Posted on Mon, Aug 16, 2010 @ 09:36 AM
Source: Popsci
Particle accelerators, which are not renowned for their real-world applications, could in fact be used to produce energy, according to a 34-year-old research paper that resurfaced this week.
It's not exactly intuitive -- accelerators require plenty of power to work -- but one of the founders of Fermilab wrote in 1976 that they could produce more energy than they use, because they're extremely good at fissioning atoms.
At the time, accelerator physicist Robert Wilson was the director of Fermilab, according toTechnology Review's arXiv blog. He was building an accelerator called the Energy Doubler/Saver, the first device to use superconducting magnets on a large scale. Read more here.
Posted on Mon, Aug 16, 2010 @ 09:26 AM
Source: Gov Tech
Smartphone use is on the rise, not just with consumers but with companies as well. They're becoming more and more like mini-computers. According to an August 2010 ABI Research report, more than 60 percent of handsets will have mobile browsers in them by 2015.
But that added functionality and ubiquity could make them prime targets for cyber-attackers in the future, if not today. Smartphones could become even more attractive to cyber-criminals because users might not focus on securing them as much as they do for traditional hardware. Read more here.
Posted on Tue, Jul 27, 2010 @ 01:22 PM
Source: Popsci
Marine Mess More than 40 million barrels of oil have been spilled in the seas since 1970—the equivalent of four Exxon Valdez–size disasters a year.
When the Deepwater Horizon rig began leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico in April, the cleanup schemes were underwhelming: fire, dispersants, pantyhose stuffed with human hair. But a new robotic system could corral future spills in hours so that oil never hits the shore.
Aeros (Airborne Robotic Oil Spill Recovery System) is a fleet of airplane-deployed robots that cordon off the oil and use centrifuge-like oil/water separators to collect oil for refining. Each ’bot can purify up to 3,000 gallons of water a minute. Several could clean an 11-million-gallon, Exxon Valdez–size spill in a few days. Read more here.
Posted on Thu, Jul 15, 2010 @ 04:54 PM
Source: NYT
In the middle of tomorrow, a great ribbed ghost has emerged from a distant yesterday.
On Tuesday morning, workers excavating the site of the underground vehicle security center for the future World Trade Center hit a row of sturdy, upright wood timbers, regularly spaced, sticking out of a briny gray muck flecked with oyster shells.
Obviously, these were more than just remnants of the wooden cribbing used in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to extend the shoreline of Manhattan Island ever farther into the Hudson River. (Lower Manhattan real estate was a precious commodity even then.) Read more here.
Posted on Wed, Jul 14, 2010 @ 12:03 AM
Source: PopSci
Add gumshoe detective to NASA's resume. Last year, scientists from the space agency working with the US Geological Survey and the Menlo Park District Attorney's office solved an 18-year-old murder case using technology developed for autonomous Earth science missions, NASA has announced.
In 1991, a man named Bernardo Bass shot and killed his girlfriend Dawn Sanchez, but her body, the firearm used and Bass's car -- the last place Sanchez was seen -- were nowhere to be found. It didn't take a seasoned detective to finger Bass as a person of interest, but the case was dismissed the same year for lack of any hard evidence attaching Bass to the crime. Read more here.
Posted on Mon, May 03, 2010 @ 04:50 PM
Source: AppDynamics
AppDynamics, Inc., the next-generationApplication Performance Management (APM) company, today announced that it has closed its Series B round of financing and raised $11 million. The round is co-led by existing Series A investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Greylock Partners, and will support the company’s continued expansion as it takes advantage of market demand for next-generation application performance management (APM). To date, the company has received $16.5 million in venture funding. Read more here
Posted on Mon, Apr 26, 2010 @ 09:31 AM
Source: R&D Mag
MIT researchers have developed software that makes computer simulations of physical systems run much more efficiently on so-called multicore chips. In experiments involving chips with 24 separate cores—or processors—simulations of fluid flows were at least 50% more efficient with the new software than they were with conventional software. And that figure should only increase with the number of cores. Read more here
Posted on Fri, Mar 05, 2010 @ 04:49 PM
Source: San Jose Mercury News
Just when it seemed America was emerging from the recession, Wall Street swooned again as January segued into February. But Silicon Valley's startup economy shifted into a higher gear. Read more here.
Posted on Wed, Feb 03, 2010 @ 08:18 AM
Source: The Boston Globe
Imagine that your stockbroker - or the
friend who’s always giving you stock tips - called and told you he had
come up with a new investment strategy. Price-to-earnings ratios, debt
levels, management, competition, what the company makes, and how well
it makes it, all those considerations go out the window. The new
strategy is this: Invest in companies with names that are very easy to
pronounce.
This would probably not strike you as a great idea. But, if recent research is to be believed, it might just be brilliant.
One
of the hottest topics in psychology today is something called
“cognitive fluency.” Cognitive fluency is simply a measure of how easy
it is to think about something, and it turns out that people prefer
things that are easy to think about to those that are hard. On the face
of it, it’s a rather intuitive idea. But psychologists are only
beginning to uncover the surprising extent to which fluency guides our
thinking, and in situations where we have no idea it is at work.
Psychologists
have determined, for example, that shares in companies with
easy-to-pronounce names do indeed significantly outperform those with
hard-to-pronounce names. Other studies have shown that when presenting
people with a factual statement, manipulations that make the statement
easier to mentally process - even totally nonsubstantive changes like
writing it in a cleaner font or making it rhyme or simply repeating it
- can alter people’s judgment of the truth of the statement, along with
their evaluation of the intelligence of the statement’s author and
their confidence in their own judgments and abilities. Similar
manipulations can get subjects to be more forgiving, more adventurous,
and more open about their personal shortcomings.
Because
it shapes our thinking in so many ways, fluency is implicated in
decisions about everything from the products we buy to the people we
find attractive to the candidates we vote for - in short, in any
situation where we weigh information. It’s a key part of the puzzle of
how feelings like attraction and belief and suspicion work, and what
researchers are learning about fluency has ramifications for anyone
interested in eliciting those emotions. Read more here
Posted on Thu, Dec 10, 2009 @ 03:39 PM
We briefed you a few days ago about the CIC's 10th anniversary party. CIC is the home to over 200 startups in Cambridge, MA, including Hubtech21!
Check here to get a flavour of the party: