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Domain: newscientisttech.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to newscientisttech.com.

Stories · 107

  1. Software Tracks Blogosphere Mood Swings

    · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the manic-depressive dept. · 149 comments
    holy_calamity writes "Dutch researchers have figured out a way to measure the mood swings of the blogosphere. It can pick up peaks of flirtiness from bloggers around Valentine's Day and drunkenness at weekends, the plan is to create a search engine that returns the prevailing mood in the blogosphere about a topic. Companies are already interested in using it to track consumer confidence. What's the mood of Slashdot on this one?"

  2. Paint-on Laser Brings Optical Computing Closer

    · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the paint-by-number dept. · 132 comments
    holy_calamity writes "New Scientist has a story about a laser made by painting a solution of semiconductor crystals onto glass. It could be used to break the interconnect barrier by having optical interconnects, the interconnect barrier threatens Moore's law unless a faster way of connecting chips is found."

  3. Philips Patents Technology to Force Ad Viewing

    · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the pure-evil dept. · 823 comments
    An anonymous reader writes "According to New Scientist, Philips has filed a patent for technology to force viewers to watch the ads in a program. Basically they plan to add extra flags to the Multimedia Home Platform that would stop controls from working until the ads are finished." From the article: "Philips' patent acknowledges that this may be 'greatly resented by viewers' who could initially think their equipment has gone wrong. So it suggests the new system could throw up a warning on screen when it is enforcing advert viewing. The patent also suggests that the system could offer viewers the chance to pay a fee interactively to go back to skipping adverts."

  4. Two Legged Robot Sets Speed Record

    · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the see-bot-run-runbot-run dept. · 149 comments
    An anonymous reader writes "Researchers in Germany and Scotland have made the fastest two-legged robot yet (for its size) called RunBot. It is controlled by a simple program that mimics the way neurons control reflexes in humans and other animals. From the article: 'We wanted to show that a very simple system with a simple neuronal controller could walk in a natural manner - and fast,' says Florentin Wörgötter, from the University of Göttingen in Germany. The story also features couple of videos of RunBot in action."

  5. Virginia Company Creates Dynamic Eyeglasses

    · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the next-step-bionic-eyeballs dept. · 39 comments
    tetrahedrassface writes "NewScientistTech is reporting that newly developed 'smart glasses' can change focus instantly from long distance to reading mode. The dynamic glasses change focus using a 5-micron-thick layer of nematic liquid crystal, sandwiched between two pieces of glass, and will be commercially available in 2 years by PixalOptics."

  6. Bacteria Propel Themselves with Slime Jets

    · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the ka-WHOOSH dept. · 50 comments
    galactic_grub writes "Scientists have discovered that some bacteria propel themselves along using tiny jets of slime. According to this story on NewScientistTech, the researchers previously thought the slime was a lubricant. They believe the same technique could be used to move nano-devices around."

  7. Quasars Used for Encryption

    · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the grain-of-salt dept. · 53 comments
    space_mongoose writes "According to this NewScientistTech story, intergalactic radio signals from quasars could emerge as an exotic but effective new tool for securing terrestrial communications against eavesdropping"