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Medicine

Tiny Fantastic Voyage Inspired Robots Are Starting To Get Reasonably Mature 27

Posted by samzenpus from the getting-small dept.
szotz writes: No shrinking machine in an underground military lab (as far as we know). And no Raquel Welch. Still there is a growing microrobotics movement underway, looking at ways that tiny, untethered robots might be used to perform medical interventions in the human body. There have been piecemeal reports for years now of various designs, such as microscallops that can swim through the eye and bots that can be pushed around by bacteria flagella. This article in IEEE Spectrum gives a round-up of recent progress and looks at some of the difficulties that arise when you try to make things tiny and still have them retain a modicum (or give them more than a modicum) of function.

Comment Re:Explanation seems to violate charge conservatio (Score 4, Informative) 265

by PaulBu (#49818839) Attached to: Fuel Free Spacecrafts Using Graphene

Well, CRT face is (weakly) grounded, so e- kinetic energy can excite atom for subsequent photon emission, but its charge will happily leak into the ground.

There is no "ground" anywhere next to flying spacecraft!

Actually, on reading the preprint, yes, electrons come from under the Fermi level, get lost in the process and graphene foam (or, spacecraft carrying it) *will* become charged -- it was pointed out in the article as well, but I did miss it on quick read.

AC below actually paints a rather dramatic picture of what can happen next! :)

Paul B.
Google

Google Calendar Ends SMS Notifications 101

Posted by timothy from the giveth-and-taketh-away dept.
LuserOnFire writes: Google has sent out an email this morning that says in part: "Starting on June 27th, 2015, SMS notifications from Google Calendar will no longer be sent. SMS notifications launched before smartphones were available. Now, in a world with smartphones and notifications, you can get richer, more reliable experience on your mobile device, even offline." You can find the announcement on Google's support pages as well. "Richer" may be accurate, but I'm not sure that "more reliable" describes web-based notifications; that may be why the announcement linked does not apply for Google's "Work, Education and Government customers."
Power

California Is Giving Away Free Solar Panels To Its Poorest Residents 272

Posted by samzenpus from the you-get-a-panel-and-you-get-a-panel-and-you-get.... dept.
MikeChino writes: Oakland-based non-profit GRID Alternatives is giving away 1,600 free solar panels to California's poorest residents by the year 2016. The initiative was introduced by Senator Kevin de León and launched with funds gathered under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GCRF), the state's cap-and-trade program. SFGate reports: "Kianté London used the program to put panels on his three-bedroom North Richmond home, which he shares with two sons and a daughter. 'It helps me and my family a great deal to have low-cost energy, because these energy prices are really expensive,' said London, 46, whose solar array was installed this week. 'And I wanted to do my part. It’s clean, green energy.' London had wanted a solar array for years, but couldn’t afford it on his income as a merchant seaman — roughly $70,000 per year. Even leasing programs offered by such companies as SolarCity and Sunrun were too expensive, he said. The new program, in contrast, paid the entire up-front cost of his array."
Iphone

A Text Message Can Crash An iPhone and Force It To Reboot 248

Posted by Soulskill from the easy-way-to-get-your-kids-to-put-the-phone-down dept.
DavidGilbert99 writes with news that a bug in iOS has made it so anyone can crash an iPhone by simply sending it a text message containing certain characters. "When the text message is displayed by a banner alert or notification on the lockscreen, the system attempts to abbreviate the text with an ellipsis. If the ellipsis is placed in the middle of a set of non-Latin script characters, including Arabic, Marathi and Chinese, it causes the system to crash and the phone to reboot." The text string is specific enough that it's unlikely to happen by accident, and users can disable text notification banners to protect themselves from being affected. However, if a user receives the crash-inducing text, they won't be able to access the Messages app without causing another crash. A similar bug crashed applications in OS X a few years ago.
Music

Ask Slashdot: Will Technology Disrupt the Song? 158

Posted by Soulskill from the riker's-trombone-suggests-otherwise dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The music industry has gone through dramatic changes over the past thirty years. Virtually everything is different except the structure of the songs we listen to. Distribution methods have long influenced songwriting habits, from records to CDs to radio airplay. So will streaming services, through their business models, incentivize a change to song form itself? Many pop music sensations are already manufactured carefully by the studios, and the shift to digital is providing them with ever more data about what people like to listen to. And don't forget that technology is a now a central part of how such music is created, from auto-tune and electronic beats to the massive amount of processing that goes into getting the exact sound a studio wants.
Google

Creationists Manipulating Search Results 445

Posted by Soulskill from the pi-is-exactly-3 dept.
reallocate writes: It looks like some Creationists are manipulating search results to ensure websites pushing religion are appearing in response to queries about science. Ask Google "What happened to the dinosaurs?" and you'll see links to Creationist sites right at the top. (And, right now, several hits to sites taking note of it.) Google has a feedback link waiting for you to use it.
Education

Google and Gates-Backed Khan Academy Introduces "Grit"-Based Classroom Funding 119

Posted by samzenpus from the effort-counts dept.
theodp writes: Their intentions are no doubt good, but some will be troubled by Google and Khan Academy's recently-concluded LearnStorm initiative, which pitted kids-against-kids, schools-against-schools, and cities-against-cities in a 3-month learning challenge for prizes based not only on students' mastery of math skills on Khan Academy, but also their perceived 'hustle' (aka 'grit'). "Points are earned by mastering math skills and also for taking on challenging new concepts and persevering," explained a Khan Academy FAQ. A blog entry further explained, "They've earned points and prizes not only for mastering math skills but also for showing 'hustle,' a metric we created to measure grit, perseverance, and growth. They competed over 200,000 hours of learning and 13.6 million standards-aligned math problems. In addition, thanks to the generosity of Google.org, DonorsChoose.org, and Comcast's Internet Essentials, 34 underserved schools unlocked new devices for their classrooms and free home internet service for eligible families, increasing student access to online learning tools like Khan Academy." Apparently funded by a $2 million Google grant, the Google, Khan Academy, and DonorsChoose grit-based classroom funding comes on the heels of the same organizations' gender-based classroom funding initiative. Supported by some of the world's wealthiest individuals and corporations, Khan Academy's Board members include a Google Board member (Diane Green), spouse of a Google Board member (Ann Doerr), and the Managing Partner of Bill Gates' bgC3 (Larry Cohen); former Board members include Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.
AI

New 'Deep Learning' Technique Lets Robots Learn Through Trial-and-Error 65

Posted by Soulskill from the not-killing-all-humans-didn't-work,-so-kill-all-humans-next-time dept.
jan_jes writes: UC Berkeley researchers turned to a branch of artificial intelligence known as deep learning for developing algorithms that enable robots to learn motor tasks through trial and error. It's a process that more closely approximates the way humans learn, marking a major milestone in the field of artificial intelligence. Their demonstration robot completes tasks such as "putting a clothes hanger on a rack, assembling a toy plane, screwing a cap on a water bottle, and more" without pre-programmed details about its surroundings. The challenge of putting robots into real-life settings (e.g. homes or offices) is that those environments are constantly changing. The robot must be able to perceive and adapt to its surroundings, so this type of learning is an important step.
Programming

Video Games: Gateway To a Programming Career? 170

Posted by Soulskill from the also-gateway-to-doritos dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes: Want more people to program? Encourage them to play more video games, at least according to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In an online Q&A, Zuckerberg suggested that a lifetime spent playing video games could prep kids and young adults for careers as programmers. "I actually think giving people the opportunity to play around with different stuff is one of the best things you can do," he told the audience. "I definitely would not have gotten into programming if I hadn't played games as a kid." A handful of games, most notably Minecraft, already have a reputation for encouraging kids to not only think analytically, but also modify the gaming environment — the first steps toward actually wrestling with code. Those of you who have done programming work in your career: did video games influence your path?
Chrome

New Chrome Extension Uses Sound To Share URLs Between Devices 77

Posted by samzenpus from the sound-of-malware dept.
itwbennett writes: Google Tone is an experimental feature that could be used to easily and instantly share browser pages, search results, videos and other pages among devices, according to Google Research. "The initial prototype used an efficient audio transmission scheme that sounded terrible, so we played it beyond the range of human hearing," researcher Alex Kauffmann and software engineer Boris Smus wrote in a post on the Google Research blog.
Government

Do Russian Uranium Deals Threaten World Supply Security? 102

Posted by samzenpus from the plenty-to-go-around dept.
Lasrick writes: A recent article in the New York Times notes that the Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom and associated firms are gaining control of a growing number of uranium resources and mining operations. The article, headlined Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal focuses on donations to charities connected to former US President Bill Clinton and his family, made by businessmen who stood to profit from the sale of Uranium One, a Canadian company with worldwide uranium-mining interests. But a major premise of the article is that Russian uranium control threatens the security of the global uranium supply. Steve Fetter and Erich Schneider demolish the idea that Russian control of uranium stocks is a threat to global security.

Comment Why make it less secure? (Score 2) 384

by Etcetera (#49737473) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Solve a Unique Networking Issue?

Dear Lord...

You have an airgapped network that prevents remote access, reducing the question of security to one of physical security... which is typically handled with big locks, cameras, 24 hour staffing at the gas station, and maybe men with guns if it comes down to it.

Why would you network these together and create an avenue for simultaneous, surruptitious hacking and attacking of your industrial equipment?

Be thankful you have a job, and don't let the SysAdmin's (natural, and usually good) desire for laziness and efficiency to lead to a future security issue justified by convenience.

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