Phoghat writes "Could mirror universes or parallel worlds account for dark matter — the 'missing' matter in the Universe? In what seems to be mixing of science and science fiction, a new paper by a team of theoretical physicists hypothesizes the existence of mirror particles as a possible candidate for dark matter. An anomaly observed in the behavior of ordinary particles that appear to oscillate in and out of existence could be from a 'hypothetical parallel world consisting of mirror particles,' says a press release from Springer. 'Each neutron would have the ability to transition into its invisible mirror twin, and back, oscillating from one world to the other.'"
New submitter MoriT sends this excerpt from a post examining the correlation between women's enrollment in computer science programs at college and their access to the internet. "There is currently a responsibility-dodging contest between industry and academia over who is to blame for the declining enrollment of women in Computer Science and declining employment of women in software development. I hear people in industry bemoan the 'empty pipeline,' while academics maintain that women aren't entering their programs because of perceptions of the industry. I have compiled some data that may help resolve the question by highlighting a third factor common to both: access to an Internet-based culture of computing. ... I conclude that in the last 10 years among many Northern European nations, rising Internet access is correlated with falling interest in computer science relative to other professions among women. The group of Mediterranean nations that show a positive correlation should be a fruitful area for future research, but seem outliers from the Northern cohort."
retroworks writes "Bloomberg News makes the case that when the federal government offers tuition assistance, students apply to more expensive colleges, giving the institutions an incentive to raise tuition and a disincentive to lower it. (The Wall Street Journal has a similar article, but it's paywalled.) This reminds me of the debate over President Reagan's cuts to the Pell Grant program in the 1980s. MIT's Campus Paper 'The Tech' quoted the MIT administration as saying it had 'no idea what really will occur' when Reagan's proposal to cut Pell came to Washington. So the question is, 25 years later, do we know now? Did cuts to federal tuition assistance hurt the education of the lower income students? Did increases to Pell grants create more opportunity? Or is federal money the milkshake, and students are just the straw?"
david.emery writes "Julian Assange, his appeals in the United Kingdom having run out, today went to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to request asylum from his pending extradition to Sweden to face questioning for 'unlawful coercion and sexual misconduct including rape.'"
An anonymous reader writes "Do you remember when Microsoft tried to claim that Internet Explorer was still the most-used browser by accusing StatCounter of using a flawed methodology? Well, StatCounter has just posted a response that walks through a number of errors and omissions in Microsoft's reasoning. They (rather politely) explain the importance of sample size, discuss the value of page view counts versus unique visitor counts, and explain the difference between their methodology and that of Net Applications."
colinneagle writes "Would you believe the Inspector General from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said it would violate the privacy of Americans for the IG office to tell us how many people in the United States had their privacy violated via the NSA warrantless wiretap powers which were granted under the FISA Amendment Act of 2008? The Act is up for a five-year extension, but Senator Ron Wyden said he'd block FAA renewal until Congress received an answer from the NSA about how many 'people in the United States have their communications reviewed by the government' under FAA powers."
New submitter Mystakaphoros writes "Musician David Lowery (of Cracker fame) takes NPR intern Emily White to task for her stance on paying for (or failing to pay for) music. Quoting: 'By allowing the artist to treat his/her work as actual property, the artist can decide how to monetize his or her work. This system has worked very well for fans and artists. Now we are being asked to undo this not because we think this is a bad or unfair way to compensate artists but simply because it is technologically possible for corporations or individuals to exploit artists work without their permission on a massive scale and globally. We are being asked to continue to let these companies violate the law without being punished or prosecuted. We are being asked to change our morality and principals to match what I think are immoral and unethical business models.'"
sciencehabit writes "The first-ever use of interactive computer tasks on a national science assessment suggests that most U.S. students struggle with the reasoning skills needed to investigate multiple variables, make strategic decisions, and explain experimental results. The results (PDF) are part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress that was given in 2009 to a representative sample of students in grades four, eight, and 12. What the vast majority of students can do, the data show, is make straightforward analyses. More than three-quarters of fourth grade students, for example, could determine which plants were sun-loving and which preferred the shade when using a simulated greenhouse to determine the ideal amount of sunlight for the growth of mystery plants. When asked about the ideal fertilizer levels for plant growth, however, only one-third of the students were able to perform the required experiment, which featured nine possible fertilizer levels and only six trays. Fewer than half the students were able to use supporting evidence to write an accurate explanation of the results. Similar patterns emerged for students in grades 8 and 12."
ananyo writes "In a revelation that could bring down the country's government, Romania's Prime Minister, Victor Ponta, stands accused of copying large sections of his 2003 PhD thesis in law from previous publications, without proper reference. Documents compiled by an anonymous whistle-blower indicate more than half of Ponta's 432-page, Romanian-language thesis on the functioning of the International Criminal Court consists of duplicated text. Last month, the country's education and research minister, computer scientist Ioan Mang, resigned following accusations of plagiarism in at least eight papers." Looks like it's contagious.
First time accepted submitter at.drinian writes "Last week, we heard about the many applications for new top-level domains that have been put forth by various businesses and organizations. ICANN, of course, has come under heavy criticism for its process. If you didn't have the accumulated baggage of 30 years of DNS, how would you redesign things? .public and .private TLDs only? No TLD control? Country-level domains?"
An anonymous reader writes "Google is apparently cracking down on a popular site that converts the music from YouTube videos into MP3s. YouTube-MP3.org has received a letter from Google, YouTube's parent company, notifying the site operators that converting videos this way violates YouTube's terms of service, according to the blog TorrentFreak, which said it has seen the letter. In addition, YouTube apparently has blocked YouTube-MP3.org's servers from accessing the site."
An anonymous reader writes "CNN reports that younger listeners are increasingly opting to stream music rather than own it. If their music is constantly available anywhere on any device, then 'what's the difference?,' ponders the article. The distinction between streaming music and owning music is starting to blur. From the article: 'But Van Buskirk also suggests another reason for streaming, not acquiring music. It's liberating. "There is a certain relief with not having to own music. It is a lot of work," he said. ... Porter says the way people own music is transforming. He believes the cloud model is where the state of music is heading, and for many people ownership is not essential. "I think ownership is access, you don't have to have music on your local hard drive to own it," he said.' Will the concept of ownership of music and software fade as cloud based services become the way people expect to access media and software?"
angry tapir writes "Icaros Desktop is an effort to build a modern Amiga-compatible operating system to standard x86 hardware. It's a distribution built atop AROS, which is an open source effort to create a system compatible at the API level with the AmigaOS 3.x series. I recently had a chat to the creator of Icaros, Paolo Besser, about the creation of the OS and why Amiga continues to inspire people today."
chiguy writes "The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau begins releasing detailed information on Americans' complaints about their credit cards online. From The Washington Post: 'The CFPB said it will only publish complaints after it has verified the consumer's relationship with the company. The new database will include not only the name of the company involved, but also the nature of the complaint and the consumer's Zip code. It will also report whether the firm responded in a timely manner, how the matter was resolved and any disputes. The CFPB said it has received more than 45,000 in the year since the bureau was launched.' Complaints about mortgages, student loans, and checking accounts will be added later. Financial institutions are complaining loudly, decrying the enforcement of one of the main tenets of the free market: transparency."
The permission dialog boxes in iOS 6 will most likely result in less, rather than more, privacy protection for iPhone and iPad users.
Two tech giants have learned a few tricks from Apple. Here's why that's a good thing.
Researchers have built a prototype display designed to compensate for vision problems so that viewers don't need to wear glasses.
In much the same way that Java replaced C++ 15 years ago as the dominant programming language for enterprise software, Web development technologies such as...
Oracle refused to commit to continued porting of its software to Hewlett-Packard's Itanium platform as part of the companies' settlement over Oracle's hiring of...
Square, a startup focused on facilitating credit card transactions at small businesses, began supporting customer loyalty programs in updates of its major apps...
Microsoft's Surface tablet is a measured gamble to enter the cutthroat tablet business, but the company could be alienating longtime hardware partners that are...
Forget lasers on sharks; this meat slicer uses lasers to measure meat and prepare it for slicing.
Researchers from Fujitsu Laboratories, Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and Kyushu University have set a new...
The U.S. Congress doesn't need to take major steps to protect the privacy of Web and mobile users, because self-policing efforts are generally working, the CEO...
Between 12 and 14 million daily searches return at least one hacked site, the company says.
A new survey finds that IT outsourcing is often disappointing--more costly than estimated, and with lower quality than expected.
Reseachers engineer an artificial finger that can feel the texture difference between satin and drywall.
Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday introduced a low-power server system called Gemini that will be based on Intel's upcoming Atom processor, code-named Centerton.
If you spend hours emptying your inbox, you may wonder: Is it possible to do without email? Here are some new ways that companies have found to communicate and collaborate.
YouTube's lawyers have sent cease-and-desist letters to the sites, threatening 'legal consequences' to those that don't comply.
A recently discovered fake Android security application is most likely a mobile component of the Zeus banking malware, security researchers from antivirus firm...
Spotify's mobile products were originally available only subscribers who paid for its premium service. Warning: This works on iOS devices only.
Salesforce.com has acquired ChoicePass, a Web company that offers companies services for providing employees with perks and discounts at local businesses.
Microsoft's new Surface tablet looked good at its introduction, but questions about pricing, arrival, connectivity, and more remain unanswered.
The unlocked ad unsubsidized Nokia 808 PureView with Carl Zeiss optics will cost $699.
Google has high hopes for its Google+ social network in the enterprise, with a more corporate-friendly version on the way as the company also continues to slowly...
Eucalyptus Systems has updated its IaaS (infrastructure as a platform) cloud computing software so that computing jobs may be started more easily.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns of a slippery slope from a bogus copyright action involving two roommates.
A total of 568 hours of downtime at 13 well-known cloud services since 2007 had an economic impact of more than US$71.7 million dollars, said the International...
Contract manufacturer Celestica said it would phase out manufacturing services for Research In Motion in the next three to six months.
Cisco Systems is extending the functionality of its Quad enterprise social networking (ESN) software through integration with Microsoft Office applications and...
The new Zeus malware steals incoming text messages and sends them to command-and-control servers operated by the attackers.
China Mobile's effort to support its own mobile operating system to compete with the likes of Apple's iPhone appears to be falling by the wayside, mired by its...
Box will announce on Tuesday the opening of its European headquarters in London, as the company seeks to boost sales of its cloud-hosted enterprise collaboration...
Security expert Dan Clements is building a virtual "lost and found" box for data, a concept he hopes companies suffering from data breaches will embrace to find...
A batch of names, addresses, emails and phone numbers of credit card customers around the world released on Monday indicates a breach of a payment processor, but...
Redmond has spared no detail in reconsidering what a tablet can, and should, be.
Hewlett-Packard voiced concerns about Oracle attempting a hostile takeover after it hired former HP CEO Mark Hurd as co-president, Oracle's lead counsel told a...
About one third of Facebook's users in India appear to access the service from a mobile phone only, supporting the notion that many people in developing...
Here's a look at how the physical and technological characteristics of the market-leading iPad shapes up against the new Microsoft Surface.
Microsoft took a bold step into the tablet market on Monday with the unveiling of a computer aimed squarely at bettering Apple's market-leading iPad.
The software giant has jumped into the tablet fray with a device it says will make the most of its Windows 8 OS.
Profits at Oracle climbed 8 percent in the quarter just ended, though hardware sales declined and overall revenue was up only slightly.
Sharp has the HDTV market cornered in terms of absolutely huge sets, with its latest entry being the 90-inch, LED-backlit, Wi-Fi-enabled LC-90LE745U.
A former marketing executive at AT&T has pleaded guilty to charges related to an insider trading scheme in which he leaked sales information about Apple's...
With the Face.com acquisition and others, it's clear that Facebook is turning a lot more attention to mobile photo-sharing.
Missing the old Macintosh software you grew up with? Now you can use it again--on your touchscreen tablet.
You have to think about security issues, but the potential energy savings of using the cloud are crystal clear.
If what we know is true, it looks like Dell’s XPS Ultrabooks will be competing on solid specs and performance, rather than low prices.
All you have to do to activate these easy-to-build DIY turn signals is lift your arm.
I've covered a lot of different cloud-based services during this series, but I really haven't scratched the surface. Today I take a look at some of the other cloud software and services available.
SAP is creating a new program that seeks to anoint consultants as "distinguished engineers" working with its HANA in-memory database platform, the company...
With so many alternatives, how many Linux users will embrace the Microsoft-owned VoIP software?
ARM processors could potentially coexist with x86 processors from Intel or Advanced Micro Devices in server environments, with the use case being similar to CPUs...