Lange als Treibstoff der Zukunft gehandelt, sorgte Biosprit aus Nutzpflanzen zuletzt für heftigen Diskussionsstoff. Eine Alternativmethode soll nun die zahlreichen Kritiker besänftigen.
Es gehört zu den vier Toplabors, die eben an Proben aus Syrien den Einsatz des Nervengases Sarin nachgewiesen haben. Stefan Mogl, Chef Fachbereich Chemie, berichtet, wie man in Spiez gearbeitet hat.
Liebeskummer, Mobbing, Finanzsorgen: Das Phänomen nennt sich «Syndrom des gebrochenen Herzens». Patienten leiden an Brustschmerz und Luftnot, haben aber keinen Herzinfarkt. Dennoch kann es tödlich sein.
Forscher haben die bewohnbare Zeit auf der Erde errechnet. Das beruhigende Resultat: Der Menschheit bleibt noch eine grosse Zeitspanne, um sich nach einem neuen Zuhause umzusehen.
Ballungsräume wachsen rasant. Swiss Re hat die grössten Gefahren durch Naturkatastrophen in Städten ermittelt, und wie viele Menschen wo gefährdet sind. Auch die Schweiz ist darunter, vor allem Zürich.
In Biotreibstoffen wird immer häufiger billiges Palmöl aus den Tropen verwendet. Steigt der Verbrauch wie bisher, wird die weitere Abholzung von Regenwäldern in Kauf genommen.
Immer mehr gesundheitsbewusste Konsumenten setzen auf die kleine Apfelbeere. Sie sieht aus wie die Heidelbeere und schmeckt säuerlich wie rote Johannisbeeren.
Die Bergung der Costa Concordia war eine «technische Meisterleistung», sagt Schiffbau-Experte Stefan Krüger. Vor 70 Jahren gab es bereits ein ähnliches Unternehmen – doch mit einfacheren Voraussetzungen.
Der Taifun Man-yi hat die Atomruine Fukushima überschwemmt. Das Wasser in den Strahlen-Tanks ist dadurch rapide angestiegen. Tepco sah deshalb nur eine Möglichkeit.
Das Wrack der Costa Concordia steht aufrecht – nach einer 19-stündigen Bergungsaktion. Techniker-Chef Nick Sloane wird wie ein Star gefeiert: «Es war wie auf der Achterbahn.» Ein Video zeigt die Aufrichtung im Zeitraffer.
Wenn ein Schiff wie die Costa Concordia zerlegt wird, fallen neben wertvollen Rohstoffen auch Tonnen von Sondermüll an. Das Abwracken ist eine schmutzige, gefährliche Arbeit.
Das US-Militär hat dem Erfinder Igor Pasternak mit über 50 Millionen Dollar den Bau eines neuartigen Transport-Luftschiffs ermöglicht.
Aufregung in der Kletterszene: Beim Erschliessen einer Kletterroute gibts keine juristischen Gesetze, aber eine Ethik.
Sie ist die Hoffnung von Japans Raumfahrtindustrie: Mit der Epsilon wurde erfolgreich eine neue Feststoffrakete in den Weltraum geschickt, die halb so gross ist wie herkömmliche Trägerraketen.
Der 16-jährige Áedán Christie setzt sein Talent in der Studienwoche «Faszination Informatik» von Schweizer Jugend forscht ein.
Sitzen tut weh, Laufen auch, und plötzlich hat man beim Schuheanziehen Schmerzen: Was man dagegen unternehmen kann, sagt Sportmediziner Dr. Martin Narozny-Willi.
Der weltberühmte Astrophysiker Stephen Hawking hat seine Autobiografie veröffentlicht und erklärt, wie er zum bekanntesten Wissenschaftler neben Albert Einstein avancierte.
Enterprise tech companies including Oracle this week started reporting financial results that cover at least part of the third calendar quarter, and so far, the trends look mildly promising compared to last quarter. For its fiscal quarter ending Aug. 31, Oracle reported revenue of $8.4 billion, up 2 percent year over year, and net income of $2.2 billion, up 8 percent. Sales of new software licenses and “engineered systems,” preconfigured hardware and software bundles like the company’s Exadata offering, helped boost results. One big question for Oracle is whether its cloud-based software will compete successfully against similar offerings from younger rivals such as Workday and Salesforce.com. Another issue is whether Oracle’s move into hardware, essentially a bet it made when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010, will pan out or continue to be a drag on profit. Overall hardware system revenue decreased 7 percent to $1.23 billion in the quarter, Oracle said. However, engineered systems did well, officials said.
Although originally built to develop enterprise Java apps, the NetBeans IDE (integrated development environment) is increasingly being rigged to help developers use the lighter weight HTML5 and JavaScript Web languages as well. , version 7.4, Oracle has outfitted the IDE with new tools to help build iOS and Android Web applications that use HTML5 and JavaScript, in addition to updating its core feature set for Java Enterprise Edition development as well. NetBeans IDE is Oracle's no-cost open source IDE for primarily designed for Java, though it includes robust support for the PHP and C/C++ languages as well. It is available for the Windows, Apple Macintosh, Oracle Solaris and Linux platforms.
Very bad news for BlackBerry. The Canadian smartphone maker posted a $995 million operating loss for the second quarter and will cut 4500 jobs—over a third of its staff—in a bid to cut costs. The news comes moments after the company halted trading on its stock, which has been on a steady downward decline in the past several months. Recent BlackBerry phones, like the Z10 and Q10, failed to catch on with consumers, and BlackBerry has been fighting a losing battle against Microsoft for the number three spot in the mobile market. In light of the results, the company said it plans to restructure and lay off around 4500 staff and cut the number of phones it sells from six to four handsets. Those phones will be targeted at the enterprise and prosumer markets.
It’s been two months since Steve Ballmer unfurled his plan to restructure Microsoft’s operations, and inquiring minds would like to know what stage the process is at. In fact, he was asked just that on Thursday during the company’s meeting with Wall Street analysts, but Ballmer’s answer wasn’t entirely clear or specific. The analyst who brought up the subject asked whether the process was completed and, if it’s not, whether it would take several more quarters for all the pieces of the different teams to be in place and for everyone to know whom they report to. Ballmer answered that there are three layers to the implementation of the plan, although he didn’t explain what each layer involves.
The humorist-turned-politician sent an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook with a dozen questions on the privacy implications of Touch ID.
Valve launched a new webpage Friday which hints of an announcement for its Steam Box home console early next week.
Here's how to reset your crashed Android smartphone and restore it to factory default settings.
Here are 10 movies that got shafted but are well worth watching.
Microsoft is pursuing the ideal of OS platforms: a unified code base that runs from smartphones to servers, giving users a consistent experience across devices at home and at work, and developers a common tool set for building applications. “We really should have one silicon interface for all of our devices. We should have one set of developer APIs on all of our devices,” said Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Operating Systems Engineering Group, during the company’s meeting with financial analysts on Thursday. “And all of the apps we bring to end users should be available on all of our devices,” he added. This is the ambitious goal Myerson’s team has been chasing since the Operating Systems Engineering Group was formed two months ago as part of a broad reorganization of the company.
It's like Chromecast, only more potent and five times the cost.
Dude, where's my processor for collecting background sensor data?
Sprint announced a new annual upgrade plan just in time for the new iPhones, and it's one of the best deals around.
Word-of-mouth has long been a driver of small business success (and failure), and these days it takes the form of online customer reviews. But the relative anonymity provided by the Web has added a new wrinkle: review fraud. using phony profiles. is trying to attack the fake review issue in a different way, allowing only people with names, faces, and legitimate social media profiles to post reviews. Doing so is free and merely involves signing in with a Facebook or LinkedIn login, then inviting friends and connections within those social networks and your address book to review a business. .
Spend your free time bending time with these fun, free, time-altering games.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer insinuated that the company is working on a version of Office for the iPad and for Android tablets when he addressed Wall Street analysts on Thursday. Speaking about “upside opportunities” that exist for Microsoft, Ballmer talked about porting products to non-Windows platforms. “We don’t have our heads in the sand,” he said during the company’s meeting with financial analysts, which was held in a Bellevue, Wash., convention center and webcast live. In this context Microsoft is “working on everything that you think we should be working on,” Ballmer said.
Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer may have several months before he actually steps down, but his candid assessment of the future of the PC and of Microsoft felt like the first words of a long goodbye. Ballmer concluded as a shareholder, not as a chief executive, promising to root for the company in the years ahead. Ballmer owns about 4 percent of Microsoft, by his own admission. ”I am very long in Microsoft,” Ballmer said. “I believe in the company as an investment. I believe in what the company can do. I believe in the people and talent that are here and at least this one shareholder will absolutely be cheering every day from the day I’m not working here on, I’m ‘MSFT,’ if you will, all over. It’s in my blood, in my heart and I’ll have been glad to have served.” At one point, he urged all of the Wall Street investors in the audience to stand up and cheer for Microsoft’s stock. “You all own Microsoft stock. Cheer for it. We all want it to go the same direction, up.” None of the analysts appeared to take Ballmer up on his offer, however.
Despite being just 0.7 inch thick, Acer’s Aspire M5 (model M5-583P-6428) weighs a hefty 4.9 pounds. So it’s fortunate for Acer that Intel’s Ultrabook definition includes only a height limit: 0.9 inch. More important, the Aspire M delivers a big display, great battery life, and good performance for a moderate $700. Outfitted with an Intel Core i5-4200U (one of the lower-end entries in Intel’s current Haswell lineup of mobile CPUs), a generous 8GB of DDR3/1600 RAM, Intel’s integrated HD4400 graphics, and a 500GB hard disk that spins its platters at 5400 rpm, the Aspire M scored a respectable Notebook Worldbench 8.1 score of 143. That’s almost 50 percent better than our reference unit, the , but we’ve seen a few laptops in this price range perform even higher. It’s easy to see where the Aspire M falls behind in performance: With any tasks involving storage retrieval, its slow hard drive can’t compete against solid-state drives (or SSD caches), which are becoming increasingly common. But its Haswell architecture clearly helped Acer's machine hold its own in tasks involving number crunching (image editing, for example), and contributed to its impressive battery life of more than 7 hours. That’s one of the best running times we’ve seen from any laptop this year. The Aspire M's design makes a good first impression, with its pewter-colored brushed metal lid and black soft-touch underbelly. The plastic interior matches the color of the lid, contrasting nicely with the black island-style keyboard—a standard-size backlit model that includes a numeric keypad. But good luck landing on the correct key if you’re a touch typist: They’re flat and slippery, and it can be difficult to find keys that are normally on or near the right edge (backspace and delete, for example). A little sculpting on the keys and perhaps some extra spacing between the standard keyboard and the keypad would have helped.
There are many faces of Android: There’s the stock version offered by Google that’s stylized in Google’s own vision, and there’s the version that your manufacturer would rather have you use. When it comes to interfaces we wish we could change, the latter version is usually the one causing headaches. It’a a matter of taste, but the interface that your Android phone comes saddled with may not always be the most appealing, and that’s why there are myriad launcher apps available in the Google Play store. These apps customize the way the interface looks and operates, and even streamline animations as you pan between screens. Once you install an application launcher, you’ll have to remember to make it the default home screen. When you go to your home screen, Android will prompt you about which launcher you wish to use, so be sure to select the new launcher you’ve installed and tap , unless you want to be prompted every time you go to the home screen. If you get sick of your new interface, you can always reset your defaults in the settings menu. is a longtime favorite of Android users, and for good reason: It’s extremely customizable and it doesn’t veer too far from the Android experience you’ve grown accustomed to.
Don’t count Windows RT out yet: Microsoft executives said Thursday that customers should expect “many more Windows RT tablets” in the future. As part of its . And although Windows RT and the Windows RT-powered Surface (like the one shown above)—RT-powered tablets will apparently remain in the conversation for some time to come. Terry Myerson, executive vice president in charge of all of Microsoft’s operating systems, said that his job was to exploit commonalities in design, silicon, and interfaces to enable consistent experiences across different platforms.
For all of its recent emphasis on its Surface tablet and the Xbox, Microsoft remains focused on the enterprise, and especially on the cloud—but its consumer offerings are a gateway, Microsoft executives said. Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner opened Microsoft’s 2013 financial analyst meeting by disclosing that more than 55 percent of Microsoft’s revenue comes from the enterprise, a number that he said Microsoft rarely discloses. Other key executives, such as chief executive Steve Ballmer, are expected later in the meeting's day, which runs until 5 PM PDT. Wall Street may have hoped that that flattened the corporate structure and placed the company’s key technologies in the spotlight, rather than making the individual products the focus. In August, however, : including Stephen Elop of Nokia, among others.
Countries that have pledged to support Internet freedom should allow technology vendors to report the number of electronic surveillance requests they receive, a tech advocacy group said Thursday. The Global Network Initiative, whose members include Facebook, Google and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has to the 21 governments in the Freedom Online Coalition. The governments include those of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Germany, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, Sweden, France and Ireland. As part of the coalition, they have committed to work together to advance Internet freedom. The GNI helps tech companies navigate government pressure that may conflict with privacy and free speech. Other members include Yahoo, Microsoft and the Center for Democracy and Technology. The GNI did not release the text of the letters it sent to the governments.
Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann reassured users that promoted pins won't be "flashy banners or pop-up ads."
The productivity suite for iOS and Android, which Google acquired last year, lets users create and edit Microsoft Office files on their mobile devices.
Is your iPad out of warranty? Hewlett-Packard wants to help. HP updated its SmartFriend support service on Thursday and will now troubleshoot problems with Windows, Android, Chrome OS, OS X, and iOS products, according to a describing the service. “HP is expanding its to provide 1:1 expert support for any brand of PC or tablet,” the company said. The plan previously supported PCs from HP and other vendors, as well as Macs. Users can avail of the service to address general hardware, software, and malware issues. HP says its agents can “remove viruses, improve PC performance, solve software errors, and connect devices to a wireless network with enhanced security.” The support is provided by phone or over the Internet, so don’t expect a technician to trot in and fix your iPad in person. But HP notes it can save you from driving to a store.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has no jurisdiction or legal authority to bring a data breach complaint against an Atlanta medical laboratory, the lab said in a response to FTC charges. The FTC, in an in August against small cancer-screening lab LabMD, acted in a way that was “arbitrary, capricious” and an abuse of discretion, lawyers for the lab wrote in a response to the FTC complaint Thursday. The agency has acted “contrary to constitutional right” and “in excess of statutory jurisdiction,” LabMD’s lawyers said. LabMD, just the second U.S. company to challenge an FTC data-breach complaint, is , the company’s CEO, Mike Daugherty, has said. Daugherty, in a discussion a week ago, accused the agency of making up cybersecurity rules as it moves forward. The FTC “has not published any rules, regulations or other guidelines clarifying and providing any notice, let alone constitutionally adequate notice, of what data-security practices” the agency believes it has authority to enforce, LabMD’s lawyers wrote in the response.
It's like a really terrible version of VH1 Behind the Music, but on Spotify.
Grand Theft Auto V isn’t available on PC. But we’ve got plenty of alternatives so I’m not even mad.
The man who led Nintendo to kick start the home console market died Thursday of pneumonia at a Japanese hospital.
. . In a unique twist, players also have access to sequences in which they play as “the pork side,” hurling their space pigs at the birds instead of the other way around. Additional new gameplay features, including a grappling hook that lets you swing around obstacles using a rope or, if you’re playing as Mr. Binks, his tongue, have also been added to the game. Perhaps the biggest change here is developer Rovio’s approach to monetizing the game. While the base game remains a 99-cent download, the company is taking it squarely into the physical world with a series of 30 small rubber toys that are part of this alternate universe. These “telepods” are sold in packs of two, six, or more. By scanning a QR code on the bottom of the toys, players can import new characters (with new powers) into the game. Those who want to stick with the old methods can purchase in-game currency or earn it the hard way, by grinding through levels in a quest for credits. This can then be spent on the new characters, but Rovio has priced the physical toys competitively enough to make them a generally more attractive and affordable option for players who want to experience all the character options the game has to offer.