Vor 45 Jahren passierte in Lucens ein schwerer Reaktor-Unfall. Die Bevölkerung wurde erst am nächsten Tag informiert. Die Sache warf keine grosse Wellen, Atomkraft galt noch als Energie der Zukunft.
Warum bewegt uns 1914 und das Grauen, das damals begann, immer noch? Nie hatte man weniger Grund, sich abzuschlachten. Es war eine der verwöhntesten Generationen der europäischen Geschichte, die den Krieg beschloss.
Ein Berner Forschungsteam untersuchte, wie Bienen auf einen weit verbreiteten Krankheitserreger reagieren – mit erstaunlichem Ergebnis.
Die europäische Kometensonde Rosetta ist bald am Ziel ihrer Reise. Nach fast dreijähriger Funkstille soll sie am Montag wieder Signale auf die Erde senden.
Hiroo Onoda hatte sich nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg im Dschungel der philippinischen Insel Lubang verschanzt – er glaubte nicht an das Ende des Kriegs. Nun ist die Legende im Alter von 91 Jahren verstorben.
Trauriger Rekord: Die Jagdlust der südafrikanischen Wilderer ist stark gestiegen: Im letzten Jahr sind 1004 Nashörner illegal getötet worden – 50 Prozent mehr als 2012.
Die Uni St.Gallen hat mit einer Studie untersucht, ob sich die Zahl neuer IV-Renten stabilisieren wird. Das Resultat ist widersprüchlich.
Im Tennis gibt es unzählige «Weisheiten» über den Spielverlauf. Statistiker haben diese nun untersucht und kommen zu überraschenden Resultaten.
Ein Bauernhof südwestlich Seoul ist wahrscheinlich mit der Vogelgrippe verseucht. Um einen Ausbruch der Krankheit zu verhindern, liessen die Behörden alle Enten keulen. Ein Testergebnis liegt noch nicht vor.
Die Grippesaison ist angebrochen. Ein Viertel aller Fälle ist durch Schweinegrippeviren bedingt. Beda Stadler sagt, wie gefährlich das ist – und wie sich der warme Winter auf die Grippe auswirkt.
Laut der Biologin Verena Keller kommen in diesem Winter weniger Wasservögel aus dem Norden zu uns. Verantwortlich dafür sind die milden Temperaturen.
Weil es den Waldrapp nur noch in Zoos gibt, ziehen Forscher die Jungtiere auf. Dabei zeigen sie ihnen die Route zum Winterquartier. Im Gegenzug gewähren die Vögel Einblick in das Geheimnis ihrer Flugkunst.
Unbekannte Sprache, unbekannte Zeichen. 50 Jahre scheiterte die Fachwelt an der jahrtausendealten Schrift Linear B aus Kreta. Wie ein junger Architekt das Rätsel schliesslich löste, erzählt jetzt ein Buch.
Sie sind die Zukunftswerkzeuge der Militärs: Flugkörper, die mehr als die fünffache Schallgeschwindigkeit erreichen. Nun hat China vor den Augen der Amerikaner eine solche Waffe getestet.
Reptilien lernen von Artgenossen, passen ihr Verhalten flexibel der jeweiligen Situation an und merken sich erstaunlich lang, was man ihnen beigebracht hat. Sie sind alles andere als dumm.
Das Schmelzen des Pine-Island-Gletschers ist nicht mehr zu stoppen. Die Folgen für das Ansteigen der Weltmeere können enorm sein.
Pollen fliegen in diesem Jahr ungewöhnlich früh. Hasel und Erle beginnen in diesen Tagen in Zürich und Basel zu blühen.
Die Kaiserschnittrate variiert stark zwischen den Schweizer Gemeinden: Rund um den Zürichsee wird jedes zweite Kind mit einer Operation geboren – im Jura nur jedes siebte. Ärzte und Hebammen sagen, warum.
Tierschützer sind entsetzt: Ein texanischer Safariclub hat die Lizenz zur Erlegung eines Spitzmaulnashorns versteigert. Das Ganze geschieht aber mit Erlaubnis der Regierung – und angeblich zu einem guten Zweck.
Das Eis geht zurück, die Technik wird immer besser, und das Geschäft mit Transporten und Touristen wächst. Und doch – die Akademik Schokalski hat es gezeigt: Für Schiffe bleiben Arktis und Antarktis gefährlich.
One day a 3D printer, using a mix of materials, will be able to create body armor for U.S. soldiers that is more lightweight and stronger than anything could be made with traditional manufacturing and materials today. That’s the word from researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who are working to revolutionize as well as the way that companies build products ranging from jet engines and satellites to football helmets. Scientists at the laboratory, a federally funded center in Livermore, California, that focuses on national security research, are working on architecting new materials to be used in a process called , more commonly known as 3D printing, and developing a technique for building multiple materials into the same product. They’re also studying the physics and chemistry at the base of the process in order to better understand how manufactured parts will stand up to conditions such as heat and stress, so they can predict a product’s behaviors and performance.
Many countries are still grappling with the issues of crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin, of which there are . China’s central bank, for example, has ordered financial institutions to halt Bitcoin-related services and products. With the value of Bitcoin increasing to more than $1000 this month after social gaming firm the virtual currency as payment, the question is: can crypto-currencies can become real currency? From the perspective of the Reserve Bank in New Zealand, or more specifically not legal tender. They are payment systems. A bank representative says the consistent message emerging from central banks and governments around the world is:
Intel has an ambitious goal for 2014: get its Atom chips into 40 million tablets, or four times the number of tablets that had Intel inside in 2013. But rather than do it by tailoring its products to what tablets now demand, the cash-rich company has another plan: pay tablet makers to use its chips. That’s essentially what Intel is doing through a program first disclosed at its financial analyst meeting in November. Intel will pay tablet makers to cover the additional component costs of using its Bay Trail chips instead of ARM-based processors, and it will also help cover the engineering costs of designing an Intel tablet. The Intel division that makes Bay Trail will incur a “significant increase” in its operating loss to pay for the plan, CFO Stacy Smith said at the November meeting, but the upshot is likely to be a lot more tablets based on Intel chips, potentially even from big players like Samsung. ”Basically, they’re making an investment to make up for them being slow to get into the market,” said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research.
An increasing number of attacks against businesses are coming from mobile devices, according to Prolexic Technologies. The American-based released data from its fourth quarter 2013 report that suggests mobile applications have and will continue to play a more expansive role in such attacks. The report gathered data from attacks against Prolexic’s clients and showed that one international financial services firm fell victim to such an attack. Subsequent digital forensics and attack signature analysis by the company detected the use of AnDOSid, an Android app that can mount an HTTP POST flood attack. The company has described the increase in such attacks as a game changer and accredits the increase to the availability of downloadable apps and the ease which users can join DDoS campaigns. The company also said it expected to see an increasing number of in the coming year. Prolexic president Stuart Scholly said he believes that applications commonly used in DDoS attacks like Low Orbit Ion Canon (LOIC) will to mobile platforms in 2014.
The weak protections for customer data in Starbucks’ mobile-payment app is a “wakeup call” for consumers who should never assume the apps they use in their smartphones are secure. Starbucks that its app stores usernames, email addresses, and passwords in clear text. As a result, anyone could see the information by connecting the phone to a PC. Choose ease over security Starbucks chose not to encrypt the data and store it on its servers in order to make the app easier to use. Taking the additional security measures would have meant having the user logon each time they used the app. By storing the data in clear text on the phone, users only had to login once, until they added more money to their account. ”The recent news that the Starbucks mobile app is not adequately protecting usernames and passwords should be a wakeup call for us—both as mobile consumers and employees,” said Jack Walsh, mobility program manager at software testing and certification firm ICSA Labs. “No one should assume that their company’s mobile apps are safe and properly secure sensitive employee or customer data.”
Some of the most futuristic features envisioned in will depend on 5G mobile technology that probably won’t be available in full until 2020, according to Ericsson’s chief technology officer. There’s a bright future for cellular in cars, according to Ulf Ewaldsson, who is the mobile gear vendor’s senior vice president and chief technology officer and head of Group Function Technology. He spoke with IDG News Service following a big automotive push by Ericsson at earlier this month. Among other things, the company showed off its CVC (Connected Vehicle Cloud), designed to deliver applications in a car for information, entertainment, making service appointments and other needs. Ericsson announced partnerships with both a carrier (AT&T) and a carmaker (Volvo). But more advanced networked-car visions, up to and including self-driving cars, will rely on capabilities that Ericsson sees coming in the as-yet-undefined it expects commercial deployments of the future specification starting in 2020.
Cybercriminals have stolen payment card data from six more U.S. retailers using similar point-of-sale malware that a computer crime intelligence company said Friday. The conclusion comes from a study of members-only forums where cybercriminals and malicious software tools, said Dan Clements, president of IntelCrawler, which conducted the analysis. The retailers have not been publicly named, but IntelCrawler is providing technical information related to the breaches to law enforcement, Clements said in a telephone interview Friday. Hackers' tools determined IntelCrawler has also identified a 17-year-old Russian who it says created the which intercepts unencrypted payment card data after a card is swiped. Security experts believe malware based on BlackPOS was used against Target.
Hydrogen-powered. Three-wheeled. Gesture-controlled. The concept cars we saw at NAIAS in Detroit were all some kind of crazy, but don't be surprised if you see something like them in the near future.
From works by legendary directors to films featuring Oscar-nominated acting performances, these ten streaming movies are worth your time and more than worth their low cost of zero dollars.
CIOs are waiting anxiously for Microsoft to pick a new CEO, but they don’t mind that it’s taking its time; the way they see it, Microsoft can’t afford to make a mistake in the selection process. For CIOs, it’s clear that the chosen candidate will have to steer the company through a variety of challenges both internal and external, and to do so successfully, the person chosen to replace Steve Ballmer will need a rare combination of skills and experience. What awaits the new boss Among the top priorities, Microsoft needs to improve its position in the tablet and smartphone markets, fix the problems dogging Windows 8 and 8.1, battle Google Apps for the cloud email and collaboration markets, and complete a broad corporate reorganization that Ballmer announced last July. “The CEO search is incredibly important,” said Mike Blake, CIO at Commune Hotels & Resorts in San Francisco, and previously CIO at Hyatt. “I’m sure the search committee is doing the best job it can to find the correct customer-focused executive who can unlock the value within the Microsoft portfolio.”
Microsoft's Xbox One outsold all others during the month of December, continuing its trend of outselling all other game consoles within the U.S.
LG’s says display's wrinkles won't affect performance and can be gently rubbed out.
U.S. President Barack Obama Friday called for changes to U.S. National Security Agency surveillance, with new privacy advocates assigned to a surveillance court and a transition away from a controversial telephone records collection program in the U.S. However, Obama stopped short of major changes advocated by and civil liberties groups. A recent debate over the NSA’s surveillance programs, prompted by leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, forced Obama to propose changes. ”Ultimately, what’s at stake in this debate goes beyond a few months of headlines or passing tensions in our foreign policy,” Obama said in a speech. The biggest change Obama proposed was a transition away from an NSA bulk phone-records-collection program, with the goal being a new program that doesn’t include the NSA holding onto the records, Obama said. Obama wants members of his administration to propose a new program by late March, when the phone records program up for reauthorization.
Google wants more developers to integrate their Android apps with its storage service Drive, and has released a new API that aims to make it easier. While Drive integration on Android was possible in the past, the new API offers developers better performance and more features, Google developer advocate Magnus Hyttsten The native, Java-based . The API includes the ability to temporarily use storage on the device if it is not connected to a network. The upshot for developers is that they don’t have to worry about failed API calls when the phone is offline or experiencing network connectivity problems, according to Hyttsten. Data stored locally will then be automatically transferred to Drive by Android’s sync scheduler when connectivity is reestablished.
Acer reported another net loss at NT$7.6 billion (US$251 million) for the fourth quarter, as senior executives at the struggling PC maker agreed to a 30 percent cut to their salaries. It’s the third consecutive quarter for which Acer has reported a net loss, as the PC market continues to shrink. During the fourth quarter, the company’s revenue reached NT$86.7 billion, down from NT$101.5 billion a year earlier. Part of the fourth quarter net loss was due to a write-off of NT$1.3 billion related to raw materials inventory and other costs, Acer said on Friday.
NTT DoCoMo has put on hold its plans to launch a smartphone with the new open-source mobile operating system, a spokesman said Friday. “We’re revising our plan to release it this fiscal year, but haven’t decided to abandon it,” said Jun Ootori, a spokesman for the Japanese telecommunications giant. “The conditions surrounding the Japanese smartphone market and the timing aren’t good right now,” he added. “We haven’t decided anything about the future but we are working with members of the (Tizen) association. We haven’t decided on a launch.” Tizen is a Linux-based OS for smartphones, tablets, and other devices that has been seen as an alternative to Google’s Android. It also has the backing of Intel and Samsung Electronics.
Neiman Marcus apologized on Thursday for a data breach that compromised payment card numbers, saying Social Security numbers and birth dates appear to be safe. Online shoppers are believed to have not been affected by the breach, and customer PINs (personal identification numbers) are not at risk since the retailer does not require PINs at its stores, the high-end retailer on its website. ”We have taken steps to notify those affected customers for whom we have contact information,” wrote Neiman Marcus CEO Karen Katz. Neiman Marcus learned about the breach in mid-December from its merchant card processor after unauthorized card activity occurred following purchases at its stores. It hired a forensics firm which confirmed on Jan. 1 the company’s network had been attacked.