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Math

'Inexact' Chips Save Power By Fudging the Math 325

Posted by Soulskill from the for-sufficiently-large-values-of-1 dept.
Barence writes "Computer scientists have unveiled a computer chip that turns traditional thinking about mathematical accuracy on its head by fudging calculations. The concept works by allowing processing components — such as hardware for adding and multiplying numbers — to make a few mistakes, which means they are not working as hard, and so use less power and get through tasks more quickly. The Rice University researchers say prototypes are 15 times more efficient and could be used in some applications without having a negative effect."
Google

Researchers Use Google's Search Algorithms To Fight Cancer 52

Posted by samzenpus from the searching-for-a-cure dept.
MatthewVD writes "German scientists have modified Google's PageRank algorithm to scan tumors and learn more about how cancers progress. PageRank orders results based on how other web pages are connected to them via hyperlinks; the modified algorithm, NetRank, scans how genes and proteins in a cell are similarly connected through a network of interactions with their neighbors. This approach could also yield new therapies to help combat tumors."
Robotics

Paralyzed Woman Uses Mind-Controlled Robot Arm 43

Posted by samzenpus from the my-right-arm-is-a-smasher-like-the-trunk-of-a-tree dept.
MrSeb writes "Using BrainGate, the world's most advanced brain-computer interface, a woman with quadriplegia has used a mind-controlled robot arm to serve herself coffee — an act she hasn't been able to perform for 15 years. BrainGate, which is being developed by a team of American neuroscientists from Brown and Stanford universities, and is currently undergoing clinical trial, requires a computer chip to be implanted in the motor cortex of the patient, which it then transmits to a computer for processing. Like all brain-computer interfaces, the user must train the software — but once this is done, you simply think of a movement, and the software moves the robot accordingly. Moving forward, the researchers would like to miniaturize the system and make it wireless — at the moment, BrainGate users have a box attached to their head, and they're tethered to a computer — which is OK for robot arm use at home, but obviously doesn't grant much mobility. The work was partly funded by DARPA, with the hope of creating more advanced prosthetics for wounded war veterans." This comes on the heels of a 71-year-old man regaining motor function in his fingers after doctors rewired his nerves to bypass the damaged ones.
Businesses

Vermont Bans Fracking 278

Posted by samzenpus from the no-more-gas-for-you dept.
eldavojohn writes "Vermont is the first state to ban fracking (hydraulic fracturing), a process that was to revolutionize the United States' position into a major producer of natural gas. New York currently has a moratorium on fracking but it is not yet a statewide ban. Video of the signing indicates the concern over drinking water as the motivation for Vermont's measures (PDF draft of legislation). Slashdot has frequently encountered news debating the safety of such practices."
Medicine

NIH Study Finds That Coffee Drinkers Have Lower Risk of Death 234

Posted by timothy from the but-only-in-a-given-time-period dept.
parallel_prankster writes "Older adults who drank coffee — caffeinated or decaffeinated — had a lower risk of death [full paper is paywalled, at the New England Journal of Medicine] overall than others who did not drink coffee, according to a study by researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and AARP. Coffee drinkers were less likely to die from heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, and infections, although the association was not seen for cancer. These results from a large study of older adults were observed after adjustment for the effects of other risk factors on mortality, such as smoking and alcohol consumption. They also found that the association between coffee and reduction in risk of death increased with the amount of coffee consumed. Relative to men and women who did not drink coffee, those who consumed three or more cups of coffee per day had approximately a 10 percent lower risk of death. Researchers caution, however, that they can't be sure whether these associations mean that drinking coffee actually makes people live longer."
NASA

NASA Counts 4,700 Potentially Hazardous Near-Earth Asteroids 99

Posted by samzenpus from the time-to-call-bruce dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA continues to get a better handle on the asteroids buzzing around in space saying today that there are roughly 4,700 potentially hazardous asteroids, or as NASA calls them PHAs. NASA says these PHAs are a subset of a larger group of near-Earth asteroids but have the closest orbits to Earth's – passing within five million miles (or about eight million kilometers) and are big enough to survive passing through Earth's atmosphere and cause damage on a regional, or greater, scale."
Math

World's Subways Share Common Mathematical Structure 159

Posted by samzenpus from the common-design dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "No two subway systems have the same design. New York City's haphazard rail system differs markedly from the highly organized Moscow Metro, or the tangled spaghetti of Tokyo's subway network. Now BBC reports that a study analyzing 14 subway networks around the world has discovered that the distribution of stations within each of the subway networks, as well as common proportions of the numbers of lines, stations, and total distances seem to converge over time to a similar structure regardless of where the networks were, when they were begun, or how quickly they reached their current layout. 'Although these (networks) might appear to be planned in some centralized manner, it is our contention here that subway systems like many other features of city systems evolve and self-organize themselves as the product of a stream of rational but usually uncoordinated decisions taking place through time,' write the study authors. The researchers uncovered three simple features that make subway system topologies similar all around the world. First, subway networks can be divided into a core and branches, like a spider with many legs. The 'core' typically sits beneath the city's center, and its stations usually form a ring shape. Second, the branches tend to be about twice as long as the width of the core. The wider the core, the longer the branches. Last, an average of 20 percent of the stations in the core link two or more subway lines, allowing people to make transfers. 'The apparent convergence towards a unique network shape in the temporal limit suggests the existence of dominant, universal mechanisms governing the evolution of these structures.'"
Space

Superflares Found On Sun-Like Stars 50

Posted by samzenpus from the get-ready-for-the-big-one dept.
astroengine writes "Scientists have found superflares more than 1 million times more powerful than flares generated by the sun occurring on sun-like stars being studied by NASA's Kepler space telescope. The finding, culled from 120 days of observations of 83,000 stars, is the first to detail how often and how energetic flares on other stars can be. The discovery, however, raises a question about how the massive outbursts, believed to be caused by complex magnetic interactions, can physically occur."
Medicine

FDA Panel Backs First Rapid, Take Home HIV Test 94

Posted by samzenpus from the privacy-of-your-own-home dept.
TheGift73 writes in with news about an over-the-counter HIV test getting the backing of a panel of FDA experts. "American consumers may soon be able to test themselves for the virus that causes AIDS in the privacy of their own homes, after a panel of experts on Tuesday recommended approval of the first rapid, over-the-counter HIV test. The 17 members of the Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted unanimously that the benefits of the OraQuick HIV test outweigh its potential risks for consumers. While the test, which uses a mouth swab to return a result in 20 minutes, does not appear to be as accurate as professionally-administered diagnostics, panelists said it could provide an important way to expand HIV testing. The FDA will make its final decision on whether to approve the product later this year, weighing the opinion of the panel."
Image

Book Review: The Logic of Chance Screenshot-sm 44

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
eldavojohn writes "The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution is a comprehensive snapshot of the latest research of biological evolution. The text is written by Eugene V. Koonin, an editor for a journal and researcher at NCBI. The book, although lacking in foundational knowledge and often foregoing explanation of research, presents a comprehensive and well-referenced view of modern evolutionary research. It is heavily laden with acronyms and jargon specific to biology and evolution. As a result, reading it requires either prior knowledge or a high tolerance for looking up these advanced topics with the reward of it being an extremely eye opening and enjoyable read worthy of your time." Keep reading for the rest of eldavojohn's review.
Math

The Mathematics of Obesity 655

Posted by Soulskill from the pi-is-tasty dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that Carson C. Chow, an MIT-trained mathematician and physicist, has taken a new look at America's obesity epidemic and found that a food glut is behind America's weight problem, with the national obesity rate jumping from 20 percent to over 30 percent since 1970. 'Beginning in the 1970s, there was a change in national agricultural policy. Instead of the government paying farmers not to engage in full production, as was the practice, they were encouraged to grow as much food as they could,' says Chow. 'With such a huge food supply, food marketing got better and restaurants got cheaper. The low cost of food fueled the growth of the fast-food industry. If food were expensive, you couldn't have fast food.' Chow and mathematical physiologist Kevin Hall created a mathematical model of a human with hundreds of equations, boiled it down to one simple equation, and then plugged in all the variables — height, weight, food intake, exercise. The slimmed-down equation proved to be a useful platform for answering a host of questions. For example, huge variations in your daily food intake will not cause variations in weight, as long as your average food intake over a year is about the same. Unfortunately, another finding is that weight change, up or down, takes a very, very long time. Chow has posted an interactive version of the model on the web where people can plug in their information and learn how much they'll need to reduce their intake and increase their activity to lose."
Android

Octave and Gnuplot Coming To Android 84

Posted by Soulskill from the for-all-your-mobile-steam-cycle-efficiency-needs dept.
New submitter MathIsTasty writes "Recently, it was announced on the Octave-maintainers list that a Kickstarter campaign has been launched to bring Matlab style numerical computations and graphing to Android via a 'more than' port of Octave and gnuplot. While I doubt it will be as successful as some recent games on Kickstarter, is this a reasonable way to fund free software development? Now, we just have to worry about people working on simulating solar irradiation while driving. Here is a good blog post about the project."
Medicine

Paralyzed Man Regains Hand Function After Breakthrough Nerve Rewiring Procedure 56

Posted by Soulskill from the so-i-rewired-it-grunt-grunt-grunt dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A 71-year-old man who became paralyzed from the waist down and lost all use of both hands in a 2008 car accident has regained motor function in his fingers after doctors rewired his nerves to bypass the damaged ones in a pioneering surgical procedure, according to a case study published on Tuesday."
Biotech

Gene Therapy Extends Mouse Lifespan 182

Posted by Soulskill from the boosterspice-before-i-get-old-please dept.
Grond writes "ScienceDaily reports, 'Researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre have demonstrated that the mouse lifespan can be extended by the application in adult life of a single treatment acting directly on the animal's genes. Mice treated at the age of one lived longer by 24% on average (PDF), and those treated at the age of two, by 13%. The therapy, furthermore, produced an appreciable improvement in the animals' health, delaying the onset of age-related diseases — like osteoporosis and insulin resistance — and achieving improved readings on aging indicators like neuromuscular coordination.' Notably, the therapy did not cause an increase in the incidence of cancer."
Science

MIT Study: Prolonged Low-level Radiation Exposure Poses Little Risk 142

Posted by Soulskill from the volunteers-for-further-tests-may-raise-their-hands dept.
JSBiff sends this quote from MITnews: "A new study from MIT scientists suggests that the guidelines governments use to determine when to evacuate people following a nuclear accident may be too conservative. The study (abstract), led by Bevin Engelward and Jacquelyn Yanch and published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found that when mice were exposed to radiation doses about 400 times greater than background levels for five weeks, no DNA damage could be detected. Current U.S. regulations require that residents of any area that reaches radiation levels eight times higher than background should be evacuated. However, the financial and emotional cost of such relocation may not be worthwhile, the researchers say."
Science

Iranian Physics Student From UT Gets 10 Years In Jail For Spying 253

Posted by Soulskill from the darn-it-we-just-got-canada-taken-care-of dept.
scibri writes "Omid Kokabee, a laser physics graduate student from the University of Texas who has been imprisoned in Tehran for the past 15 months, was sentenced to 10 years in jail on Sunday for allegedly conspiring with foreign countries against Iran. Kokabee was arrested in February 2011 while on a trip home, and charged with 'communicating with a hostile government' (i.e. Israel) and 'illegal earnings.' He has consistently denied the charges, and refused to speak at his trial, where no evidence against him was presented. Several international science groups, including the American Physical Society, have spoken up in his defense, and an online petition has been set up in support."
Medicine

Wireless Implants Promise Superior Vision Restoration 52

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the trends-show-cool-visors-back-in-fashion dept.
ananyo writes, quoting Nature: "The development of retinal implants has been dogged by problems of unwieldiness since the first implantable stimulator for vision restoration was developed in 1968. Now researchers have come up with a solution that overcomes many of the problems by the use of special glasses that fire infrared signals into the eye and onto an implanted array of silicon photodiodes. The system, tested in rats, simplifies what needs to be implanted and both transmits visual data and power directly to the implants, eliminating the need for any bulky external power source (abstract)."
United Kingdom

UK To Give Peer-Reviewed Science Libel Protection 101

Posted by Soulskill from the about-bloody-time dept.
scibri writes "England is finally getting around to updating its notoriously plaintiff-friendly libel laws, which have been extensively criticized for stifling scientific debate in the past few years, such as in the case of Simon Singh. The government introduced a defamation bill last week that would extend explicit protection to statements in scientific or academic journals — providing the work was properly peer reviewed. The protection would also extend to reports of academic and scientific conferences. The proposed legislation is popular among the UK's researchers and journalists, but a similar law on whistleblower protection has had mixed reviews in the U.S."
Hardware

"Brainput" Boosts Your Brain Power By Offloading Multitasking To a Computer 121

Posted by samzenpus from the let-me-give-you-a-hand dept.
MrSeb writes "A group of American researchers from MIT, Indiana University, and Tufts University, led by Erin Treacy Solovey, have developed Brainput — a system that can detect when your brain is trying to multitask, and offload some of that workload to a computer. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which is basically a portable, poor man's version of fMRI, Brainput measures the activity of your brain. This data is analyzed, and if Brainput detects that you're multitasking, the software kicks in and helps you out. In the case of the Brainput research paper (PDF), Solovey and her team set up a maze with two remotely controlled robots. The operator, equipped with fNIRS headgear, has to navigate both robots through the maze simultaneously, constantly switching back and forth between them. When Brainput detects that the driver is multitasking, it tells the robots to use their own sensors to help with navigation. Overall, with Brainput turned on, operator performance improved — and yet they didn't generally notice that the robots were partially autonomous. Moving forward, Solovey wants to investigate other cognitive states that can be reliably detected using fNIRS. Imagine a computer that increases the size of buttons and text when you're tired, or a video game that slows down when you're stressed. Your Xbox might detect that you're in the mood for fighting games, and change its splash screen accordingly. Eventually, computer interfaces might completely remold themselves to your mental state."
Earth

Russian Satellite Takes Most Detailed 121-Megapixel Image of Earth Yet 123

Posted by samzenpus from the realer-than-real dept.
Diggester writes "The satellite, known as Elektro-L No.1, took an image from its stationary point over 35,000 kilometers above the Indian Ocean. This is the most detailed image of the Earth yet available, capturing the Earth in a single shot with 121-megapixels. NASA satellites use a collection of pictures from multiple flybys stitched together. The detail in the pic is just amazing."

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