Ants can get their bearings whatever the orientation of their body, new research shows. Their brains may be smaller than the head of a pin, but ants are excellent navigators that use celestial and terrestrial cues to memorize their paths. To do so, they use several regions of the brain simultaneously, proving once again that the brain of insects is more complex than thought. Source
19 January 2017 Leading global publisher The Business Year (TBY) recently met with HE Essam Abdul Mohsen Al-Marzouq, the newly appointed Minister of Oil and the Minister of Electricity and Water of Kuwait. The Minister spoke extensively about privatization plans in the electricity sector and elaborated on his intentions to move the Ministry of Electricity and Water away from being a producer in order to become more […]
PALO ALTO, Calif. With monetary policy still modestly accommodative, the U.S. central bank should continue to raise interest rates slowly to keep jobs plentiful and inflation low, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said on Thursday. “I think that allowing the economy to run markedly and persistently “hot” would be risky and unwise,” Yellen said in remarks prepared for delivery to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. […]
Lawmakers, government officials, and aid workers are bracing themselves for a broad offensive from President-elect Donald Trump against federal programs that support family planning and gender equality around the world. As one of his first acts in the Oval Office, the Republican president-elect plans to restore the “Mexico City policy” as soon as Sunday, a congressional staffer told Foreign Policy. Also known as the “global gag rule,” […]
Submitted by Peter Schiff via Euro Pacific Capital, There is much we don’t know about how the Trump presidency will play out. Will the Wall get built? Who will pay for it? Will it have at least some fencing? Will repeal and replace happen at exactly the same time? Will Trump throw a ceremonial switch? Will there be a Trump National Golf Course in Sochi? It’s anyone’s […]
A new system called Data Civilizer automatically finds connections among many different data tables and allows users to perform database-style queries across all of them. The results of the queries can then be saved as new, orderly data sets that may draw information from dozens or even thousands of different tables. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology The age of big data has seen a host of new […]
Researchers have written computer programs that found patterns among anonymized data about web traffic and used those patterns to identify individual users. The researchers note web users with active social media are vulnerable to the attack. (via WSJ)
An example question from the Raven’s Progressive Matrices standardized test. The test taker should choose answer D because the relationships between it and the other elements in the bottom row are most similar to the relationships between the elements of the top rows. Credit: Ken Forbus A Northwestern University team developed a new computational model that performs at human levels on a standard intelligence test. This work […]
While some scientists believe that the world can achieve significant dematerialization through improvements in technology, a new study finds that technological advances alone will not bring about dematerialization and, ultimately, a sustainable world. The researchers found that no matter how much more efficient and compact a product is made, consumers will only demand more of that product and in the long run increase the total amount of […]
The world relies heavily on gasoline and other hydrocarbons to power its cars and trucks. In search of an alternative fuel type, some researchers are turning to the stuff of fireworks and explosives: metal powders. And now one team is reporting a method to produce a metal nanopowder fuel with high energy content that is stable in air and doesn’t go boom until ignited. (via WSJ)
Harris was initially pleased by this development. Top predators have long played an important role in nature. Wolves and cougars once put pressure on bison to keep moving over long ranges of land, and he says, “There was never overgrazing because the predators were behind the animals pushing them on, giving the land naturally a chance to rest.” Harris mimics that cycle of rotation and rest in […]
Tesla Panasonic hopes to work with Tesla to produce more than just batteries for next generation vehicles as the company continues to move further into the automotive field. As reported by Reuters on Thursday, Panasonic CEO Kazuhiro Tsuga said in an interview that the company is “deeply interested” in Tesla’s self-driving vehicle system and ambitions, and hopes to “expand our collaboration by jointly developing devices for that, […]
Researchers have devised a new way to protect personal electronic health records using a patient’s own heartbeat. (via WSJ)
ABU DHABI // More than 30 Christian leaders held prayers at the site of a 7th century monastery on Abu Dhabi’s Sir Bani Yas Island during a landmark visit sponsored by the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Court and the National Programme for Tolerance. The recitation of the Lord’s Prayer by Christian leaders, including the regional archbishops of the Syrian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox churches, is thought to […]
Fruit flies — the tiny insects that swarm our kitchens over the summer months — exhibit rational decision making when selecting mates, according to new research. Scientists observed different combinations of fruit flies mate about 2,700 times, and were surprised to discover that male flies almost always pick the female mate that would produce the most offspring. The study provides the first evidence that fruit flies are […]
Research used anonymous Facebook data from almost 17 million social connections in 55 countries to determine that the role of weak and strong ties in job searches is important around the world, but the value of a single strong tie is even more important for job seekers in countries with pronounced income inequality. (via WSJ)
Support from alumnus creates new opportunities for scholarship and academic exchange CAMBRIDGE, United States of America, January 18, 2017 The Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) (https://CMES.fas.Harvard.edu) at Harvard University today opened its first overseas office, in Tunisia, home to a tradition of learning and research that extends from Antiquity to the present. The office and the year-round programs run from the location are made possible by […]
An important step towards a completely new experimental access to quantum physics has been made by researchers in Germany. The team of scientists has now shown how to manipulate the electric vacuum field and thus generate deviations from the ground state of empty space which can only be understood in the context of the quantum theory of light. (via WSJ)
By Lisa Richwine and Anya George Tharakan Streaming video pioneer Netflix Inc added over a third more subscribers than expected in the last quarter of 2016, a sign of success for its ambitious global expansion that sent its shares up 8 percent in extended trading. Netflix signed up 7.1 million new subscribers globally, far more than the 5.2 million analysts had expected, according to research firm FactSet, […]
Researchers have developed a general framework to design reconfigurable metamaterials. The design strategy is scale independent, meaning it can be applied to everything from meter-scale architectures to reconfigurable nano-scale systems such as photonic crystals, waveguides and metamaterials to guide heat. (via WSJ)
Via ConvergEx’s Nicholas Colas, Want to know why US stocks feel so fragile? Perhaps we can blame Wall Street analysts. Even after two months of market buzz about lower taxes, infrastructure spending and less regulation juicing investor expectations for better earnings growth, they refuse to bump their revenue or earnings estimates for 2017. Our monthly look at revenue expectations for the companies of the Dow […]
A few cities are already building data marketplaces, especially in light of the increasing streams of data from the IoT. Getty Images/iStockphoto If you live in a big city, chances are pretty good that you’ll be sharing a lot more of your personal information with government entities within a few years. special feature Louisville and the Future of the Smart City Louisville, Kentucky is building a unique […]
A customizable soft robot that fits around a heart and helps it beat has now been developed by researchers, potentially opening new treatment options for people suffering from heart failure. (via WSJ)
By Kate Kelland | DAVOS, Switzerland, DAVOS, Switzerland, A global coalition of governments, health specialists and philanthropists will launch a new plan on Thursday to “outsmart” future disease epidemics with a fund to prepare and create new vaccines. Stung by the devastation of West Africa’s 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak, which killed more than 11,300 people before an effective vaccine was developed, the coalition is aiming to ensure such […]
