The need to use proprietary Lightning cables with your iPhone creates some complications, including for external batteries — you’ll have to carry a separate cable just to top up your power pack. We can’t guarantee that Apple will solve the problem by switching to USB, but you can get the next best thing. Belkin has […]
Researchers who set out to investigate whether smartphones eavesdrop on consumers’ conversations debunked one conspiracy theory and ended up finding another “disturbing practice.” Five researchers from Northeastern University in Boston, who specialize in computer science, studied more than 17,000 popular Android apps — nearly half of which were allowed access to a user’s camera and […]
Scientists have long known that diamond is the best material for conducting heat, but it has drawbacks: It is costly and is an electrical insulator; when paired with a semiconductor device, diamond expands at a different rate than the device does when it is heated. Now a group of researchers from around the United States […]
In an ultracold quantum gas, collective interactions among the particles can lead to many forms of unusual behavior, such as superfluidity. Researchers have now observed a new collective phenomenon in a spinor gas—an ultracold atomic cloud that has both magnetic and superfluid properties. Laurent Vernac and colleagues from the University of Paris 13 in Villetaneuse […]
Einstein’s understanding of gravity, as outlined in his general theory of relativity, predicts that all objects fall at the same rate, regardless of their mass or composition. This theory has passed test after test here on Earth, but does it still hold true for some of the most massive and dense objects in the known […]
Last month a rocket thundered off a NASA launch pad in Virginia, destined for the International Space Station. Nestled among the 7,400 lbs. of supplies was a handful of seeds designed to open new windows into our knowledge of how plants grow in space – information that could lead to growing fresh food in space […]
Events If you’re sweating about how to get on top of machine learning and AI, snap up an early bird ticket for MCubed, our three-day delve into how real organisations can exploit these technologies. With two superb keynote speakers, 36 conference sessions, and four optional deep dive workshops, there’s no better way to get to […]
Advances in machine learning, including deep learning, have propelled artificial intelligence (AI) into the public conscience and forced executives to create new business plans based on data. However, the scarcity of highly trained data scientists has stymied many machine learning implementations, potentially blocking future AI development. Now a group of academics and technologists say the […]
Google has published a new blog post in response to a story from The Wall Street Journal yesterday that detailed how common it is for third-party app developers to be able to read and analyze the contents of a user’s Gmail message. While not offering any substantially new insights into the industry practice, now understood […]
It doesn’t seem to be a good year for Microsoft fans, especially fans waiting for the Windows-powered mobile device to show them all who’s boss. Actually, it has never been a good few years for Windows Phone/Windows Mobile believers and, at least for now, it sounds like they never will have a good year. The […]
Scientists haven’t conclusively spotted any new particles since the Higgs boson, and that’s got some people worried—there are a ton of other physics puzzles remaining, many of which would require the presence of a new particle to resolve. But recently, there have been some tantalizing clues of new physics, perhaps a new particle, that many […]
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Germany has found a second skyrmion phase in a sample of Cu2OSeO3. In their paper published in the journal Nature Physics, the group describes how they found the second phase and the implications of their results. Skyrmions are magnetic anomalies found in some materials. They appear […]
