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AI in the News: Interesting News Stories about AI
AITopics > AI in the News
AI in the News is a AAAI service to alert readers to current news articles in the field of AI that appear in various online news sources. An AI program—NewsFinder—crawls the web looking for AI-related news articles. The collection of articles is first filtered to select only those that mention at least one of many key terms related to AI. Then duplicate articles are detected using a semantic similarity metric, and filtered out. Finally, each article is classified using a bank of support vector machines, one for each of the 19 major topics in AITopics; articles matching no topics are also filtered out of the collection. The resulting collection is published on this web page, in the AI-Alert email list, and in our various topic-oriented and aggregate RSS feeds.
Details about NewsFinder can be found on the NewsFinder page.
All News Stories - August 07, 2011
- August 06, 2011: Cash Hoarders: Uptrend Stocks With Significant Cash Holdings - NASDAQ. GoogleNews. "On Thursday, Kapitall co-founder David Neubert explained that large sums of cash do not a healthy company make. In his mind, he could better grow the company’s growth with its amassed cash rather than through corporate debt. Cringely attributes this conservative mentality to Jobs’ previous experience as the co-founder of the nascent Apple Corp in the 1970s and his exile from the struggling Apple in the 1990s. To assist you with your own analysis, here is a list of rallying companies that have significant cash versus annual operating expenses."(info)
- August 05, 2011: 'A flaw in legal reasoning' - Stabroek News. GoogleNews. "I refer to a letter written by Mr Christopher Ram and published in Stabroek News on August 3, under the caption ‘Has Mr Nandlall offered cautionary advice to his client?’ This letter appears to be a response to a letter of mine published in Stabroek News on August 1, where I wrote as attorney-at-law for the plaintiff in the case in which Mr Kissoon, the editor and the publishers of the Kaieteur News are the defendants. This is the second occasion on which Mr Ram has responded in the press to letters written by me which touch and concern matters of law. In the letter under review, without uttering a single word on the propriety or lack thereof of his client’s publication, Mr Ram accuses President Jagdeo, of committing the same wrong of which I am accusing Mr Kissoon. Reader Comments » The Comments section is intended to provide a forum for reasoned and reasonable debate on the newspaper's content and is an extension of the newspaper and what it has become well known for over its history: accuracy, balance and fairness."(info)
- July 31, 2011: Uncle Sam: Guinta's reasoning flawed - Seacoastonline.com. GoogleNews. "But then I talked to my Uncle Sam, who's 89 years old, fought in World War II, and knows a thing or two. Uncle Sam chuckled about Mr. Guinta's claim that Granite State families balance their budget each month without borrowing any money. He told me he borrowed money, for example, to buy his house after the war, and borrowed more to get training to learn how to weld so he could get a decent job. Uncle Sam shook his head from side to side about Rep. Guinta's question (based upon the mythical New Hampshire family who doesn't borrow money): "why should it be any different for the federal government?"(info)
- August 04, 2011: Using psychological terms accurately - China Daily. GoogleNews. "Using psychological terms accurately Updated: 2011-08-04 10:39 By Patrick Mattimore (chinadaily.com.cn) Several years ago China Daily published an account of a father who forced his son to kneel in front of an Internet Cafe in order to teach his son to stay away from cyber cafes and focus on studying. The reporter wrote that onlookers believed that this negative reinforcement was not a good method of teaching. But this was not negative reinforcement. A more recent China Daily editorial proposed that countries use relation therapy to heal "diplomatic schizophrenia"."(info)
- August 06, 2011: May Community Center hosts support group for diabetics, others interested in ... - Your Houston News. GoogleNews. "Diabetes is a chronic disease caused by either a lack of or a resistance to insulin. Management of the disease is the key to averting potential vital organ damage that might result from prolonged high blood sugar levels. Susan Gandy, a registered nurse and certified diabetes educator based at Kingwood Medical Center, facilitates a monthly diabetic support group at May Community Center, 2100 Wolf Road in Huffman. The next support group meeting is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Aug. 23."(info)
- August 06, 2011: AI-Habibiyyah: We Will Disburse Zakat Every Month If … - Leadership Newspapers. GoogleNews. "LEADERSHIP TV Join Us on Twitter Find Us on Facebook AI-Habibiyyah: We Will Disburse Zakat Every Month If … The AI-Habibiyyah society on Thursday 28th July, disbursed their third Zakat . In the speech of the Imam at the occasion, he began by thanking Allah for using the AI- Habibiyyah Islamic society to bring the relief Islam preaches to the less privileged of society. He said AI-Habibiyyah intends to disburse their Zakat every month if there are donors which they are working hard to achieve. According to him, if all the rich Muslims in Nigeria pay their Zakat as Allah instructed, by Allah, the society would witness total security and peaceful co existence the entire world over."(info)
- August 06, 2011: Facebook Profile Pics will Help Invade your Privacy - Technorati. GoogleNews. "Facebook Profile Pics will Help Invade your Privacy We all know the line "A picture is worth a thousand words" and it appears that it's even worth more than that specially with the technology that we have today. According to Alessandro Acquisti, an associate professor of IT and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, with the right tool and training your photos posted online can be used to retrieve your real name, birth date, Social Security number and other personal information that you would never have thought possible. He said that it's getting easier for people to gain "detailed" personal information of other people using the photos they've posted on Facebook and other social media sites. Knowing how much information each student place on their Facebook account, person doing the same experiment with a different intent would have more than enough information to use against a particular student."(info)
- August 03, 2011: S&P 500 drops below the 200-day moving average: What next? - Futures Magazine. GoogleNews. "The S&P closed at 1254.05 on Tuesday, five points above the March 16 Tsunami selloff intraday Low of 1249.05. A Capitulation Day in a Down Cycle Decliners on the S&P have led Advancers for eight consecutive sessions and we are 18 days into the current selloff which began on July 8. The forward annual performance in this setup is an eyepopping 24-1 with a median return of 24.42% but Reverse Thrust signals are different animals than forward thrust signals. Breaking the 200DMA The S&P closed below the 200DMA today for the first time in 224 trading days."(info)
- August 06, 2011: Cavium Debuts New NEURON Search Processors - TMC Net. GoogleNews. "infoTECH Feature Cavium Debuts New NEURON Search Processors Cavium, a provider of highly integrated semiconductor products, unveiled its new NEURON Search processor family built with breakthrough search technology that can deliver 4x higher capacity. The new family includes NEURON Search and NEURONMAX Search product lines with support for both IPv4 and IPv6 rules. The Search processors are capable of delivering 100 million to over 1.6 billion searches per second with guaranteed low latency and are targeted at search apps in enterprise and service provider infrastructure equipment. The NEURON Search Processor ( News - Alert ) CNSP1XXX product line offers 100 million to 1.6 billion searches per second with enough capacity in a single chip to replace four of the highest density 40 Mb TCAM parts."(info)
- August 04, 2011: Gadgeteer: Microsoft's open-source .NET alternative to Arduino - ExtremeTech. GoogleNews. "Gadgeteer: Microsoft’s open-source .NET alternative to Arduino Share This article Watch out Arduino, you finally have some competition: the equally-open-source and possibly-easier-to-program Microsoft .NET Gadgeteer. At its core, Gadgeteer is an ARM7-powered .NET Micro Framework-compatible family of boards and modules. The project quickly garnered a lot of interest amongst teachers, developers, and hobbyists alike, and thus they made Gadgeteer a public, open-source project. In this case “open source” means that the source code for the core .NET libraries that power Gadgeteer is available, and that the actual hardware itself has an open specification ."(info)
- August 05, 2011: Made in Toronto: Sous-Vide Cookers - Torontoist. GoogleNews. "Made in Toronto: Sous-Vide Cookers Toronto is known for its vibrant restaurant scene, but we're also a major centre for food processing and production. Made in Toronto looks at some of the foodstuffs and culinary products that are created in the Big Smoke. Frank Hsu, owner of Fresh Meals Solutions, begins to cook in a large induction pot controlled by a Sous Vide Magic. Cooking has come a long way since Prometheus brought fire down from the heavens."(info)
- August 01, 2011: At The Crossroads - Outlook. GoogleNews. "I don’t know whether to continue or not,” he writes. He is thinking of working in a BPO for the next year and then taking up either of these courses. please write to veena AT outlookindia.com 1. Please note that our comments section is not a general free-for-all but for feedback to articles/blogs posted on the site 4."(info)
- August 04, 2011: Current Issue: LabView at 25 Made for Parallel Programming - Automation World. GoogleNews. "Ive been fascinated by LabView since I first saw it in 1998. Dear Industry Colleague, LabVIEW is 25 this year, so its a perfect time to pause for reflection and to speculate on the future. We knew that personal computers held great potential for use by scientists and engineers, and we were confident that the GUI and mouse would be the primary way people would interact with their computers. In return, our customers inspire us to maintain our mission and provide them with continuous productivity improvements and access to the latest technologies."(info)
- August 05, 2011: 10 questions - Mark Pesce - The Australian. GoogleNews. "That’s not impossible: automobiles use far less steel than they did 50 years ago, and go much further on a litre of petrol – but we will need to consider efficiency and sustainability as key elements of design, as important as form and function. Our world would be nearly unrecognisable to my Sicilian great-great-grandparents. The reason for this acceleration is simple: research builds upon research, creating a “compound interest” of human knowledge. Will computers achieve the intelligence levels of humans within the next 20 years?"(info)
- August 06, 2011: They Say Travel Broadens the Mind… - Toffeeweb. GoogleNews. "But before I go: I first came to ToffeeWeb to learn more about Everton, the club I have supported all my life. I live abroad now and virtually never get to a game any more, but I follow the fortunes of the club and often discuss developments with my father over the phone. It�s irrelevant to me whether or not Barcelona is the greatest team ever to have played the game and whether the last Champions� League final was the greatest game ever played (just so you know what football means to me). I thought, at the time, that they had a fair number of loyal fans and that it was �their turn�."(info)
- August 05, 2011: Facial Recognition Software Takes One Glance at You and Brings Up Your Facebook Profile. Popular Science. "It may be even worse than you thought — with rapidly improving face recognition technology, your automatically tagged Facebook pictures could help a stranger, or the authorities, quickly identify you on the street. A simple system that compares Facebook pictures and webcam snapshots can make a positive match after less than three seconds, according to Carnegie Mellon University researchers. Alessandro Acquisti and colleagues presented their findings at the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas. The system was able to correlate Facebook profile pictures to webcam shots, and to otherwise anonymous photos on a dating website."(info)
- August 05, 2011: Carefully Engineered to Survive Fierce Radiation, Juno Probe Launches Today to Visit Jupiter. Popular Science. "Juno, which will study the formidable radiation belts of Jupiter, is arguably one of the toughest spacecraft ever built, equipped with a celestial carapace that will shield its heart and data center against a raging storm of deadly radiation. And it is one of the most refined, with instruments that can measure Jupiter’s sub-cloud atmosphere in unprecedented detail. It will serve as a valuable test bed for future missions in the universe’s most dangerous places — and it will answer important questions about how Jupiter, and the rest of the planets, came to be. The separation was a departure from typical spacecraft designs, said Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator and director of the space science department at Southwest Research Institute."(info)
- August 04, 2011: Students' Innovative 3-D Vision System Wins Prize. Popular Science. "This week I had the honor of crowning the winner of National Instruments’ student design competition, in which students show off the various inventive ways they use NI’s LabView software. For those who don’t know, NI builds the software and systems by which an engineer can test and prototype pretty much anything, from an irrigation system to a rocket. Rice University built a sensor-filled baseball that precisely transmits the mechanics of a throw to better teach pitching. They conquered the classic glasses-or-no-glasses problem by simply stepping around it: instead of a conventional flat screen, they built a four-sided glass enclosure which displays the four sides of a simulated object."(info)
- August 04, 2011: Markings Point to the Existence of Liquid Water on the Martian Surface Today. Popular Science. "All week we’ve heard rumblings from NASA that big Mars science news would drop today, and sure enough that news is big: NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has quite possibly found liquid water flowing on the surface of Mars. Not water that flowed millennia ago, or water that once flowed but is now permanently ice. It underscores the idea that Mars could indeed be capable of harboring some kind of life. The evidence comes to us in the form of the finger-like features you see running down the slope of the crater in the pic above (and in the animation below)."(info)
- August 04, 2011: The Panama Canal Gets an Update. Popular Science. "The century-old Panama Canal has a major shortcoming: New ships are too long, too deep and too wide to fit through it. by 2015, 40 percent of the world’s fleet will have outgrown the roughly 50-milelong passageway that is a key artery for goods headed from Asia to Europe and the U.S. Gulf and East coasts. by the time the seven-year, $5.25-billion project is complete, it will have dredged a total of 5.3 billion cubic feet of dirt, sand and mud. But the biggest bottlenecks are at each end of the canal, where locks lift and lower ships into and out of the channels."(info)
- August 04, 2011: PAMELA Spacecraft Finds a Belt of Antimatter Around the Earth. Popular Science. "You probably didn’t wake up this morning wondering what happens to the antiprotons that must be created by the collision of cosmic rays with the upper atmosphere. But if you are one of the few who loses sleep over the fact that these antiprotons should be somewhere out there but have yet to be directly detected, we are happy to report that you can rest easy: Astrophysicists have finally found them trapped in an antiproton belt around the Earth. For those of you who couldn't care less about antiprotons or what an antiproton is, this is less a story about antiprotons or earth-shattering discovery and more a story about good science bearing fruit. See, when cosmic rays from the sun and elsewhere in the cosmos bombard nuclei in the upper atmosphere, the resulting particle collisions are akin to those that occur in particle accelerators here on the ground."(info)
- August 04, 2011: DOT Mapping Out a Plan to Protect Cars From Cyber-Attacks. Popular Science. "The DOT has a vision for a networked automotive future in which cars speak to each other and to roadway infrastructure via wireless communications. This isn’t so much a call for proposals a la Darpa as much as a genuine call for ideas--that is, there’s no contract to be awarded as a result of this request for information. Via the RFI: The USDOT is collecting relevant information to characterize needs and establish a strategic research roadmap to meet the rising challenges of ensuring the safety of automotive safety-critical systems due to increasing complexity of motor vehicle systems using advanced electronic controls to improve drivability, safety, efficiency, and operational reliability; escalating use of information technology in motor vehicles to enhance basic and secondary vehicle functions and to enable infotainment applications; and wireless connectivity to in-vehicle systems, between vehicles and external information networks, and among vehicles. Call it an official acknowledgement that change is afoot on America’s highways and byways."(info)
- August 04, 2011: A Sensor-Packed Shipping Container That Folds Flat in 30 Seconds. Popular Science. "In the half-century since Malcom McLean, an entrepreneurial former trucker from North Carolina, first began packing freight onto ships in uniform steel boxes, shipping containers have transformed the way we move most of the goods on Earth. As McLean recognized, cargo with consistent dimensions becomes a commodity. As strong as steel and up to five times as corrosion resistant, fiber-reinforced polymer walls make the box lighter and easier to scan than today’s containers. If the container is opened at an unscheduled time, by an unauthorized person, or outside a designated trusted zone, an alarm is triggered and transmits an alert."(info)
- August 05, 2011: Controversial Paper Company Relocates Sumatran Tiger. Wired. "Wildlife conservationists and a controversial paper company this week relocated a critically endangered tiger away from plantations and onto a national park in Sumatra, an Indonesian island famous for its rich biodiversity. A veterinarian performed a final checkup on the 7-year-old female Sumatran tiger, named Putri or princess in Indonesian, and fitted her with a GPS tracking collar shortly before she woke up from sedatives. Camera traps sprinkled around the release site will record Putri s activity as she settles into her new home in Sembilang National Park, South Sumatra. The Sumatran tiger is a national treasure and a symbol of our rich history."(info)
- August 04, 2011: Human Cells a Chimera of Ancient Life. Wired. "Despite eons of mingling inside our cells, gene networks we ve inherited from primitive, singled-celled ancestors have stayed separate. The genes date from an event 1.5 billion years ago, when two kinds of simple cells, neither having a nucleus or cellular membrane, shacked up and created an entirely new form of life: eukaryotes. We humans, as part of the eukaryotes, we re still a community of two prokaryotes, said James McInerney, co-author of a study published in Genome Biology and Evolution, July 27. They ve found an imprint of this original symbiosis remaining after 1.5 billion years, said Bill Martin, an endosymbiosis researcher at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, in Germany and editor of the journal publishing the study."(info)
- August 04, 2011: Drive to Impress Females Pushes Males Toward Early Graves. Wired. "Wired Science Brightcove Player End of Brightcove Player Again and again across the animal kingdom, males die younger than females a consistent, puzzling pattern of premature expiration that new research suggests may be the unavoidable biological cost of impressing the ladies. An emblematic example of the trade-off is seen among houbara bustards, a large Middle Eastern bird with exuberant male courtship displays. It is the males that invest most effort into extravagant sexual display that experience this spermatogenic burn-out at an earlier age, wrote researchers led by biologist Brian Preston of France s University of Burgundy in an August 1 Ecology Letters paper. Houbara bustard."(info)
- August 03, 2011: Scientists Build Software to Rescue Stalled Programs. Wired. "By Ryan Paul, Ars Technica MIT researchers have developed an experimental software framework called Jolt that allows applications to recover in some cases when they hang. When Jolt detects that a program is stuck in a certain kind of infinite loop, it can force it to exit the loop and continue executing. The researchers have published a paper that describes their implementation of Jolt and how it performed in a number of tests against bugs in well-known open source software utilities. In several test cases, Jolt allowed hung programs to continue to completion in situations where the user would otherwise have to forcefully terminate the process."(info)
- August 02, 2011: Can Planting Vegetables in Vacant Lots Save Cleveland?. Wired. "By transforming its vacant lots, backyards and roof-tops into farming plots, the city of Cleveland could meet all of its fresh produce, poultry and honey needs, calculate researchers from Ohio State University. Post-industrial cities like Cleveland are struggling with more and more unused land, these become sources of crime, said Parwinder Grewal co-author of a study Can cities become self-reliant in food? published July 20 in Cities. The population of Cleveland, what Grewal considers a typical post-industrial city, peaked near one million in 1950, and has been declining since."(info)
- August 04, 2011: Shah returns to CSAIL. MITNews. "Assistant Professor Julie Shah completed her undergraduate, graduate and PhD degrees at MIT, thus when she was offered a position as an assistant professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics accepting the job was easy.“MIT is just one of those places where there’s never a dull day,” Shah says. She will also be founding the Interactive Robotics Group at CSAIL, where she will focus on creating algorithms that will allow robots to successfully work alongside people to manufacture planes, explore space and even work in the operating room.The seed for her lab was planted when Shah created a plan execution system, dubbed Chaski, as part of her PhD thesis. The idea behind Chaski was to give a vague plan to a human-robot team, allowing members to delegate tasks and responsibilities at will, similar to a real human work environment. The system allowed the robot to monitor the actions of its human counterparts and then select its next steps based on what would best support the human’s actions."(info)
- August 05, 2011: Take Stanford's 'Introduction to Artificial Intelligence' Course - The Atlantic. GoogleNews. "Alexis Madrigal - Alexis Madrigal is a senior editor at The Atlantic. He's the author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology . More Alexis Madrigal is a senior editor at The Atlantic. He's spoken at Stanford, CalTech, Berkeley, SXSW, E3, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and his writing was anthologized in Best Technology Writing 2010 (Yale University Press)."(info)
- August 06, 2011: Stanford to Offer Free Course on Artificial Intelligence - The Moral Liberal. GoogleNews. "This is more than just downloading materials and following along with a live stream , writes Evan Ackerman, at IEEE Spectrum , you’re actually going to have to do all the same work as the Stanford students. There will be at least 10 hours per week of studying, along with weekly graded homework assignments. The professors will be available to answer your questions. You won’t technically earn credits for the course unless you’re a Stanford student, but for all practical purposes, you’ll be getting the exact same knowledge and experience."(info)
- August 06, 2011: Clinical warning system could change healthcare - Nurse.com. GoogleNews. "A clinical warning system that uses wireless sensors to track the vital signs of at-risk patients is undergoing a feasibility study at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. When the full system is operational, sensors will take blood oxygenation and heart-rate readings from at-risk patients once or twice a minute. The incoming vital signs and data in the medical record will be continually scrutinized by a machine-learning algorithm looking for signs of clinical deterioration. The performance of the prototype network, which was installed at Barnes-Jewish Hospital from June 4, 2009, until Jan. 31, 2010, was described at the SenSys '10 conference in Zurich, Switzerland."(info)
- August 06, 2011: Robot learns from experience - msnbc.com. GoogleNews. "Robot learns from experience Tokyo Institute of Technology Intelligent humanoid robot capable of learning and decision-making in a real environment By John Roach, contributing writer at msnbc.com. This breakthrough demonstrates the evolving ability of robots to adapt to ever-changing environments, according to Osamu Hasegawa , an associate professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology who is developing the technology. "So far, robots, including industrial robots, have been able to do specific tasks quickly and accurately. " is Technology & Science editor at msnbc.com."(info)
- August 04, 2011: Recommended: Mmm! Robot makes cookies - msnbc.com. GoogleNews. "Robot makes cookies The future of robots is shaping up to be wonderful for couch potatoes: they can fetch beers , fold laundry , and now they can even bake cookies. This latest breakthrough comes from the Distributed Robotics Lab at MIT, where graduate student Mario Bollini is plugging away at code that allows robots to make decisions for themselves as they accomplish specific tasks. Beyond baking, robots with these types of skills are already being eyed for factory jobs. Top msnbc.com headlines Science editor at msnbc.com, author of "The Case for Pluto," winner of the National Academies Communication Award for Cosmic Log in 2008."(info)
- August 06, 2011: Ten Movies That Predicted the Future - The Times Herald. GoogleNews. "News Ten Movies That Predicted the Future BOSTON (TheStreet) -- New York has yet to be destroyed by a giant marshmallow man. Movies are often at their best when they offer an escape from reality, with far-fetched plots that defy rational expectations and the rules of physics. Every once in a while, however, what you see on the silver screen can hold a mirror to modern life years later. Technology, politics and even mundane aspects of daily existence in the film world can turn out to be eerily predictive."(info)
- August 04, 2011: US internet providers hijacking users' search queries. NewScientist. "Searches made by millions of internet users are being hijacked and redirected by some internet service providers in the US. Patents filed by Paxfire, the company involved in the hijacking, suggest that it may be part of a larger plan to allow ISPs to generate revenue by tracking the sites their customers visit. Reese Richman, a New York law firm that specialises in consumer protection lawsuits, today filed a class action against one of the ISPs and Paxfire, which researchers believe provided the equipment used to hijack and redirect the searches. None of the companies would comment on the redirection scheme, but evidence collected by Christian Kreibich and Nicholas Weaver at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California, who discovered the redirection and have been monitoring it for several months, suggest that the process generates revenue for the ISPs."(info)
- August 03, 2011: Susan Greenfield: Living online is changing our brains. NewScientist. "How do you respond to those who say there's no evidence for this?When people say there is no evidence, you can turn that back and say, what kind of evidence would you imagine there would be? Are we going to have to wait for 20 years and see that people are different from previous generations? We know the human brain can change and the environment can change it. She also reviews evidence showing there's a change in violence, distraction and addiction in children, linked to the pervasion of technology."(info)
- August 03, 2011: Taser under fire after teenager's death. NewScientist. "TASER International, the maker of the electro-shock stun gun, has seen off 127 lawsuits from families who have claimed that its 50,000-volt weapon, in the hands of police, killed a relative. In all but one case the firm's lawyers have successfully argued that mitigating circumstances - mainly the victim's alleged drug use or a pre-existing cardiac condition - meant they would have died from the trauma of being physically subdued by police officers in any case. But on 19 July the Arizona-based firm lost a major decision when a jury in a US district court ruled that Darryl Turner, a 17-year-old shop assistant in Charlotte, North Carolina, had been killed by a police taser after receiving an extended 37-second shock. Amnesty International estimates that 450 people in the US have died after being tased since 2001."(info)
- August 02, 2011: New Japanese robot lifts patients off floor into wheelchair. ZDNet. "Researchers in Japan have unveiled a robot that can lift a patient up to 80kg (176 lbs) off the floor and onto a wheelchair. Developed by a joint team at RIKEN and Tokai Rubber Industries (TRI), the robot, nicknamed RIBA (Robot for Interactive Body Assistance) 2, uses high-precision tactile sensors and flexible motor controls to gently lift and transport patients from the floor or bed onto a wheelchair and vice versa. A human care-giver is still required to monitor and aid with embarking and disembarking the robot. Shaped like a teddy bear, RIBA 2 is soft to the touch and responds to voice commands."(info)
- August 03, 2011: Researchers Modify Kinect Gaming Device to Scan in 3-D. Kurzweilai. "Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, preparing for a future archaeological dig to Jordan, will likely pack a Microsoft Kinect Xbox 360 in the field to take high-quality, low-cost 3-D scans of dig sites. The researchers have figured out a way to extract data streaming from the Kinect’s onboard color camera and infrared sensor to make hand-held 3-D scans of small objects and people. For the initial field application of their modified Kinect dubbed ArKinect (a mashup of archaeology and Kinect) the researchers plan to train engineering and archaeology students to use the device to collect data on a future expedition to Jordan. The steps for making a 3D reconstruction of a real-life stuffed bear (far left) include: 1) projecting a pattern of infrared dots onto the bear to construct a depth map (second from left); 2) connecting nearby dots with a triangular mesh grid (third from left); 3) filling in each triangle in the grid with color and texture information from the Kinect s color camera (far right) (credit: UCSD) The ability to operate the Kinect freehand is a huge advantage over other scanning systems like LIDAR (light detecting and ranging), which creates a more accurate scan but has to be kept stationary in order to be precisely aimed."(info)
- August 03, 2011: Graphene-based thin films may lead to flexible displays. Kurzweilai. "Researchers at Rice University have created thin films that could revolutionize touch-screen displays, solar panels, and LED lighting a strong candidate to replace indium tin oxide (ITO). ITO is a commercial product widely used as a transparent, conductive coating. The transparent material combines single-atom-thick sheets of graphene and a fine mesh of aluminum nanowire on a flexible substrate (credit: Tour Lab/Rice University) The researcher s new thin film combines a single-layer sheet of highly conductive graphene with a fine grid of metal nanowire. The metal grid strengthens the graphene, and the graphene fills all the empty spaces between the grid."(info)
- August 01, 2011: Researchers develop mouse with ‘off switch’ in serotonin-producing brain cells. Kurzweilai. "Scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed a strain of mice with a built-in off switch that can selectively shut down the animals’ serotonin-producing cells, which make up a brain network controlling breathing, temperature regulation, and mood. The researchers developed mice with a unique receptor on the surface of their serotonin-producing neurons. Typically, cells communicate via chemicals that bind to receptors on their surfaces, with the molecules binding to their receptors. The researchers added this special receptor to the mice’s serotonin-producing neurons using a genetic manipulation technique called intersectional genetics."(info)
- August 05, 2011: Astronomers see possibility of water on Mars. USAToday. "An explanation for dark lines that appear on the steep slopes of Martian hills in the spring and summer could suggest some interesting possibilities for life, exobiologists say. The lines might be briny water melting out of frozen, frosty slushes, researchers suggest in a paper in this week's edition of the journal Science. The lines aren't large, just 1.5 to 15 foot wide channels that snake down steep hillsides in the middle latitudes of Mars' southern hemisphere. The lines, which can be quite long, are between 1.5 and 15 feet across.vThe authors suggest three possibilities to explain them: - water migration, which would require "ample pure water" - geothermally heated water - brines whose freezing point is depressed because of their salt concentration Brines make the most sense, they say."(info)
- August 02, 2011: RIBA-II healthcare robot now stronger, smarter -- still a bear. Engadget. "RIKEN's original RIBA healthcare robot was already fairly adept at lifting patients while not completely terrifying them but, as is the case with such things, it's now been succeeded by a new and improved model. [Thanks, robotbling] Show full PR text RIBA-II, the next generation care-giving robot New robot boasts the latest in sensor technology, promises a brighter future for Japan's elderly population August 2, 2011 A new robot using high-precision tactile sensors and flexible motor control technology has taken Japan one step closer to its goal of providing high-quality care for its growing elderly population. In 2009, the RIKEN-TRI Collaboration Center for Human-Interactive Robot Research (RTC), a joint project established in 2007 and located at the Nagoya Science Park in central Japan, unveiled a robot called RIBA (Robot for Interactive Body Assistance) designed to assist in this task. RTC's new robot, named RIBA-II, overcomes these limitations with added power and functionality."(info)
- August 04, 2011: Movie Review - 'Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes' - 'Rise' Welcomes Earth's New Ape Overlords : NPR. NPR. "20th Century Fox Super Monkey Brawl: Caesar (Andy Serkis) leads his army of apes in a revolt against the humans, who imprison his kind for use in drug experiments. If proof were still needed that human beings are all but irrelevant to the Hollywood blockbuster, Rise of the Planet of the Apes provides it in spades. Opting for James Franco over 3-D (few budgets can stretch to both), the filmmakers leave him stranded opposite blue screens and a bland veterinary love interest (Pinto), his cheeky charisma obliterated by the movie's rampaging simians. Playing Will Rodman, a San Francisco geneticist with a dementia-stricken father (John Lithgow), Franco has never been so lost: He seems to know he's being outperformed by every computer-generated chimp on-screen."(info)
- August 04, 2011: Judge Allows American To Sue Rumsfeld Over Torture : NPR. NPR. "A judge is allowing an Army veteran who says he was imprisoned unjustly and tortured by the U.S. military in Iraq to sue former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld personally for damages. The veteran's identity is withheld in court filings, but he worked for an American contracting company as a translator for the Marines in the volatile Anbar province before being detained for nine months at Camp Cropper, a U.S. military facility near the Baghdad airport dedicated to holding "high-value" detainees. Lawyers for the man, who is in his 50s, say he was preparing to come home to the United States on annual leave when he was abducted by the U.S. military and held without justification while his family knew nothing about his whereabouts or even whether he was still alive. The Justice Department also argued that a judge cannot review wartime decisions that are the constitutional responsibility of Congress and the president."(info)
- August 05, 2011: Can an ape learn to be human?. Independent. "As two new films explore the human-like behaviour of chimpanzees, Steve Connor explains the fascination and fear we have about our closest living relatives Getty Ape expectations: A young chimpanzee Many years ago while on a visit to London Zoo I experienced first hand the wily intelligence of chimpanzees in the days when they were kept behind wire mesh. Many years ago while on a visit to London Zoo I experienced first hand the wily intelligence of chimpanzees in the days when they were kept behind wire mesh. Some years later, primatologist Mathias Osvath of Lund University in Sweden documented a rather more complex strand of protest in a chimp called Santino who lives in Furuvik Zoo. Santino showed that it was possible for chimps to plan for the future."(info)
- August 06, 2011: AntiSec claims to have hacked more than 70 police websites in response to arrests. LATimes. "AntiSec, the hacker group made of members from Anonymous and LulzSec, said Saturday that it has hacked more than 70 law enforcement agency websites in the U.S. in retaliation of recent arrests of alleged AntiSec members in the U.S. and the U.K. The group, which has previously lodged attacks against law enforcement in Arizona, also said it was able to access 10 gigabytes of emails, credit card details and other sensitive data from the agencies. And in a move that will infuriate law enforcement further, AntiSec called this cyber attack ShootingSheriffsSaturday. A week after we defaced and destroyed the websites of over 70 law enforcement agencies, we are releasing a massive amount of confidential information that is sure to embarass, discredit and incriminate police officers across the US, AntiSec said in a statement posted on the website PasteBin, which has become a favorite place for the hackers to post the information they've stolen."(info)
- August 06, 2011: At Angel Stadium: Peanuts, Cracker Jacks and Android tablets [Video]. LATimes. "For more than 100 years, people have sat in the sun on a summer's day to catch a ballgame. Now, T-Mobile and the Los Angeles Angels are in the middle of an experiment to see if they can add tablet computers to the culture of watching a live game. T-Mobile is renting two tablets, the 7-inch-screen Samsung Galaxy Tab and the 8.9-inch-screen T-Mobile G-Slate (made by LG), at Angel Stadium for a reasonable $10 per game. So why plunk down an Alexander Hamilton to get a tablet at a game, when your hands might already be full with the normal ballpark fare?"(info)
- August 06, 2011: Is it dumb to let a 2-year-old wield a smartphone?. LATimes. "GenY moms are starting 'em out young: A third of their 2-year-olds are already at home with smartphones, laptops and even digital cameras. Of the 1,038 women polled, 90% have children under the age of 10. "The kids are not potty trained yet, but are using laptops, smartphones. Other highlights from the report: -- Facebook is the social medium of choice among those polled: 81% of the women surveyed turn to Facebook on a regular basis, with 46% checking in three or more times a day."(info)
- August 06, 2011: Free cellphone program for the poor draws critics. LATimes. "Is having a cellphone a basic human right? In more than half the states in America, people who are eligible for Medicaid and food stamps may also be eligible for a free cellphone and 250 free minutes a month. A story in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that unearthed this program, which has been around for three years, reported that up to 5.5 million people could qualify for a free cellphone and free service in Pennsylvania alone. The article identified two companies that provide free cellphones and free minutes to people who qualify -- Assurance Wireless, a program of Sprint subsidiary Virgin Mobile, and SafeLink, a program from Tracphone Wireless."(info)
- August 05, 2011: Hashtags and race: Beyond the 'Jersey Shore' effect on Twitter. LATimes. "It's no secret that Twitter draws in people hungry for celebrity and entertainment news -- and celebs and shows alike have tried to capitalize on those social forces. But tear away from the TV screen for a second and you'll find that some of the most successful hashtags aren't news- or celeb-related, but instead phrases like #ChicksWithGoldTeeth or #WhenIWas13. And they're often being tweeted by African Americans. Brendan Meeder of Carnegie Mellon University might have a theory, according to an interesting Slate article titled How Black People Use Twitter."(info)
- August 05, 2011: Google's self-driving car is in an accident but human was driving, company says. LATimes. "Google Inc.'s quest to popularize cars that drive themselves seemed to hit a roadblock today when news emerged that one of the automated vehicles was in an accident. But in an ironic twist, the company is saying that the car was not driving itself; a human was. Self-driving cars must legally have a human at the wheel, ready to assume control if anything goes wrong. Google says that in this case, the human driver was operating the car in manual mode at the time of the accident."(info)
- August 05, 2011: Researchers show power of Facebook facial-recognition software. LATimes. "Facebook has come under a lot of heat for its facial-recognition software, in which the social networking site has been automatically enrolling its more than 750 million users. But Facebook has made it clear that the software, which automatically tags people in photos, isn't going anyway anytime soon. In fact, facial-recognition software is growing and is being used and further developed by Facebook, Google, Apple and the U.S. government. On Friday Carnegie Mellon University researcher Alessandro Acquisti showed off his research, funded in part by the U.S. Army, on how facial-recognition technology can be used with Facebook profile photos to match names and other identification data to pictures."(info)
- August 04, 2011: Raspberry Pi Interview With Eben Upton. RobotNet. "The robot revolution just got a little closer thanks to some of the cool devices that are coming down the pipe. One such cool device is called the Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi device is basically a $25 Linux PC on a credit card sized board! I contacted the Director of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Eben Upton, and he graciously answered some of my questions pertaining to his foundation, the Raspberry Pi device, and how the device relates to robotics."(info)
- August 04, 2011: Avatar-based Virtual Co-driver System replaces vehicle owner's manuals. ScienceDaily. "Flashing signal lamps and unfamiliar control elements tend to worry car drivers. Scientists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen in cooperation with engineers at Audi AG have developed an Avatar-based Virtual Co-driver System (AviCoS) to support the driver with explicit information on the vehicle in a natural-language dialog -- supported by images and videos -- making cumbersome paging through owner's manuals a thing of the past. The avatar is displayed on the monitor of the Audi Mulitmedia Interface that comes standard in all new Audi models. It is particularly useful in unfamiliar vehicles, says Professor Helmut Krcmar, Chair of the TU Muenchen Institute of Business Informatics."(info)
- August 02, 2011: Special software helps researchers identify individual animals when studying behavior in the wild. ScienceDaily. "A new software system will make things easier by analyzing the animals' faces for individual identification. The pictures from the video trap are highly encouraging. A new software system could soon make things easier for the park rangers by searching through the photos and videos for sequences in which the animals appear and assigning the images to individual gorillas. Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institutes for Integrated Circuits IIS and Digital Media Technology IDMT as well as at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology are jointly developing the system in the SAISBECO project."(info)
- August 04, 2011: You (YOU!) Can Take Stanford's 'Intro to AI' Course Next Quarter, For Free. IEEE Spectrum. "Tweet Stanford has been offering portions of its robotics coursework online for a few years now, but professors Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig are kicking things up a notch (okay, lots of notches) with next semester's CS221: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. This is more than just downloading materials and following along with a live stream; you're actually going to have to do all the same work as the Stanford students. There will be at least 10 hours per week of studying, along with weekly graded homework assignments. The professors will be available to answer your questions."(info)
- August 01, 2011: Foxconn To Replace Human Workers With One Million Robots. IEEE Spectrum. "Tweet Foxconn, an electronics manufacturer from Taiwan with huge factories in China, generates about 40 percent of the global consumer electronics revenue by creating things like iPhones and computer components on giant assembly lines staffed by humans. Yesterday, Foxconn announced (at an employee dance party of all places) that they're planning on buying some robots to replace their human workforce. And by some robots, they mean one million robots over the next three years. At this point, it's not sounding like Foxconn is trying to augment its human workforce with robots to make things easier on the humans."(info)
- July 28, 2011: WANT: Volkswagen Demonstrates Production-Level Automotive Autopilot on Video. IEEE Spectrum. "Tweet Volkswagen announced their Temporary Autopilot (TAP) system last month, and it's just shown up on video. If anything, it works better than advertised, and includes some innovative features that do their best to keep you safe, even if you completely zone out: As you can see, this TAP system has been integrated into a production car, and uses production-level radar, camera, and ultrasonic sensors along with by a laser scanner and an electronic horizon to do everything that it does. A big stumbling block for this kind of thing is the issue of liability and who is (or isn't) in control of the car, and Volkswagen very deliberately includes the following in their press release: The driver always retains driving responsibility and is always in control. TAP always offers the driver an optimal degree of automation as a function of the driving situation, acquisition of the surroundings and driver and system states."(info)
- July 26, 2011: Love Is in the Water For Some Reason at RoboSub 2011. IEEE Spectrum. "Tweet It's the 14th year of AUVSI's RoboSub competition, which of course means that all of this year's challenges are love-themed. Anyway, the competition took place from July 12 to 17 at the U.S. Navy's SPAWAR System Center down in San Diego, where nearly 30 teams (including both high school and international teams) unleashed their autonomous robot submarines against a hapless swimming pool filled with gates, buoys, paths to follow, objects to retrieve, and targets to torpedo. If you're wondering why this is so hard, here's a comment on last year's competition from the 2010 Maryland team's advisor: Some more food for thought on how difficult the competition is: navigation for subs can t rely on GPS (GPS signals only penetrate a few inches in the water), there s no contact with the ground (so you can t use encoders), and substantial random currents render dead reckoning worthless. So yeah, even tasks that would be a dead cinch for a robot driving on land is extremely difficult for a robot under the water."(info)
- August 05, 2011: Google's Self-Driving Car Crashes. PCWorld. "One of Google's self-driving cars got into an accident earlier this week. But Google is claiming the auto-pilot-equipped Prius was actually flipped into manual mode when the accident happened, making this a case of user error. Jalopnik and many other websites reported the incident as the "first caused by Google's self-driving car," which prompted a quick response from a Google spokesperson. One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car," the spokesperson said."(info)
- August 01, 2011: Foxconn to Rely More on Robots for Manufacturing. PCWorld. "Foxconn, the maker of Apple's iPhone and iPad, plans to rely more on robots for manufacturing over the coming years, allowing the company to invest more in research and development and save on labor costs. Foxconn CEO Terry Gou made the remarks in a speech last Friday at the company's campus in Shenzhen, China. The Taiwan-based company has more than 1 million employees, the majority of which are located at facilities in mainland China. Aside from Apple, the company also manufactures products for companies like HP, Sony, and Nintendo."(info)
- August 04, 2011: The Weather Isn'ta Good Enough Reason to Stay in San Diego and Struggle - San Diego Reader. GoogleNews. "The Weather Isn’t a Good Enough Reason to Stay in San Diego and Struggle Jason Ulsh, 33, explains how and why his job search led him out of sunny San Diego (and why he’s ok with it). And what kind of work do you do? There are some psychology research and marketing firms in San Diego, but most of them are elsewhere. Why did you decide to start looking outside of San Diego?"(info)
- August 02, 2011: Eastman conference ponders 'What happens when music meets the mind' - The Daily News Online. GoogleNews. "ROCHESTER -- What happens to your body when you sing a note or play an instrument? What happens when the Beatles or Beethoven meet the brain? The answers to all these questions and many more are being answered by research in the area of music cognition, which takes in elements of music performance and scientific study of the brain, and relates to everything we hear from speech to music. This comprehensive field will take center stage at the Eastman School of Music Aug. 11 to 14, when the School hosts the biennial meeting of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, bringing more than 200 scholars and speakers to Rochester."(info)
- August 06, 2011: Morality tale - Financial Times. GoogleNews. "Morality tale By Simon Blackburn A long-awaited work by Derek Parfit attempts to reconcile opposing ethical theories Raphael’s ‘The School of Athens’ (1510) Together weighing 2kg, or just under 5lb, these two colossal volumes represent many years of work by one of the most influential moral philosophers of our time. They have been long in the making: it is more than 25 years since Derek Parfit impressed the world with Reasons and Persons , a work that made his reputation and firmly ensconced him behind the walls of All Souls, Oxford. So is this, as it has been described, the most significant contribution to moral philosophy for well over a century? This is the view held by philosophers from Augustine to Hobbes, Hume, and Adam Smith."(info)
- August 02, 2011: Expert says Philippine tax system a 'complicated mess' - Inquirer.net. GoogleNews. "Expert says Philippine tax system a ‘complicated mess’ An internationally acclaimed economist has opined that the country’s tax system was a “complicated mess,” suggesting that the government should adopt a simplified and flat taxation scheme to shore up revenues and fund more development initiatives. John Nye, a professor of economics at George Mason University in the United States and who has had several articles published in international journals, said in a lecture in Manila Tuesday that the country could benefit from higher revenue collection if the tax system were simplified. Nye suggested that the government impose the same tax rates on all income earners. Nye also observed that under the country’s tax system, the more advanced business sectors such as those composed of multinational companies were taxed more while the less progressive ones such as agriculture were taxed much less."(info)
- August 05, 2011: $40 billion wiped from Aussie superannuation funds - Herald Sun. GoogleNews. "ABOUT $40 billion has been wiped from Aussie superannuation funds this week as global share markets continue to plunge. On an individual basis, the collapsing share markets have wiped out $4500 from the average $100,000 super fund since July 1, including $3000 just this week, research company SuperRatings said yesterday. The situation is worse for people who chose a "growth" investment option, these funds have lost about $6000 for every $100,000 this financial year, while the "shares only" option is down $10,500. " But for many savers, it might be hard to keep their nerve and resist taking a loss now in the hope they can permanently re-set their savings and pension funds to less risky assets."(info)
- August 06, 2011: Lobato 8/5: Key expert weighs in - Education News Colorado. GoogleNews. "Lobato 8/5: Key expert weighs in Bruce Baker, a national school finance expert, testified Friday that Colorado’s school finance system is especially regressive for districts with high numbers of poor children and English language learners because it doesn’t compensate for the higher costs of teaching such students. Baker testified as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the Lobato v. State school funding lawsuit, which wrapped up its first week Friday. He’s one of the national witnesses being used by the plaintiffs to buttress their claim that the state’s school finance system violates the “thorough and uniform” education requirements of the state constitution. Plaintiffs’ lawyer Kathleen Gebhardt walked Baker through his testimony, which was followed by a lively cross-examination during which Baker gave as good as he got from Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Fero."(info)
- August 03, 2011: Expert: public school system hits rock bottom - KPHO Phoenix. GoogleNews. "Expert: public school system hits rock bottom It's that time of year again as kids head back to school in just a couple weeks. After all the school supply shopping is done, what can they expect in their classrooms? "This is by far the most difficult year, financially, that schools have ever faced, in my experience," said interim Arizona School Boards Association Executive Director Chuck Essigs. They've never been this deep and they never lasted as long as they're lasting now," Essigs said."(info)
- August 02, 2011: Japanese Scientists Invent Robot That Learns, Thinks, and Acts - PC Magazine. GoogleNews. "Japanese Scientists Invent Robot That Learns, Thinks, and Acts Japanese scientists are developing a robot that reacts by making educated guesses based on past experiencesmeaning it can think, learn, and react just like humans. Created by the Hasegawa Lab of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, the robot was built upon an "unsupervised" learning mechanism called Self-Organizing Incremental Neural Network ( SOINN ), which takes in dynamic information and enables the robot to estimate future patterns and networks. "So far robots, including industrial robots, have been able to do specific tasks quickly and accurately. Use of this site is governed by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.Copyright 1996-2011 Ziff Davis, Inc. All Rights Reserved."(info)
- August 02, 2011: Researchers Develop DNA Neural Network that Thinks - All Tech News. GoogleNews. "Share this Article Author: Tags: A team at Caltech has developed an artificial neural network The world’s first neural network, built from DNA molecules with the power to think, has been developed by researchers, at the California Institute of Technology. Postdoctoral scholar, Lulu Qian, and fellow workers explained, “how molecular systems can exhibit autonomous brain-like behaviors”, in a paper that was made public, containing details about their research, on July 21. Leave a Reply Other News The HP Pavilion P7 1070T is a nice mainstream desktop computer, competing in the high tech computer market. However, the poor aspects of the computer take into account the up-surging competition from competitors, such as Acer and Gateway due to which the HP computer looks very pricey."(info)
- August 01, 2011: José Carlos Príncipe winner “2011 IEEE Neural Network Pioneer Award” – People - Portuguese American Journal. GoogleNews. "José Carlos Príncipe is the first Portuguese researcher to receive the “IEEE Neural Network Pioneer Award.” The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is the world’s largest technical association. The award will be presented on 3rd August during the 2011 IJCNN (International Joint Conference on Neural Networks) gala dinner in San José (CA). José Carlos Príncipe is an international pioneer in the world of computational neuroengineering, with research that opens doors for the prevention of epileptic seizures or to allow paraplegics to interact with the world using robots. A professor at the University of Florida, he maintains close relations with Portugal research institutions, namely Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering of Porto (INESC Porto) and the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP)."(info)
- August 06, 2011: TMCnet's Chat Translation Week in Review - TMC Net. GoogleNews. "The Lionbridge GeoFluent is a technology platform designed to remove the cost, time and quality barriers of traditional translation. It combines the capabilities of Translation Workspace, Lionbridge's cloud-based translation memory capability, and Real-Time Translation Services (RTTS), IBM’s machine translation engine. It will focus on how global teams can better collaborate on ideas and increase the rate at which crucial decisions are being made with GeoFluent real-time chat translation. Lionbridge delivers the solution as a SaaS ( News - Alert ) platform, and nothing is required for its operation other than a Web browser."(info)
- August 03, 2011: Lionbridge Technologies' CEO Discusses Q2 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript - Seeking Alpha. GoogleNews. "Welcome to the Lionbridge investor call to discuss financial results for the second quarter of 2011. So today I'll walk through our second quarter results and the positive trends driving our business. As you see, we delivered about $113 million this quarter, well ahead of our expectations, and this marks about 14% sequential quarterly growth. So all the cost actions of the past 2 years are beginning to bear fruit, and now we're beginning to see the leverage from incremental revenue."(info)
- August 04, 2011: Lionbridge GeoFluent's Chat Translation Addresses Global Communications Challenge - TMC Net. GoogleNews. "Chat Translation Featured Articles. Lionbridge GeoFluent's Chat Translation Addresses Global Communications Challenge Analysts estimate that more than 90 percent of enterprise content never reaches non-English speaking audiences due to time and cost constraints. Lionbridge GeoFluent solves this global communication challenge by providing cost effective, quality, on-demand chat translation of marketing and customer care communications such as Web pages, online chat, user generated content and more. According to Lionbridge, with the industry’s only cloud-based, customized real-time chat translation platform that instantly translates content and communications into multiple languages, GeoFluent unlocks the knowledge of the global enterprise."(info)
- August 05, 2011: Bing's Take on Content Quality - WebProNews. GoogleNews. "Bing’s Take on Content Quality Been focusing on Google's quality standards? Here's Bing's advice. Since the Google Panda Update first launched back in February (and really for some time before that), there has been a lot of discussion about search quality throughout the industry – the quality of the content that search engines are returning in their results. Thin content – don’t produce pages with little relevant content on them – go deep when producing content – think “authority” when building your pages."(info)
- August 03, 2011: DARPA software to spin "dumb" photos or video into intelligence gold - Network World. GoogleNews. "DARPA wants software/algorithm that can decipher photos/videos If a picture is worth a thousand words, the scientists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) would like to make that about a billion with a new software intelligent program. DARPA this month said it will detail a new system it would like to see built known as the Visual Media Reasoning (VMR) program . The main idea is to develop an advanced software program that can "turn 'dumb' unstructured, ad hoc photos and video into true visual intelligence. "The volume of this visual media is growing rapidly and is quickly outpacing our ability to review, let alone analyze, the contents of every image."(info)
- July 30, 2011: Mixed martial arts in limbo: Illegal fights occur in Alabama as commission ... - al.com. GoogleNews. "Leavell is waiting for the new Alabama Athletic Commission to sanction the sport. These days, his 8,000-square-foot tent sits in a trailer in Tuscaloosa, as useless as the cages, lights, chairs and tables that used to help regularly entertain MMA fans in Alabama. It is a class C felony to promote one and a misdemeanor to attend one until regulations are formally passed, according to the Alabama Athletic Commission. Leavell, co-founder of Strike Hard Productions , grows frustrated watching other promoters take the risk to make money while his bills pile up."(info)
- August 05, 2011: IMAGE GALLERY: Team Tours Clinic, Sets $25K Goal - Patch.com. GoogleNews. "A recent trip to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute helped a team of 10-year-old Westborough boys understand the fundraising work they have been doing this summer. On July 27, the 10-year-old Westborough Little League All Star team took a private tour through the clinic and learned how the money they raised will be used. “As coaches, we could not be prouder of this terrific group of boys,” said Coach Craig Nichols. For more information, email nicholsiinwestboro@yahoo.com ."(info)
- August 05, 2011: Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt - E-Flux. GoogleNews. "Playing the City—take three. From August 11 to August 25, 2011, more than fifteen international artists will occupy the inner city of Frankfurt with their actions, performances, and installations. Playing the City 3 will focus on public space as a venue for artistic activities involving the city and its inhabitants in a variety of ways again. The works presented in the context of the project Playing the City 3 show a wide range of what art in public space can be today."(info)
- August 01, 2011: The Muslim Question: An understanding for difficult times - Foreign Policy Journal. GoogleNews. "The Muslim Question: An understanding for difficult times by Ali Ahmed August 1, 2011 Attending summer school at the University of Oslo, I had the opportunity to witness Norway in its grief and resilience first hand over the last week. He has given his concern with immigration and multiculturalism in his defense. While all have distanced themselves from his methods, there are resonances of his political thinking in conservative perspectives across the western world. Insofar as the west finds the consequence in immigration disconcerting, then western governments need to reexamine their own policies that have led up to such immigration."(info)
- August 04, 2011: Wade explains reasoning behind Astros optioning Johnson, Wallace to Triple-A - Examiner.com. GoogleNews. "HOUSTON -- Astros general manager Ed Wade made a bold roster move late Sunday night by optioning corner infielders Chris Johnson and Brett Wallace to Triple-A Oklahoma City in what turned out to be a busy weekend for the organization due to trading standout outfielders Hunter Pence and Michael Bourn. Johnson hit .245 with six homers and 36 RBI over 343 at-bats in 92 games, while Wallace has slipped to a .268 mark on the season, which includes four homers, 26 RBI and 22 doubles over 317 at-bats in 101 games, after hitting a stellar .388 in the month of April. Wade reinforced the Astros' level of confidence in Johnson and Wallace, stating it was in the organization's best interest to move both players out of the big league environment so they can concentrate on improving certain weaknesses in their game. When Houston called up Johnson last season on June 20 to be the club's starting third baseman, the National League had very little information on his flaws, but as the year went on, advanced scouts became more familiar with the 26-year-old infielder."(info)
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