability to carry current with no resistance.
  • Mitigating disasters by hunting down Dragon Kings: Forecasting natural or economic disasters by identifying statistical anomalies
    Professional Dragon King hunters are exploring the ways in which natural or economic disasters can be predicted by identifying statistical anomalies.
  • Large-scale simulation of human blood is boon to personalized medicine
    Having a virtual copy of a patient's blood in a computer would be a boon to researchers and doctors. They could examine a simulated heart attack caused by blood clotting in a diseased coronary artery and see if a drug like aspirin would be effective in reducing the size of such a clot.
  • Escape response of small fish tested using a supercomputer
    Researchers have for the first time succeeded in discovering the optimal escape response of fish using a supercomputer. The aim was to test whether the escape mechanism of small fish, developed in the course of evolution, is optimal for achieving the maximum escape distance in a short time.
  • Online-only news outlets struggle to find funding
    The first report to systematically assess how online-only news websites across Western Europe are faring has found that new start-ups are struggling to find business models that can cover their operating costs. It suggests that the funding environment is more challenging for new start-ups than for traditional media outlets that also have online content, because the latters' operations can be subsidised by revenues from offline businesses.
  • Thwarting the cleverest attackers: Even most secure-seeming computer is shockingly vulnerable to attack
    Savvy hackers can steal a computer's secrets by timing its data storage transactions or measuring its power use. New research shows how to stop them.
  • Computer use and exercise combo may reduce the odds of having memory loss
    You think your computer has a lot of memory ? if you keep using your computer you may, too. Combining mentally stimulating activities, such as using a computer, with moderate exercise decreases your odds of having memory loss more than computer use or exercise alone, a new study shows.
  • Dynamic view of city created based on Foursquare check-in data
    The millions of "check-ins" generated by Foursquare, the location-based social networking site, can be used to create a dynamic view of a city's workings and character, researchers say. In contrast to static neighborhood boundaries and dated census figures, these "Livehoods" reflect the ever-changing patterns of city life.
  • Website security: Spot a bot to stop a botnet
    Computer scientists have developed a two-pronged algorithm that can detect the presence of a botnet on a computer network and block its malicious activities before it causes too much harm.
  • A 100-gigabit highway for science: Researchers take a 'test drive' on ANI testbed
    Climate researchers are producing some of the fastest growing datasets in science. Five years ago, the amount of information generated for the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report was 35 terabytes ?- equivalent to the amount of text in 35 million books, occupying a bookshelf 248 miles (399 km) long. By 2014, when the next IPCC report is published, experts predict that 2 petabytes of data will have been generated for it?that's a 580 percent increase in data production. Because thousands of researchers around the world contribute to the generation and analysis of new data, a reliable, high-speed network is needed to transport the torrent of information. Fortunately, the Department of Energy's (DOE) ESnet (Energy Sciences Network) has laid the foundation for such a network -- not just for climate research, but for all data-intensive science.
  • 'Cloud' computing technology should make sharing medical images easier and more efficient
    Patients find ?cloud? technology a faster, more efficient way to store and distribute their medical images than current options, according to preliminary findings.
  • Video games can teach how to shoot guns more accurately and aim for the head
    Just 20 minutes of playing a violent shooting video game made players more accurate when firing a realistic gun at a mannequin -- and more likely to aim for and hit the head, a new study found.
  • What online social networks may know about non-members
    What can social networks on the internet know about persons who are friends of members, but have no user profile of their own? Researchers have just studied this question. Their work shows that through network analytical and machine learning tools the relationships between members and the connection patterns to non-members can be evaluated with regards to non-member relationships. Using simple contact data, it is possible, under certain conditions, to correctly predict that two non-members know each other with approx. 40 percent probability.
  • Wearable electronics:Transparent, lightweight, flexible conductor could revolutionize electronics industry
    The most transparent, lightweight and flexible material ever for conducting electricity has just been invented. Called GraphExeter, the material could revolutionize the creation of wearable electronic devices, such as clothing containing computers, phones and MP3 players.
  • Researchers combat global disease with a cell phone, Google Maps and a lot of ingenuity
    Researchers have developed a compact and cost-effective RDT reader platform to combine digital reading of all existing rapid-diagnostic-tests. The team's new reader is installed on a cell phone that can work with various lateral flow immuno-chromatographic assays and similar tests to sense the presence of a target analyte in samples.
  • Polluting China for the sake of economic growth
    China's economic growth will continue to be energy-intensive and highly polluting for the foreseeable future with emissions and efficiency far below capital growth on the agenda, according to a new study.
  • Bejeweled: Nanotech gets boost from nanowire decorations
    Engineers have found a novel method for "decorating" nanowires with chains of tiny particles to increase their electrical and catalytic performance. The new technique is simpler, faster and more effective than earlier methods and could lead to better batteries, solar cells and catalysts.
  • How Twitter broke its biggest story, 'WeGotBinLaden'
    By analyzing 600,000 tweets sent on the night US Special Forces captured Osama bin Laden, researchers studied how Twitter broke the story and spread the news. Their data also shows that the Twitterverse was overwhelmingly convinced the news of bin Laden's death was true, even before it was confirmed on television.
  • Action videogames change brains, improve visual attention
    Playing an action videogame, even for a relatively short time, causes differences in brain activity and improvements in visual attention, a new study shows.
  • Study finds twist to the story of the number line: Number line is learned, not innate human intuition
    Tape measures. Rulers. Graphs. The gas gauge in your car, and the icon on your favorite digital device showing battery power. The number line and its cousins -- notations that map numbers onto space and often represent magnitude -- are everywhere. Most adults in industrialized societies are so fluent at using the concept, we hardly think about it. We don't stop to wonder: Is it "natural"? Is it cultural? Now, challenging a mainstream scholarly position that the number-line concept is innate, a study suggests it is learned.
  • The wisdom of retail traders
    Retail investors' are not as unsophisticated as many think: they can actually predict future stock returns, a new study shows.
  • Shedding light on southpaws: Sports data help confirm theory explaining left-handed minority in general population
    Lefties (only ten percent of the general population) have always been a bit of a puzzle. Researchers have now developed a mathematical model that shows the low percentage of lefties is a result of the balance between cooperation and competition in human evolution. They are the first to use real-world data (from competitive sports, including baseball, boxing and hockey) to test and confirm the hypothesis that social behavior is related to population-level handedness.
  • Physicists benchmark quantum simulator with hundreds of qubits
    Physicists have built a quantum simulator that can engineer interactions among hundreds of quantum bits (qubits) -- 10 times more than previous devices. The simulator has passed a series of important benchmarking tests and scientists are poised to study problems in material science that are impossible to model on conventional computers.
  • Mathematics: First-ever image of a flat torus in 3-D
    Just as a terrestrial globe cannot be flattened without distorting the distances, it seemed impossible to visualize abstract mathematical objects called flat tori in ordinary three-dimensional space. However, a team of mathematicians and computer scientists has succeeded in constructing and visually representing an image of a flat torus in three-dimensional space. This is a smooth fractal, halfway between fractals and ordinary surfaces.
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Page last modified on April 01, 2010, at 11:15 AM