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Submission + - Robert Langer: Creating things that could change the world (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by Jim_Austin
Jim_Austin writes: Robert S. Langer has more than 1000 patents, licensed to more than 300 companies. His academic articles have more than 163,000 citations, for an h-index of 203. He talks about science, graduate education in the sciences, entrepreneurship, and the connections among them.

Submission + - Major brain pathway rediscovered after century-old confusion, controversy (washington.edu)

Submitted by vinces99
vinces99 writes: A couple of years ago a scientist looking at dozens of MRI scans of human brains noticed something surprising: A large fiber pathway that seemed to be part of the network of connections that process visual information that wasn't mentioned in any modern-day anatomy textbooks. “It was this massive bundle of fibers, visible in every brain I examined,” said Jason Yeatman, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. “... As far as I could tell, it was absent from the literature and from all major neuroanatomy textbooks.”

With colleagues at Stanford University, Yeatman started some detective work to figure out the identity of that mysterious fiber bundle. The researchers found an early 20th century atlas that depicted the structure, now known as the vertical occipital fasciculus. But the last time that atlas had been checked out was 1912, meaning the researchers were the first to view the images in the last century. They describes the history and controversy of the elusive pathway in a paper published Nov. 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Submission + - US Marshals auctioning $20M worth of Silk Road's Bitcoins (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: The US Marshals office this week said it would auction off almost 50,000 or about $20 million worth of alleged Silk Road creator Robert Ulbricht’s Bitcoins. The auction, which is the second sale of Silk Road’s Bitcoin collection, will take place during a 6-hour period on Dec. 4 from 8:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. EST. Bids will be accepted by email from pre-registered bidders only, the US Marshall’s office stated. In June a more than $17 million in Bitcoins seized from the Silk Road take-down was auctioned off.

Submission + - Launching 2015: a new Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web (eff.org)

Submitted by Peter Eckersley
Peter Eckersley writes: Today EFF, Mozilla, Cisco and Akamai announced a forthcoming project called Let's Encrypt. Let's Encrypt will be a certificate authority that issues free certificates to any website, using automated protocols (demo video here). Launching in summer 2015, we believe this will be the missing piece that deprecates the woefully insecure HTTP protocol in favor of HTTPS.

Submission + - Rooftop solar to reach price parity in the U.S. by 2016 (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: The cost of rooftop solar-powered electricity will be on par with prices of coal-powered energy and other conventional sources in all 50 U.S. states in just two years, a leap from today where PV energy has price parity in only 10 states, according to Deutsche Bank's leading solar industry analyst. The sharp decline in solar energy costs is the result of increased economies of scale leading to cheaper photovoltaic panels, new leasing models and declining installation costs, Deutsche Bank's Vishal Shah stated in a recent report. The cost of solar-generated electricity in the top 10 states for capacity ranges from 11-15 cents per kilowatt hour (c/kWh), compared to the retail electricity price of 11-37 c/kWh. Amit Ronen, a former Congressional staffer behind legislation that created an investment tax credit for solar installations, said one of the only impediments to decreasing solar electricity prices are fees proposed by utilities on customers who install solar and take advantage of net metering, or the ability to sell excess power back to utilities.

Submission + - When Performance Meets Profit: BitTorrent Bundles (bittorrent.com)

Submitted by Daniel Sadoc Menasche
Daniel Sadoc Menasche writes: Today BitTorrent has announced that artists are allowed to offer paid music and video bundles (http://gizmodo.com/bittorrent-now-lets-anyone-release-an-album-as-a-paid-f-1660014496). Bundles are content collections, such as albums of songs. After signing up for a “BitTorrent bundle”, a user can download any of the files in the bundle, learning about new content that he was unaware before (http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/14/bittorrent-paywall-science-fiction-series/). This not only boosts the popularity of the artists, but also improves the performance of the system and availability of content, as described in this scientific paper titled "Content availability and bundling in swarming systems” that appeared last year in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (http://www.dcc.ufrj.br/~sadoc/bundling.pdf). According to the researchers, the mean content download time comprises idle waiting for content to become available and active download time while content is available. If the increased availability due to bundling and the corresponding decrease in idle waiting are significant, bundling can allow users to download more content in less time, now with royalties flowing to the artists.

Submission + - Player-Run MMORPG by Former Ultima Online Devs Finding Kickstarter Success 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Shards Online has returned to Kickstarter with a refocused plan and a promise to match pledges dollar for dollar up to their goal. With just a week gone by they have already reached 75% of their goal. Project Lead Derek Brinkmann says "If Ultima Online and Neverwinter Nights had a love child, Shards Online would be the result. By combining the persistent virtual world of Ultima Online with the freedom of community run servers and the ability to act as a dungeonmaster in Neverwinter Nights, we are creating a paradise for roleplayers where you are no longer constrained by the rules handed to you by the development team." The team now has their sights set on their stretch goals like more animations for roleplayers and an extra game world to be released at Alpha.

Submission + - Elusive dark matter may be detected with GPS satellites (scienceblog.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two researchers say time disparities identified through the network of satellites that make up our modern GPS infrastructure can help detect dark matter. In a paper in the online version of the scientific journal Nature Physics, they write that dark matter may be organized as a large gas-like collection of topological defects, or energy cracks. “We propose to detect the defects, the dark matter, as they sweep through us with a network of sensitive atomic clocks. The idea is, where the clocks go out of synchronization, we would know that dark matter, the topological defect, has passed by."

Submission + - Court agrees that Google's search results qualify as free speech (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by wabrandsma
wabrandsma writes: From Ars Technica:
The regulation of Google's search results has come up from time to time over the past decade, and although the idea has gained some traction in Europe (most recently with “right to be forgotten” laws), courts and regulatory bodies in the US have generally agreed that Google's search results are considered free speech. That consensus was upheld last Thursday, when a San Francisco Superior Court judge ruled in favor of Google's right to order its search results as it sees fit.

Submission + - Nokia Announces N1 Android Tablet with Intel Processor and iPad Looks

Submitted by SmartAboutThings
SmartAboutThings writes: Nokia has sold its phone division to Microsoft and won't be able to make Nokia-branded devices until sometime in 2016. But it seems that the hardware giant won't die just like that. Welcome the Nokia N1 tablet, a surprise launch by the company. The device has and iPad-like design but runs Android 5.0 Lollipop. There's also a 64-bit Intel processor on the inside and a Nokia Z launcher.

Submission + - The USA Freedom Act: What's to Come and What You Need to Know

Submitted by StikyPad
StikyPad writes: The USA Freedom Act, the leading contender for NSA reform, is set for a vote this week. The bill has some problems, but is a major step forward for surveillance reform. That's why we're asking you to call your Senator and urge them to support the USA Freedom Act. Here's a rundown of what's to come, what you need to know, and what may happen this week.

Submission + - Perl 6 for 2015 (fosdem.org)

Submitted by eneville
eneville writes: The last pieces are finally falling into place. After years of design and implementation, 2015 will be the year that Perl 6 officially launches for production use.

In this talk, the creator of Perl reflects on the history of the effort, how the team got some things right, and how it learned from its mistakes when it got them wrong. But mostly how a bunch of stubbornly fun-loving people outlasted the naysayers to accomplish the extraordinary task of implementing a language that was so ambitious, even its designers said it was impossible. Prepare to be delightfully surprised.

Comment Re:That was close... (Score 1) 264

by jdschulteis (#48326651) Attached to: We Are Running Out of Sand

I thought the article was about running out of sand for silicon semiconductors. Besides California falling into the Pacific Ocean after a big earthquake, a lack of sand would be the end of Silicon Valley.

No worries: silicon for semiconductors could be made from the fine, smooth, easily-blows-away desert sand.

Comment Re:That explains it... (Score 1) 80

by jdschulteis (#48311219) Attached to: Birds Found Using Human Musical Scales For the First Time

..I could have sworn I heard Whole Lotta Love blasting out of the magnolia tree across the street.

Turns out, it might have been a couple of bluejays getting horny!!!

The only thing missing was the sound of the thermin...

If you mean the descending sound in the chorus, I don't think it's a theremin. I've always thought it was slide guitar and volume control.

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