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Submission + - Supernova left its mark in ancient bacteria (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Sediment in a deep-sea core may hold radioactive iron spewed by a distant supernova 2.2 million years ago and preserved in the fossilized remains of iron-loving bacteria. If confirmed, the iron traces would be the first biological signature of a specific exploding star.
Scientists have found the isotope iron-60, which does not form on Earth, in a sediment core from the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, dating to between about 1.7 million and 3.3 million years ago. The iron-60, which appears in layers dated to around 2.2 million years ago, could be the remains of magnetite chains formed by bacteria on the sea floor as radioactive supernova debris showered on them from the atmosphere, after crossing inter-stellar space at nearly the speed of light.

Submission + - Is there more than one Higgs Boson? (livescience.com)

Submitted by LeadSongDog
LeadSongDog writes: Just when you thought the hunt was finished, at the April APS meeting, the possibility is now being raised of multiple versions of the Higgs. It seems we just can't take "The standard model works" for an answer.

Submission + - Nicolas Maduro is the new president of Venezuela (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by paysonwelch
paysonwelch writes: I couldn't find any news articles on this, it was just announced, I heard it on the radio, the news is only a few minutes old. Wikipedia however has already been updated. "Maduro became interim President following the death of Hugo Chávez. The electoral authority declared Maduro as the President on April 14, 2013."

Submission + - TurboTax site melts down the day before returns are due (intuit.com)

Submitted by BcNexus
BcNexus writes: Many pages on the site are unavailable; instead, Intuit is serving up generic pages: http://ha.turbotax.intuit.com/support/ (screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/flARJR7.png?1)

eFiling is also unavailable for the desktop version of the software. Users (https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/1876892-when-will-the-tt-site-be-working-again-it-s-a-problem-that-it-crashes-on-april-14) are upset (https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/1876955-i-m-thinking-of-stopping-the-payment-on-my-card-since-your-site-has-frozen-several-times-in-a-row-on-the-final-step-and-no-one-answers-the-support-line-how-do-you-feel-about-that).

So much for saving paper. I'm giving up on eFiling and schlepping down to the post office tomorrow.

Submission + - Facebook's Android App Can Now Retrieve Data About What Apps You Use 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook on Friday released its Android launcher called Home. The company also updated its Facebook app, adding in new permissions to allow it to collect data about the apps you are running. The description on Google Play offers a bit more detail:
"RETRIEVE RUNNING APPS
Allows the app to retrieve information about currently and recently running tasks. This may allow the app to discover information about which applications are used on the device."
Science

Submission + - Researchers Build Evolving Brain Computer? (hplusmagazine.com) 2

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: "We have mimicked how neurons behave in the brain," announces an international research team from Japan and Michigan Tech. They've built an "evolutionary circuit" in a molecular computer that evolves to solve complex problems, and the molecular computer also exhibits brain-like massive parallel processing. "The neat part is, approximately 300 molecules talk with each other at a time during information processing," says physicist Ranjit Pati of Michigan Tech. When viewed with a scanning tunneling microscope, the evolving patterns bear an uncanny resemblance to the human brain as seen by a Functional MRI. Using the electrically-charged tip of a tunneling microscope, they've individually set molecules to a desired state, essentially writing data to the system. And while conventional computers are typically built using two-state (0, 1) transistors, the molecular layer is built using a hexagonal molecule, and can switch among four conducting states — 0, 1, 2 and 3, suggesting it may ultimately have more AI potential than quantum computing.

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