Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/296034028?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Google changes Android dashboard numbers to count active users, not just pings
The Android device dashboard has been providing a picture of OS version distribution since before Froyo pushed aside Eclair, but now it's seeing some changes. A post on the Android Developers Google+ page indicates that starting this month, numbers are based on devices whose users actively checked Google Play during the reporting period. Previously, it counted all devices that pinged Google servers. The latest stats, updated today, show a jump in the amount of actives (previously devices, now users) on Jelly Bean (Android 4.1 or higher), up to 25 percent from 16.5 percent last month when it counted the old way. The number of devices recorded running Froyo and Gingerbread have taken the biggest hit, down 3.6 and 4 percentage points, respectively.
There are a few ways to react to this, particularly remembering that these numbers are meant to help developers figure out how many users are available to target on the various versions of Android and types of hardware. It may help give a clearer picture of what setups the active users that developers hope to reach are using, without being muddied by little-used zombie hardware. On the other hand, it could be seen as a way to juke stats which have been used against Google's mobile OS by its competitors like Apple. Whichever side of the line one finds themselves on, more data is available by clicking on the source link below.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Software, Mobile, Google
Source: Android Developers (Google+), Android Dashboard
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/02/google-changes-android-dashboard-numbers-to-count-active-users/
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In Nelson, Ga., you now have to own a gun
NELSON, Ga. (AP) ? Backers of a newly adopted ordinance requiring gun ownership in a small north Georgia town acknowledge they were largely seeking to make a point about gun rights.
The ordinance in the city of Nelson ? population 1,300 ? was approved Monday night and goes into effect in 10 days. However, it contains no penalties and exempts anyone who objects, convicted felons and those with certain mental and physical disabilities.
City Councilman Duane Cronic, who sponsored the measure, said he knows the ordinance won't be enforced but he still believes it will make the town safer.
"I likened it to a security sign that people put up in their front yards. Some people have security systems, some people don't, but they put those signs up," he said. "I really felt like this ordinance was a security sign for our city."
Another purpose, according to the city council's agenda, is "opposition of any future attempt by the federal government to confiscate personal firearms."
Council members in Nelson, a small city located 50 miles north of Atlanta, voted unanimously to approve the Family Protection Ordinance. The measure requires every head of household to own a gun and ammunition to "provide for the emergency management of the city" and to "provide for and protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants."
Nelson resident Lamar Kellett was one of five people who spoke during a public comment period Monday night and one of two who opposed the ordinance. Among his many objections, he said it dilutes the city's laws to pass measures that aren't intended to be enforced.
"Does this mean now 55 miles an hour speed limit means 65, 80, whatever you choose? There's not a whole lot of difference. A law's a law," he said.
Kellett also said the ordinance will have no effect, that it won't encourage people like him who don't want a gun to go out and buy one.
The proposal illustrates how the response to the massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., varies widely in different parts of the country.
While lawmakers in generally more liberal states with large urban centers like New York and California have moved to tighten gun control laws, more conservative, rural areas in the American heartland have been going in the opposite direction.
Among the other efforts to broaden gun rights that have surfaced since the Newtown killings:
? Earlier Monday, lawmakers in Oklahoma scuttled a bill that would have allowed public school districts to decide whether to let teachers be armed.
? Spring City, Utah, passed an ordinance this year recommending that residents keep firearms, softening an initial proposal that aimed to require it.
? Residents of tiny Byron, Maine, rejected a proposal last month that would have required a gun in every home. Even some who initially supported the measure said it should have recommended gun ownership instead of requiring it, and worried that the proposal had made the community a laughingstock. Selectmen of another Maine town, Sabbatus, threw out a similar measure. The state's attorney general said state law prevents municipalities from passing their own firearms laws anyway.
? Lawmakers in about two dozen states have considered making it easier for school employees or volunteers to carry guns on campus. South Dakota passed such a measure last month. Individual communities from New Jersey to Colorado have voted to allow administrators or teachers to carry guns in school.
Located in the Appalachian foothills, Nelson is a tiny, hilly town with narrow, twisting roads. It's a place where most people know one another and leave their doors unlocked.
It used to be a major source of marble, with the local marble company employing many in town. But that industry is mostly gone now, Mayor Mike Haviland said. There are no retail stores in town anymore, and just about everyone leaves town for work now, making it a bedroom community for Atlanta, he said.
The mayor said he never dreamed his small city would be the focus of national and international media attention, but he understands it.
"It bumps up against the national issues on guns," he said.
Police Chief Heath Mitchell noted that the city doesn't have police officers who work 24 hours a day and is far from the two sheriff's offices that might send deputies in case of trouble, so response times to emergency calls can be long. Having a gun would help residents take their protection into their own hands, he said.
But the chief ? the town's sole police officer ? acknowledged the crime rate is very low. He mostly sees minor property thefts and a burglary every few months. The most recent homicide was more than five years ago, he said.
The ordinance is modeled after a similar one adopted in 1982 by Kennesaw, an Atlanta suburb. City officials there worried at the time that growth in Atlanta might bring crime to the community, which now has about 30,000 residents. Kennesaw police have acknowledged that their ordinance is difficult to enforce, and they haven't made any attempt to do so.
Leroy Blackwell, 82, has lived in Nelson for about 50 years and owns a hunting rifle he keeps in a closet. He said before the council's decision that he would support the ordinance even if it didn't have exemptions, but he would have preferred it to be voluntary.
"Really, I think it would be more fair to put it to a vote" so everybody could have a say, he said.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ga-city-council-votes-require-gun-ownership-003042709.html
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Obama proposes $100M for brain mapping project
President Barack Obama speaks about the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, in the East Room at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
President Barack Obama speaks about the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, in the East Room at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
President Barack Obama listens as National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis S. Collins speaks about the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, in the East Room at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
President Barack Obama leaves the stage in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, after he spoke about the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
President Barack Obama announces the BRIAN, Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies proposal, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, East Room of the White House in Washington. The president is asking Congress to spend $100 million next year to start a new project to map the human brain in hopes of eventually finding cures for diseases like Alzheimer's. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama on Tuesday proposed an effort to map the brain's activity in unprecedented detail, as a step toward finding better ways to treat such conditions as Alzheimer's, autism, stroke and traumatic brain injuries.
He asked Congress to spend $100 million next year to start a project that will explore details of the brain, which contains 100 billion cells and trillions of connections.
That's a relatively small investment for the federal government ? less than a fifth of what NASA spends every year just to study the sun ? but it's too early to determine how Congress will react.
Obama said the so-called BRAIN Initiative could create jobs, and told scientists gathered in the White House's East Room that the research has the potential to improve the lives of billions of people worldwide.
"As humans we can identify galaxies light-years away," Obama said. "We can study particles smaller than an atom, but we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears."
Scientists unconnected to the project praised the idea.
BRAIN stands for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies. The idea, which Obama first proposed in his State of the Union address, would require the development of new technology that can record the electrical activity of individual cells and complex neural circuits in the brain "at the speed of thought," the White House said.
Obama wants the initial $100 million investment to support research at the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation. He also wants private companies, universities and philanthropists to partner with the federal agencies in support of the research. And he wants a study of the ethical, legal and societal implications of the research.
The goals of the work are unclear at this point. A working group at NIH, co-chaired by Cornelia "Cori" Bargmann of The Rockefeller University and William Newsome of Stanford University, would work on defining the goals and develop a multi-year plan to achieve them that included cost estimates.
The $100 million request is "a pretty good start for getting this project off the ground," Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health told reporters in a conference call. While the ultimate goal applies to the human brain, some work will be done in simpler systems of the brains of animals like worms, flies and mice, he said.
Collins said new understandings about how the brain works may also provide leads for developing better computers.
Brain scientists unconnected with the project were enthusiastic.
"This is spectacular," said David Fitzpatrick, scientific director and CEO of the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience in Jupiter, Fla., which focuses on studying neural circuits and structures.
While current brain-scanning technologies can reveal the average activity of large populations of brain cells, the new project is aimed at tracking activity down to the individual cell and the tiny details of cell connections, he said. It's "an entirely different scale," he said, and one that can pay off someday in treatments for a long list of neurological and psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia, Parkinson's, depression, epilepsy and autism.
"Ultimately, you can't fix it if you don't know how it works," he said. "We need this fundamental understanding of neuronal circuits, their structure, their function and their development in order to make progress on these disorders."
"This investment in fundamental brain science is going to pay off immensely in the future," Fitzpatrick said.
Richard Frackowiak, a co-director of Europe's Human Brain Project, which is funded by the European Commission, said he was delighted by the announcement.
"From our point of view as scientists we can only applaud and say we will collaborate as much as possible," he said. "The opportunities for a massive worldwide collaborative effort to solve the problem of neurodegeneration and psychiatric disease will ... really become absolutely feasible," he said. "We need that."
___
Ritter reported from New York.
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Monday, April 1, 2013
256 Shades Of Grey
I want a black and white computer, and I don't want it out of sheer, wanton weirdness. I actually think it's a good idea. Here's why.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/WgBl6Rz7Tpo/
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Stanford researchers create genetic transistors, make biologic computing possible
When constructing computer circuits, most folks start with silicon and metal, but not the researchers at Stanford. The boffins in Palo Alto want to build computers out of living tissue, and to that end they've created a biological transistor, called the transcriptor. Transcriptors substitute DNA for semiconductors and RNA for the electrons in traditional transistors -- essentially, the transcriptor controls the flow of a specific RNA protein along a DNA strand using tailored combinations of enzymes. Using these transcriptors, researchers built logic gates to derive true/false answers to biochemical questions posed within living cells. Using these bio-transistors, researchers gain access to data not previously available (like whether an individual cell has been exposed to certain external stimuli), in addition to allowing them to control basic functions like cellular reproduction.
This new breakthrough -- when combined with the DNA-based data storage and a method to transmit DNA between cells the school's already working on -- means that Stanford has created all the necessary components of a biologic computer. Such computers would allow man to actually reprogram how living systems operate. Of course, they haven't built a living genetic PC just yet, but to speed up its development, the team has contributed all the transcriptor-based logic gates to the public domain. Looking to build your own biologic computer? A full explanation of the transcriptor awaits below.
Filed under: Science
Via: The Verge
Source: Stanford University, Science Magazine
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/2MLwxlSGAUg/
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