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Submission + - High Schoolers use home-made Nuclear Fusion Reactor to Dominate Science Fair (us.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Twenty high school students gather every Friday night in a basement of a modest home in Federal Way, WA (suburb of Seattle) to work on science experiments using a home-made nuclear fusion reactor. Last weekend, these students won the “First Place – Gold – Over All” award at the Washington State Science and Engineering Fair in the senior division. They now have two (2) teams who have received all-expense paid trips to the Intel International Science Fair in Phoenix in May of 2016. In addition, these students won $182,000 in scholarships at this fair, including a fully paid year of school at WSU for 2 members, and 2 $20,000 4 year renewable scholarships to Ohio Wesleyan University.
This extreme science club is a brain child of Carl Greninger, a Program Manager at Microsoft by day, scientist by night. He was concerned about the current state of high school science education. He lamented that the public school system does not truly expose students to the excitement of experimental discovery. Determined to prove that high school science could be much more than reading about old experiments in text books, he gathered some students and built a working nuclear fusion reactor in his garage. He did this with his own funds and in the evenings. He runs a rigorous science program from his basement on Friday nights where students design and execute experiments using the fusion reactor. Every year these students have been submitting and publishing their results as well as publishing white papers. Since its inception, this basement science club has been a model to be reckoned with. Year after year, his students have been receiving the top awards at every local, national, and international science fairs hauling in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of scholarships.

Submission + - Soneone is Cutting Fiber Optic Cables in San Francisco

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: USA Today reports that the FBI is investigating at least 11 physical attacks on high-capacity Internet cables in California's San Francisco Bay Area dating back to at least July 6, 2014, including one early this week. "When it affects multiple companies and cities, it does become disturbing," says Special Agent Greg Wuthrich. "We definitely need the public's assistance." The pattern of attacks raises serious questions about the glaring vulnerability of critical Internet infrastructure, says JJ Thompson. "When it's situations that are scattered all in one geography, that raises the possibility that they are testing out capabilities, response times and impact," says Thompson. "That is a security person's nightmare."

Mark Peterson, a spokesman for Internet provider Wave Broadband, says an unspecified number of Sacramento-area customers were knocked offline by the latest attack. Peterson characterized the Tuesday attack as "coordinated" and said the company was working with Level 3 and Zayo to restore service. It’s possible the vandals were dressed as telecommunications workers to avoid arousing suspicion, say FBI officials. Backup systems help cushion consumers from the worst of the attacks, meaning people may notice slower email or videos not playing, but may not have service completely disrupted. But repairs are costly and penalties are not stiff enough to deter would-be vandals. "There are flags and signs indicating to somebody who wants to do damage: This is where it is folks," says Richard Doherty. "It's a terrible social crime that affects thousands and millions of people."

Submission + - Microsoft To Launch Minecraft Education Portal For Teachers

Submitted by Mickeycaskill
Mickeycaskill writes: Microsoft wants to help educators use Minecraft to teach pupils about maths, history, creative design and other subjects and skills, claiming the game is already being used in classrooms in the US and UK.

Minecraft developer Mojang was bought by Microsoft last year for $2.5 billion and the game has been featured in a number of HoloLens demos, an indication of how it sees the former indie phenomenon as more than just a game.

“Very soon after Minecraft launched, we noticed teachers bringing the game into their classrooms,” said a blog post. “Often inspired by the passion of their students, they started using Minecraft to design history lessons, teach language classes, explore mathematics, physics, computer science, writing, and more."

Submission + - Windows 10 shares your Wi-fi password with friends, and with their friends

Submitted by gsslay
gsslay writes: The Register reports that Windows 10 will include, defaulted on, "Wi-Fi Sense", a facility to share wifi passwords with friends. (Outlook.com (nee Hotmail) contacts, Skype contacts and, with an opt-in, Facebook friends.)

This involves Microsoft storing the wifi passwords entered into your laptop (any password, not necessarily just your own). This can then be used by any other person suitably connected to you. If you don't want someone's Windows 10 passing on your password, Microsoft has two solutions; only share passwords using their Wi-Fi Sense service (which can't be passed on), or by adding "_optout" to your SSID. (Similar to Google's "_nomap" that went down so well.)

Submission + - Using lasers to trigger a mouse's happy memory gives it the will to struggle on (ieee.org)

Submitted by the_newsbeagle
the_newsbeagle writes: With optogenetics, scientists can tag neurons with light-responsive proteins, and then trigger those neurons to "turn on" with the pulse of a light. In the latest application, MIT researchers used light to turn on certain neurons in male mice's hippocampi that were associated with a happy memory (coming into contact with female mice!), and then tested whether that artificially activated memory changed the mice's reactions to a stressful situation (being hung by their tails). Mice who got jolted with the happy memory struggled to get free for longer than the control mice. This tail-suspension test was developed to screen potential antidepressant drugs: If a rodent struggles longer before giving up, it's considered less depressed.

Submission + - Turning neural networks upside down produces psychedelic visuals (blogspot.co.uk)

Submitted by cjellibebi
cjellibebi writes: Neural networks that were designed to recognise images, when run backwards, turn out of being capable of enhancing existing images to resemble the images they were meant to try and recognise. The results are pretty trippy. This blog-post explains the research in great detail. There are pictures, and even a video. The Guardian has a digested article for the less tech-savvy.

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