Archive for July, 2014
Dean Kamen’s Stirling Engine
July 2nd, 2014Via: Forbes: Kamen’s contribution has been in engineering his Stirling with the most high-performance materials. He started off using skilled welders to put together key parts of the engine made out of exotic alloys. More recently he’s figured out how make those pieces with even more precision using 3-D printing. Crane says a key element […]
Ambitious Artificial Intelligence Project Has Been Operating In Near-Secrecy For 30 Years
July 2nd, 2014Via: Business Insider: “We’ve been keeping a very low profile, mostly intentionally,” said Doug Lenat, President and CEO of Cycorp. “No outside investments, no debts. We don’t write very many articles or go to conferences, but for the first time, we’re close to having this be applicable enough that we want to talk to you.” […]
New Record for a Trapped Field in a Superconductor
July 2nd, 2014Via: University of Cambridge: A world record that has stood for more than a decade has been broken by a team led by University of Cambridge engineers, harnessing the equivalent of three tonnes of force inside a golf ball-sized sample of material that is normally as brittle as fine china. The Cambridge researchers managed to […]
More Books Sold Online Than in Brick-And-Mortar Retail
July 2nd, 2014Via: Book Industry Study Group: In formats, eBooks hit record volume numbers while revenue was flat; downloaded audiobooks hit all-time highs in both revenue and units. In sales channels, publishers’ net revenue from sales of digital and print content via online retail is now ahead of revenue from brick-and-mortar retail.
PayPal Froze Account of Secure Email Startup ProtonMail Due to “Technical Problem”
July 2nd, 2014Via: Gigaom: About 6 weeks ago my colleague Barb Darrow covered a new secure email startup called ProtonMail, which was set up by a bunch of MIT, Harvard and CERN researchers who are annoyed with the NSA’s intrusive ways. The team’s Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign has done pretty well in the last 2 weeks, thus far […]
The Military Is Already Using Facebook to Track Your Mood
July 2nd, 2014Via: Defense One: Critics have targeted a recent study on how emotions spread on the popular social network site Facebook, complaining that some 600,000 Facebook users did not know that they were taking part in an experiment. Somewhat more disturbing, the researchers deliberately manipulated users’ feelings to measure an effect called emotional contagion. Though Cornell […]
