News
NSA revelations force question: What do we want?
June 10, 2013 11:06 am | by ADAM GELLER, AP National Writer | CommentsWe knew that the technology was there. We knew that the law might allow it. As we stood under a security camera at a street corner, connected with friends online or talked on a smartphone equipped with GPS, we knew, too, it was conceivable that we might be monitored.
'One giant leap' toward a NASA Armstrong center?
June 10, 2013 10:37 am | by ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer | CommentsNeil Armstrong's name is attached to a lunar crater, an asteroid, more than a dozen schools and a museum, but not a single NASA facility is christened in honor of the man whose "giant leap" made him the first to walk on the moon. All that could soon change on the fringes of the Mojave Desert...
Denials in surveillance program require decoding
June 10, 2013 10:29 am | by MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer | CommentsGoogle CEO Larry Page and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg are denying reports that depict two of the Internet's most influential companies as willing participants in a secret government program that gives the National Security Agency unfettered access to email and other personal information transmitted on various online services.
Leak of NSA programs tests US, China ties
June 10, 2013 10:14 am | by GILLIAN WONG, Associated Press | CommentsA day after the presidents of China and the United States ended their first summit, pledges of cooperation by the two leaders faced an early test from an unexpected quarter -- an American intelligence contractor was leaking highly sensitive U.S. surveillance programs from his hiding place in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong.
Securing the cloud
June 10, 2013 12:00 am | by Massachusetts Institute of Technology | CommentsHomomorphic encryption is one of the most exciting new research topics in cryptography, which promises to make cloud computing perfectly secure. With it, a Web user would send encrypted data to a server in the cloud, which would process it without decrypting it and send back a still-encrypted result. Sometimes, however, the server needs to know something about the data it’s handling. Otherwise, some computational tasks become prohibit...
Music service, mobile software expected from Apple
June 9, 2013 11:24 am | by ANICK JESDANUN - AP Technology Writer - Associated Press | CommentsA digital radio service and changes to the software behind iPhones and iPads are among the features expected Monday as Apple opens its annual conference for software developers in San Francisco. Apple is expected to unveil a simplified look to iOS, the software that runs iPhones and iPads. If the...
Microsoft, HP make laptop pitch to Maine educators
June 8, 2013 10:46 am | by DAVID SHARP - Associated Press - Associated Press | CommentsRepresentatives of Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard are making the rounds to build support as Maine educators decide which laptops or tablets they're going to provide to more than 70,000 middle and high school students this fall. Microsoft Education's chief technology officer Cameron Evans...
Denials in surveillance program require decoding
June 7, 2013 8:22 pm | by MICHAEL LIEDTKE - AP Technology Writer - Associated Press | CommentsGoogle CEO Larry Page and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg are denying reports that depict two of the Internet's most influential companies as willing participants in a secret government program that gives the National Security Agency unfettered access to email and other personal...
Is Big Data turning government into 'Big Brother?'
June 7, 2013 3:08 am | by MICHAEL LIEDTKE - AP Technology Writer - Associated Press | CommentsThe revelations that the National Security Agency is perusing millions of U.S. customer phone records at Verizon Communications and snooping on the digital communications stored by nine major Internet services illustrate how aggressively personal data is being collected and analyzed.
Promising material for lithium-ion batteries
June 6, 2013 3:26 pm | by Technische Universitaet Muenchen | CommentsSo far, the negative electrode typically consists of graphite, whose layers can store lithium atoms. Scientists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) have now developed a material made of boron and silicon that could smooth the way to systems with higher capacities.
Study suggests second life for possible spintronic materials
June 6, 2013 3:16 pm | by EurekAlert! | CommentsTen years ago, scientists were convinced that a combination of manganese and gallium nitride could be a key material to create spintronics, the next generation of electronic devices that operate on properties found at the nanoscale. But researchers grew discouraged when experiments indicated that the two materials were as harmonious as oil and water.
Icahn and Southeastern push against Dell buyout
June 6, 2013 3:11 pm | by The Associated Press | CommentsActivist investor Carl Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management Inc. are formally urging Dell shareholders to reject a buyout offer from the struggling PC maker's founder and investment firm Silver Lake Partners. Dell Inc. has agreed to sell itself to founder and CEO Michael Dell and Silver Lake...
Wi-Fi signals enable gesture recognition throughout entire home
June 6, 2013 3:03 pm | by University of Washington | CommentsForget to turn off the lights before leaving the apartment? No problem. Just raise your hand, finger-swipe the air, and your lights will power down. Want to change the song playing on your music system in the other room? Move your hand to the right and flip through the songs.
'Temporal cloaking' could bring more secure optical communications
June 6, 2013 2:39 pm | by Purdue University | CommentsResearchers have demonstrated a method for "temporal cloaking" of optical communications, representing a potential tool to thwart would-be eavesdroppers and improve security for telecommunications. "More work has to be done before this approach finds practical application, but it does use technology that could integrate smoothly..."
New all-solid sulfur-based battery outperforms lithium-ion technology
June 6, 2013 12:43 pm | by ORNL | CommentsScientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have designed and tested an all-solid lithium-sulfur battery with approximately four times the energy density of conventional lithium-ion technologies that power today's electronics. The ORNL battery design, which uses abundant low-cost elemental sulfur...
