science wire

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Next time you go on vacation, you may want to think twice before shooting hundreds of photos of that scenic mountain or lake. A new study from MIT neuroscientists shows that the most memorable photos are those that contain people, followed by static indoor scenes and human-scale objects.

Researchers at the Stanford Security Laboratory create a computer program to defeat audio captchas on website account registration forms, revealing a design flaw that leaves them vulnerable to automated attacks. BY MELISSAE FELLET Stanford researchers have found an audible security weakness on the Internet.

The University of Sydney is leading an investigation into the use of online social networking tools and other information technologies by older Australians as a means of combating social isolation and increasing community engagement of seniors.

By Melissa Beattie-Moss Research/Penn State Want to know what mainstream America's ideal moms looked like 50 years ago?

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Without Internet access at home, teens from low income households are more likely than their wealthier counterparts to use their cell phones to go online. But those teens with the least money who are using their phones for Internet access are likely paying the most to get online, according to a new study by University of Michigan researchers.

Thanks to the raising of three million dollars, Martin Odersky has just created the company Typesafe.

PA. A Nottingham student is bringing the plight of one of Brazil's most threatened ecosystems to the heart of British forests as part of an ambitious art installation aimed at increasing public understanding of climate science.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. At first glance, a diagram of the complex network of genes that regulate cellular metabolism might seem hopelessly complex, and efforts to control such a system futile. However, an MIT researcher has come up with a new computational model that can analyze any type of complex network - biological, social or electronic - and reveal the critical points that can be used to control the entire system.

A fundamentally new approach to glasses-free 3-D displays could save power, widen the viewing angle and make 3-D illusions more realistic.

Much more than an exhibition, the Robotics Festival will enable both children and adults to better understand the technology behind these devices - of varying shapes and astonishing abilities - through touching, building and programming.

In 1957, Max Mathews invented a program that allowed a mainframe computer to play a 17-second musical composition.

The Australian National University continues to be at the forefront of national and international solar research thanks to funding provided by the Commonwealth via the Australian Solar Institute (ASI).

San Diego Supercomputer Center UC San Diego CONNECT "Data Deluge" is Changing, Expanding Supercomputer-based Research April 22, 2011 By Jan Zverina The exponentially increasing amount of digital info

The lives of prominent and ordinary Australians who have come and gone will be resurrected in the digital afterlife through a new website being launched at The Australian National University today .

Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN) LCTES Cyber-Physical Systems Calit2 UC San Diego Computer Scientists Propose Novel Solution to Reduce HVAC Power Consumption April 13, 2011 By Doug Ra

University Park, Pa. All of those Twitter tweets and Facebook friends may have value after all, according to Penn State researchers.

How Much Information? Project How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers Global Information Industry Center San Diego Supercomputer Center to Open Large-scale Data Systems Research Cente

New Oxford University research shows that membership of the British National Party (BNP) is higher where whites and non-whites live in segregated areas.

Koronis will aid researchers focusing on biological and medical sciences MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (04/06/2011) —The University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute for Advanced Computatio

Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3) Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities (MEGA) &md

AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin today will dedicate Lonestar 4, its newest supercomputer, as part of the advanced computing arsenal for the state of Texas and the nation. The National Science Foundation (NSF), The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Texas System, the UT Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences , Texas A&M University, Texas Tech University and multiple technology partners committed $12 million to deploy this new supercomputer.

AUSTIN, Texas — Six assistant professors at The University of Texas at Austin received Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards totaling nearly $3 million from the National Science Foundation. The CAREER awards recognize promising young faculty and supports their research with five years of funding.

The University of Bristol has received £1.6million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council UK (EPSRC) to establish a new centre for research into how decisions are made. This work will ultimately lead to better artificial decision making systems such as computer-based traffic flow systems, automatic stock market trading systems and early warning systems for disasters.

Setting the aeronautics field aflutter, advanced mathematics outduels supercomputers to quell a deadly aeronautical vibration phenomenon.

A survey of IT experts by the University of Sydney lends further weight to calls to halt the rollout of the NSW Clinical Information System FirstNet, with a review finding the system should be spearheaded by an IT-savvy clinician.

Watson, IBM's celebrity supercomputer, has already trounced the two best human Jeopardy! players. But does the computer, which uses natural language processing to interpret complex, nuanced questions and provide accurate answers in English, have a bedside manner?

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Engineering researchers at the University of Michigan have found a way to improve the performance of ferroelectric materials, which have the potential to make memory devices with more storage capacity than magnetic hard drives and faster write speed and longer lifetimes than flash memory.

The second Creative Economy report of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is officially launched today (11 March) at King's College London by Edna Dos Santos-Duisenberg, Chief of the Creative Economy and Industries Programme at UNCTAD.

AUSTIN, Texas — A  database and Web site tool that tracks social conflict in Africa has been created by the Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS) program at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. The Social Conflict in Africa Database (SCAD) provides information that has never been tracked before on more than 6,300 social conflict events across Africa, including strikes, riots, protests, coups and communal violence from 1990 and 2009.

Alireza Shabani , a postdoctoral research associate in chemistry at Princeton University , and an international team of scientists have removed a major obstacle in the quest to engineer quantum systems that will play a major role in the computers, communication networks and biomedical devices of the future.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Think picking all the top-seeded teams as the Final Four in your March Madness bracket is your best bet for winning the office pool? Think again.

Cambridge, MA - The Sun has been in the news a lot lately because it's beginning to send out more flares and solar storms. Its recent turmoil is particularly newsworthy because the Sun was very quiet for an unusually long time. Astronomers had a tough time explaining the extended solar minimum. New computer simulations imply that the Sun's long quiet spell resulted from changing flows of hot plasma within it.

A research group led by scientists from the University of Bristol has demonstrated the quantum operation of new components that will enable compact circuits for future photonic quantum computers. Quantum computers, holding the great promise of tremendous computational power for particular tasks, have been the goal of worldwide efforts by scientists for several years.

Zurich, Switzerland, 1 Mar 2011—Energy consumption poses a critical challenge in the development of next-generation supercomputers and IT systems.

SDSC UC San Diego NICS National Science Foundation TeraGrid The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, has deployed a new high-performance computer (HPC) ca