6:56 PM
Analysis of what Pres. Obama's proposed budget means to R&D in the US--the analysis done by a variety of experts and organizations have all concluded that the budget is a boost for R&D. While cutting the deficit, Pres. Obama appears to be trying to boost funding for innovation as a way to help the US economy recover and gain strength:
http://www.rdmag.com/News/2011/02/Science-Policy-What-Obamas-proposed-budget-means-for-R-D/
GE scientists are currently developing powerful new magnets that use less rare Earth metals, aimed towards reducing US dependence on China's rare Earth metals. The DoE gave GE $2;25 mil to develop these magnets, which are stronger and lighter than the current rare Earth metal-based magnets:
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/powerful-magnets-developed-end-rare-earths-dependency
New Zealand is trying to contain a measles outbreak, with their public health officials worried that they will not be able to stop the spread of the disease. For every 1000 cases there are typically 1 death and 100 hospital admissions, and the highly contagious disease may have already infected more than 300 people:
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/new-zealand-fears-uncontrollable-measles-outbreak
Amazon residents won a $8.64 bil award against Chevron over their lawsuit for years of crude oil pollution by Chevron in the Amazon. Both sides plan to appeal since they think the award should be more (Amazon residents say it will cost more than that to clean up the polluted areas) or less (Chevron obviously isn't happy about being ordered to pay $8.64 bil):
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/02/15/ecuador.chevron/index.html?hpt=T1
Scientists are hunting for a massive, hidden object (a planet or dwarf star) in our solar system, far beyond Pluto. The object is estimated to be 4x the size of Jupiter and 15,000 times further from the sun than Earth:
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/15/scientists-telescope-hunt-massive-hidden-object-in-space/?hpt=Sbin
Stanford researchers have developed full duplex wireless technology--allowing wireless signals to be sent and received simultaneously on a single channel, effectively doubling the speed of existing networks:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/february/duplex-radio-transmission-021411.html
Auctions of the wireless spectrum given up by TV stations could raise $33 bil or more for the US government a report by CTIA and CEA concluded. That amount doesn't include the money that will go to the TV stations for leaving those frequencies. Other analysts say that the government could get much more money--if the spectrum sells for the same amount as the 700 MHz auctions, they will raise about $99 bil!
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9209498/Spectrum_incentive_auctions_would_raise_big_bucks_say_trade_groups_?source=rss_mobilewireless
McAfee announced that hackers are increasingly targeting smartphones--smartphone malware increased 56% last year, with hackers using Adobe products like PDFs and Flash to embed malicious code. Spam was down 62% last year but politically motivated hacking increased, with the Android system increasingly targeted by hackers:
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/cell-phones-are-hackers-target-choice
Google showed off their Movie Studio app for Android tablets at MWC today, which allows tablets to edit entire movies just like on a PC--adding transitions, move around slides, include music tracks, export it in a variety of formats, and share it with friends:
http://www.droid-life.com/2011/02/15/google-introduces-movie-studio-on-android-for-honeycomb-here-are-the-first-pictures/
Remember the quad-core announcement by Qualcomm yesterday that made headlines from Mobile World Congress? Nvidia just destroyed Qualcomm's and TI's roadmaps by revealing that they are already in sampling with their quad-core chips (they even had working systems to show off that far surpassed the performance of anything else available) and by 2014 they will have more than 100x better performance than anything on the market today:
http://www.droid-life.com/2011/02/15/nvidia-introduces-worlds-first-quad-core-mobile-processor-headed-for-tablets-by-august/
Motorola says that it won't develop phones for Windows Phone and that they are the only 100% Android vendor:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/219685/motorola_exec_windows_phone_was_too_late_too_little.html?tk=rss_news
HTC unveiled 2 Android-based smartphones that have deep integration with Facebook, including a special button that can be pressed to immediately share content or updates on Facebook when a user is on the web, taking a photo or video, etc.:
http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/press-releases/htc-unveils-two-social-phones-one-touch-facebook%C2%AE-access
Executives from Sprint and now Intel have resigned from Clearwire's Board of Directors:
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/02/intel-exec-resigns-from-clearwire-board.html
Articles about Round 1 out of 3 rounds of IBM's supercomputer's competition vs. probably the 2 most famous Jeopardy champions:
http://www.rdmag.com/News/2011/02/Information-Tech-Watson-paces-humans-in-Round-1-of-three-Jeopardy-matches/
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/02/14/jeopardy.ibm.watson/index.html?hpt=Sbin
IBM's Watson dominated its human opponents during Day 2 of the Jeopardy challenge:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/303714
A law under consideration in South Dakota could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. Their Republican-based legislature is expected to vote on that law soon:
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/south-dakota-hb-1171-legalize-killing-abortion-providers
A man stabbed his friend to death (the knife attack resulted in more than 100 injuries to his friend!) over a text message where the phone's predictive dictionary changed a letter on a word that changed the meaning of the text message:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1356632/Man-killed-friend-row-mis-spelt-text-message.html?ITO=1490
http://www.rdmag.com/News/2011/02/Science-Policy-What-Obamas-proposed-budget-means-for-R-D/
GE scientists are currently developing powerful new magnets that use less rare Earth metals, aimed towards reducing US dependence on China's rare Earth metals. The DoE gave GE $2;25 mil to develop these magnets, which are stronger and lighter than the current rare Earth metal-based magnets:
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/powerful-magnets-developed-end-rare-earths-dependency
New Zealand is trying to contain a measles outbreak, with their public health officials worried that they will not be able to stop the spread of the disease. For every 1000 cases there are typically 1 death and 100 hospital admissions, and the highly contagious disease may have already infected more than 300 people:
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/new-zealand-fears-uncontrollable-measles-outbreak
Amazon residents won a $8.64 bil award against Chevron over their lawsuit for years of crude oil pollution by Chevron in the Amazon. Both sides plan to appeal since they think the award should be more (Amazon residents say it will cost more than that to clean up the polluted areas) or less (Chevron obviously isn't happy about being ordered to pay $8.64 bil):
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/02/15/ecuador.chevron/index.html?hpt=T1
Scientists are hunting for a massive, hidden object (a planet or dwarf star) in our solar system, far beyond Pluto. The object is estimated to be 4x the size of Jupiter and 15,000 times further from the sun than Earth:
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/15/scientists-telescope-hunt-massive-hidden-object-in-space/?hpt=Sbin
Stanford researchers have developed full duplex wireless technology--allowing wireless signals to be sent and received simultaneously on a single channel, effectively doubling the speed of existing networks:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/february/duplex-radio-transmission-021411.html
Auctions of the wireless spectrum given up by TV stations could raise $33 bil or more for the US government a report by CTIA and CEA concluded. That amount doesn't include the money that will go to the TV stations for leaving those frequencies. Other analysts say that the government could get much more money--if the spectrum sells for the same amount as the 700 MHz auctions, they will raise about $99 bil!
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9209498/Spectrum_incentive_auctions_would_raise_big_bucks_say_trade_groups_?source=rss_mobilewireless
McAfee announced that hackers are increasingly targeting smartphones--smartphone malware increased 56% last year, with hackers using Adobe products like PDFs and Flash to embed malicious code. Spam was down 62% last year but politically motivated hacking increased, with the Android system increasingly targeted by hackers:
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/cell-phones-are-hackers-target-choice
Google showed off their Movie Studio app for Android tablets at MWC today, which allows tablets to edit entire movies just like on a PC--adding transitions, move around slides, include music tracks, export it in a variety of formats, and share it with friends:
http://www.droid-life.com/2011/02/15/google-introduces-movie-studio-on-android-for-honeycomb-here-are-the-first-pictures/
Remember the quad-core announcement by Qualcomm yesterday that made headlines from Mobile World Congress? Nvidia just destroyed Qualcomm's and TI's roadmaps by revealing that they are already in sampling with their quad-core chips (they even had working systems to show off that far surpassed the performance of anything else available) and by 2014 they will have more than 100x better performance than anything on the market today:
http://www.droid-life.com/2011/02/15/nvidia-introduces-worlds-first-quad-core-mobile-processor-headed-for-tablets-by-august/
Motorola says that it won't develop phones for Windows Phone and that they are the only 100% Android vendor:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/219685/motorola_exec_windows_phone_was_too_late_too_little.html?tk=rss_news
HTC unveiled 2 Android-based smartphones that have deep integration with Facebook, including a special button that can be pressed to immediately share content or updates on Facebook when a user is on the web, taking a photo or video, etc.:
http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/press-releases/htc-unveils-two-social-phones-one-touch-facebook%C2%AE-access
Executives from Sprint and now Intel have resigned from Clearwire's Board of Directors:
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/02/intel-exec-resigns-from-clearwire-board.html
Articles about Round 1 out of 3 rounds of IBM's supercomputer's competition vs. probably the 2 most famous Jeopardy champions:
http://www.rdmag.com/News/2011/02/Information-Tech-Watson-paces-humans-in-Round-1-of-three-Jeopardy-matches/
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/02/14/jeopardy.ibm.watson/index.html?hpt=Sbin
IBM's Watson dominated its human opponents during Day 2 of the Jeopardy challenge:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/303714
A law under consideration in South Dakota could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. Their Republican-based legislature is expected to vote on that law soon:
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/south-dakota-hb-1171-legalize-killing-abortion-providers
A man stabbed his friend to death (the knife attack resulted in more than 100 injuries to his friend!) over a text message where the phone's predictive dictionary changed a letter on a word that changed the meaning of the text message:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1356632/Man-killed-friend-row-mis-spelt-text-message.html?ITO=1490