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Thứ Tư, 15 tháng 5, 2013

At Google I/O 2013 event, new new maps, music tools, phones, photo software

June 27, 2012: An Android display at the 2012 Google I/O conference in San Francisco. Google is expected to use its annual software developers' conference to showcase the latest mobile devices running on its Android software, while also unveiling other features in its evolving product line-up.AP Photo/Paul Sakuma

SAN FRANCISCO – Google is expected to use its annual software developers' conference to showcase the latest mobile devices running on its Android software, while also unveiling other features in its evolving product line-up.

The gathering, scheduled to begin Wednesday morning in San Francisco, provides Google Inc. with an opportunity to flex its technological muscle in front of a sold-out audience of engineers and entrepreneurs who develop applications and other features that can make smartphones and tablets more appealing.

Reporters from around the world also will be on hand, giving Google a chance to generate more hoopla about its latest innovations.

Watch Google I/O 2013 live at FoxNews.com.

The company, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., made a big splash at last year's conference by staging an elaborate production to highlight the potential of Google Glass -- an Internet-connected device and camera that can be worn on a person's face like a pair of spectacles. Google co-founder Sergey Brin wowed the crowd last year by taking to the stage and then engaging in a live video chat with a group of skydivers who were in a dirigible hovering above the convention. When they jumped, the skydivers' descent to the rooftop was shown live through the Google Glass camera.

Some of the developers in attendance last year paid $1,500 apiece for a Google Glass prototype that was delivered to them in March.

Google hasn't spelled out what its executives will discuss during this year's opening keynote, which is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. PT and last for nearly three hours. Given that Google Glass is now being tested by the developers who bought the "Explorer" edition, the device might not be one of the featured attractions.

It's a safe bet the spotlight at some point Wednesday will shine on Android, which already has been activated on more than 750 million devices around the world. Google gives the mobile operating system away, making it easier for gadget makers to sell their devices at prices below Apple Inc.'s iPhone and iPad.

Android has helped Google make more money because its search engine and other services, including maps, are usually built into the devices that rely on the software. That tie-in drives more visitors to Google, giving the company more opportunities to sell the advertising that generates most of its revenue.

Much of the speculation about the conference, dubbed "Google I/O," has centered on a possible upgrade to the Nexus 7, a mini-tablet that debuted at last year's event as an alternative to the similarly sized Kindle Fire made by Amazon.com Inc. and the larger iPad. A few months after the Nexus 7 came out, Apple released the iPad Mini to counter the threat posed by Google's entrance into the market.

The next version of the Nexus 7 is expected to feature a much faster processor and a higher resolution display screen while maintaining the same $199 sales prices. If that turns out to be true, it could siphon even more sales from the iPad Mini, which starts at $329.

There's also speculation that Google will unveil a music-streaming service that would allow Android users to listen to their favorite songs and artists for a monthly fee. Google has long been rumored to be in talks with music labels to work out the licensing rights for a service that would compete with Spotify, Internet radio provider Pandora Media Inc. and other outlets that stream digital music to Internet-connected computers, smartphones and tablets.

Another Google-designed phone under the Nexus brand is also a possibility. Google also could use the occasion to introduce a model made by its unprofitable Motorola Mobility subsidiary.

A sneak peak at the next generation of Android, code named "Key Lime Pie," could be in the offing, too.

Other potential product introductions include laptops running on Android or another Google operating system based on the company's Chrome web browser.

Google also may provide more insights into the popularity of Google Plus, a social networking alternative to Facebook that launched nearly two years ago. Google Plus had more than 135 million active users at the end of last year, based on Google's last public disclosure about activity on that network. That left Google Plus far behind Facebook, which boasts 1.1 billion active users.

In an attempt persuade more people to use its social networking service more frequently, Google has promised to keep adding tools that aren't available on Facebook.

On other fronts, Google is believed to be working on a digital gaming center that could be unveiled Wednesday. Getting into gaming would give Google an opportunity to participate in one of the most popular activities on mobile devices.

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Thứ Tư, 8 tháng 5, 2013

Igniting debate: School scrubs photo of professors burning book

San Jose State University's Dr. Alison Bridger holds a lit match beneath a book that claims global warming is "natural" as assistant professor Craig Clements looks on last month. The photograph has since been removed from the university's website. (SJSU.edu)

What could prompt two college professors to burn a book? Disagreement with the contents, of course.

Two San Jose State University professors took a picture as they held a match to a book that takes on the idea of global warming, and the photo landed on an official school website until some realized the idea of academics burning books is not exactly scholarly. The image depicted Alison Bridger, a professor and chairwoman of the university’s department of meteorology and climate science, holding a lit match beneath “The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania” as the 312-page paperback was held by assistant professor Craig Clements.

“This week we received a deluge of free books from the Heartland Institute,” the original caption read, according to an archived version of the webpage. “ … Shown above, Drs. Bridger and Clements test the flammability of the book.”

“The Department of Meteorology and Climate Science ... regrets what was clearly an ill-conceived attempt at satire."

- San Jose State University, Department of Meteorology and Climate Change

The picture and the accompanying caption, which was posted late last month, were later removed from the university’s servers after a popular climate change website, Watts Up With That?, noticed it and referenced Fahrenheit 451, the 1953 novel by Ray Bradbury in which books are outlawed and widely burned.

“When I first got the tip on this, I thought to myself ‘nobody can be this stupid to photograph themselves doing this’ but, here they are, right from the San Jose State University Meteorology Department web page,” blogger Anthony Watts wrote on Thursday.

Watts also included links to the university’s meteorology and climate change department, as well as phone numbers and an email address to contact school officials.

A day later, on Friday, department officials acknowledged the photograph and apologized to those who voiced their concerns.

“The Department of Meteorology and Climate Science has removed the material in question from its website, and regrets what was clearly an ill-conceived attempt at satire,” the website read. “Please be assured the university does not condone book burning for any reason.”

Messages left with Bridger and Clements early Wednesday were not immediately returned. A university spokeswoman later told FoxNews.com that the school would have no further comment on the matter.

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Thứ Sáu, 3 tháng 5, 2013

Amanda Bynes tweets topless photo, friends beg for help

LOS ANGELES – The Amanda Bynes saga took another scary turn in the late night hours Wednesday night when actress Jenny McCarthy tweeted that police were at the troubled star's home in New York City.

"Police are at @AmandaBynes house. I hope they get her help. Enough of this circus. She needs help," McCarthy wrote.

The source of McCarthy's information? Apparently she was quoting from the tweets of Bynes' former publicist Jonathan Jaxson, who had tweeted: "I just spoke to@AmandaBynes and she is soooo messed up on drugs and please @NY_POLICE find her and help her! I don't know her address!"

The online kerfuffle came soon after Bynes had posted topless photos of herself on Twitter.

Those pics came after Tuesday night's shots in which she was similarly unclothed, but at least still wearing a bra.

PHOTOS: More Bynes Twitpics.

In the preceding weeks, Bynes, 27, had been spotted wandering strangely around New York City, shaving half her head, tweeting obscene things about her affection for musician Drake, posting videos of herself mumbling in front of the mirror.

Bynes' behavior reportedly has the children in her apartment building scared, too.

And while some of her actions are reminiscent of a 2007 Britney Spears, whose very public meltdown culminated in her shaving her own head and later led to -- and still requires -- a legal conservatorship, one court expert told FOX411's Pop Tarts column earlier this week that there is nothing like that in the works for Bynes.

"There are two main standards that courts look at as far as conservatorships. The first is the person a danger to themselves -- Spears was and demonstrated that often -- and the second is whether the person a danger to society. Britney Spears was, and to her two children as well," legal consultant and alternative sentencing expert Wendy Feldman. "Amanda seems to have a serious mental illness, but that does not meet the standard in court. There is no record of suicide attempts or drug overdoses."

At least for now.

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Thứ Hai, 1 tháng 4, 2013

NASA spacecraft snaps new photo of potential 'comet of the century'

The Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope aboard NASA's Swift imaged comet ISON (center) on Jan. 30, when it was located about 3.3 degrees from the bright star Castor in the constellation Gemini. At the time of this 5.5-minute optical exposure, ISON waNASA/Swift/D. Bodewits, UMCP
From now through October, comet ISON tracks through the constellations Gemini, Cancer and Leo as it falls toward the sun. Image released March 29, 2013.NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Axel Mellinger

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A NASA spacecraft scanning for the most powerful explosions in the universe has captured a photo of Comet ISON, an icy wanderer that could potentially dazzle stargazers when it swings close to the sun later this year.

NASA's Swift satellite, which is typically used to track intense gamma-ray bursts from distant stars, photographed Comet ISON on Jan. 30, with the space agency unveiling the photo today (March 29). By tracking the comet over the last two months, Swift has allowed astronomers to learn new details about how large the comet is and how fast it is spewing out gas and dust.

"Comet ISON has the potential to be among the brightest comets of the last 50 years, which gives us a rare opportunity to observe its changes in great detail and over an extended period," said Lead Investigator Dennis Bodewits, an astronomer with University of Maryland at College Park (UMCP) who helped obtain the new image.

Some astronomers have predicted that ISON could be the "Comet of the Century" when it makes its closest approach to the sun in late November. But a recent analysis found that the comet is not brightening as expected, and may have a ways to go to meet such expectations.

Comet ISON was first discovered in September 2012 by Russian astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok using the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) located near Kislovodsk. The comet's official designation is Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON).

Swift's Comet ISON view
Bodewits and his university colleagues teamed up with the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., to capture new views of Comet ISON using the Swift spacecraft. The satellite's Jan. 30 photo shows the comet as a bright, fuzzy white ball. At the time, Comet ISON was about 375 million miles from Earth and 460 million miles from the sun.

"Using images acquired over the last two months from Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT), the team has made initial estimates of the comet's water and dust production and used them to infer the size of its icy nucleus," NASA officials wrote in a statement.

Swift's observations revealed that Comet ISON is currently shedding about 112,000 pounds of dust and about 130 pounds of water every minute, an odd mismatch for such an anticipated comet.

All comets are made of dust and frozen gases that mix together to form a sort of "dirty snowball" in space, NASA officials explained. Water ice in comets typically stays frozen until the comet approaches within three times the Earth's distance to the sun, at which time the water ice heats up and changes directly into gas (a process called sublimation), creating jets of material that can brighten the comet.

"The mismatch we detect between the amount of dust and water produced tells us that ISON's water sublimation is not yet powering its jets because the comet is still too far from the sun," Bodewits said. "Other more volatile materials, such as carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide ice, evaporate at greater distances and are now fueling ISON's activity."

Currently, Comet ISON is about 5,000 times fainter than the dimmest object the human eye can see.

NASA's Comet ISON campaign
NASA's Swift spacecraft is one of several satellites and probes to observe Comet ISON as it passes through the inner solar system. The space agency has formed the Comet ISON Observing Campaign (CIOC) to make the most of the comet's visit.

On Oct. 1, the comet will pass within 6.7 million miles of Mars, and may be spotted by orbiters around the Red Planet. [Comet ISON's Path Through Solar System (Video)]

"During this close encounter, Comet ISON may be observable to NASA and ESA spacecraft now working at Mars," said Michael Kelley, a UMCP astronomer and also a Swift and CIOC team member. "Personally, I'm hoping we'll see a dramatic postcard image taken by NASA's latest Mars explorer, the Curiosity rover."

On Nov. 28 — 58 days after swing close by Mars — Comet ISON will make its closest approach to the sun, flying within 730,000 miles of the star's surface during the encounter. Several sun-watching observatories will be tracking the comet at that time, and ISON may even become visible in the daytime sky to observers who block the sun's light with their hand, NASA officials said.

The comet will make its closest approach to Earth on Dec. 26, coming with 39.9 million miles of the planet as a late Christmas present.

But whether Comet ISON will live up to its celestial hype or fizzle out in a whimper still remains to be seen, astronomers warned. The comet must still survive the approach into the inner solar system, as well as its close encounter with the sun.

"It looks promising, but that's all we can say for sure now," Matthew Knight, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory said. "Past comets have failed to live up to expectations once they reached the inner solar system, and only observations over the next few months will improve our knowledge of how ISON will perform."

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Thứ Sáu, 15 tháng 3, 2013

DR. KEITH ABLOW: Moore's flawed rationale means his photo would motivate public against obesity

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore wants photographs of the children slaughtered in Newtown, Conn., at the Sandy Hook Elementary School to be released for public consumption.

His rationale is Americans will be so horrified by the carnage inflicted by Adam Lanza that they will demand gun control and effectively silence the NRA.

From a psychological perspective, Moore is arguing we traumatize Americans with grotesque images to such an extent that any rational argument about what caused the Sandy Hook tragedy ends, and people follow along with his absurd notion that guns and ammunition were what resulted in children dying there, rather than the obvious fact that our failed mental health care system is to blame.

To review the actual facts, Adam Lanza was a mentally ill man who lived in the windowless basement of his mother’s home. Inexplicably, she not only failed to secure her legally obtained firearms, but taught him to be a marksman.

Yet, this one-in-a-million scenario, which depended far more on Lanza never getting all the help he needed and being locked in a complex, unhealthy relationship with his mother (whom he shot to death), is heralded as a reason by Moore to violate the U.S. Constitution and take people’s right to bear arms away from them.

Moore apparently doesn’t care that showing photographs of dead, murdered children to the public would expose millions of children to those images, and might inflict the kind of psychological trauma upon them that contributes to making them shut down, lose empathy and become capable of violent acts themselves.

Moore apparently doesn’t understand that using dead children as a prop to make political points and elevate his political position is a failure of empathy and act of brazen narcissism.

Because the political underpinnings of what really happened to make this country defend human rights and free people from tyranny would be just as irrelevant to him as the underpinnings of what really happened in Newtown, where our shattered, shoddy mental health care system was again on display—as it was in Aurora, Colo., where James Holmes, who was also mentally ill, killed 12 people; and as it was near Tucson, Ariz., where Jared Lee Loughner, who was mentally ill, shot 19 people, killing six and severely wounding Rep. Gabby Giffords.

Here’s a psychiatrist’s advice for Moore: Heart disease kills almost 600,000 people per year in the United States. There are about 30,000 deaths from handguns. Most of those are suicides due to depression.

So, I suggest that, rather than releasing the pictures of slaughtered children, which will traumatize tens of millions of American children, he should release a naked photograph of himself.

Because, by his rationale (which I do not share), a full view of his obese torso could motivate people to stop drugging themselves with copious amounts of food and might put an end to a fair amount of heart disease.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team. Dr. Ablow can be reached at info@keithablow.com.

Dr. Keith Ablow

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Thứ Sáu, 1 tháng 3, 2013

First ever photo of alien planet forming

Astronomers have captured what may be the first-ever direct photograph of an alien planet in the process of forming around a nearby star.

The picture, which captured a giant alien planet as it is coming together, was snapped by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile. It shows a faint blob embedded in a thick disk of gas and dust around the young star HD 100546. The object appears to be a baby gas giant planet, similar to Jupiter, forming from the disk's material, scientists say.

"So far, planet formation has mostly been a topic tackled by computer simulations," astronomer Sascha Quanz of ETH Zurich in Switzerland, leader of the research team, said in a statement. "If our discovery is indeed a forming planet, then for the first time scientists will be able to study the planet formation process and the interaction of a forming planet and its natal environment empirically at a very early stage."

'For the first time scientists will be able to study the planet formation process.'

- Astronomer Sascha Quanz of ETH Zurich in Switzerland

The star HD 100546, which lies 335 light-years from Earth, was already thought to host another giant planet that orbits it about six times farther out than the Earth is from the sun. The new potential planet lies even farther, about 10 times the distance of its sibling, at roughly 70 times the stretch between the Earth and sun. [Giant Planet In the Making Spotted? (Video)]

The possible planet seems to fit the picture scientists are building of how worlds form. Stars themselves are born in clouds of gas and dust, and after the form, a disk of leftover material often orbits them. From this disk, baby planets can take shape. That's what appears to be happening here.

For example, the new photo reveals structures in the disk surrounding the star that could be caused by interactions between its material and the forming planet. Furthermore, the data suggest the material around the planet-blob has been heated up, which is consistent with the planet-forming hypothesis.

The observations were made possible by the NACO adaptive optics instrument on the Very Large Telescope, which compensates for the blurring caused by Earth's atmosphere. The instrument also uses a special coronagraph that observes in near-infrared wavelengths to block out the bright light from the star, so as to see its surroundings better.

"Exoplanet research is one of the most exciting new frontiers in astronomy, and direct imaging of planets is still a new field, greatly benefiting from recent improvements in instruments and data analysis methods," said Adam Amara, another member of the team. "In this research we used data analysis techniques developed for cosmological research, showing that cross-fertilization of ideas between fields can lead to extraordinary progress."

The findings are detailed in a paper to appear online in Thursday's issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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