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Submission + - Did Google Remove Vivint From Search Results For Being a Nest Competitor? (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Been missing your dose of Silicon Valley gossip? Here's the latest drama – Vivint vs Google.

Yesterday, Utah-based home automation company Vivint, which is a competitor of Nest's smart thermostats, accused Google of deliberately removing it from search results for four months without telling it why.

Vivint's founder and CEO Todd Pedersen and VP of Innovation Jeremy Warren told Pando Daily that 16 days after Google acquired Nest, Vivint stopped appearing in Google search results completely.

It wasn't bumped down the results either – according to search specialists Foxtail Marketing, out of 3,300 possible search terms that would have shown Vivint in Google's search results, the company was only listed for three, meaning that it had all but disappeared from the web.

But while Google officially said not much to us, Google's head of webspam Matt Cutts popped up on YCominator's Hacker News social bookmarking website with a retort.

Submission + - Lyme Disease Bacteria Has Existed For 15 Million Years, Says Scientist (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: The scientist behind the idea for Jurassic Park has found proof that Lyme disease actually predates the entire human race.

Dr George Poinar Jr, a professor emeritus in the Department of Integrative Biology of the Oregon State University (OSU) College of Science, studied a 15-20 million-year-old piece of amber from the Dominican Republic.

Poinar is one of the world's leading experts on plant and animal life forms found preserved in amber, and it is he who popularised the idea of extracting DNA from insects in amber, which was adapted by Michael Crichton for the Jurassic Park book and films.

In the amber, he found the oldest ever fossilised evidence of ticks carrying Borrelia, a type of spirochete-like bacteria that causes Lyme disease.

The study, entitled "Spirochete-like cells in a Dominican amber Ambylomma tick (Arachnida: Ixodidae)" is published in the journal Historical Biology.

Submission + - Study: Stop Being So Cynical, You Could Give Yourself Dementia (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Scientists from the University of Eastern Finland have found that people who have high levels of cynical distrust are three times as likely to suffer from dementia in later life, than those who have more faith in other people.

Their study is the first of its kind to look at the relationship between cynicism and dementia. Entitled: "Late-life cynical distrust, risk of incident dementia, and mortality in a population-based cohort", it is published in the latest issue of the journal Neurology.

Over a period of eight years, the researchers studied 1,499 people, who all had an average age of 71. The participants were given tests for dementia and a questionnaire to measure their level of cynicism, based on the Cook-Medley Scale.

Submission + - Iran Court Summons Mark Zuckerberg (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: An Iranian judge has summoned Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to answer allegations that his company's apps have breached people's privacy, it was reported Tuesday. The court in Fars province ordered that Zuckerberg address unspecified "violation of privacy" claims made by Iranians over the reach of Facebook-owned apps, ISNA news agency reported.

"Based on the judge's verdict, the Zionist manager of Facebook... should report to the prosecutor's office to defend himself and make compensation for damages," Rouhollah Momen-Nasab, a senior Iranian Internet security official, told ISNA.

Access to social networks, including Twitter and Facebook, are routinely blocked by Iranian authorities, as are other websites considered un-Islamic or detrimental to the regime.

Submission + - UK Piracy Crackdown Falls Short as Torrentz.eu Comes Back Online (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Massive torrent search engine Torrentz.eu is once again accessible in the UK following a 24-hour ban, after the owners pointed out that its suspension was illegal.

Torrentz, which is the most popular search engine of its kind, was taken down when the site's Polish registrar Nazwa complied with a request from the UK's Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) on Sunday and suspended the Torrentz.eu domain.

However on Monday a lawyer for the search engine contacted Nazwa and pointed out an ICANN ruling which stated a court order was needed to get a domain suspended.

The temporary removal of Torrentz.eu was part of a wider PIPCU operation over the weekend, which included the suspension of file-locker search engine FileCrop and sports streaming website Cricfree.tv on Saturday.

Submission + - Conscious Sentient Robots Capable of Feelings are Impossible, Say Researchers (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: If you're a big fan of Isaac Asimov and sentient robots like Johnny Five and Sonny, you might not be happy to hear that computer science researchers have used mathematical theory to prove that robots capable of feelings and emotions will never exist.

Using a variation of Giulio Tononi's influential mathematical framework for consciousness, a team of researchers from the National University of Ireland have proved mathematically that computers are unable to completely integrate information.

Tononi's 2008 framework argued that integrated information cannot be reduced into smaller components, so for example, if a human were to perceive a red triangle, the human brain would not be able to break down the triangle as a colourless outline of a triangle and a shapeless patch of red at the same time. The researchers disagree.

"There's no computer you could build that could integrate information so that it cannot be edited. Computers can still be useful and intelligent without complete integration, but we will never trust it as we trust a person, as the computer is just following certain algorithms," said Dr Maguire, who led the research.

"We agree with Tononi's approach but we feel his quantification of integrated information didn't work. The cost of integrating something was that you would lose a lot of your memories at the same time, so we decided to provide a new type of quantification."

Submission + - Engineers Invent World's Smallest, Fastest Nanomotor Ever To Power Nanobots (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: University of Texas engineers have created the world's smallest, fastest and longest-running tiny synthetic motor to date – an invention that could change the future of medicine by powering nanobot computers to dispense drugs and fight cancer cells throughout the body.

Led by mechanical engineering assistant professor Donglei "Emma" Fan of the Cockrell School of Engineering, the team of researchers set out to create a three-part nanomotor 500 times smaller than a grain of salt and tiny enough to fit inside a human cell.

While most nanomotors rotate at the speed of 14 to 500 RPMs, the new ultra-high speed nanomotor can rotate for 15 continuous hours at the speed of 18,000 RPMS, which is equivalent to the speed of a jet airplane engine.

Submission + - Japan Invents New Safer Lithium Ion Battery That Uses Parasitic Conduction (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Researchers at the Tohoku University in Japan have created a new type of lithium ion conductor that could greatly decrease the fire risks associated with lithium batteries.

Due to its long life, Lithium ion is currently the preferred choice of rechargeable battery for everything from air planes and electrical cars to wearable tech, smartphones, tablets and implantable medical devices.

However, the compound relies on liquid chemistries, whereby lithium salts dissolve into organic liquid electrolyte solvents that are highly flammable, so in order to remove fire risks, the cells in batteries would need to be completely solid-state.

To achieve this, the researchers used rock salt Lithium Borohydride (LiBH4). This compound has previously been considered for use in lithium batteries, but has so far only been able to work if it is at a high temperature or pressure.

Submission + - Quantum Computing: Global Symmetry Not Required to Speed Up Quantum Search (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Researchers have proved that global symmetry is not required in order for a quantum particle to search quickly for an item in a database.

Grover's quantum search algorithm can be formulated as quantum particles having the ability to search for items in an unsorted database by jumping from one node to another, making quantum computing work much faster than traditional computers can.

However, the assertion has always assumed that quantum particles can only hop directly from one item to another, meaning that a quantum computer's ability to search for items depends on what items the particle hops onto.

Researchers from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the University of California San Diego have used a physics technique known as the "degenerate perturbation theory" to prove that searches can still be sped up without the use of global symmetry.

Submission + - Move Aside Nasa: China's Yuegong-1 Simulates Plant Cultivation on the Moon (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: In the race to make humans self-sufficient in space, China has pulled ahead of Nasa with the development of Yuegong-1 (Moon Palace-1), a lab simulating the cultivation of plants and micro-organisms on the moon.

Three Chinese volunteers spent 105 days living in a module measuring 500 cubic metres (36 square metres), feeding themselves by growing five types of grains, 15 types of vegetables including soybean, peanuts, peppers, carrots, tomatoes and coriander, one type of fruit and yellow mealworm for protein.

Yuegong-1 is one of the world's most advanced bioregenerative life support systems, also known as a controlled ecological life support system.

Nasa has announced plans to send plants to the moon next year when the top contenders for the Google Lunar XPrize competition try to make a soft moon landing with their own rovers. The US space agency also wants to grow plants in a greenhouse on Mars by 2021.

Submission + - 22 Million Women Worldwide Hooked on 'Otome' Romantic Dating Simulator Game Apps (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Over 22 million women worldwide are currently playing a range of "Otome" romantic dating simulator mobile apps by Japanese app developer Voltage, inspired by Shjo manga comic books for young girls wildly popular in Japan.

Otome apps are interactive 2D animated games on iOS and Android aimed at women in their 20s and 30s.

The user plays the protagonist in chick flick/ soap opera-type premise and can pick from one of five male characters, each of whom comes with a different personality, agenda and storyline.

During the game, the user can choose how the protagonist responds, which affects the outcome of the game.

"We began distributing our first dating sim title 'My lover is the No.1 Host' in December 2006. Up until then we'd been making battle simulation games aimed at men and lyric and song ringtone websites, but the reception we got [was so positive] that we gradually started to specialise in dating sims," said a Voltage spokesperson.

"Dating simulation games came about in Japan during the late 1980s in PC games aimed towards boys and men. The market has been primarily focused on things aimed towards men for a while now, but with the widespread use of mobile phones, we realised that there was a market for these games aimed at women too."

Submission + - The Wind Rises: The WWII Fighter Planes that Inspired Hayao Miyazaki (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Acclaimed film director Miyazaki's career has spanned six decades and the works from his animation firm Studio Ghibli have become a major influence in cinema history.

Miyazaki's passion for historic aeroplanes and flying has filtered into almost every single animated film he has made and his Studio Ghibli is named after the Italian Caproni Ca.309 Ghibli World War II fighter, so it is not surprising that he has chosen to pay tribute to not one, but two aerospace legends in The Wind Rises, the final film of his career.

The Wind Rises tells the fictionalised biography of Jiro Horikoshi, the chief engineer behind many Japanese WWI fighter planes, on his journey to build a plane that could match the West's more advanced technology.

The film jumps between Horikoshi's life and his dreams, where he meets his idol, the Italian airplane designer Gianni Caproni.

Submission + - Welcome to Utherverse: The MMO Game Where You Can Live Out Virtual Fantasies (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Ever wished you could take a vacation from real life to a place where you are always beautiful, young, rich, successful and having a great time? Over 50 million people in the world are doing this right now, in a corner of the web known as Utherverse.

Utherverse is a massively multi-player online game (MMO) that currently comprises 100,000 commercial worlds and over 1 million personal worlds, and once online, you are free to do what you want, without the constraints of everyday life.

You can meet people and make friends through IM text chats, webcam or voice chat, have sex with other avatars, smoke virtual marijuana, party and explore Utherverse's red light district, hold your dream wedding, decorate your dream home or even get a virtual job – whatever you want to do or be, you can.

There is a copious amount of sexually explicit content on Utherverse, and the first world launched in 2004 was Red Light Center, a virtual replica of Amsterdam's red light district.

"In the beginning, adult content was wildly successful on the net and that was how so many people moved onto the internet," Shuster says.

Submission + - Germany: Ancient Roman Military Camp Unearthed by Archaeologists (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: After 200 years of people searching for evidence of Roman military presence in eastern Germany, state archaeologists have finally announced the discovery of a long-lost ancient military camp near the town of Hachelbich in Thuringia, eastern Germany.

Situated in a broad valley, the camp measures 18 hectares (180,000 square metres) and is thought to have sheltered a Roman legion consisting of up to 5,000 troops.

The camp seems to have been a temporary thing, set-up by the Romans on their way to invade further eastern territory. The camp was first discovered in 2010, but the archaeologists wanted to make absolutely sure that their find was conclusively Roman.

To that end, Thuringia state archaeologist Mario Kuessner and his team excavated two hectares of land and analysed soil disturbances over another 10 hectares in order to discover the outlines of the ancient camp.

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