Slashdot Mirror

destinyland writes "MIT researchers have developed a method of splitting a water molecule by emulating the way blue-green algae separates oxygen from hydrogen. One chemistry professor called it 'an extremely clever piece of work' that addresses 'the nanoscale organization of the components.' Using sunlight rather than electricity to make hydrogen from water could greatly improve the efficiency of the process. The hydrogen can be stored for generating electricity or burned as fuel for cars. The project is being led by the winner of a 2004 MacArthur Foundation genius grant, who uses genetically engineered viruses as templates for nanoscale electronic components. 'Suddenly, I wondered, what if we could assemble materials like the abalone does — but not be limited to one element?'" Here is the press release from MIT; the research paper is available only to subscribers of Nature Nanotechnology (or those willing to part with $18).

swframe writes "A new object recognition system developed at MIT and UCLA looks for rudimentary visual features shared by multiple examples of the same object. Then it looks for combinations of those features shared by multiple examples, and combinations of those combinations, and so on, until it has assembled a model of the object that resembles a line drawing. Popular Science has a summary of the research. I've been working on something similar and I think this accomplishment looks very promising."

Hugh Pickens writes "Astrobiology Magazine reports that NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered something odd about GJ 436b, a planet about the size of Neptune located 33 light-years away, circling the star Gliese 436. The mystery? GJ 436b lacks methane, an ingredient common to many of the planets in our solar system. Methane is present on our life-bearing planet, manufactured primarily by microbes living in cows, and all of the giant planets in our solar system have methane too, despite their lack of cows. Spitzer was able to detect the faint glow of GJ 436b by watching it slip behind its star, an event called a secondary eclipse. As the planet disappears, the total light observed from the star system drops, and the diference is then measured to find the brightness of the planet at various wavelengths. Eventually, a larger space telescope could use the same kind of technique to search smaller, Earth-like worlds for methane and other chemical signs of life, such as water, oxygen and carbon dioxide. Adam Showman, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, says the 'provocative result' raises questions about the evolution of this planet, as well as the possibility that its atmosphere might represent an entirely new class of atmospheres that has never been explored."

ByronScott writes "A team of researchers at MIT has just announced that they have successfully modified a virus to split apart molecules of water, paving the way for an efficient and non-energy-intensive method of producing hydrogen fuel. 'The team, led by Angela Belcher, the Germeshausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering, engineered a common, harmless bacterial virus called M13 so that it would attract and bind with molecules of a catalyst (the team used iridium oxide) and a biological pigment (zinc porphyrins). The viruses became wire-like devices that could very efficiently split the oxygen from water molecules. Over time, however, the virus-wires would clump together and lose their effectiveness, so the researchers added an extra step: encapsulating them in a microgel matrix, so they maintained their uniform arrangement and kept their stability and efficiency.'"

aftab14 writes "'What's brilliant about this (approach) is that it allows you to build a cognitive model in a much more straightforward and transparent way than you could do before,' says Nick Chater, a professor of cognitive and decision sciences at University College London. 'You can imagine all the things that a human knows, and trying to list those would just be an endless task, and it might even be an infinite task. But the magic trick is saying, "No, no, just tell me a few things," and then the brain — or in this case the Church system, hopefully somewhat analogous to the way the mind does it — can churn out, using its probabilistic calculation, all the consequences and inferences. And also, when you give the system new information, it can figure out the consequences of that.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Discovery News reports that scientists have identified a region of the brain which appears to control morality and discovered that a powerful magnetic field can scramble the moral center of the brain, impairing volunteers' notion of right and wrong. 'You think of morality as being a really high-level behavior,' says Liane Young, a scientist at MIT and co-author of the article. 'To be able to apply (a magnetic field) to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgments is really astonishing.' Young and her colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging to locate an area of the brain just above and behind the right ear known as the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ), which other studies had previously related to moral judgments. Volunteers were exposed to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for 25 minutes before reading stories involving morally questionable characters, and being asked to judge their actions. The researchers found that when the RTPJ was disrupted volunteers were more likely to judge actions solely on the basis of whether they caused harm — not whether they were morally wrong in themselves. The scientists didn't permanently remove the subjects' moral sensibilities and on the scientists' seven point scale, the difference was about one point, averaging out to about a 15 percent change, 'but it's still striking to see such a change in such high level behavior as moral decision-making.' Young points out that the study was correlation; their work only links the RTJP, morality, and magnetic fields, but doesn't definitively prove that one causes another."

arcticstoat calls our attention to MIT research that has produced a version of polyethylene that can conduct heat away from computer chips. Polyethylene is the most widely used plastic. It's not clear how practical this research is for industrial-scale use, involving as it does an atomic-force microscope. The work is detailed in a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology this month. "The new process causes the polymer to conduct heat very efficiently in just one direction, unlike metals, which conduct equally well in all directions. ... The key to the transformation was getting all the polymer molecules to line up the same way, rather than forming a chaotic tangled mass, as they normally do. The team did that by slowly drawing a polyethylene fiber out of a solution, using the finely controllable cantilever of an atomic-force microscope, which they also used to measure the properties of the resulting fiber. This fiber was about 300 times more thermally conductive than normal polyethylene along the direction of the individual fibers, says the team’s leader..."

MikeChino writes "MIT scientists have discovered a never-before-known phenomenon wherein carbon nanotubes can be used to harness energy from 'thermopower waves.' To do this they coated the nanotubes with a reactive fuel and then lit one end, causing a fast-moving thermal wave to speed down the length of the tube. The heat from the fuel rises to a temperature of 3,000 kelvins, and can speed along the tube 10,000 times faster than the normal spread of this chemical reaction. The heat also pushes electrons down the tube, which creates a substantial electrical current. The system can output energy (in proportion to its weight) about 100x greater than an equivalent weight lithium-ion battery, and according to MIT the discovery 'opens up a new area of energy research, which is rare.'"

eldavojohn writes "MIT researchers have built and demonstrated the first room-temperature germanium laser that can produce light at wavelengths suited for communication. This achievement has two parts: '[U]nlike the materials typically used in lasers, germanium is easy to incorporate into existing processes for manufacturing silicon chips. So the result could prove an important step toward computers that move data — and maybe even perform calculations — using light instead of electricity. But more fundamentally, the researchers have shown that, contrary to prior belief, a class of materials called indirect-band-gap semiconductors can yield practical lasers.' While these are only the initial steps in what may become optical computing devices, the article paints it as very promising. The painful details will be published in the journal Optics Letters."

eldavojohn writes "Thirteen picosatellites were launched back in June of 2006 with the price coming down dramatically in the years since. But the Rubik's cube sized devices have no mobility, meaning once they're put in orbit, they stay in that orbit. The big problem is that traditional chemical propulsion systems are too large for ten-centimeter sided cubes weighing a kilogram. A new electric propulsion system designed by Paulo Lozano of MIT might change that. " "The article explains how it works: 'Lozano's design relies on electrospraying, a physics process that uses electricity to extract positive and negative ions from a liquid salt that is created in a laboratory and serves as the system's propellant. The liquid contains no solvent, such as water, and can be charged electrically with no heat involved. Whereas other electric propulsion systems charge the ions in a chamber on the satellite, the ionic liquid in Lozano's design has already been charged on the ground, which is why his system doesn't need a chamber. Electricity is then converted from the main power source of the CubeSat, typically batteries or a solar panel, and applied to a tiny structure roughly the size of a postage stamp. This thin panel is made of about 1,000 porous metal structures that resemble needles and have several grams of the ionic liquid on them. By applying voltage to the needles, an electric field is created that extracts the ions from the liquid, accelerates them at very high speeds and forces them to fly away. This process creates an ionic force strong enough to produce thrust.'"

coondoggie writes "Computer users with rudimentary skills will be able to program via screen shots rather than lines of code with a new graphical scripting language called Sikuli that was devised at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With a basic understanding of Python, people can write programs that incorporate screen shots of graphical user interface (GUI) elements to automate computer work. One example given by the authors of a paper about Sikuli is a script that notifies a person when his bus is rounding the corner so he can leave in time to catch it." Here's a video demo of the technology, and a paper explaining the concept (PDF).

coondoggie writes "Computer users with rudimentary skills will be able to program via screen shots rather than lines of code with a new graphical scripting language called Sikuli that was devised at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With a basic understanding of Python, people can write programs that incorporate screen shots of graphical user interface (GUI) elements to automate computer work. One example given by the authors of a paper about Sikuli is a script that notifies a person when his bus is rounding the corner so he can leave in time to catch it." Here's a video demo of the technology, and a paper explaining the concept (PDF).

Tisha_AH writes "A report by the Whitehead Institute indicates that the human Y chromosome present in males is evolving at a furious pace. Across the chromosome there can be as much as a 33% difference within humans alone. The portions of the chromosome evolving fastest are related to sperm production."

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from TGDaily: "Researchers from Harvard and MIT have demonstrated a way to build better artificial visual systems with the help of low-cost, high-performance gaming hardware. [A video describing their research is available.] 'Reverse engineering a biological visual system — a system with hundreds of millions of processing units — and building an artificial system that works the same way is a daunting task,' says David Cox, Principal Investigator of the Visual Neuroscience Group at the Rowland Institute at Harvard. 'It is not enough to simply assemble together a huge amount of computing power. We have to figure out how to put all the parts together so that they can do what our brains can do.' The team drew inspiration from screening techniques in molecular biology, where a multitude of candidate organisms or compounds are screened in parallel to find those that have a particular property of interest. Rather than building a single model and seeing how well it could recognize visual objects, the team constructed thousands of candidate models, and screened for those that performed best on an object recognition task. The resulting models outperformed a crop of state-of-the-art computer vision systems across a range of test sets, more accurately identifying a range of objects on random natural backgrounds with variation in position, scale, and rotation. Using ordinary CPUs, the effort would have required either years or millions of dollars of computing hardware. Instead, by harnessing modern graphics hardware, the analysis was done in just one week, and at a small fraction of the cost."

mit_team writes "As you might have heard, DARPA has announced a network challenge in the vein of the DARPA Grand Challenge. In this challenge, participants are tasked with finding 10 red weather balloons distributed throughout the continental US for 8 hours on December 5. The idea is to get this to be a crowd-sourcing kind of activity, where people will use social media tools to solve this problem. Our group, the MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team, based out of the MIT Media Lab, has created a system where you get money not just for finding balloons, but for getting people to join the hunt who find the balloons, or for getting people who get people who find balloons, etc. First you have to sign up. Then you can send invitations to others to join through your own unique URL, crediting you with recruiting them. While our team is interested in winning the contest, we are also interested in studying information diffusion in social networks. Does Twitter spread information faster than blogs? Is your blog effective at spreading information? We could use your help in getting out the word. If you sign up and blog about us you will be able to see the impact that your blog has on getting out the word in real time. Win money, help science, and help charity! Kind regards, The MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team."

itwbennett writes "A new data center being built in Helsinki, scheduled to go live at the end of January, will generate energy and deliver hot water for the city. The data center is located in an old bomb shelter and is connected to the Helsinki public energy company's district heating system, which works by pumping boiling water through a system of pipes to households in Helsinki. The recycled heat from the data center could add about 1 percent to the total energy generated by the energy company's system in the summer." The article doesn't say what the overall efficiency of the heat recovery is. Researchers at MIT are working on a new energy-conversion technology based on quantum dots that they say has already demonstrated 40% of the Carnot efficiency limit — 4 times what is achieved by current commercial thermoelectric devices. The researchers believe they can reach 90% of the Carnot limit.

At a UN-sponsored Internet Governance Forum in Egypt, anti-censorship group Open Net Initiative was startled by a demand from UN officials to remove a poster mentioning Chinese Net censorship. When ONI refused the request, security personnel arrived and took away the poster. The group was promoting a new book, Access Controlled, a survey of Internet censorship, filtering, and online surveillance. A witness said, "The poster was thrown on the floor and we were told to remove it because of the reference to China and Tibet. We refused, and security guards came and removed it. The incident was witnessed by many." Here is a video of the removal.

blueser writes "From Nov 10th to Nov 13th the Brazilian Government hosted a public hacking contest to test the robustness of its voting machines. 38 participants from private and public IT companies (including the Brazilian Federal Police) were divided into 9 teams, which tried several different approaches to try to tamper with the software installed on the machines, and even to physically interfere in other stages of the process. All attempts (aside from a minor one which would not compromise the overall results) failed, and observations from the participants and neutral observers will be taken into account to improve the process even further. Here is the official announcement for the contest (Google translation; Portuguese original). A summary of the results is available in the Brazilian press (original). Brazilian voting machines use Linux." US voting officials ought to be envious of their Brazilian counterparts, or ashamed, or both. Perhaps this MIT-developed cryptographic voting system offers a way forward.

theodp writes "A CS student blogger named Carolyn offers an interesting take on why learning from PowerPoint lectures is frustrating. Unlike an old-school chalk talk, professors who use PowerPoint tend to present topics very quickly, leaving little time to digest the visuals or to take learning-reinforcing notes. Also, profs who use the ready-made PowerPoint lectures that ship with many textbooks tend to come across as, shall we say, less than connected with their material. Then there are professors who just don't know how to use PowerPoint, a problem that is by no means limited to college classes."

eldavojohn writes "A new award-winning thesis from an MIT computer science assistant professor showed that the Nash equilibrium of complex games (like the economy or poker) belong to problems with non-deterministic polynomial (NP) complexity (more specifically PPAD complexity, a subset of TFNP problems which is a subset of FNP problems which is a subset of NP problems). More importantly there should be a single solution for one problem that can be adapted to fit all the other problems. Meaning if you can generalize the solution to poker, you have the ability to discover the Nash equilibrium of the economy. Some computer scientists are calling this the biggest development in game theory in a decade."

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at MIT's Robust Robotics Group have developed a robotic helicopter capable of autonomously flying inside buildings or other GPS-denied environments. It has an on-board camera and a laser scanner that maps the local environment. The video talks about search-and-rescue and civil engineering applications, but it also brings somewhat scary reminders of Minority Report to my head. How long till I see one of these chasing me down a dark alley? The team's website has more videos showing earlier stages of the project."

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at MIT's Robust Robotics Group have developed a robotic helicopter capable of autonomously flying inside buildings or other GPS-denied environments. It has an on-board camera and a laser scanner that maps the local environment. The video talks about search-and-rescue and civil engineering applications, but it also brings somewhat scary reminders of Minority Report to my head. How long till I see one of these chasing me down a dark alley? The team's website has more videos showing earlier stages of the project."

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at MIT's Robust Robotics Group have developed a robotic helicopter capable of autonomously flying inside buildings or other GPS-denied environments. It has an on-board camera and a laser scanner that maps the local environment. The video talks about search-and-rescue and civil engineering applications, but it also brings somewhat scary reminders of Minority Report to my head. How long till I see one of these chasing me down a dark alley? The team's website has more videos showing earlier stages of the project."

mikael writes "Sciencedaily.com is reporting that scientists have discovered how DNA is folded within the nucleus of a cell such that active genes remain accessible without becoming tangled. The first observation is that genes are actually stored in two locations. The first location acts as a cache where all active genes are kept. The second location is a denser storage area where inactive genes are kept. The second observation is that all genes are stored as fractal globules, which allows genes that are used together to be adjacent to each other when folded, even though they may be far apart when unfolded."

netbuzz writes "No longer will those applying to MIT have to write the storied 'long' essay — long as in 500 words. 'We wanted to remove that larger-than-life quality to that one essay and take away a bit of the high-stakes nature of that one piece,' says the dean of admissions. Not everyone agrees with the bow to brevity, including a current MIT student who penned a scathing critique in The Tech and offers up her own essay as an example of what the form can provide to both MIT and the applicant." [125 words, including these.]

one_neuron_two_neuron writes "Researchers at Harvard have taken a new look at how electricity can make neurons fire in the brain. The scientists found some surprising things: if you stick an electrode in the brain and apply current, you don't just make a small group of neurons fire — many neurons fire a long way away from the electrode. That's probably because instead of activating the cell bodies of the neurons, their axons fire. Those axons are the wiring of the brain. Your cerebral cortex is something like a big pile of unwound yo-yos — if you stick an electrode into the cortex, you're much more likely to hit the strings (the axons), and the yo-yo connected to the string can be really far away. So, how will you ever hook up a computer to your brain? This data shows that we need to rethink how to do that with electrical current. If you stick an electrode in one place, neurons in a totally different place will fire. New optogenetic methods (e.g. using viral delivery of proteins) might work. Or possibly we will figure out how to make the brain learn to interpret these sparse, widespread electrical patterns. New optical techniques have made a dramatic impact on neuroscience recently, and this study uses pulsed-laser-scanning microscopy (two-photon microscopy) to take pictures of neurons deep inside the living brain. The academic paper (PDF) is available on the author's site."

eldavojohn writes "MIT Researchers have unveiled a new potential replacement for barcodes. Using an LED covered with a tiny mask and a lens, these new bokodes can be processed by a standard mobile phone camera and can encode thousands of times more information than your average barcode. New applications are being dreamed up by the team. Dr. Mohan of MIT said, 'Let's say you're standing in a library with 20 shelves in front of you and thousands of books. You could take a picture and you'd immediately know where the book you're looking for is.'"

rkrishardy writes "A group of researchers from MIT, Stanford, and Syracuse has developed a new program, named 'Ardilla,' which can analyze PHP code for cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection attack vulnerabilities. (Here is the paper, in PDF, and a table of results from scanning six PHP applications.) Ardilla uses a modified Zend interpreter to analyze the code, trace the data, and determine whether the threat is real or not, significantly decreasing false positives." Unfortunately, license issues prevent the tool in its current form from being released as open source.

bigmammoth writes "Xiph hackers have been hard at work improving the Theora codec over the past year, with the latest versions gaining on and passing h.264 in objective PSNR quality measurements. From the update: 'Amusingly, it also shows test versions of Thusnelda pulling ahead of h.264 in terms of objective quality as bitrate increases. It's important to note that PSNR is an objective measure that does not exactly represent perceived quality, and PSNR measurements have always been especially kind to Theora. This is also data from a single clip. That said, it's clear that the gap in the fundamental infrastructure has closed substantially before the task of detailed subjective tuning has begun in earnest.' Momentum is building with a major Open Video Conference in June, the impending launch of Firefox 3.5 and excitement about wider adoption in a top-4 web site. It's looking like free video codecs may pose a serious threat to the h.264 bait-and-switch plan to start charging millions for internet streaming of h.264 in 2010."

Al writes "Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have created a cheaper way to track physical motion that could prove useful for movie special effects. Normally an actor needs to wear special markers that reflect light with numerous high-speed cameras placed around a specially-lit set. The new system, called Second Skin, instead relies on tiny photosensors embedded in clothes that record movement by picking patterns of infrared light emitted by inexpensive projectors that can be mounted in ceilings or even outdoors. The whole system costs less than $1,000 to build, and the researchers have developed a version that vibrates to guide a person's arm movements. Watch a video of Second Skin in action."

An anonymous reader writes "MIT has been monitoring student internet connections for the past decade without telling them. There is no official policy and no student input." The Tech article says, though, that the record keeping is fairly limited in its scope (connection information is collected, but not the data transferred) and duration (three days, for on-campus connections).

thefickler writes "Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are now using viruses to build cathodes for Lithium-Ion batteries. Three years ago these same researchers found they could build an anode using viruses. Creating both the anode and cathode using viruses will make batteries easy to build. This nanoscale battery technology will allow batteries to be lightweight and to 'take the shape of their container' rather than creating containers for the batteries, which could open up new possibilities for car and electronics manufacturers."

palegray.net writes "Wired brings us a look into the world of neuroengineering, the science of hacking the brain to improve its function. Dr. Ed Boyden is the director of MIT's Neuroengineering and Neuromedia Lab, focusing on innovative methods of physically altering neuroanatomy for various purposes. As useful as discoveries in the field may be, the work certainly raises moral and ethical questions. From the article: '"If we surgically or electrically modify someone's personality... that raises many questions about personal identity, (of) who we are at our core," says Dr. Debra Matthews of The Berman Institute of Bioethics. "We place ourselves in the mind and therefore the brain. (Mood-altering surgery) feels like fundamentally modifying who a person is."'"

Nakeot writes "In the continuing efforts to build faster and smaller components, a group of researchers at MIT have constructed a basic prototype device that folds materials only hundreds of microns across. Mechanical engineer and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering George Barbastathis leads the charge into 'nano-origami' machines involving, the article reads, 'a new technique that allows engineers to fold nanoscale materials into simple 3-D structures' (more details available on MIT's page). The group had worked in 2005 with MIT Associate Professor Yang Shao-Horn to build a single-fold nano-capacitor (PDF, or see Google's HTML version), and this work appears to automate their 2005 process. A comment on the posted video appears to suggests this device is not completely automated yet, however. (This should not be confused with Paul Rothemund's slightly-more-ahead DNA-origami technology.)"

Nakeot writes "In the continuing efforts to build faster and smaller components, a group of researchers at MIT have constructed a basic prototype device that folds materials only hundreds of microns across. Mechanical engineer and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering George Barbastathis leads the charge into 'nano-origami' machines involving, the article reads, 'a new technique that allows engineers to fold nanoscale materials into simple 3-D structures' (more details available on MIT's page). The group had worked in 2005 with MIT Associate Professor Yang Shao-Horn to build a single-fold nano-capacitor (PDF, or see Google's HTML version), and this work appears to automate their 2005 process. A comment on the posted video appears to suggests this device is not completely automated yet, however. (This should not be confused with Paul Rothemund's slightly-more-ahead DNA-origami technology.)"

Nakeot writes "In the continuing efforts to build faster and smaller components, a group of researchers at MIT have constructed a basic prototype device that folds materials only hundreds of microns across. Mechanical engineer and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering George Barbastathis leads the charge into 'nano-origami' machines involving, the article reads, 'a new technique that allows engineers to fold nanoscale materials into simple 3-D structures' (more details available on MIT's page). The group had worked in 2005 with MIT Associate Professor Yang Shao-Horn to build a single-fold nano-capacitor (PDF, or see Google's HTML version), and this work appears to automate their 2005 process. A comment on the posted video appears to suggests this device is not completely automated yet, however. (This should not be confused with Paul Rothemund's slightly-more-ahead DNA-origami technology.)"

Nakeot writes "In the continuing efforts to build faster and smaller components, a group of researchers at MIT have constructed a basic prototype device that folds materials only hundreds of microns across. Mechanical engineer and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering George Barbastathis leads the charge into 'nano-origami' machines involving, the article reads, 'a new technique that allows engineers to fold nanoscale materials into simple 3-D structures' (more details available on MIT's page). The group had worked in 2005 with MIT Associate Professor Yang Shao-Horn to build a single-fold nano-capacitor (PDF, or see Google's HTML version), and this work appears to automate their 2005 process. A comment on the posted video appears to suggests this device is not completely automated yet, however. (This should not be confused with Paul Rothemund's slightly-more-ahead DNA-origami technology.)"

FormOfActionBanana writes "The security firm Fortify Software has undertaken an automated code review of the NIST SHA-3 round 1 contestants (previously Slashdotted) reference implementations. After a followup audit, the team is now reporting summary results. According to the blog entry, 'This just emphasizes what we already knew about C, even the most careful, security conscious developer messes up memory management.' Of particular interest, Professor Ron Rivest's (the "R" in RSA) MD6 team has already corrected a buffer overflow pointed out by the Fortify review. Bruce Schneier's Skein, also previously Slashdotted, came through defect-free."

FormOfActionBanana writes "The security firm Fortify Software has undertaken an automated code review of the NIST SHA-3 round 1 contestants (previously Slashdotted) reference implementations. After a followup audit, the team is now reporting summary results. According to the blog entry, 'This just emphasizes what we already knew about C, even the most careful, security conscious developer messes up memory management.' Of particular interest, Professor Ron Rivest's (the "R" in RSA) MD6 team has already corrected a buffer overflow pointed out by the Fortify review. Bruce Schneier's Skein, also previously Slashdotted, came through defect-free."

An anonymous reader writes "Wikipedia apparently wasn't enough. There had to be a course on the much needed subject of soap operas at MIT. Here's the Course Description: "The television landscape has changed drastically in the past few years; nowhere is this more prevalent than in the American daytime serial drama, one of the oldest forms of television content. This class examines the history of these "soap operas" and their audiences by focusing on the production, consumption, and media texts of soaps. The class will include discussions of what makes soap operas a unique form, the history of the genre, current experimentation with transmedia storytelling, the online fan community, and comparisons between daytime dramas and primetime serials from 24 to Friday Night Lights, through a study of Procter & Gamble's As the World Turns."" All I really need to know I learned from my evil twin, who fathered my unborn child, who has a extremely rare disease that only one of my many CIA contacts, who is also sleeping with my wife, can cure.

theodp writes "Working as a NASA intern, grad student Erez Lieberman had a eureka moment, resulting in an algorithm that detects whether a person is standing correctly or is off balance. Unfortunately, MIT liked it so much they decided to patent it. Seeking permission to use his own idea for his iShoe startup, which develops products like insoles to address the problems of seniors, Lieberman was told no problem — as long as he promised a hefty royalty and forked over a $75,000 upfront payment. Whether or not students are aware of it, the NYTimes reports that most universities own inventions created by students that were developed using a 'significant' amount of schools resources. Colleges and universities once obtained fewer than 250 patents a year, but that was before the Bayh-Dole Act gave them ownership of inventions developed through federally financed research. Now they acquire about 3,000 a year, and in 2006 licensing fees and equity in spinoff companies totaled at least $45B — research powerhouses like Stanford and NYU pocketed $61M and $157M, respectively."

schlangemann writes "Check out the paper Towards the Simulation of E-commerce by Herbert Schlangemann, which is available in the IEEEXplor database (full article available only to IEEE members). This generated paper has been accepted with review by the 2008 International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE). According to the organizers, 'CSSE is one of the important conferences sponsored by IEEE Computer Society, which serves as a forum for scientists and engineers in the latest development of artificial intelligence, grid computing, computer graphics, database technology, and software engineering.' Even better, fake author Herbert Schlangemann has been selected as session chair (PDF) for that conference. (The name Schlangemann was chosen based on the short film Der Schlangemann by Andreas Hansson and Björn Renberg.)"

joe writes "Aram Harrow and colleagues have just published on the arXiv a quantum algorithm for solving systems of linear equations (paper, PDF). Until now, the only quantum algorithms of practical consequence have been Shor's algorithm for prime factoring, and Feynman-inspired quantum simulation algorithms. All other algorithms either solve problems with no known practical applications, or produce only a polynomial speedup versus classical algorithms. Harrow et. al.'s algorithm provides an exponential speedup over the best-known classical algorithms. Since solving linear equations is such a common task in computational science and engineering, this algorithm makes many more important problems that currently use thousands of hours of CPU time on supercomputers amenable to significant quantum speedup. Now we just need a large-scale quantum computer. Hurry up, guys!"

tytso writes "Suppose there is a book that you want to read on your ebook reader, but it is out of print (so even if you purchase the dead-tree version of the book used, the author won't receive any royalties) and the publisher has refused to make it available as an ebook. You can buy it from Amazon as a used book, but that isn't your preferred medium. It is available on the internet as a pirated etext, however. This blog post outlines a few possibilities, and then asks, 'What is the right thing to do? And why?' I'm also curious if the answers change depending on whether you are a Baby Boomer, or a Gen X, Gen Y, etc. — I've noticed that attitudes around copyright seem to change depending on whether someone is a college student or a recent college graduate, versus someone who can remember a time when the Internet did not exist."

SpaceSlug writes "The world's largest digital camera is to be used to keep an eye out for asteroids heading towards Earth. The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) has been built by researchers at MIT's Lincoln Lab. At its heart is a 1.4 billion pixel (or 1400 megapixel) camera that will scan the night sky looking for rogue near-Earth objects from atop Mount Haleakala in Maui Island, Hawaii. The system uses something called an orthogonal transfer CCD to remove atmospheric blur from images."

mcpublic writes "For the 37th anniversary of Intel's 4004, the world's first off-the-shelf, customer-programmable microprocessor, vintage computer enthusiast Bill Kotaska has successfully built a replica of Busicom's historic 141-PF printing calculator using vintage Intel chips. Decades before the ubiquitous 'Intel inside' sticker, Japanese calculator maker Busicom introduced the first product ever built around an Intel microprocessor. Bill's homebrew replica includes a rare Shinshu Seiki Model-102 drum printer and runs firmware extracted from the original Busicom ROMs. Schematics and photos of his re-creation are available at the unofficial 4004 web site, along with Tim McNerney's new PIC-based emulator of the Model-102 printer. The site includes the Busicom 'source code,' 4004 details, interactive simulators, and other goodies for students, engineers, and computer historians." We discussed the 36th 4004 anniversary project here last year.

An anonymous reader writes "Cameron Freer, an instructor in pure mathematics at MIT, is working on an intriguing project called vdash.org (video from O'Reilly Ignite Boston 4): a math wiki which only allows true theorems to be added! Based on Isabelle, a free-software theorem prover, the wiki will state all of known mathematics in a machine-readable language and verify all theorems for correctness, thus providing a knowledge base for interactive proof assistants. In addition to its benefits for education and research, such a project could reveal undiscovered connections between fields of mathematics, thus advancing some fields with no further work being necessary."

katrina writes "Covering the infamous MafiaBoy bank hack, the launch of the first ever online newspaper — MIT's 'The Tech' — and Brewster Kahle developing the Internet Archive back in 1996, five decades of the most significant Internet developments, hacks, legal battles and innovations have been documented in a massive historical article on Cnet UK."

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at MIT have created a method for analyzing networks to detect exploitable vulnerabilities using attack graph analysis which can be done in near real time. The new Lincoln Labs tool will allow admins of large networks to detect their most vulnerable areas and also model zero day attacks. 'NetSPA (for Network Security Planning Architecture) uses information about networks and the individual machines and programs running on them to create a graph that shows how hackers could infiltrate them. System administrators can examine visualizations of the graph themselves to decide what action to take, but NetSPA also analyzes the graph and offers recommendations about how to quickly fix the most important weaknesses. NetSPA relies on vulnerability scanners to identify known weaknesses in network-accessible programs that might allow an unauthorized person access to a machine. But simply being aware of vulnerabilities is not sufficient; NetSPA also has to analyze complex firewall and router rules to determine which vulnerabilities can actually be reached and exploited by attackers and how attackers can spread through a network by jumping from one vulnerable host to another.'"

mattnyc99 writes "There was plenty of chatter last week about an MIT announcement that researcher Angela Belcher had developed a way to create virus-based nanoscale batteries to power mini gadgets of the future. In a fascinating followup at Popular Mechanics, Belcher now says that her unpublished work includes full-scale models of the batteries themselves, and that they could power everything from cars and laptops to medical devices and wearable armor. Quoting: 'We haven't ruled out cars. That's a lot of amplification. But right now the thing is trying to make the best material possible, and if we get a really great material, then we have to think about how do you scale it.'"