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According to a new paper from Jessica Lynn Peck of the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, ride-hailing services may have helped reduce alcohol-related traffic accidents by 25-30% in New York City. The report specifically focuses on Uber, which was first introduced in the city in May 2011, and looks at how the ride-hailing service has impacted New York City. The Economist notes in its report that Uber is "largely banned outside of New York City." From the report: To control for factors unrelated to Uber's launch such as adverse weather conditions, Ms Peck compares accident rates in each of New York's five boroughs to those in the counties where Uber was not present, picking those that had the most similar population density and pre-2011 drunk-driving rate. The four boroughs which were quick to adopt Uber -- Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx-- all saw decreases in alcohol-related car crashes relative to their controls. By contrast, Staten Island, where Uber caught on more slowly, saw no such decrease.

Mark.JUK writes "Scientists working at New York's Institute of Ultrafast Spectroscopy and Lasers have discovered a new way of mapping the multiple higher channels / more complex light in an optical fibre, which could allow telecommunications operators the ability to harness 'untapped data channels' and thus improve broadband speeds and internet capacity across the world. Critically, the new model allows scientists to follow polarization and other changes as light travels, which also gives you an insight into the material that it travels through. Until recently it wasn't possible to map such light, but all that has changed thanks to the globe-shaped Higher Order Poincare Sphere model."

S3D writes "After recent verification of the proof of the Poincaré conjecture, another of the Clay Institute's Millenium Problems may have been solved. This new solution is for Navier-Stokes equations under physically reasonable conditions. Navier-Stocks equations describe the motion of fluid substances such as liquids and gases. Penny Smith has posted an Arxiv paper entitled 'Immortal Smooth Solution of the Three Space Dimensional Navier-Stokes System' which may prove the existence of such solutions."

S3D writes "After recent verification of the proof of the Poincaré conjecture, another of the Clay Institute's Millenium Problems may have been solved. This new solution is for Navier-Stokes equations under physically reasonable conditions. Navier-Stocks equations describe the motion of fluid substances such as liquids and gases. Penny Smith has posted an Arxiv paper entitled 'Immortal Smooth Solution of the Three Space Dimensional Navier-Stokes System' which may prove the existence of such solutions."

Quill345 writes "The days of high-paying technology-based jobs right out of highschool are over. As writers for ACM report, the skill-sets required for jobs have grown over time. Academia has responded to the evolution with novel programs recruiting women and integrating IT into MBA programs. And as technology finds its way into every aspect of business life, the NSF is creating a grant program to fund service science, a blend of IT into other industries. Researchers at City University of NY are working on an NSF-funded project to infuse technology into Liberal Arts courses taken by students who are in primary tech-producer or tech-consumer majors. What are these crucial modern skills? Knowledge of laws like the DMCA? Interpersonal and group work skills? Experience with different technology platforms? The ability to discriminate between useful and useless information sources?"

Quill345 writes "The days of high-paying technology-based jobs right out of highschool are over. As writers for ACM report, the skill-sets required for jobs have grown over time. Academia has responded to the evolution with novel programs recruiting women and integrating IT into MBA programs. And as technology finds its way into every aspect of business life, the NSF is creating a grant program to fund service science, a blend of IT into other industries. Researchers at City University of NY are working on an NSF-funded project to infuse technology into Liberal Arts courses taken by students who are in primary tech-producer or tech-consumer majors. What are these crucial modern skills? Knowledge of laws like the DMCA? Interpersonal and group work skills? Experience with different technology platforms? The ability to discriminate between useful and useless information sources?"

HarlanC writes: "The NY Times has an article (registration required) discussing the famous meeting between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in Copenhagen in 1941. The conclusion is that Heisenberg revealed to Bohr the existance of a Nazi atomic program in an attempt to obtain assistance from Bohr. The Times of London article is here (long registration process required)" The play "Copenhagen" was based on a fictionalization of this meeting, it was much better than "Proof", I assure you.

Clay Shirky is a Professor of New Media at Hunter College in NYC, currently on leave while he works with the acceleratorgroup. And writes. Prolifically. About almost everything to do with the Internet, with sidelong glances at Open Source and Linux, which (yes) he uses as his everyday operating system. What should you ask Clay? Take a look at his personal site, read some of what he's written, and go from there. (He's so wide-ranging that he's hard to pin down!) We'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated questions to him Thursday afternoon (US EST), and will post his answers early next week.

roblimo pointed out this article in Business 2.0 by one Clay Shirky, a professor of New Media at Hunter College. Shirky goes into the idea of "adaptive radiation," and makes some pointed observations about its effect on software, Linux specifically. An excerpt: "This will keep Linux out of the best of breed competition because it is never perfectly tailored to any particular environment, but it also means that Linux avoids the best of breed trap. For any given purpose, best of breed products are either ideal or useless." Shirky is an insightful commentator as well; he also set up a "Web Pay Phone" outside his office at Hunter a few years back. Now go mutate!

Anonymous Coward writes "from http://ajanta.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/~jupiter/pub/sciinfo/higgs.html: "One of the most important discoveries in particle physics of the last 25 years has possibly just been made by experimentalists at CERN, the giant laboratory just outside of Geneva on the border of Switzerland and France. Scientists there think that they have discovered the Higgs field, also nicknamed the "God particle" by Nobel laureate Leon Lederman who wrote a book with that title. If the result is verified, the Higgs will have a mass about 125 times the mass of the proton, making it as heavy as a medium-sized nucleus, and it will "fill in" the last missing piece of a puzzle involving the solution of one of the great outstanding problems in physics of the 20th century: the origin of all mass."" Very preliminary stuff, but interesting...