Friday, January 22, 2010
Verizon, AT&T May Carry Apple Tablet
Apple has sent invitations for a Jan. 27 event in San Francisco, where the technology company will unveil its long-awaited tablet device. AppleFrom FOX News:
Which wireless carrier will offer Apple's soon-to-be-released mystery device? Will it be Verizon? AT&T? The answer, according to sources at the two companies, is both.
As any well-read geek will tell you, Apple is releasing some sort of tablet device next week, and the rumors about features have been flying as fast and furious as those men in tights at Cirque du Soleil. I'm not going to add to the noise by speculating about unreleased details like the size, shape, color, price and general feature list. Instead I'm going to add the other noise: the network noise.
Read more ....
Amazon Prepares For Apple Tablet With Promise Of Apps For Kindle Ereader
Amazon's Kindle: soon with apps. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty ImagesFrom The Guardian:
Developers are being sought to produce iPhone-style apps as Kindle faces Apple tablet challenge in ebook market.
Amazon is inviting developers to build iPhone-style apps on its Kindle ebook reader, in what is seen as a pre-emptive strike against the expected launch next week of an Apple tablet computer.
Developers are promised the capacity to "build and upload active content that will be available in the Kindle Store later this year". The first developers will be allowed to join a test programme – a limited beta – from next month.
Read more ....
Scientist Creates Intergalactic tube Map Of The Milky Way
Accessible: Samuel Arbesman's map of the Milky Way is based on the London tube map and uses stars and nebula as the 'stations'From The Daily Mail:
If you thought your daily commute was a time-consuming chore, spare a thought for intergalactic space travellers of the future making their way to work on this 'Milky Way Transit Authority'.
Based completely on the London Underground, a Harvard scientist has released this simplified Milky Way map to display the 'vast and complex interconnections' of our galaxy in an accessible way.
But future passengers won't want to get caught up in intergalactic engineering works as the 'stops' on the map, created by Samuel Arbesman, are thousands of light years apart.
Read more ....
The Truth About Robots And The Uncanny Valley: Analysis
Japan's government sponsored research laboratory, AIST, unveils the humanoid robot "HRP-4C," which has 42 actuators and several sensors on its body. (Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images)From Popular Mechanics:
An oft-cited theory in robotics, the uncanny valley, refers to that point along the chart of robot–human likeness where a robot looks and acts nearly—but not exactly—like a human. This subtle imperfection, the theory states, causes people's feelings toward robots to veer from fondness to revulsion. Here, contributing editor Erik Sofge argues that the theory is so loosely backed it is nearly useless for roboticists. For an in-depth look at the human–robot relationship, check out PM's feature story "Can Robots Be Trusted?" on stands now.
Read more ....
High-Speed Brain Scan Used to Diagnose War Vets' PTSD With 90% Accuracy
The Stress Of War Different soldiers sharing the same experiences can react very differently. A research group in Minneapolis believes it has found an objective means to accurately identify PTSD through magnetoencephalography. From Popular Science:
With so many troops rotating into and out of two different war zones, mental health experts in the U.S. are urgently trying to understand the causes – and a means to assuage or prevent – post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Now, a group of researchers at the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis VA Medical Center may have unlocked the secret to objective PTSD diagnosis: a biomarker in the brain that diagnoses the condition with more than 90 percent accuracy.
Read more ....
Thursday, January 21, 2010
New Theory On The Origin Of Primates
New biogeographic reconstruction of primates, flying lemurs, and tree shrews about 185 millions of years in the early Jurassic. (Credit: Image courtesy of Buffalo Museum of Science)From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Jan. 20, 2010) — A new model for primate origins is presented in Zoologica Scripta, published by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The paper argues that the distributions of the major primate groups are correlated with Mesozoic tectonic features and that their respective ranges are congruent with each evolving locally from a widespread ancestor on the supercontinent of Pangea about 185 million years ago.
Read more ....
Ability To Recognize Faces Is Inherited
From Live Science:Some people never forget a face. For the rest of us, recognizing faces is not so easy. And those with prosopagnosia can't even recognize their close friends.
Now scientists say the ability to recognize faces is inherited and separate from general intelligence or IQ.
IQ is strongly heritable. And one longstanding general thought about IQ holds that if you're smart in one area, you'll be smart in others. But some skills seem distinct. A person can be brilliant with numbers but not good with linguistics, for example. This latter reality supports a modularity hypothesis, in which the mind is like a Swiss Army knife — a general-purpose tool with special-purpose devices, researchers explained.
Read more ....
For Dogs, It's 'Survival Of The Cutest'
From Discovery News:Look at how cute and adorable Claudia and Johnny are! Don't they just melt your heart?
New research shows that how we value the "cuteness" of our pet dogs could influence a breed's survival, variation and overall evolutionary pattern.
The University of Manchester released a new study today that compared the skull shapes of domestic dogs with those of different species across the order Carnivora, to which dogs, cats, bears, weasels, seals and walruses belong.
Read more ....
Tablet Wars: Amazon Adds Apps to Kindle
From Gadget Lab:Amazon has announced that it will open up the Kindle e-reader to third party developers, allowing applications, or what Amazon calls “active content”, to run on the device.
What kind of apps could run in the low-fi Kindle? Well, you won’t be getting Monkey Ball, but interactive books, travel guides with locations data, RSS readers and anything that brings text to the device would be a good candidate. This could even include magazine and newspaper subscriptions.
Read more ....
Space Pictures Taken From Garden Shed
Amateur astronomer Peter Shah who has taken astonishing shots of the universe from his garden shed Photo: WALES NEWS SERVICE From The Telegraph:
An amateur stargazer has stunned astronomers around the world with his photographs of the universe – taken from his garden shed.
Peter Shah, 38, cut a hole in the roof of his wooden shed and set up his modest eight-inch telescope inside. After months of patiently waiting for the right moment he emerged with a series of striking images of the Milky Way.
His photographs of a vivid variety of star clusters light years from Earth have been compared to the images taken from the £2.5 billion Hubble space telescope.
Read more ....
Fish Oil Slows Burn Of Genetic Fuse In Ageing, Say Scientists
Cod liver oil capsules with omega-3. Photograph: Graham TurnerFrom The Guardian:
Omega-3 fatty acids from fish oils have a direct effect on biological ageing, US research suggests.
Fish oil may be the true elixir of youth, according to new evidence of its effect on biological ageing. Omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil preserve the genetic "fuse" that determines the lifespan of cells, say scientists.
The discovery, made in heart disease patients, may explain many of the claimed health benefits of omega-3.
Read more ....
Bad Memory? Forget It!
From The Daily Mail:
Do you have trouble remembering where you left your car keys? Do you struggle to recall people's names? A study from Cambridge University suggests that regular aerobic exercise - such as jogging - can significantly boost memory by triggering the growth of grey matter in the brain. But are there other things we can do to develop our brain cells? We asked eight-times World Memory Champion Dominic O'Brien, author of Learn To Remember and a host of bestselling memory books, for his tips...
Read more ....
Himalayan Melting: How A Climate Panel Got It Wrong
A fast-moving glacial stream rushes down from Rakaposhi Mountain in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. Paula Bronstein / GettyFrom Time Magazine:
Between the undying controversy that was "Climategate" and the near collapse of the Copenhagen summit on global warming, 2009 was not a great year for climate scientists or activists. Less than a month into the new year, 2010 isn't looking much better.
On Wednesday (the day after Republican Scott Brown, an opponent of cap and trade, seized a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts), a new scandal broke over climate science. Faced with criticism of a widely quoted piece of analysis from its 2007 climate assessment that warned that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was forced to admit to relying on dubious scientific sources, apologized and retracted its earlier estimate. That estimate of the rate of Himalayan glacier loss because of warming, which appeared in the same assessment that earned the global body a share of the Nobel Peace Prize, was "poorly substantiated," the IPCC said.
Read more ....
Boeing 747 Marks A Major Milestone
From L.A. Times:
The first jumbo jet made its maiden commercial flight 40 years ago today. More than 1,400 of the planes with their signature hump have rolled off the Boeing assembly line.
It was the kind of plane that seemed to fit the swinging go-go days with martini-swigging travelers lingering around a bar.
First-class passengers dressed in their Sunday best made their way up a spiral staircase to get to the "flying penthouse," harking memories of private rail cars.
It seemed the epitome of plushness when it made its first commercial flight 40 years ago today. A Times reporter described the cabin as a "luxurious auditorium some genie had wafted aloft."
Read more ....
Electromagnetic Pulse Cannon Could Demo Car-Stopping Power Next Month
EMP Cannon This skewed perspective shows a presumably older version of Eureka Aerospace's EMP car-stopper. PopSci From Popular Science:
U.S. Marines could deploy the non-lethal weapon if it proves viable.
Stopping a speeding car without killing its driver and passengers with traditional means--bullets--can prove tricky, even if skilled snipers can put a disabling shot in a car's engine block. But a Canadian company could soon demo an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) cannon capable of effectively scrambling a car's chips and other electronics, according to Flight International. The U.S. Marines have lined up as possible, if skeptical, customers.
Read more ....
The Sound of Saturn's Rings
From Universe Today:
This wonderful video was posted by Jennifer Ouellette on Discovery News, and I just had to share it. The sounds are actual recordings picked up by the Cassini spacecraft. I have heard the eerie audio before, but never had previously seen it paired up with moving images from the mission. The radio emissions, called Saturn kilometric radiation, are generated along with Saturn's auroras, or northern and southern lights. Cassini's Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument takes high-resolution measurements that allow scientists to convert the radio waves into audio recordings by shifting the frequencies down into the audio frequency range.
Read more ....
Calpain Is Important To Memory Processes After All
From Science Daily:Science Daily (Jan. 21, 2010) — A second high-profile paper in as many months has found an important role in learning and memory for calpain, a molecule whose academic fortunes have ebbed and flowed for 25 years.
USC's Michel Baudry (then at the University of California, Irvine) and Gary Lynch (UC Irvine) first pointed to calpain as the key to memory in a seminal 1984 paper in Science on the biochemistry of memory.
Read more ....
Embryos Like to Be Rocked Like Babies
To test out a device that keeps embryos in motion, researchers placed early-stage mouse embryos into a thimble-sized funnel, at the bottom of which were tiny channels through which fluids flowed. Credit: University of Michigan.From Live Science:
Like babies that can be lulled to sleep with swaying, embryos also prefer to be rocked.
By gently rocking embryos while they grew during in vitro fertilization, scientists increased pregnancy rates in mice by more than 20 percent. The same rock-a-bye procedure could lead to more success for in vitro fertilization in humans, the researchers say.
Read more ....
Brain Scans Predict Video Gamers Success
A screen shot of the video game "Space Fortress" which was used to measure performance and learning rates. Credit: Rensselaer Polytechnic InstituteFrom Cosmos:
SYDNEY: The size of three specific regions of the brain can predict performance in video games, and may show the way forward for education, said American psychologists.
Participants in the study had to play the video game "Space Fortress", and submit to brain scans to measure the volume of three parts of the 'striatum', located deep in the forebrain and thought to be responsible for picking up skills and behavioural habits.
Read more ....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)