Items tagged with Research
MIT is poised to make a massive investment into the future of nuclear fusion power. This move is significant because fusion power is potentially inexhaustible and produces zero carbon emissions. Fusion power could quite literally change the world as we know it today.
MIT has announced a new collaboration with a...
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Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have announced a new power generating device that is able to use temperature fluctuations to create electricity. The technology is based on principals of thermoelectric devices able to generate power when one side of the device is a different temperature...
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One of the most memorable scenes in all of science fiction films is the scene in the original Star Wars movie where Luke first sees the holographic projection of Princess Leia while trying to clean R2-D2. Many fans of that film have been waiting for decades for a similar projection system to launch. Physicists have...
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New research has come out that looks at the number of Americans that own a smart speaker along the lines of the Amazon Echo or Google Home devices. The research came from NPR and Edison Research, and found that 16% of Americans own a smart speaker, putting the figure at around 39 million people.
That the figure is...
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A new study has found something very disturbing on some of the top websites in the world. Researchers from the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy have conducted research that found that over 400 of the top 50,000 websites in the world are using "session replay scripts" to track user behavior. This...
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Anyone around back in the '80s when rabbit ears were the main way of tuning in to your favorite shows will know that foil improved reception. A group of researchers has now found that we can apply similar tech to our WiFi routers. The team of researchers used a 3D printer to produce a cheap and customized reflector...
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If you spend any amount of time on the Internet, you have certainly run across CAPTCHA on a few occasions. CAPTCHA is the security device that forces you to read squiggly words and type them into the box to prove you are a person and not a spamming robot sent from the future to troll forums and steal all of our memes...
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It's hard for many of us to trust the studies that seem to come out on a daily basis covering a variety of topics. You can find studies on the same subject that come down on completely different sides of the topic depending on who funded them. You might expect a study commissioned by the European Commission (EC) to be...
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Researchers from the Université de Montréal have published a study that found certain types of video games resulted in the loss of grey matter in the brain, while other types of video games resulted in an increase. Specifically, the study claims that gamers who frequently play first person shooter type video games...
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At its core, Minecraft is a game. It's designed to be fun, immersive, and challenging. But as we've seen in recent years, it can become a lot more than just a game, thanks in part to its extreme modularity. Especially with the introduction of the Redstone block, we've seen people create everything from calculators to...
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The amount of research that goes on inside of Google's walls (and out) at any given time is nothing short of amazing. You can be sure much of that research revolves around the mobile market, as its Android operating system didn't reach super stardom through sheer luck. With its latest move, however, Google is really...
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A group of French and American scientists publishing in the science journal Nature are reporting success in their attempt to develop software that allows damaged robots to quickly overcome many sustained injuries and continue with their tasks.
A major problem in robotics has long been the inability of the machines...
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At this point, the resetting of a mobile phone to a from-the-factory state is something we have all done, perhaps simply to get a fresh start with a device that has become sluggish and over-burdened with years of downloaded flotsam. But more likely, we do it for the purpose of selling the phone or passing it along to...
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Anyone who has driven an Android smartphone any distance whatsoever has no doubt wondered whether any of the apps they use could be serving as information conduits. The relaxed vetting process that the Google Play Store has in place ('relaxed' versus the jailer-esque process in use by those minding Apple's app store)...
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Leaving the realm of science fiction behind, the super-fast charging mobile phone is inching its way ever more closer to science-fact. As reported in Stanford Magazine in advance of publication this week in the journal Nature, researchers at Stanford University have developed a high-performance aluminum-ion battery...
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At long last, Pixar has finally made good on a promise they made last year to release Free Non-Commercial RenderMan. The software is a full-feature version of the company's RenderMan software that anyone can install and use for purposes of research, education, evaluation, plug-in development, and personal projects...
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In setting up a new lab, a group of research students at Purdue University were inspired to come up with a way to put the huge amount of packing peanuts they were receiving to good use. At the suggestion of Professor Vilas Pol, the researchers developed a potential new eco-friendly application for rendering the...
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If there's one man who understands all the potential of artificial intelligence, it's Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. You might recall that this past fall, we wrote about one of Musk's comments regarding how future AI developments could lead us to "[summon] the demon". Quite simply, we don't want a "Skynet" to...
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Still find yourself pissed off at Facebook for potentially messing with your head when it experimented on 700,000 users without their consent? Hey, it's all good, brother -- Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer posted a set of new guidelines that will help the world's largest social network do a better job at monkeying around...
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As we slowly march towards a future where scenes from Minority Report and Transcendence feel more like reality and less like science fiction, Microsoft Research is unveiling a data-drive crystal ball of sorts. It's a project emerging from the Microsoft Prediction Lab, where laypeople are encouraged to make predictions...
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You can't swing a dead cat these days without hitting a research team claiming to have discovered a new technology or ability that will miraculously enhance battery capabilities as soon as a few quick problems are patched up or some niggling cost factors get fixed. The majority of these announcements splash down and...
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Here’s an interesting psychological factoid: Emotional states can be transferred to other people via text-based messages on social media, such as Facebook. That means that if, for instance, you view a bunch of sad posts, you’re more likely to pen a sad post yourself shortly thereafter even though you...
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