Mark Zuckerberg gets married at surprise wedding

Less than 100 people arrived at the Facebook CEO's Palo Alto, Calif., home today thinking they were there for his girlfriend's graduation ceremony. Instead, the two shared their vows. [Read more]

Here's how desperately cities want Apple stores

According to a report, Apple gets hugely preferential leases just to open its stores in certain cities and locations. Why is anyone surprised? [Read more]

China to Google: Android must remain open

In OKing the Google-Motorola merger, regulators in China stipulate that Google must make the Android OS free and open for five years. [Read more]

Do hybrid cars kill you with silence?

This summer, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration will begin creating guidelines for the minimum amount of noise a car engine can emit -- at lower speeds hybrid and electric cars cause too many accidents. [Read more]

Are people more honest when they text?

A study at the University of Michigan suggests not only that we are likely to tell the truth when we let our fingers do the talking, but that we're also more likely to give more detailed and precise answers to questions. [Read more]

VU offers safe viewing of partial solar eclipse tonight - nwitimes.com

USA TODAY

VU offers safe viewing of partial solar eclipse tonight nwitimes.com VALPARAISO | The Valparaiso University Department of Physics and Astronomy will host a viewing of the partial annular solar eclipse predicted to occur from 7:22 pm to about 8:05 pm today. The viewing will take place from the top floor of the parking ... Where to View the Annular Solar EclipseKREX News Channel 5 The annular eclipse will be visible in parts of Asia and western United StatesCNN International Southland Prepares for Partial Solar EclipsePatch.com ksl.com -USA TODAY -Alamogordo Daily News all 1,253 news articles »

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg weds one day after IPO - USA TODAY

USA TODAY

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg weds one day after IPO USA TODAY SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? A day after the historic Facebook IPO, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg updated his status Saturday to "married." By Allyson Magda, Handout via AP This photo provided by Facebook shows Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and ... Status: married. Surprise update as Mark Zuckerberg weds Priscilla ChanThe Guardian Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg weds Priscilla ChanSan Francisco Chronicle Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg updates relationship status to 'married'CNN BusinessWeek -San Jose Mercury News all 891 news articles »

SpaceX's Commercial Launch to Space Station Aborted at Liftoff - Bl…

Bloomberg

SpaceX's Commercial Launch to Space Station Aborted at Liftoff Bloomberg A US mission to send the first unmanned commercial spacecraft to the International Space Station was aborted with a half second left in the countdown. Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the company's Dragon capsule, ... SpaceX rocket launch aborted in split-second before liftoffNewsOK.com SpaceX launch to space station abortedStandardNet SpaceX to try another rocket launch TuesdayUSA TODAY Ocala all 1,964 news articles »

Dust 514 gets beta registration - SlashGear

SlashGear

Dust 514 gets beta registration SlashGear Publisher CCP Games is now letting numerous other players get in on the beta for the free-to-play massively multiplayer title on the PS3, Dust 514. The company announced that it has plans to massively expand its online beta throughout the summer. Dust 514 beta registration opensComputerandvideogames.com DUST 514 beta registration opens up, EVE players get first accessNeoseeker Dust 514 Beta Registration Now Open For PS3 GamersCinema Blend ZoKnowsGaming -PSX Extreme all 23 news articles »

Google patent sends ring signals to Project Glass - Phys.Org

BBC News

Google patent sends ring signals to Project Glass Phys.Org (Phys.org) -- Google's September 2011 patent that was filed for a wearable display device was granted this week, which suggests that its envisioned heads-up display device can be controlled by infrared markers in the form of devices worn on the hands, ... Those suave Google glasses are now patent-protectedEngadget Google Patent Suggests New Direction For Project Glass Augmented Reality InterfaceWired News Google patents Project Glass wearable displayCNET TechCrunch -SlashGear -DVICE all 40 news articles »

Google patent sends ring signals to Project Glass

(Phys.org) -- Google's September 2011 patent that was filed for a wearable display device was granted this week, which suggests that its envisioned heads-up display device can be controlled by infrared markers in the form of devices worn on the hands, such as fake fingernails or rings. The patent says, “A wearable marker may take the form of a ring, a bracelet, an artificial fingernail configured to be affixed to a fingernail, a decal configured to be affixed to a fingernail, or a glove, among other possible wearable items."

Is it ripe? Carbon nanotube-based ethylene sensor establishes fruit…

(Phys.org) -- The term ethylene (ethene) generally brings to mind polyethylene plastics, not fruit. However, ethylene is more than just a feedstock for chemical industry, it is also the smallest plant hormone, and it controls physiological processes, such as the ripening of fruit, seed germination, and the blooming and wilting of blossoms. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, American researchers have now introduced a highly sensitive ethylene sensor that could be used to determine the ripeness of fruit.

Wrinkle-traveling Clothbot makes its IEEE debut (w/ Video)

(Phys.org) -- As any gathering of scientists working with robots will suggest, attempts toward perfecting techniques and outcomes of grasping and maneuvering are key issues for researchers working on climbing robots. At this week’s IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the robotics community got to see what a Chinese team has achieved in its presentation of Clothbot. This is a climbing robot that easily climbs up your pants or shirt. The Clothbot is small and lightweight, which did not deter from bloggers’ reactions that the device was “creepy.” System and Design of Clothbot: a Robot for Flexible Clothes Climbing, by Yuanyuan Liu, Xinyu Wu, Huihuan Qian, Duan Zheng, Jianquan Sun and Yangsheng Xu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, was presented Tuesday at the IEEE event.

SpaceX rocket launch aborted in last half-second (Update)

Engineers aborted the launch of a privately built spacecraft on a landmark mission to the International Space Station at the last second Saturday due to a rocket engine problem.

Motorola Mobility smartphones face US import ban

A US commission sided with Microsoft by moving to ban the import of Android-powered Motorola smartphones based on patent infringement complaints by the software colossus.

Open Source Robotics Foundation Announced

Announced via the Willow Garage website, the Open Source Robotics Foundation, Inc. (OSRF) is an independent non-profit organization founded by members of the global robotics community. Its mission is to support the development, distribution, and adoption of open source software for use in robotics research, education, and product development. OSRF's board of directors includes Professor Wolfram Burgard of the University of Freiburg, Ryan Gariepy, CTO of Clearpath Robotics, Brian Gerkey, Director of Open Source Development at Willow Garage, Helen Greiner, a co-founder of iRobot and currently CEO of CyPhyWorks, and Sam Park, Executive Vice President of Yujin Robot. Initially sponsored projects include the Robot Operating System (ROS), and Gazebo, a 3D multi-robot simulator with dynamics. Gazebo has been chosen by DARPA as the simulation platform for its recently announced robotics challenge for (humanoid) disaster robots.

Paralyzed Woman Finishes London Marathon

While it took her 16 days to do it, Claire Lomas, who lost use of her legs in a 2007 accident, finished the London Marathon with the aid of a ReWalk powered exoskeleton from Argo Medical Technologies.

Berkley Sends 100 Robots Down River

Berkley's Floating Sensor Network project launched 100 floating robots equipped with GPS-enabled smartphones down the Sacramento River on May 9. The launch was designed to test a new generation of water monitoring technologies. The 12 inch robots, called Drifters, are designed to provide real-time, high-resolution data of hard-to-map waterways. One of many possible uses is locating breeches in levee systems quickly enough to allow repair, before erosion destroys the levee. Other uses include identifying contaminants. Andrew Tinka, lead graduate student on the project notes:

?If something spills in the water, if there?s a contaminant, you need to know where it is now, you need to know where it?s going, you need to know where it will be later on. The Floating Sensor Network project can help by tracking water flow at a level of detail not currently possible.?

Deploying the robots is as simple as throwing them into the water from boats, docks, or helicopters. Each robot has a buoyancy control system, differential drive, GPS, compass, depth sensor, salinity sensor, Zigbee and GSM radios, and 72 hours of power from a lithium battery. The open source control system is written entirely in Python and runs on top of Linux. The project is headed by Alexandre Bayen of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). For more details see the Berkley news release. The project has also released quite a few technical reports and papers describing the developments that went into designing the drifter robots. You can also check several videos of the robots in action.

How to pick Robotics Stocks and what to avoid.

We usually forget that apart from an exciting research field, robotics is also a huge industry. Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher of The Robot Report describe the robotics stock exchange map from an investor?s perspective. There are numerous companies that are currently active on robotics but only a fraction of them rely heavily on that sector, most of these stocks are influenced by other trends. There are also newly formed companies that aspire to cash in on the hype that surrounds robotics as an exotic and innovative sector without providing evidence that they are a viable and healthy investment. You can read more about robotics stocks in the article from everything-robotic.com and also in the Robot Report.

ABB Video Tour of Hannover Fair

If you're unfamiliar with Hannover Messe (Hannover Fair), the above video from ABB is probably worth the time it takes you to watch it. It's mainly in German, with English subtitles, and is more about the fair itself than about ABB's presence there. It may even make you want to put Hannover Messe 2013 on your calendar (link downloads ICS file).

New Study Shows Gene Therapy For HIV Safe After A Decade

Genetically modified T cells which attack HIV have been shown to be both effective and safe after more than a decade.

A clinical trial testing a gene therapy for HIV patients is now 11 years old. Recently, the researchers running the study published an examination of the patients after all this time. Of the study?s 43 patients, all were healthy, and 41 of them confirmed that their immune cells which received a genetically-altered boost were still performing as hoped more than a decade after the initial infusions.

Researchers first collected some of the patients? T cells, the type of white blood cell that fights infections and tumors. They then added a retroviral vector to the cells that inserted its DNA into the cells? own DNA. The important part of the new DNA would cause the T cells to recognize a protein found on HIV and target the virus for attack. The modified T cells were injected back into the patients between 1998 and 2002.

One of major concerns with gene therapies is the risk that the inserted DNA will cause cell replication errors and turn the cell cancerous. Years ago, in a different study, two out of nine young boys developed leukemia after undergoing gene therapy for X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency (?Bubble Boy disease?). But there is a key difference between that trial and the current one. The earlier trial involved genetic modification of blood stem cells. As none of the participants in the current study have developed cancer after 11 years, the researchers are concluding that the type of cell makes all the difference. ?T cells appear to be a safe haven for gene modification,? Carl June, one of the lead researchers of the study said in a press release.

The study was co-led by Bruce Levine, head of the Clinical Cell and Vaccine Production Facility at Pennsylvania University?s Perelman School of Medicine. It was published earlier this month in Science Translational Medicine.

Eleven years of being both effective and safe is a gene therapy breakthrough. But as promising as the study is, there?s still room for improvement. Patient viral loads were not reduced to undetectable levels, something routinely achieved by drugs. This could be due to an inadequate dosage of T cells. But now that T cells have been shown to be gene friendly, a higher dose could be tried in the future. Also, they tested function of the modified T cells in lab dishes. But while there was no direct confirmation that the cells are performing effectively inside the body, the fact that all 43 patients are healthy seems to be pretty rigorous evidence.

The trial was led by University of Pennsylvania researchers Bruce Levine and Carl June.

So how is it possible that the modified T cells are still chugging along after 11 years? Human T cells can live for years, and they divide,  passing their genetic material on to their cellular progeny. In fact, the current level of gene function in the patients indicates that over half of the original modified T cells or their progeny should still be functional for 16 years following infusion.

Even though the modified T cells in the current study haven?t proved more effective than drugs, they may still yet as higher doses are tried. HIV can be effectively controlled with drugs but patients are often required to take multiple pills at specific times of the day for the rest of their lives. And the drugs often have unpleasant side-effects such as nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea. Even if HIV levels aren?t rendered undetectable, as they weren?t in the current study, just decreasing a patient?s dependency on drugs would be a major accomplishment.

The promising results a decade out isn?t just good news for HIV patients and clinicians alone. Gene therapies targeting other diseases could benefit from the protocol. Any malady that can be helped by setting the molecular sights of T cells on a target should be fair game. In fact, Levine and June are already reprogramming T cells to seek out and destroy leukemia tumors. In a paper published last October they reported how cancerous cells in three patients were wiped out in just three weeks. As in the HIV trial the T cells were modified to recognize and attack cells expressing a specific protein. CD19 is a protein found on leukemia cells but not on healthy ones.

It?s about time gene therapies began delivering on the promise that so many have hoped for. Researchers are busy trying to find out why gene therapies turn stem cells into tumors but behave so well in T cells. Answering that question could open the door to gene therapies in other cell types. The current study is the latest in a spurt of good news for gene therapies. Other trials have stopped bleeding in hemophilia patients, successfully treated Parkinson’s symptoms, and helped the blind to see. Let?s hope we?re entering an era in which successful gene therapy trials are becoming the norm rather than the exception.

[image credits: Scientific American and Philly.com]
images: Scientific American and Philly.com

Google Search Gets Smarter With Knowledge Graph

By tapping databases and connecting people, places, and things Google's Knowledge Graph enriches your search experience.

This week Google is rolling out a new search tool: the Knowledge Graph. Breaking with the old strategy of keywords and webpages, Knowledge Graph makes use of the vast amounts of online data to give you persons, places, and things that are related to what you’re looking for. This new search philosophy of “Things Not Strings” ceases to treat your query as a random string of characters, and treats them as real world ideas instead. And it’s only the beginning of the move away from having to wade through website after website to find what you’re looking for.

Without Knowledge Graph, Google search results are keyword-based and direct us to websites that contain our keyword or related keywords. But as we know words are often ambiguous. For example, if you type in ?mercury? you could be interested in the elemental liquid, the planet, or the fleet-of-foot messenger of the Roman gods. By being connected to a network of relevant material, results become more narrow, getting us to our relevant ?mercury? more quickly. They?re richer too, allowing us easy access to information about the first planet from the sun.

Now, instead of Googling to get to the Wikipedia page, much of the information you?re looking for will already be displayed in the results ? a Googlepedia. Sort of.

When searching for a book, dog breed, or planet, an information panel will appear in that empty white space to the right of the results list. The section will contain a brief description, a collection of facts, the highest-ranking related images, related searches, and other related information such as a map, an upcoming concert for a band, or recently Google+ posts from people in your circles.

The information display won?t be nearly as complete as a Wikipedia page, and not all topics get an information display. Easily packaged subjects like specific sports teams, movies, locations, and famous people get a display. Cars, video games, and companies do not.

Of course, your facts are only as good as your sources. The Knowledge Graph draws from multiple online data sources including Wikipedia, the CIA World Factbook, and Freebase, an open database generated by Metaweb, which Google acquired in 2010. Wikipedia has nearly four million articles, and Freebase has data on over 24 million people, places, and things. Subject-specific information is gathered from sites like Weather Underground for weather and the World Bank for global economics. As before, data from Google searches are used to make educated guesses of what people are searching for and what webpages they want to see. They?ve only just started building it up, but already the Knowledge Graph includes 500 million people, places, and things with connections to 3.5 billion attributes. And the bewildering network of connections will be honed by people using it with a feature that allows users to point out incorrect or irrelevant information.

Like the real world and information about it, the Knowledge Graph is a work in progress. Here?s a short video that describes how Google is reshaping itself from an ?information engine to a knowledge engine.?

What will Google look like after the Knowledge Graph has had 5 or 10 years to gobble up databases? If it?s true that Google was already making us dumber, get ready to donate a few more IQ points for the sake of convenience.

For many searches we probably won?t notice the ?extra knowledge? in the results (incidentally, the Graph has yet to grace the Google page on my laptop), but already we can see where all of this is going. Along with Google, tools like WolframAlpha and Siri, have conditioned people to expect more out their software ? they want useful information and they want it quick and easy. Google Chrome’s text to speech function makes that happen, and so do Google Glasses. It doesn’t get any easier than looking at things and talking to yourself. The Knowledge Graph adds to these as part of Google’s effort to both shape the direction that people interact with technology, and to stay relevant and competitive in this increasingly AI-driven world.

[image credits: Google via YouTube]
[video credits: Google via YouTube]
images: Google
video: Google via YouTube

Paralyzed Woman Controls Robotic Arm With Her Thoughts

A neural interface device allows patients to control a robotic arm with their minds.

Cathy Hutchinson hasn’t moved her limbs of her own volition for 15 years, but by imagining she was using her own hand, she controlled a robotic arm to pick up a thermos of coffee and took a sip. The technology is a neural interface system called BrainGate2, currently in clinical trials, which connects Cathy’s brain to a robot. The device is the result of over 10 years of research at Brown University and an extension of the first BrainGate in 2006, which allowed patients to control a computer cursor on a screen.

Cathy was one of two patients on the study, which was recently reported in Nature, who suffer from tetraplegia, a condition in which communication between the brain and the rest of the body is disconnected either through a stroke or damage to the spinal cord. Prof. John Donoghue, principal investigator on the BrainGate project, described their approach to Nature: “Our idea is to bypass that damaged nervous system and go directly from the brain to the outside world, so the brain signals cannot control muscles but machines and devices, like a computer or a robotic limb.” When Cathy controlled the arm with her mind to bring the coffee over for her to drink, the team was amazed.

Check out the video to see the moment for yourself:

As we previously introduced, BrainGate2 has three components: a sensor, a decoder, and assistive technology. The sensor consists of an array of 96 hair-thin electrodes the size of a children’s aspirin that is surgically implanted into the motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls body movements. Neural activity is relayed through a gold wire to a computer (the decoder), which interprets the signals and produces a command for the robot arm. Two robotic arms have been tested in the study: the DEKA Arm System and the heavier DLR Light-Weight Robot III arm from the German Aerospace Centre.

Cathy has had the BrainGate sensor implanted in her brain for the last five years, as she was involved in previous studies with the system. During testing that took place one year ago, Cathy was able to successfully raise the coffee and drink from it using BrainGate2 four times out of six attempts. In another test of the BrainGate2 system, the two patients had to reach out and grab a ball in a 30-second window, and Cathy experienced better success with the DEKA arm (46 percent success rate) than the DLR arm (21 percent).

Prof. Donoghue explained to Nature that controlling the robotic arm is much more complicated than moving the cursor on a screen in the original BrainGate study: “To move from this type of two-dimensional movement to movements involving reaching out for an object, grasping it and then guiding it in three-dimensional space is a huge step for us. It seems like more than one additional dimension in complexity.” He emphasized that a lot of work needed to be done to improve the rate and accuracy of motion as well as improving the decoding algorithms for more complex motions.

The Brown researchers already have plans to make the sensor wireless and improve the robotic arm to allow for more complicated tasks, such as brushing teeth. In the long term, an alternative approach is being considered in which the signals from the decoder are transmitted to the patient’s muscles, allowing them to reuse their own limbs.

This is a huge stride for the field of brain-computer interfaces, and will undoubtedly inspire more surgical and nonsurgical approaches. Controlling objects with the mind makes for great science fiction, but people who suffer from conditions that prohibit motion due to spinal cord damage are on the cusp of regaining a part of themselves that they thought was lost forever. Furthermore, similar technologies will open up even more possibilities for mind control of objects as the programs that can translate neural signals into instructions become more sophisticated.

“All of us were standing in awe, more or less, because we’re watching her drinking the coffee,” Prof. Donoghue commented in the video. “It was really such a stunning scene.”

[Media: YouTube]

[Sources: Arstechnica, BrainGate, Nature, Nature Video]

New Video Humorously Imagines Life In The Singularity And All Its P…

Will the future involve wiping your memory of any copyrighted works you haven't paid for?

What will post-Singularity life be like in 2052 if you died and your mind was uploaded to a computer? Possibly mired in data rate throttling, advertiser-sponsored consciousness, immoral thought extraction, and memory wipes of copyrighted material.

A new witty video called “Welcome to Life” offers a little glimpse into what it might be like for your mind to awake in a digital world after your biological self has expired. Taking jabs at the Apple experience, terms of service agreements, and all the legal hurdles one might anticipate that could hinder future existence, the video humorously approaches a subject that is rather difficult to imagine. The creator of “Welcome to Life”, Tom Scott, is also responsible for a parody of the Google Glasses video, which captured over 2 million views on YouTube.

Here’s a glimpse into your possible future:

For me, the most intriguing part is the end with the question, “Do you wish to continue?” When the technology becomes available to upload our minds and never fear failing health or aging, we can answer “Yes” to that question perpetually, so long as our service providers can keep the lights on.

Thanks to Noah, a Singularity Hub member, for sending the video to us!

[Media: YouTube]

[Sources: Tom Scott]