Researchers have demonstrated that laser emissions can be created through the interaction of light and water waves. This ‘water-wave laser’ could someday be used in tiny sensors or ‘lab-on-a-chip’ devices used to test new drug therapies. (via WSJ)
November 30, 2016 by: FT Confidential Research The FTCR China Business Activity Index, a composite reading of the month-on-month change in activity in the real estate, export and freight sectors, fell to a 10-month low in November. The index dropped to 47.8 from 50 in October, below last November’s 48.6. Our BAI readings have always fallen sequentially in November but this is the weakest reading for the […]
Identity and access management is on the cusp of changes that will help define its overall role in enterprise security, adapt it to meet new access requirements, and combine it with security tools to form protection that extends to devices, cloud services and customer identification. This evolution was outlined Tuesday during the opening keynote at the Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit in Las Vegas. “The undercurrent […]
By Katharine Houreld | NAIROBI NAIROBI When Western navies raided three dhows in the Arabian Sea this year, some of the weapons they found matched arms taken from Houthi rebels in Yemen, a report said, suggesting links between Iranian suppliers and the Yemeni war. Two of the dhows, all of which were unregistered and therefore stateless, were manufactured by Al Mansoor, an Iranian shipbuilder whose yard is next […]
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon addresses the Annual Conference of Swiss Developement Cooperation in Zurich, Switzerland January 22, 2016. On the screen behind are displayed the 17 goals of UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann). Emerging Voices highlights new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges from contributing scholars and practitioners. This post is from Niklas Kossow, communications officer for the European Union FP7 ANTICORRP […]
New research by a mathematics professor has successfully reactivated oscillations in insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells — one of the first necessary steps to resurrecting the dormant cells and restoring the production of insulin. (via WSJ)
5836 25 by Shannon K. O’Neil November 11, 2016 A man displays a new 2000 Indian rupee banknote after withdrawing from a bank (Reuters/Mukesh Gupta). France’s Anticorruption ReformsAfter years of criticism for failing to prosecute foreign bribery, France adopted a new anticorruption law that will force companies doing business on its soil to take more aggressive preventative measures, and also gives the government stronger tools to fight […]
4224 28 by Adam Segal November 18, 2016 A man is silhouetted against a video screen with an Facebook logo as he poses with an Samsung S4 smartphone in this photo illustration taken in the central Bosnian town of Zenica, August 14, 2013. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters) Here is a quick round-up of this week’s technology headlines and related stories you may have missed: 1. Disinformation. Disinformation everywhere. Since Donald Trump’s […]
People have a general idea of how much a rocket-propelled grenade costs. What about a cyber weapon? (Baz Ratner/Reuters), Max Smeets is a D.Phil candidate and research affiliate of the Cyber Studies Programme at the University of Oxford. His work analyzes the proliferation of cyber weapons. Can a non-state actor take down critical infrastructure with a cyberattack? If it is not possible today, will it be possible […]
The AI can add animations to static images, although the researchers acknowledge that it rarely generates the “correct” future. Image: MIT Researchers have developed a deep-learning system that can do the very human task of interpreting what’s happening in a photo and guessing what’s likely to happen next. Better yet, the system, developed by machine-learning researchers at MIT, can express its idea of a plausible future by […]
Children may learn new words using the same method as robots. New research suggests that early learning is based not on conscious thought but on an automatic ability to associate objects, which enables babies to quickly make sense of their environment. (via WSJ)
The Lego-compatible, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-enabled SBricks Plus have four ports that are inputs and outputs, so you can attach sensors, motors, and lights. Image: Vengit Remember those colored bricks you used to play with as a child, or possibly much more recently? They were great, and still are, for building anything from bridges to trains. But in hindsight they lacked one thing: interactivity. Things started to change […]
Malwarebytes Ransomware continues to evolve and it is becoming more and more of a challenge for the general public to stay shielded from such threats and security experts to stay on top of the evolving strains of ransomware being found in the wild. It is not just the malicious code itself, however, which is a problem. Now, support scammers are taking tips from ransomware developers to make […]
Although women comprise a small fraction of tech professionals—just one in four, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology—several nonprofits and startups are working to jumpstart women’s participation in computer science. In a previous column, I considered Grace Hopper Academy, a New York City coding bootcamp designed explicitly for women. GHA’s sister school, Fullstack Academy, takes that program online with a Remote […]
Every tech magazine comes out with a “best products of the year” list at around this time. Readers love lists—and it is shopping season, after all. Plus, it’s an easy story to do: Just open up a Web browser and start searching for the best of everything, then rewrite what you read online. Maybe throw in a few outliers, so the list is less generic than the […]
(Image: file photo) Nearly a million users across Europe were thrown off the internet during the weekend into Monday after criminals tried to hijack home routers as part of a coordinated cyber attack. Security researchers said that routers provided to customers in Germany by their internet providers were at risk of attack from the notorious Mirai malware, most notable for its large-scale botnet that brought parts of […]
Two weeks before the election, I traveled to Maine for a conference and drove through Massachusetts and New Hampshire on my way. In Silicon Valley, which was mostly Clinton country, I’d seen very few signs or bumper stickers promoting any candidates. But as I drove through the northeast, plenty of Trump signs were displayed on people’s lawns, fences, and car bumpers. I did see a […]
The Surface Phone is probably closer than most people think, at least according to a report by Chinese financial publication Commercial Times, who claims that Pegatron, a main supplier for Apple, is reportedly working with Microsoft and is already administering production trials of the enigmatic Surface Phone. Surface Phone Rumors The Surface-branded phone has enjoyed its wealth of rumors in recent months. Others predict it as a high-end […]
Opec’s most powerful members were rushing on Tuesday to rescue a supply deal designed to end the longest oil price crash in a generation. Saudi Arabia, Opec’s largest producer, and its arch rival Iran have both set out their positions ahead of Wednesday’s ministerial meeting in Vienna, with the kingdom hinting it could walk away from a deal if its conditions are not met and Tehran publicly […]
Qatar’s foreign trade surplus shrank by 34 percent from a year earlier to QR7.7 billion ($2.11 billion) in October, according to data from the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics. The surplus slumped from more than QR11.6 billion in the year-earlier period because of low natural gas and oil prices. Exports of petroleum gases and other gaseous hydrocarbons fell 19.8 percent to QR11 billion, according to the […]
Higher than normal water temperatures have caused the largest die-off of corals ever recorded on the Great Barrier Reef, scientists said on Tuesday. Two-thirds of the corals living in shallow waters in a 700km swath of reef in the northern region have been killed by a massive coral bleaching event over the past eight to nine months, according to the Australian Research Council of Excellence for Coral […]
The aim of a new research project was to analyze learning using Augmented Reality (AR) technology and the motivational and cognitive aspects related to it in an informal learning context. (via WSJ)
While there is no sign of our collective obsession with social media fading any time soon, there is also a growing determination by some to cut all ties and go on a technology detox. It sometimes feels as if new platforms for posting, sharing and pontificating are appearing by the day. With so many outlets for people to share their opinions and views of the world, and […]
A research group has developed a hydrogen-carrying polymer, which can be molded as a tangible, safe, and compact plastic sheet. Source
