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Submission + - Auto Makers Announce Electric Car Charging Standard (motorward.com)

Submitted by Overly Critical Guy
Overly Critical Guy writes: Auto makers are launching a universal EV charger that charges an electric vehicle in 15 to 20 minutes. The standard, called Combined Charging System, has been approved by the Society of Automative Engineers and ACEA, the European association of vehicle manufacturers, as the standard for fast-charging electric vehicles.

Submission + - Google releases key part of Street View pipeline (blogspot.com)

Submitted by drom
drom writes: Google released a key part of their Street View pipeline as open source today: Ceres Solver. It's a large-scale nonlinear least squares minimizer. What does that mean? It's a way to fit a model (like expected position of a car) to data (like GPS positions or accelerometers). The library is completely general and works for many problems. It offers state of the art performance for bundle adjustment problems typical in 3D reconstruction, among others.
Android

Submission + - Accountability - Not Code Quality- Makes iOS Safer Than Android (threatpost.com) 1

Submitted by
chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: "Threatpost is reporting on a new study of mobile malware that finds accountability, not superior technology, has kept Apple's iOS ecosystem free of viruses, even as the competing Android platform strains under the wait of repeated malicious code outbreaks.
Dan Guido of the firm Trail of Bits and Michael Arpaia of iSEC Partners told attendees at the SOURCE Boston Conference on Thursday about an empirical analysis of existing malicious programs for the Android and iOS platforms shows that Google is losing the mobile security contest badly — every piece of malicious code the two identified was for the company's Android OS, while Apple's iOS remained free of malware, despite owning 30% of the mobile smart phone market in the U.S. Apple's special sauce? Policies that demand accountability from iOS developers, and stricter controls on what applications can do once they are installed on Apple devices."
Science

Submission + - 'Huge' water resource exists under Africa (bbc.co.uk) 2

Submitted by gambit3
gambit3 writes: Scientists say the notoriously dry continent of Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater. They argue that the total volume of water in aquifers underground is 100 times the amount found on the surface.
Across Africa more than 300 million people are said not to have access to safe drinking water.
Freshwater rivers and lakes are subject to seasonal floods and droughts that can limit their availability for people and for agriculture. At present only 5% of arable land is irrigated.
Science

Submission + - Eating meat helped early humans reproduce (latimes.com) 1

Submitted by PolygamousRanchKid
PolygamousRanchKid writes: If early humans had been vegans we might all still be living in caves, Swedish researchers suggested in an article Thursday. When a mother eats meat, her breast-fed child's brain grows faster and she is able to wean the child at an earlier age, allowing her to have more children faster, the article explains. "Eating meat enabled the breast-feeding periods and thereby the time between births to be shortened," said psychologist Elia Psouni of Lund University in Sweden. "This must have had a crucial impact on human evolution."

She notes, however, that the results say nothing about what humans today should or should not eat.
Science

Submission + - Studies Suggest Massive Increase in Scientific Fraud (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus writes: Scientific fraud has always been with us. But as stated or suggested by some scientists, journal editors, and a few studies, the amount of scientific “cheating” has far outpaced the expansion of science itself. According to some, the financial incentives to “cut corners” have never been greater, resulting in record numbers of retractions from prestigious journals.

From the article: “For example, the journal Nature reported that published retractions had increased tenfold over the past decade, while the number of published papers had increased by just 44 percent.”

Submission + - Survey finds no hint of dark matter near Solar System--no hint of a clue, either (nature.com)

Submitted by Eponymous Hero
Eponymous Hero writes: Does dark matter exist or doesn't it? It seems these results don't shed as much light as we'd hoped.

"Moni Bidin says he’s not sure whether dark matter exists or not. But he says that his team’s survey is the most comprehensive of its type ever done, and the puzzling results must be reckoned with. 'We don’t have a good comprehension of what is going on,' he says."

This has the smell of a Neutrinogate scandal, but at least we've been warned about the shoulder shrugging.

"As an example, Newberg notes that the researchers assumed that the group of stars they examined were smoothly distributed above and below the plane of the Milky Way. But if the distribution turns out to be lumpier, as is the case for stars in the outer parts of the galaxy, then the resulting calculations of dark matter density could be incorrect.

Flynn agrees that there are a number of ways that the method employed by Moni Bidin and his co-authors 'could get it wrong.'"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Technology Makes It Harder to Save Money

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "LiveScience reports that a survey conducted for the American Institute of CPAs reveals that while more than half of US adults believe technology has made it easier to spend money, just 3 percent think it has made it easier to save. The research found that Americans who subscribe to digital services spend an average of $166 each month for cable TV, home Internet access, mobile phone service and digital subscriptions, such as satellite radio and streaming video — the equivalent of 17 percent of their monthly rent or mortgage payment. and those who download songs, apps and other products spend an additional $38 per month. "Our gadgets and connections can bring benefits like mobility and efficiency,” says Jordan Amin. “But they can also bring financial challenges, like taking money that could go to savings, for instance, or contributing to credit card debt." If facing a financial crunch, Americans would rather change what they eat than give up their cell phones, downloads or digital TV services. Asked to choose the one action they would most likely take in tight time, 41 percent said they would cut back on eating out, 20 percent said they would cut off cable TV, 8 percent said they would end cell phone service and 8 percent said they would stop downloading songs and digital products."

Submission + - Computer game designed to treat depression as effective as traditional treatment (news24.com)

Submitted by sirlark
sirlark writes: Researchers at the University of Auckland tested an interactive 3D fantasy game called Sparx on a 94 youngsters diagnosed with depression whose average age was 15 and a half. Sparx invites a user to take on a series of seven challenges over four to seven weeks in which an avatar has to learn to deal with anger and hurt feelings and swap negative thoughts for helpful ones. Used for three months, Sparx was at least as effective as face-to-face conventional counselling, according to several depression rating scales. In addition, 44% of the Sparx group who carried out at least four of the seven challenges recovered completely. In the conventional treatment group, only 26% recovered fully.

One has to wonder if it Sparx specifically, or gaming in general that provides the most benefit. Given that most of the symptoms of depression relate to a feeling of being unable to influence one's environment (powerlessness, helplessness, ennui, etc) and games are specifically designed to make one feel powerful but challenged (if they hit the sweet spot).
Facebook

Submission + - Maryland bans employers from asking for Facebook passwords (thehill.com)

Submitted by Freddybear
Freddybear writes: Last Friday, Maryland became the first state to ban employers from asking for access to the social media accounts of employees or applicants. Lawmakers in the US House and Senate are working on legislation that would ban the practice nationally.
AT&T

Submission + - US carriers finally doing something about cellphone theft (macworld.com)

Submitted by zarmanto
zarmanto writes: In a move that is so long overdue that it boggles the mind, the FCC and the four largest cellular providers in the US state that they will be joining forces to combat cell phone theft. From TFA:

"Over the next six months, each of the four operators is expected to put in place a program to disable phones reported as stolen and within 18 months the FCC plans to help merge them into a central database in order to prevent a phone from being used on another carrier’s network."

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