Recent articles in ScienceDaily

• Spider web's strength lies in more than its silk. A study that combines experimental observations of spider webs with complex computer simulations has shown that web durability depends not only on silk strength, but on how overall web design compensates for damage and the response of individual strands to continuously varying stresses.
• Artificial intelligence: Getting better at the age guessing game. The active learning algorithm is faster and more accurate in guessing the age of an individual than conventional algorithms.
• Data storage: Magnetic memories. Magnetic random-access memory based on new spin transfer technology achieves higher storage density by packing multiple bits of data into each memory cell.
• Risk-based passenger screening could make air travel safer. Intensive screening of all airline passengers actually makes the system less secure by overtaxing security resources, while risk-based methods increase overall security, according to new research. The researchers developed three algorithms dealing with risk uncertainty in the passenger population. Then, they ran simulations to demonstrate how their algorithms could estimate risk in the overall passenger population and how errors in this estimation procedure can be mitigated to reduce the risk to the overall system.
• Rap music powers rhythmic action of medical sensor. The driving bass rhythm of rap music can be harnessed to power a new type of miniature medical sensor designed to be implanted in the body.
• Speed limit on the quantum highway: Physicists measure propagation velocity of quantum signals in a many-body system. A quantum computer based on quantum particles instead of classical bits, can in principle outperform any classical computer. However, it still remains an open question, how fast and how efficient quantum computers really may be able to work. A critical limitation will be given by the velocity with which a quantum signal can spread within a processing unit. For the first time, a group of physicists has succeeded in observing such a process in a solid-state like system.
• Facebook is a community. Researchers in Italy have used two high-speed computer algorithms to analyze the connections between a large sub-set of the more than half a billion users of the social networking site Facebook to reveal that the system has a very strong structure. The study shows that Facebook has a well-defined community structure that follows a statistical power law in which there are a huge number of people with few connections and a much smaller number with a large number of connections.
• Quantum physics enables perfectly secure cloud computing. Researchers have succeeded in combining the power of quantum computing with the security of quantum cryptography and have shown that perfectly secure cloud computing can be achieved using the principles of quantum mechanics. They have performed an experimental demonstration of quantum computation in which the input, the data processing, and the output remain unknown to the quantum computer.
• Computer simulations revealing how methane and hydrogen pack into gas hydrates could enlighten alternative fuel production and carbon dioxide storage. For some time, researchers have explored flammable ice for low-carbon or alternative fuel or as a place to store carbon dioxide. Now, a computer analysis of the ice and gas compound, known as a gas hydrate, reveals key details of its structure. The results show that hydrates can hold hydrogen at an optimal capacity of 5 weight-percent, a value that meets the goal of a U.S. Department of Energy standard and makes gas hydrates practical and affordable.
• Faster-than-fast Fourier transform. Researchers have developed a new algorithm that, in a large range of practically important cases, improves on the fast Fourier transform. Under some circumstances, the improvement can be dramatic -- a tenfold increase in speed. The new algorithm could be particularly useful for image compression, enabling, say, smartphones to wirelessly transmit large video files without draining their batteries or consuming their monthly bandwidth allotments.
• Zappos breach goes beyond credit cards: Consumers face identity theft if hackers correlate other penetrated databases. An expert comments on the Zappos web site breach by hackers. He said that information about a customer can be used to 'de-anonymize' other databases on other Web sites, further invading customer privacy.
• Ten-second dance of electrons is step toward exotic new computers. Scientists have achieved a 100-fold increase in the ability to maintain control the spins of electrons in a solid material, a key step in the development of ultrafast quantum computers.
• Electron's negativity cut in half by supercomputer: Simulations slice electron in half -- a physical process that cannot be done in nature. Using several massive supercomputers, a team of physicists has split a simulated electron perfectly in half. The results are another example of how tabletop experiments on ultra-cold atoms and other condensed-matter materials can provide clues about the behavior of fundamental particles.
• Simulating firefighting operations on a PC. Firefighters often put their lives at risk during operations, so it is essential they have reliable tools to help them do their job. Now, a modular simulation kit is set to help develop new information and communication technologies -- and ensure they are tailored to firefighters' needs from the outset.
• Theory explains how new material could improve electronic shelf life. Engineers have discovered that the new material graphene conducts heat about 20 times faster than silicon, making it an option as a semiconductor material that could produce quieter and longer-lasting computers, cellphones and other devices.
• New computer model explains lakes and storms on Saturn's moon Titan. Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is an alien world covered in a thick atmosphere with abundant methane. Titan boasts methane clouds and fog, as well as rainstorms and plentiful lakes of liquid methane. The origins of many of these features, however, remain puzzling to scientists. Now, researchers have developed a computer model of Titan's atmosphere and methane cycle that, for the first time, explains many of these phenomena in a relatively simple and coherent way.
• Smart way of saving lives in natural disasters. Smartphones could help save hundreds of thousands of lives in the aftermath of a disaster or humanitarian crisis, new research has found.
• Shearing triggers odd behavior in microscopic particles. Microscopic spheres form strings in surprising alignments when suspended in a viscous fluid and sheared between two plates, a finding that will affect the way scientists think about the properties of such wide-ranging substances as shampoo and futuristic computer chips.
• More powerful supercomputers? New device could bring optical information processing. Researchers have created a new type of optical device small enough to fit millions on a computer chip that could lead to faster, more powerful information processing and supercomputers.
• Crucial advances in 'brain reading' demonstrated. A new study demonstrates several crucial advances in "brain reading" or "brain decoding" using computerized machine learning methods. Researchers classified data taken from people being scanned while watching videos meant to induce nicotine cravings and detected whether people were watching and resisting cravings, indulging in them, or watching videos that were unrelated to smoking or cravings.
• Protecting computers at start-up: New guidelines. A new draft computer security publication provides guidance for vendors and security professionals as they work to protect personal computers as they start up.
• HokieSpeed is a new powerful supercomputer for the masses. Virginia Tech crashed the supercomputing arena in 2003 with System X, a machine that placed the university among the world's top computational research facilities. Now comes HokieSpeed, a new supercomputer that is up to 22 times faster and yet a quarter of the size of X. As researchers from around the world have used System X to crack riddles of the blood system and further DNA research, HokieSpeed will be a next-generation research tool for engineers, scientists, and others.
• Computer vision research: Do you see what I see?. A question confronting neuroscientists and computer vision researchers alike is how objects can be identified by simply "looking" at an image. But teaching a computer to "know" what it's looking at is far harder. Scientists have now modeled human brain structure to develop better programming approaches for computer object identification.
• Tool detects patterns hidden in vast data sets. Researchers have developed a tool that can tackle large data sets in a way that no other software program can. Part of a suite of statistical tools called MINE, it can tease out multiple patterns hidden in health information, statistics amassed from a season of major league baseball, data on the changing bacterial landscape of the gut, and more.
• Computing: Improving security in the cloud. New encryption research may lead to improved data security, even for operations performed on remote servers.
• New method for enhancing thermal conductivity could cool computer chips, lasers and other devices. Engineers have discovered a surprising new way to increase a material's thermal conductivity that provides a new tool for managing thermal effects in computers, lasers and a number of other powered devices.
• Sharpening the lines: Advance could lead to smaller features in the quest for more compact, faster microchips. The microchip revolution has seen a steady shrinking of features on silicon chips, packing in more transistors and wires to boost chips' speed and data capacity. But in recent years, the technologies behind these chips have begun to bump up against fundamental limits, such as the wavelengths of light used for critical steps in chip manufacturing. Now, a new technique offers a way to break through one of these limits, possibly enabling further leaps in the computational power packed into a tiny sliver of silicon.
• High-energy physicists set record for network data transfer. Researchers have set a new world record for data transfer, helping to usher in the next generation of high-speed network technology. They transferred data in opposite directions at a combined rate of 186 gigabits per second (Gbps) in a wide-area network circuit. The rate is equivalent to moving two million gigabytes per day, fast enough to transfer nearly 100,000 full Blu-ray disks -- each with a complete movie and all the extras -- in a day.
• The Internet Protocol IPv6: A universal language. We are at the dawn of the age of IPv6, the Internet protocol that will succeed version 4, experts say. With 340 undecillion available addresses, IPv6 ensures that the Internet can continue growing and offers advantages in terms of stability, flexibility, and simplicity in network administration.
• Multi-purpose photonic chip paves the way to programmable quantum processors. A multi-purpose optical chip which generates, manipulates and measures entanglement and mixture -- two quantum phenomena which are essential driving forces for tomorrow's quantum computers -- has now been developed. This work represents an important step forward in the race to develop a quantum computer.