The planet’s two largest ice sheets have been losing ice faster during the past decade, causing widespread confusion and concern. A new international study provides a firmer read on the state of continental ice sheets and how much they are contributing to sea-level rise. (more…)
IEEE recognizes doctoral student’s robotics work with ‘Best Paper’ award
Ying Mao, a doctoral student studying mechanical engineering at the University of Delaware, earned the “Best Student Paper” award at the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
IEEE is the “world’s largest professional association for the advancement of technology.”
The paper, titled “Transition from Mechanical Arm to Human Arm with CAREX: a Cable Driven ARm EXoskeleton (CAREX) for Neural Rehabilitation,” was selected from among nearly 800 papers accepted to the conference. (more…)
FORT DAVIS, Texas — Astronomers have used the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory to measure the mass of what may be the most massive black hole yet — 17 billion times our sun’s mass — in galaxy NGC 1277. The unusual black hole makes up 14 percent of its galaxy’s mass, rather than the usual 0.1 percent. This galaxy and several more in the same study could change theories about how black holes and galaxies form and evolve. The work will appear in the journal Nature on Nov. 29.
NGC 1277 lies 220 million light-years away in the constellation Perseus. The galaxy is only 10 percent the size and mass of our Milky Way. Despite NGC 1277’s diminutive size, the black hole at its heart is more than 11 times as wide as Neptune’s orbit around the sun. (more…)
New research has revealed a significant gap between what the government claims are the biggest security threats facing the UK and the fears of the population.
Terrorism is not perceived as the most important threat to everyday life despite claims by policy makers.
Politics researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Warwick led detailed focus groups across the UK and conducted a nationwide survey as part of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project which looked at public attitudes towards security threats. (more…)
New Center to Foster Economic Competitiveness in the U.S., Create 500 Jobs Aligned to New Markets for Watson, Smarter Commerce and Social Business Client
COLUMBUS, OHIO – 29 Nov 2012: IBM today announced it will establish a new analytics center in Columbus, Ohio, dedicated to advancing research, development, client services and skills training in the areas of analytics, big data and cognitive computing. The move aims to create 500 new analytics jobs and nurture economic development in the region over the next three years.
Ohio is home to 27 Fortune 500, and 57 Fortune 1,000 companies, as well as a burgeoning technology sector and leading academic institutions. The IBM Client Center for Advanced Analytics will offer a strong foundation for a broad public and private sector collaboration that will include The Ohio State University (Ohio State), JobsOhio, Columbus 2020, ICC, an IBM Premier Partner, and other Columbus-based businesses. (more…)
Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Oregon have found a way to exploit cloud-based Web browsers, using them to perform large-scale computing tasks anonymously. The finding has potential ramifications for the security of “cloud browser” services.
At issue are cloud browsers, which create a Web interface in the cloud so that computing is done there rather than on a user’s machine. This is particularly useful for mobile devices, such as smartphones, which have limited computing power.The cloud-computing paradigm pools the computational power and storage of multiple computers, allowing shared resources for multiple users. (more…)
Egypt’s new democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi recently made world headlines on two accounts. The first was for his central role in brokering a cease-fire in Gaza between Israeli forces and Hamas. The second, which followed almost immediately after the deal was confirmed, was a highly controversial presidential decree that would temporarily insulate his legislative and executive decisions from any judicial oversight. Ian Straughn, visiting assistant professor of anthropology and Joukowsky Family Librarian for Middle East Studies, analyzes the return of protesters to Cairo’s Tahrir Square and the future of the Arab Spring in Egypt. (more…)
Microsoft launches national campaign to alert Americans to Google’s new pay-to-rank shopping search practices.
REDMOND, Wash. — Nov. 28, 2012 — Bing, Microsoft Corp.’s search engine, today is launching a national campaign to highlight Bing’s commitment to honest search results and to help explain to consumers the risks of Google Shopping’s newly announced “pay-to-rank” practice, in which the shopping search results customers see are not true search results such as they see elsewhere on Google; they are actually ads that are ranked, in part, by who pays the most. More information on these practices is available at https://www.scroogled.com.
Instead of showing you the most relevant shopping search results for the latest coffee maker you’re looking to buy mom, Google’s new redesigned shopping vertical now decides what to show you — and how prominently to display what product offers they show — based partially on how much a merchant selling the product has paid Google. Merchants can literally pay to improve their chances to display their product offers higher than others inside of Google’s shopping “search,” even if it’s not necessarily better or cheaper. That’s not right, it’s not transparent, it’s not what you expect from search, and it’s not how we at Bing think search engines should help consumers get the best prices and selection when shopping. Consumers are urged to visit https://www.scroogled.com to learn more about how to avoid getting “Scroogled,” a term used by Bing to describe Google’s new practice that leaves people with fewer choices and potentially higher prices. (more…)
