Technology

Australia's top models are going to be on the main stage in Cairns this week but don't get too excited.   They're only here to show new ways to understand climate change, improve air safety and enhance agricultural sustainability - the small stuff unless you care about life as we know it.  Fortunately, these numerical models understand those things much better than actual supermodels. The gathering is the IMACS/MODSIM Congress and will attract more than 650 experts in modelling and simulation from Australia and overseas to the Cairns Convention Centre from July 13-17, 2009.CSIRO…

A few weeks ago, I got a text message on my mobile. It said it was from my credit card company (and it had the right one). It said they had to talk with me urgently about my account, and I should call a given phone number as soon as possible. In other words, it sure looked like someone was phishing for something... except that they did have the credit card brand correct. Chance, perhaps? I did what you should do if you get one of those: I ignored the phone number in the message, pulled out my credit card, and called the customer service number on that. I told them what I got. They confirmed…

Cornell computer scientists say they have tracked and analyzed the "news cycle", the way stories rise and fall in popularity, and found a consistent pattern as stories rose into prominence and then fell off after a few days, with a 'heartbeat' pattern of handoffs between blogs and mainstream media.  In mainstream media, in most cases a story rises to prominence slowly then dies quickly but in the blogosphere, stories rise in popularity very quickly but then stay around longer, as discussion goes back and forth.  Every story is eventually pushed aside by something newer. So…

Google's Chrome OS is going after Windows. Is this going to be a game changer? The plan is part of Google’s bet that a huge shift in computing is under way. In Google’s view, Web connections will become so fast and browsers so powerful that most of the programs that currently run on PCs will be replaced by online applications. That would eliminate the need to install, upgrade and back up software. Analysts say advances in technology make that vision more realistic today than when the browser company Netscape unsuccessfully championed it a decade ago... Rather than buying bulky desktop…

If nanotechnology has a dream future, it is self-assembling and self-organizing systems - something nature has been producing for millions of years. A team of scientists has examined how thousands of bacterial membrane proteins are able to assemble into clusters that direct cell movement to select chemicals in their environment and they say their results provide valuable insight into how complex periodic patterns in biological systems can be generated and repaired. Researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the University of California (UC) Berkeley, the Howard…

New Scientist reports on a study that shows how bad “secret questions” are at protecting your accounts: What’s your secret question? Your mother’s maiden name? Your first pet? For many people, facts like these are all that protect their email and other accounts should they forget their password. Now a new study (pdf) by researchers at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, US, reveals just how easy the answers of such security questions are for other people to guess. Acquaintances of 32 webmail users — people with whom they would not normally share their login details — were asked to try…

Robots, lacking families and pensions, will rush into scenarios where humans fear to tread, like rescue missions following natural disasters.   So they need our support.   RoboCup Rescue is a new effort to promote research and development in the field of rescue robotics. Robots for search and rescue missions, the efficient co-ordination of rescue services or decision-support systems are all the practical result of rescue robotics research. Two RoboCup leagues give an insight into digitally supported rescue possibilities: Rescue Simulation and Real Rescue. Rescue Robot at RoboCup…

Paperless office?  An optimistic pipe dream.    We use more paper documents than at any time in history despite the prevalence of the Internet and digital technology.    Part of the reason is lousy copy protection of scanned documents and storing them online. But a new approach to archiving scanned documents that makes the text searchable and adds a watermark to images for copy protection and validation reported in the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Reasoning-based Intelligent Systems may herald some forward progress. That's good news because…

TEL AVIV and BERLIN, July 3 /PRNewswire/ -- German-Israeli cooperation brings together two complementary approaches to the advancement of commercialization of tomorrow's technologies. Germany Trade & Invest, the Israeli-German Chamber of Commerce, and several partners will be hosting the 1st Israeli-German Conference on the commercialization of future technologies in Tel Aviv on July 6, 2009. The event is a response to the high level of Israeli interest in German high-tech R&D. There are currently over 250 Israeli companies with subsidiaries in Germany, a number of them in…

ZÜRICH, July 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Solianis recently signed an investment agreement with a Swiss foundation which invests its assets in Swiss companies. According to the agreement, this foundation will put CHF 5 million, while the previous investors in Solianis are investing another CHF 3 million. "The CHF 8 million invested will enable us to increase our efforts to complete the prototype of our non-invasive glucose monitoring device and to prepare the clinical trials required for CE certification. The realisation of our innovative product concept is now assured", says Mario Stark,…