Like most other "all points" signs in the world, this one will lead you in the right direction towards your destination. But that's pretty much where the similarities end.    

Georg Petschnigg, FiftyThree's co-founder, is tight-lipped about what exactly his team has in the works. The company remains focused on building a new generation of creativity tools.    

Facebook Wi-Fi, which gives users free wireless internet in exchange for "checking in" to businesses, has graduated from experiment to steadily spreading product.    

theodp writes "Bill Gates already called dibbs on polio, so British Airways had to settle for tackling the 'global misalignment of talent' problem, putting '100 of the most forward-thinking founders, CEOs, venture capitalists, and Silicon Valley game-changers' on a flight from San Francisco to London to 'innovate and collaborate to find an effective solution to this growing global challenge.' UnGroundedThinking.com showcases the winning concepts, which include Advisher (an online community to help foster women in STEM), INIT ('nutritional labels' to disclose products' 'STEM ingredients'), DGTL (rewards young women with fashionable clothes for completing coding challenges), Beacons in a Backpack (solar powered backpacks pre-loaded with videos, multimedia content, and game-powered educational tools that also serve as mobile hotspots for rural/remote areas), Tech21 (STEM education program aimed at 21-years-and-older post-college grads in the workforce), Certify.me (allows STEM talent from across the globe to audition for potential employers via standardized-quality assessments), and STEAM Truck (a mobile dance lab where STEM art installations teach kids that science is fun and valuable). 'This has the feel of Southby [SXSW],' gushed a Google Ventures general partner. "It's a serendipitous occasion. It's about time we presented engineers to kids as role models — not just firefighters, cops, doctors, detectives. Who knows? Maybe The Internship changes that.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Moto-Electra has made it from Jacksonville, Florida to the Santa Monica Pier in California in 3 days ... on an electric bike.    

Old Disney meets new: The legendary character that started it all is the latest star of Disney's successful line of gaming apps.    

WebGangsta writes "The rumor mill continues to grow closer and closer to reality, as The Verge is reporting the upcoming SERIES 5 TiVo will have 6 tuners, support OTA recording (an old TiVo feature being brought back), storage beyond the 2TB limit, and more. While some would say that TiVo today is nothing more than a Patent Holder (albeit a successful one), there's still a market for a cable box that doubles as a streaming player. Is hardware the future of TiVo, or should they go and just license their software to all? And don't get us started on those 'TiVo Buying Hulu' or 'Apple/Google buying TiVo' rumors... that's a different story for a different day."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Atticus Rex writes "The fact that our social networking services are so centralized is a big part of why they fall so easily to government surveillance. It only takes a handful of amoral Zuckerbergs to hand over hundreds of millions of people's data to PRISM. That's why this Slate article makes the case for a mass migration to decentralized, free software social networks, which are much more robust to spying and interference. On top of that, these systems respect your freedom as a software user (or developer), and they're less likely to pepper you with obnoxious advertisements." On a related note, identi.ca is ditching their Twitter clone platform for pump.io which promises an experience closer to the Facebook news feed. Unfortunately, adoption seems slow since Facebook, Google, et al have an interest in preventing interoperability and it can be lonely on the distributed social network.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NuSTAR has been busy studying the most energetic phenomena in the universe. Recently, a few high-energy events have sprung up, akin to "things that go bump in the night." When one telescope catches a sudden outpouring of high-energy light in the sky, NuSTAR and a host of other telescopes stop what they were doing and take a better look.

(Credit: Shao-Yu Chen et al.)

Shao-Yu Chen at the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences in Taiwan and associates have incorporated chlorophyll into graphene transistors to make light-activated switches, MIT Technology Review reports.

The new phototransistor design consists of two silver electrodes connected by a sheet of graphene. The graphene is then covered by a layer of chlorophyll using a method known as drop casting. .

This layer has a significant influence on the electronic characteristics of the device. When a voltage is set up between the silver electrodes, relatively little current flows.   However, when the chlorophyll is zapped by light of certain frequencies, the current increases dramatically. [...]

 

Artists can submit visions of future interstellar travel to the FarMaker Interstellar Speed Sketch 2013 contest.

Obsessive-compulsive mice exhibit a defective grooming response during a conditioning task (credit: Eric Burguière et al./Science)

By applying optogenetics (light stimulation) to specific neurons in the brain, researchers at INSERM (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale) have re-established normal behavior in mice with pathological repetitive behavior similar to that observed in human patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorders.

Repetitive obsessive-compulsive disorders can become a real handicap to daily life (for example, washing hands up to 30 times a day; or checking excessively that a door is locked, etc.). Obsessive-compulsive disorders affect 2 to 3% of the population and in France, it is estimated that over one million persons are affected by this disorder.

The usual treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorders is to use pharmacological treatments (anti-depressants, neuroleptics) and/or behavioral psychotherapy. They don’t work in around one third of patients.

So it is necessary to gain better understanding of the cerebral mechanisms that cause these repetitive behavior patterns in order to provide better treatment.

Previous neuroimaging studies allowed the INSERM scientists to identify dysfunctional neuron circuits located between the front of the brain (the orbitofrontal cortex) and more deep-seated cerebral structures (ganglions at the base on the brain), in certain persons suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorders.

In this new study, Eric Burguière and his co-workers (in the laboratory of Prof. Ann Graybiel in MIT) concentrated their research on this neuron circuit to examine its function in detail and also to develop an approach to treating obsessive-compulsive disorders in a mutant mouse model.

In these mutant mice, the obsessive behavior was expressed by repeated grooming all day long, to such an extent that it caused cutaneous lesions. From a physiological point of view, these animals are failing to express a protein (caused by the absence of a gene Sapap3) that is normally present in the stratial neuron synapses, a structure that is part of the ganglions at the base of the brain and is involved in functions such as learning sequences, developing habits, or decision-making.

Initial observations of the mice allowed the researchers to show that the emergence of compulsive behavior in mutant mice was caused by a deficiency in behavioral inhibition. The mice are unable to stop the act of grooming, even when it is no longer necessary. The researchers then used recordings of the neuron activity to show that the dysfunction of communication in the brain between the neocortex and the striatum leads to hyperactivity of stratial neurons in mice.

Using light

To check this hypothesis, they used optogenetics. This method consists in modifying the previously identified neurons to make them express light-sensitive proteins known as opsins. Since these neuron cells are more sensitive to light, it becomes possible to control their activity by exciting them or inhibiting them using a simple light beam.

When the researchers used light stimulation to excite the neurons in the cortex that send messages to the striatum, the compulsive disorders of the mice were greatly attenuated.

“Our discoveries show that selective stimulation of the circuit can re-establish normal behavior in mice that originally presented pathological repetitive behavior, similar to the type of behavior observed in certain patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorders.” said Burguière.

Using optogenetics may allow for identifying the role played by neuron circuits in the brain that, if found to be dysfunctional, may cause pathological behavior.

“I have indeed decided to return to France as part of an Inserm team so that I can run a parallel study on the physiological and behavioral effects of deep cerebral stimulation on patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorders, and on mice using the optogenetics technique, in order to get a better understanding of how light stimulation works,” said Burguière.

 

See images of NASA's 2013 astronaut class, a mix of eight men and women that will become the next U.S. space travelers.

MACH interviews a participant (credit: Mohammed (Ehsan) Hoque et al.)

New software developed at MIT can be used to help people practice their interpersonal skills until they feel more comfortable with situations such as a job interview or a first date.

The software, called MACH (My Automated Conversation coacH), uses a computer-generated onscreen face, along with facial, speech, and behavior analysis and synthesis software, to simulate face-to-face conversations. It then provides users with feedback on their interactions.

Social phobias affect about 15 million adults in the United States, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, and surveys show that public speaking is high on the list of such phobias. For some people, these fears of social situations can be especially acute: For example, individuals with Asperger’s syndrome often have difficulty making eye contact and reacting appropriately to social cues. But with appropriate training, such difficulties can often be overcome.

The research was led by MIT Media Lab doctoral student M. Ehsan Hoque, who says the work could be helpful to a wide range of people. “Interpersonal skills are the key to being successful at work and at home,” Hoque says. “How we appear and how we convey our feelings to others define us. But there isn’t much help out there to improve on that segment of interaction.”

Many people with social phobias, Hoque says, want “the possibility of having some kind of automated system so that they can practice social interactions in their own environment. … They desire to control the pace of the interaction, practice as many times as they wish, and own their data.”

The MACH software offers all those features, Hoque says. In fact, in randomized tests with 90 MIT juniors who volunteered for the research, the software showed its value.

First, the test subjects — all of whom were native speakers of English — were randomly divided into three groups. Each group participated in two simulated job interviews, a week apart, with MIT career counselors.

But between the two interviews, unbeknownst to the counselors, the students received help: One group watched videos of interview advice, while a second group had a practice session with the MACH simulated interviewer, but received no feedback other than a video of their own performance. Finally, a third group used MACH and then saw videos of themselves accompanied by an analysis of such measures as how much they smiled, how well they maintained eye contact, how well they modulated their voices, and how often they used filler words such as “like,” “basically” and “umm.”

Evaluations by another group of career counselors showed statistically significant improvement by members of the third group on measures including “appears excited about the job,” “overall performance,” and “would you recommend hiring this person?” In all of these categories, by comparison, there was no significant change for the other two groups.

Laptop software

The software behind these improvements was developed over two years as part of Hoque’s doctoral thesis work with help from his advisor, professor of media arts and sciences Rosalind Picard, as well as Matthieu Courgeon and Jean-Claude Martin from LIMSI-CNRS in France, Bilge Mutlu from the University of Wisconsin, and MIT undergraduate Sumit Gogia.

Designed to run on an ordinary laptop, the system uses the computer’s webcam to monitor a user’s facial expressions and movements, and its microphone to capture the subject’s speech. The MACH system then analyzes the user’s smiles, head gestures, speech volume and speed, and use of filler words, among other things. The automated interviewer — a life-size, three-dimensional simulated face — can smile and nod in response to the subject’s speech and motions, ask questions and give responses.

“While it may seem odd to use computers to teach us how to better talk to people, such software plays an important [role] in more comprehensive programs for teaching social skills [and] may eventually play an essential step in developing key interpersonal skills,” says Jonathan Gratch, a research associate professor of computer science and psychology at the University of Southern California who was not involved in this research. “Such programs also offer important advantages over the human role-players often used to teach such skills. They can faithfully embody a specific theory of pedagogy, and thus can be more consistent than human role-players.”

One reason the automated system’s feedback is effective, Hoque believes, is precisely because it’s not human: “It’s easier to tell the brutal truth through the [software],” he says, “because it’s objective.”

While this initial implementation was focused on helping job candidates, Hoque says training with the software could be helpful in many kinds of social interactions.

After finishing his doctorate in media arts and sciences this summer, Hoque will become an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Rochester in the fall.

The Lone Signal project wants to send your notes out into the universe.

Over the last two weeks I've posted the first four parts of the fantastic Standing With Stones documentary (England and Wales and Ireland), filmed over the course of a two year tour of the monuments by film-maker Michael Bott and presenter Rupert Soskin. If you're in a hurry to watch the entire thing, head to the Vimeo album that Michael Bott has put together. Otherwise, embedded in this story are the final three instalments in the series, featuring the megaliths of northern England and the Isle of Man, Scotland, and the Scottish Isles.

If you watch and enjoy the film, make sure you do the right thing by heading to the Standing With Stones website and donating a dollar or ten to the film-makers - I'm sure you'll agree its richly deserved, and we should be encouraging and helping to fund more features like this one by open-minded, independent people. They're still to recover production costs from two years of filming, so if you can spare the change do it!

Previously on TDG:

• Standing With Stones: Megalithic England
• Standing With Stones: Megalithic Wales and Ireland

(Credit: Anthony Leonardo, Janelia Farm Research Campus/HHMI)

Neuroscientist Anthony Leonardo created the tiny dragonfly backpack above to study how circuits of neurons do rapid computations to catch a mosquito in air, Wired reports.

Electrodes inserted into the dragonfly’s body and brain record the electrical activity of neurons, and a custom-made chip amplifies the signals and transmits them wirelessly to a nearby computer.

The researchers came up with a clever solution to power the chip without adding so much mass that the insects couldn’t get off the ground, based on the same technology found in the RFID key card access system used in many office buildings.

There, a reader, usually a small pad next to a door, emits radio waves to create a magnetic field. When a key card gets close enough to the reader, the magnetic field induces a current that powers a chip inside the card, enabling it to transmit a code to unlock the door.

The two long antennae on the dragonfly backpack harvest radio waves and power the chip in a similar way. Eliminating the need for a battery on the backpack was the key to keeping the weight down. [...]

 

(Credit: Kone)

With a new lightweight material known as UltraRope, however, elevators should now be able to travel up to one kilometer (3,281 ft) continuously, Gizmag reports.

Using traditional steel lifting cables, they can’t go farther than 500 meters (1,640 ft) in one vertical run.

UltraRope from Finnish elevator manufacturer Kone, unveiled this Monday in London, is ribbon- or tape-like in form and composed of a carbon fiber core. It is twice as strong as steel. [....]

Hubble Ultra Deep Field image (credit: NASA, STScI, ESA)

A new technique that will provide a clearer picture of the Universe’s history and future has been developed by researchers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).

Described in research published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, ICRAR PhD Candidate Jacinta Delhaize is studying distant galaxies to determine how much hydrogen they contain — by “stacking” their signals.

Delhaize said that one of the pieces of the puzzle is hydrogen gas and how much of it galaxies contained through the history of the Universe.

“Hydrogen is the building block of the Universe, it’s what stars form from and what keeps a galaxy ‘alive’,” said Delhaize.

“Galaxies in the past formed stars at a much faster rate than galaxies now. We think that past galaxies had more hydrogen, and that might be why their star formation rate is higher.

Delhaize and her supervisors set out to observe how much hydrogen was in far away galaxies, but the faint radio signals of this distant hydrogen gas are almost impossible to detect directly. This is where the new stacking technique comes in.

Jacinta Delhaize with CSIRO’s Parkes Radio Telescope during one of her data collecting trips (credit: Anita Redfern Photography)

To gather enough data for her research, Delhaize detected weak signals from thousands of individual galaxies, combining them to produce a strong averaged signal that is easier to study.

The research used CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope to survey a large section of the sky for 87 hours, collecting signals from hydrogen over an unmatched volume of space and up to two billion years back in time.

Delhaize said observing such a large volume of space meant that she could accurately calculate the average amount of hydrogen in galaxies at a certain distance from Earth, corresponding to a particular period in the Universe’s history.

This provides information that can be used in simulations of the Universe’s evolution and clues to how galaxies formed and changed over time.

Image enhancement by combining multiple images

“Usually astronomers take multiple images of the same object, then combine the images together to obtain a clearer picture (like taking a longer exposure),” Delhaize explained to KurzweilAI. “What we are doing here is combining together brief observations (like short exposures) of the hydrogen signal from many ‘different’ galaxies to get information about the average properties of the galaxies.So while we don’t know anything about any individual galaxies, we have lots of information about the average properties of a population.

“This spectral stacking has been used a few times in the past, but here we have shown that it can be used to study a very large volume of the Universe, which means you can accurately calculate the density of hydrogen out to large distances in the Universe.

“We stacked together 15,093 galaxies between 0 and 0.5 billion light years away, and 3,277 galaxies between 0.5 and 2 billion light years away. By comparing these two samples we found that there is no observable evidence for evolution in the density of hydrogen in the Universe out to this distance — that is, over the past 2 billion years, the total density of hydrogen in the Universe has not changed. Important pieces of information like this help astronomers to simulate galaxy evolution more accurately, and hence to understand the history of the Universe.”

Next-generation telescopes like the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and CSIRO’s Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) will be able to observe even larger volumes of the Universe with higher resolution.

“That makes them fast, accurate and perfect for studying the distant Universe. We can use the stacking technique to get every last piece of valuable information out of their observations,” said Delhaize.

Jacinta Delhaize was the 2008 Western Australian Science Student of the Year and will complete her PhD at The University of Western Australia node of ICRAR later this year. ICRAR is a joint venture between Curtin University and The University of Western Australia providing research excellence in the field of radio astronomy.

The rumors are true. In mid-March, word arrived by way of a publication called FCW that Amazon, the king of cloud computing, had inked a contract with the Central Intelligence Agency to provide $600 million in cloud services over the next decade, and last week, Amazon openly confirmed the deal -- if not the price tag -- after rival IBM filed a formal protest over the pact.