kkleiner writes "Professor at MIT Neri Oxman's creations are demonstrating the powerful combination of 3D printing and new design algorithms inspired from nature. Just as a computer printer makes copies of 2D images, 3D printers have copied an impressive variety of objects, such as robots, chairs, prosthetics, kidneys, and jaw bones, to mention a few. But Oxman and her colleagues are discovering new design and engineering principles that will help to mature 3D printing into a technology capable of producing complex and beautiful structures impossible by other manufacturing techniques."
Trailrunner7 writes "Google's Android platform has become the most popular mobile operating system both among consumers and malware writers, and the company earlier this year introduced the Bouncer system to look for malicious apps in the Google Play market. Bouncer, which checks for malicious apps and known malware, is a good first step, but as new work from researchers Jon Oberheide and Charlie Miller shows, it can be bypassed quite easily and in ways that will be difficult for Google to address in the long term. Oberheide and Miller, both well-known for their work on mobile security, went into their research without much detailed knowledge of how the Bouncer system works. Google has said little publicly about its capabilities, preferring not to give attackers any insights into the system's inner workings. So Oberheide and Miller looked at it as a challenge, an exercise to see how much they could deduce about Bouncer from the outside, and, as it turns out, the inside."
Nerval's Lobster writes "NoSQL databases sometimes feature a concept called document storage, a way of storing data that differs in radical ways from the means available to traditional relational SQL databases. But what does 'document storage' actually mean, and what are its implications for developers and other IT pros? This SlashBI article focuses on MongoDB; the techniques utilized here are similar in other document-based databases."
First time accepted submitter SomePgmr writes "The U.S. government's secret space program has decided to give NASA two telescopes as big as, and even more powerful than, the Hubble Space Telescope. Designed for surveillance, the telescopes from the National Reconnaissance Office were no longer needed for spy missions and can now be used to study the heavens."
jkauzlar writes "Believe it or not, it's been 18 years since Design Patterns by Gamma, et al, first began to hit the desks of programmers world-wide. This was a work of undeniable influence and usefulness, but there is criticism however that pattern-abuse has lead to over-architected software. This failure is perhaps due to wide-spread use of patterns as templates instead of understanding their underlying 'grammar' of this language such that it may be applied gracefully to the problem at hand. What's been missing until now is a sufficiently authoritative study of design patterns at this 'grammatical' level of abstraction. Jason McC. Smith, through a surprisingly captivating series of analytic twists and turns, has developed a theory of Elemental Design Patterns that may yet rejuvenate this aging topic." Keep reading for the rest of Joe's review.
derekmead writes "I'm not sure that Dutch artist Bart Jansen had political commentary in mind when he created the Orvillecopter — combining a stuffed cat with a quadrotor, and naming it after Orville Wright — but indeed it's art, whose meaning will lie in the eye of the beholder. And for those that say stitching up a dead animal around the guts of a helicopter and flying it around is 'sick,' what of the massive drone industry, which, more than just producing a symbol, actually is creating flying death?"
kodiaktau writes "Microsoft has announced a feature called SmartGlass that provides a new set of features when viewing media on mobile or PC devices. Sources say that it will provide context focused advertising/product placement as well as metadata about the media you are currently viewing. Additionally the interface allows you to store viewing data and share between your desktop and mobile devices to continue viewing content between devices. From the article: 'SmartGlass also allows you to view the web on an Xbox 360 using Internet Explorer. The tablet or phone becomes the keyboard and you can easily browse web pages without having a physical keyboard in the living room.'"
An anonymous reader writes "A new algorithm developed by researchers at West Point seems to break new ground for viral marketing practices in online social networks. Assuming a trend or behavior that spreads in an online social network based on the classic 'tipping' model from sociology (based on the work of Thomas Schelling and Mark Granovetter), the new West Point algorithm can find a set of individuals in the network that can initiate a social cascade – a progressive series of 'tipping' incidents — which leads to everyone in the social network adopting the new behavior. The good news for viral marketers is that this set of individuals is often very small – a sample of the Friendster social network can be influenced when only 0.8% of the initial population is seeded. The trick is finding the seed set. The algorithm is described in a paper to be presented later this summer at the prestigious IEEE ASONAM conference."
alphadogg writes "American schools need mega-broadband networks — and they need them soon, a new report says. Specifically, U.S. educational institutions will need networks that deliver broadband performance of 100Mbps for every 1,000 students and staff members in time for the 2014-15 school year. That's the conclusion reached by the State Educational Technology Directors Association. Why the need for speed? For one thing, more and more schools are using online textbooks and collaboration tools, said Christine Fox, director of educational leadership and research at SETDA. Broadband access must be 'ubiquitous' and 'robust,' she said, adding that schools should think of broadband as a 'necessary utility,' not as an add-on. The report, called 'The Broadband Imperative,' further suggests that schools should upgrade their networks to support speeds of 1Gbps per 1,000 users in five years."
First time accepted submitter blubadger writes "Having slept through chemistry at school, I'm looking to fill in the gaps in my science education by following a short online course or two. I've been searching for 'Chemistry 101,' 'Basics of Physics,' 'Biology Primer,' and so on. There's some high-quality stuff on offer – from Academic Earth, MIT and others – but it tends to take the form of videos of traditional university lectures. I was hoping to cut through the chit-chat and blackboards and get straight into the infographics and animations that will help me understand complex ideas. Flash and HTML5 Canvas seem wasted on videos of lectures. If the quality were high enough I would be willing to pay. Have Slashdotters seen anything that fits the bill?"
An anonymous reader writes "Sho Yano this week will become the youngest student to get an M.D. from University of Chicago. He was reading at age 2, writing by 3, and composing music by his 5th birthday. He graduated from Loyola University in three years — summa cum laude, no less. When he entered U. of C.'s prestigious Pritzker School of Medicine at 12, it was into one of the school's most rigorous programs, where students get both their doctorate and medical degrees. Intelligence is not Yano's only gift — though according to a test he took at age 4, his IQ is too high to accurately measure and is easily above genius level. He is an accomplished pianist who has performed at Ravinia, and he has a black belt in tae kwon do. Classmates and faculty described him as 'sweet' and 'humble,' a hardworking, Bach-adoring, Greek literature-quoting student. And in his own words, 'I may not be the most outgoing person, but I do like to be around people.'"
First time accepted submitter sarfralogy writes with this news about a cooler redesigned by MIT that is saving lives. "It started with a basic soft drink cooler, a need for easier management of tuberculosis and $150,000 in innovation support. A big challenge in managing tuberculosis is keeping the medicine cool, in addition to tracking and monitoring dose administration. These challenges can be life-threatening, especially in less-developed countries, where refrigerators and fancy cooling devices are rare; ice must be trucked in on a daily basis to keep medicines at controlled temperatures. A redesigned cooler with the ability to keep the medicine cool and record when medicine is dispensed is aiming to solve both these problems. The design of the cooler is simple and practical — common characteristics of a scientifically sound experiment or innovation. It's nothing more than a standard soft drink cooler but the team from MIT's Little Devices Lab equipped the cooler with the ability to sound an alert when the temperature inside the cooler becomes too high and transmit data wirelessly using a cellphone transmitter whenever the cooler is opened."
Marc Zicree, Doug Drexler, David Raiklen, and Neil Johnson are the guys behind the fastest funded film project ever on Kickstarter, Space Command. The project will feature a number of Star Trek vets behind the camera and a number of Trek actors are also involved, including Armin Shimerman, George Takei, Ethan Phillips and Robert Picardo. The team has graciously agreed to take some time from trying to make a crowd-funded movie, building spaceships, and exploring alien worlds to answer your questions. Ask as many as you like but please confine your questions to one per post.
angry tapir writes "ARM chips made with an advanced, 20-nanometer manufacturing process could appear in smartphones and tablets by as soon as the end of next year, the head of ARM's processor division said Monday. The more advanced chips should allow device makers to improve the performance of their products without reducing battery life, or offer the same performance with longer battery life."
Lasrick writes "I Love this article in Smithsonian by Richard Conniff. One of my geology professors was in grad school when the theories for plate tectonics, seafloor spreading, etc., were introduced; he remembered how most of his professors denounced them as ridiculous. The article chronicles the introduction of continental drift theory, starting a century ago with Alfred Wegener. From the article: 'It was a century ago this spring that a little-known German meteorologist named Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents had once been massed together in a single supercontinent and then gradually drifted apart. He was, of course, right. Continental drift and the more recent science of plate tectonics are now the bedrock of modern geology, helping to answer vital questions like where to find precious oil and mineral deposits, and how to keep San Francisco upright. But in Wegener’s day, geological thinking stood firmly on a solid earth where continents and oceans were permanent features.'"
In this week's episode of , Theon Greyjoy gives a stirring speech in the face of certain doom, Daenerys Targaryen gate-crashes the House of the Undying Ones, and the Night's Watch encampment at the Fist of the First Men gets some unexpected dinner guests. Which one of those developments proves the most disappointing for fans of George R. R. Martin's books?
Ford has taken the wraps off the 2013 F-Series pickup and there's something familiar inside: buttons and knobs. Rather than outfit the new (and optional) MyFord Touch-equipped center stack with the same capacitive controls fitted to the Edge and Explorer, Ford opted for standard switchgear.But why?According to a Ford spokesman speaking with Wired, "Our truck ...
As gaming goes digital, what's the future of a show like E3?
Up, up, and very far away. At least, that's the U.S. military's eventual goal for Phantom Eye -- a ginormous, hydrogen-powered uber-drone. The vehicle, manufactured by Boeing and designed as a huge surveillance tool, performed its first test flight at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center last week.
Towards the end of the E3 demo for ?
It's a scenario that security researchers have long worried about — a man-in-the-middle attack that allows someone to impersonate Microsoft Update to deliver malware to machines disguised as legitimate Microsoft code. And now it's one of the tactics that researchers have discovered that the Flame cyberespionage tool was using to spread itself to machines on a local network.
BP has subpoenaed the private emails of scientists who studied the Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe, stoking fears of misinformation campaigns and researcher intimidation.
After months of curiosity, speculation and spec leaks, the first honest-to-goodness Windows 8 devices have finally been announced. At the Computex trade show in Taipei Monday, Acer and Asus introduced a large suite of Windows 8 tablets, all-in-one PCs, and hybrid ultrabooks.
Live blog of Electronic Arts' press conference at E3 2012, expected to highlight and other new games.
German artist Bartek Elsner's cardboard replicas.
Citing unnamed sources that have spoken with Facebook executives, reported on Monday that the social networking giant is building mechanisms that would connect children's accounts to their parents', letting parents decide who their kids can "friend" and what applications they can use.
Not long ago, malnourishment was embodied by emaciation. Now it's far more likely to be hidden in folds of fat.
Before Danger Room spent a few days aboard the Navy's newest fast-attack submarine, we didn't know what to expect. Would it be claustrophobic? Would there be any privacy? Would the 's crew go stir-crazy? As it turned out, all these questions had the same answer: No, as this exclusive video explains.
Samsung's Galaxy S III is launching across five wireless carriers, beginning this month, without its highly touted quad-core CPU.
Just weeks after Oracle bought the social marketing firm Vitrue, Salesforce.com said Monday it was buying Buddy Media -- for a cool $689 million. Is this all about chasing the chief marketing office (CMO) market with its Salesforce Marketing Cloud, or more about billionaire tech titans and a brewing battle?
I have been speaking recently with cloud executives from HP, Dell, and other cloud providers. I have been asking what they see as the hurdles to cloud expansion. These are the hurdles that each of them feels they must leap to achieve the market share they want.
It took a while for the mainstream web to catch on, but these days even Google suggests web developers use responsive design to build websites that work on any screen. Now Firefox is showing off some new developer tools designed to help web developers do just that.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison had a 15-minute break with nothing else to do, so he typed up a few sentences that would end up costing HP billions of dollars. Never one to shy away from from the courts, Ellison was on jury duty in March of last year, hearing a case about a woman who slipped on a patch of diesel fuel at a car dealership in Half Moon Bay, California. One afternoon, during a break in the trial, he drafted a press release announcing that Oracle would pull the plug on all software it offered for HP servers based on the Itanium chip, a big, beefy microprocessor that HP had nurtured alongside Intel for more than a decade.
Live blog coverage of Microsoft's E3 2012 press conference includes new info on the latest games.
The U.S. Navy just dropped another $2.4 billion on a class of new light aircraft carriers specifically designed to carry the U.S. Marines' F-35B stealth jump jet. Just one small problem: the F-35B is still plagued by design problems -- and there's no guarantee if or when they'll be resolved.
The attackers behind the complex Flame cyberespionage toolkit, believed to be a state-sponsored operation, used an extensive list of fake identities to register at least 86 domains as part of their command-and-control center, and were particularly interested in stealing AutoCAD documents from infected machines. They also appear to have updated their malware even after it was publicly exposed last week.
If all we want to do in the wintertime is snuggle in our houses, drink tea and watch , it¿s a safe bet that other animals are just as disinclined to venture outdoors. Unfortunately, when we start stretching our legs in the sun, so do a lot of other creatures. Some of them even venture into our territory, and as humans, we reserve the right to invite in just as much wilderness as we want into our lives. Squirrels, hummingbirds and puppies? Yes! But rats and pigeons? No! Is it possible to prevent the unwelcome forms of wildlife from entering your abode, while keeping our precious pets safe? We compiled a few methods of natural pest prevention to keep both you and your non-human companions irritation-free throughout the summer.
How much will wind affect the Red Bull Stratos Jump? Dot Physics blogger Rhett Allain dissects the physics of Felix Baumgartner's upcoming stunt.
U.S. Special Operations and Command (SOCOM) is looking to make a few upgrades. Among them: new weapons with adjustable intensity levels -- from non-lethal to lethal -- that are capable of doing everything from thwarting enemy ships to paralyzing, disorienting or barricading individuals.
Ari Dyckovsky was 15 when some Bose-Einstein condensate hit him right between the eyes. It didn't really hit him between the eyes. That's just a metaphor. But metaphors are thoroughly appropriate when you're discussing a trip from the suburbs of Washington, D.C., into that alternate universe known as quantum mechanics.
Lenovo's re-vamped X-series ThinkPad is a thin and light laptop with an Ivy Bridge processor. But performance is underwhelming, and then there's the keyboard.
From the start, London organizers wanted Olympic venues that could be reused, repurposed or removed after the Games.
Laurie Simmons' daughter, Lena Dunham, has recently been thrown into the spotlight with the success of her new HBO series, questioning how much of the show is from Dunham's own biography.
The Montgolfier brothers develop a balloon that will soon be all the rage in Paris.
When Felix Baumgartner jumps from 120,000 feet later this summer, the one question everyone has is what happens when he breaks the speed of sound. No one knows, which is the point of the jump.