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Submission + - What is 'computational thinking'? Your future job may depend on it (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: Behavioural economist Colin Lewis explains why skills such as the ability to recognize patterns, to filter out unnecessary information, or to break down a task into minute details so that we can clearly explain a process to another person or to a computer, will be critical to the next generation of workers.

Submission + - An MIT Dean's Defense of the Humanities

Submitted by AthanasiusKircher
AthanasiusKircher writes: Deborah Fitzgerald, a historian of science and dean of MIT's School of the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, speaks out in a Boston Globe column about the importance of the humanities, even as STEM fields increasingly dominate public discussion surrounding higher education. '[T]he world’s problems are never tidily confined to the laboratory or spreadsheet. From climate change to poverty to disease, the challenges of our age are unwaveringly human in nature and scale, and engineering and science issues are always embedded in broader human realities, from deeply felt cultural traditions to building codes to political tensions. So our students also need an in-depth understanding of human complexities — the political, cultural, and economic realities that shape our existence — as well as fluency in the powerful forms of thinking and creativity cultivated by the humanities, arts, and social sciences.' Fitzgerald goes on to quote a variety of STEM MIT graduates who have described the essential role the humanities played in their education, and she concludes with a striking juxtaposition of important skills perhaps reminscent of Robert Heinlein's famous description of an ideal human being: 'Whatever our calling, whether we are scientists, engineers, poets, public servants, or parents, we all live in a complex, and ever-changing world, and all of us deserve what’s in this toolbox: critical thinking skills; knowledge of the past and other cultures; an ability to work with and interpret numbers and statistics; access to the insights of great writers and artists; a willingness to experiment, to open up to change; and the ability to navigate ambiguity.' What other essential knowledge or skills should we add to this imaginary 'toolbox'?

Submission + - SpaceX Wins Injunction Against Russian Rocket Purchases

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: Reuters is reporting that Space Exploration Technologies, aka SpaceX, has won a Federal Claims Court temporary injunction against the purchase by United Launch Alliance of Russian-made rocket boosters, intended for use by the United States Air Force. In her ruling Judge Susan Braden prohibited ULA and the USAF, 'from making any purchases from or payment of money to [Russian firm] NPO Energomash.' United Launch Alliance is a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Submission + - 13th century multiverse unearthed (economist.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Robert Grosseteste, an English scholar who lived from about 1175 to 1253, was the first thinker in northern Europe to try to develop unified physical laws to explain the origin and form of the geocentric medieval universe of heavens and Earth.
Tom McLeish, professor of physics and pro-vice-chancellor for research at Britain’s Durham University, and a multinational team of researchers found that Grosseteste’s physical laws were so rigorously defined that they could be re-expressed using modern mathematical and computing techniques—as the medieval scholar might have done if he had been able to use such methods. The thinking went that the translated equations could then be solved and the solutions explored.
The 'Ordered Universe Project' started six years ago and has now reported some of its findings. Only a small set of Grosseteste's parameters resulted in the “ordered” medieval universe he sought to explain, the researchers found; most resulted either in no spheres being created or a “disordered” cosmos of numerous spheres. Grosseteste, then, had created a medieval “multiverse”. De Luce suggests that the scholar realized his theories could result in universes with all manner of spheres, although he did not appear to realize the significance of this. A century later, philosophers Albert of Saxony and Nicole Oresme both considered the idea of multiple worlds and how they might exist simultaneously or in sequence.

Submission + - Scientists Solve Mystery of Quacking Noises in Antarctic Waters (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Since the 1960s, marine scientists have puzzled over the strange quacking sounds they often heard in the icy waters of Antarctica’s Southern Ocean. Submarine personnel first described the oddly repetitive call, which is one of the most common sounds in that ocean during the austral winter. They gave it the name “bio-duck.” The sound consists of a series of pulses with a 3.1-second interval between two series. The sound further stumped scientists when they discovered some years ago that it occurred each winter and spring simultaneously in the eastern Weddell Sea and off Western Australia. Now, cetacean researchers are declaring the mystery solved: Antarctic minke whales produce the calls. The discovery is already providing new insights into the behaviors of this little-known cetacean species, which is the primary target for Japanese “scientific” whale hunts.

Submission + - New bill on illegal downloads in Canada let companies exchange personal info (nationalpost.com)

Submitted by grumpyman
grumpyman writes: New bill to crack down on illegal downloads in Canada allow private companies to exchange personal information with other companies if they believe there has been a breach of agreement, or a case of fraud. I copyright this message and therefore if you are reading it, you have broken the law. I demand that your ISP to provide me your name and address so I can launch a suit.

Submission + - Snowden's purloined documents are now available online (aclu.org)

Submitted by Frosty Piss
Frosty Piss writes: The ACLU and others have long suspected that the National Security Agency has gone far beyond its mandate of gathering information for counter-terrorism and foreign intelligence purposes. Many Those suspicions were confirmed when, on June 5, 2013, The Guardian released the first in a series of documents provided by Edward Snowden detailing the NSA's unlawful spying activities. All of the documents released since that day, both by the media and the government, are housed in a database maintained by the ACLU and accessible by the public on-line.

Submission + - Why are we made of matter?

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: The Universe began with equal amounts of matter and antimatter after the Big Bang, and yet when we look out at today's Universe, we find that, even on the largest scales, it's made of at least 99.999%+ matter and not antimatter. The problem of how we went from a matter-antimatter-symmetric Universe to the matter-dominated one we have today is known as baryogenesis, and is one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics. Where are we on the quest to understand it as of April, 2014? A wonderful and comprehensive recap is here.

Submission + - Dropbox's new policy of scanning files for DMCA issues (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Advocatus Diaboli
Advocatus Diaboli writes: This weekend, though, a small corner of the Internet exploded with concern that Dropbox was going too far, actually scanning users' private and directly peer-shared files for potential copyright issues. What's actually going on is a little more complicated than that, but shows that sharing a file on Dropbox isn't always the same as sharing that file directly from your hard drive over something like e-mail or instant messenger. The whole kerfuffle started yesterday evening, when one Darrell Whitelaw tweeted a picture of an error he received when trying to share a link to a Dropbox file with a friend via IM. The Dropbox web page warned him and his friend that "certain files in this folder can't be shared due to a takedown request in accordance with the DMCA."

Submission + - New Australian privacy laws could make Google Glass illegal (afr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Recording private conversations or activities using Google’s Glass eyewear or similar wearable technologies without consent could become illegal under a push to overhaul Australian state and federal privacy laws.

Submission + - Google Glass signs deal with Ray Ban owner (muktware.com) 1

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: Google has signed a deal with The Luxottica Group, the world’s largest eyewear company which owns 80% of the eyewear market. Luxottica owns Ray-Ban, Oakley, Vogue-Eyewear, Persol, Oliver Peoples, Alain Mikli and Arnette. This deal shows how serious Google is about Google Glass contrary to the skepticism raised by high-profiled users like Robert Scoble who spelled doom for the device implying that Google itself is not sure about the future of the device.

Submission + - Gonorrhea Microbe Uses 'Grappling Hooks' to Pass From Person to Person (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Gonorrhea passes from person to person thanks to some clever hitchhiking. Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium that causes the sexually transmitted disease, shoots cables—called pili—onto proteins in the semen to tow themselves through coital liquid. The pili are normally wrapped in bundles, but when exposed to seminal fluid, they unwind into individual strands. This exposes more grappling hooks for transport, boosting the bacteria’s ability to invade by as much as 24-fold. Drugs that unhook gonorrhea’s pili may yield new antibacterials that stymie the transmission of this STD, which infects 100 million people per year.

Submission + - Scientists Develop Solar Cell That Can Also Emit Light

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists at the Nanyang Technological University have developed a solar cell that not only converts sunlight into electricity but also emits light as electricity passes through it. Tuning the composition of the solar cell enables it to emit different wavelengths of light, and because it is only about 1 micrometer thick, the material is semi-translucent and therefore could potentially be used in windows. The solar cell is comprised of the semiconducting mineral perovskite, which has been studied as a replacement for silicon in solar panels since 2009. Perovskite solar cells are not yet as efficient at energy conversion as silicon solar cells, but gains in this area of development coupled with cheaper manufacturing costs (10-20 cents per watt projected as opposed to 75 cents per watt with silicon solar panels and 50 cents per watt with fossil fuels) make perovskite a popular subject matter in the solar cell industry.

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