Researchers from North Carolina State University have for the first time integrated a material called bismuth ferrite (BFO) as a single crystal onto a silicon chip, opening the door to a new generation of multifunctional, smart devices.
BFO has both ferromagnetic and ferroelectric properties, meaning that it can be magnetized by running an electric current through the material. Potential applications for BFO include new magnetic memory devices, smart sensors and spintronics technologies. (more…)
Like urban bike-sharing programs everywhere, Chicago’s Divvy must contend with a key problem: due to commuting patterns, some bike stations empty out fast while others fill up quickly, leaving no space for more drop-offs.
But such urban problems can be addressed with socially minded computer science, as a group of 50 Chicago high school students learned recently during a daylong conference at the University of Chicago. (more…)
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity resumed full science operations on Saturday, Nov. 23.
Activities over the weekend included use of Curiosity’s robotic arm to deliver portions of powdered rock to a laboratory inside the rover. The powder has been stored in the arm since the rover collected it by drilling into the target rock “Cumberland” six months ago. Several portions of the powder have already been analyzed. The laboratory has flexibility for examining duplicate samples in different ways. (more…)
Berkeley Study Provides Unprecedented Details on Ultrafast Processes in Diamond Nitrogen Vacancy Centers
From supersensitive detections of magnetic fields to quantum information processing, the key to a number of highly promising advanced technologies may lie in one of the most common defects in diamonds. Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have taken an important step towards unlocking this key with the first ever detailed look at critical ultrafast processes in these diamond defects. (more…)
Halloween and October Festivities See Six Retail Subcategories in the Top 10 Political News Sites Continue Growth as Americans Keep Tabs on Government Shutdown
RESTON, VA, November 22, 2013 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly ranking of U.S. desktop web activity at the top online properties for October 2013 based on data from the comScore MMX service. Several retail subcategories were among the top-gaining in October as Halloween and other festivities took place. Americans also frequented Political News sites as major stories such as the U.S. government shutdown and debt ceiling deadline made headlines. (more…)
New lab unifies data, expertise and novel analytics to speed discovery in industries including retail, medicine and finance
San Jose, Calif. – 10 Oct 2013: Scientists from IBM today announced the Accelerated Discovery Lab, a new collaborative environment specifically targeted at helping clients find unknown relationships from disparate data sets.
The workspace includes access to diverse data sources, unique research capabilities for analytics such as domain models, text analytics and natural language processing capabilities derived from Watson, a powerful hardware and software infrastructure, and broad domain expertise including biology, medicine, finance, weather modeling, mathematics, computer science and information technology. This combination reduces time to insight resulting in business impact – cost savings, revenue generation and scientific impact – ahead of the traditional pace of discovery. (more…)
Research shows a correlation between eating breakfast and a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes
As Americans continue to fight the obesity epidemic and try to stem the incidence of type 2 diabetes, dietary guidelines are becoming increasingly important.
Among the possible keys to better health? Eating breakfast, for starters. (more…)
IBM teams up with Johns Hopkins University and UC San Francisco to help public health officials model, predict and track the possible spread of infectious diseases
SAN JOSE, Calif., – 30 Sep 2013: Scientists from IBM are collaborating with Johns Hopkins University and University of California, San Francisco to combat illness and infectious diseases in real-time with smarter data tools for public health. The focus is to help contain global outbreaks of dengue fever and malaria by applying the latest analytic models, computing technology and mathematical skills on an open-source framework.
Vector-borne diseases, like malaria and dengue fever, are infections transmitted to humans and other animals by blood-feeding insects, such as mosquitoes, ticks and fleas. (more…)
