Scientific American

D-Wave's Quantum Computer Courts Controversy

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:00:00 EST

“I've been doing combative stuff since I was born,” says Geordie Rose, leaning back in a chair in his small, windowless office in Burnaby, Canada, as he describes how he has spent most of his life making things difficult for himself. Until his early 20s, that meant an obsession with wrestling -- the sport that, he claims, provides the least reward for the most work. More recently, says Rose, now 41, “that's been D-Wave in a nutshell: an unbearable amount of pain and very little recognition”.

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Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet [Excerpt, Part 2]

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:00:00 EST

The arrival of filtering required spammers to switch strategy. The carpetbaggers of spam’s youth left the scene, ushering in criminal sophisticates who set to work spoofing the filters. The game had changed. As Finn Brunton recounts in his brilliant history of spam, excerpted here for a second day: “Rather than sales pitches for goods or sites, they [messages] could be used for phishing, identity theft, credit card scams, and infecting the recipient’s computer with viruses, worms, adware, and other forms of dangerous and crooked malware. A successful spam message could net many thousands of dollars, rather than $5 or $10 plus whatever the spammer might make selling off their good addresses to other spammers.” Brunton illustrates the ingenuity of this transformation by detailing the highly inventive litspam--the hijacking of entire texts of Borges or Conan Doyle to waltz past spam filtering algorithms.

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Statistics and Magnetic Socks Shape Modern Tae Kwon Do

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:30:00 EST

This story was originally published by Inside Science News Service .

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Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet [Excerpt, Part 1]

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:00:00 EST

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Optical Circuits: Single Photon Flips Transistor Switch

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:00:00 EST

Transistors, the tiny switches that flip on and off inside computer chips, have long been the domain of electricity. But scientists are beginning to develop chip components that run on light. Last week, in a remarkable achievement, a team led by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge reported building a transistor that is switched by a single photon.

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How Not to Be Crass Wearing Google's Glass

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 07:30:00 EST

This month, my Scientific American column took a look at the prospects for Google Glass, Google's futuristic, eye-mounted, pseudo-smartphone thing. Frankly, Glass's greatest vulnerability isn't that it may fail technologically, it's that it may fail socially. How comfortable will you be when you're conversing with someone who may or may not be filming you?

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Former NSA Whistleblower Sheds Light on the Science of Surveillance [Q&A]

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 19:55:00 EST

A National Security Agency whistleblower named Thomas Drake was indicted several years ago for providing information to the press on waste, fraud and bureaucratic dysfunction in the agency’s counterterrorism programs. The U.S. Department of Justice indicted Drake, an NSA senior executive, under the Espionage Act of 1917 for retaining allegedly classified information. Eventually, the felony charges against Drake were dropped , and he pled guilty to a misdemeanor, exceeding authorized use of a computer. Still, the DOJ’s strategy in that case may provide some clues as to what’s in store for Edward Snowden, a government contractor who exposed himself last weekend as the source for a widespread domestic communications story first reported by The Guardian . Drake spoke with Scientific American to shed some light on whistleblower prosecutions and the science behind surveillance. An edited transcript of the conversation follows:

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5 Basic Unknowns about the NSA "Black Hole"

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:40:00 EST

Last week saw revelations that the FBI and the National Security Agency have been collecting Americans' phone records en masse and that the agencies have access to data from nine tech companies.

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How Social Media Is Changing Disaster Response

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 17:15:00 EST

When Hurricane Katrina ravaged the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, Facebook was the new kid on the block. There was no Twitter for news updates, and the iPhone was not yet on the scene. By the time Hurricane Sandy slammed the eastern seaboard last year, social media had become an integral part of disaster response, filling the void in areas where cell phone service was lost while millions of Americans looked to resources including Twitter and Facebook to keep informed, locate loved ones, notify authorities and express support. Gone are the days of one-way communication where only official sources provide bulletins on disaster news.

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Wiretaps through Software Hacks to Get Legal Scrutiny

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 15:40:00 EST

Earlier this year a group of researchers published a controversial idea for giving law enforcement access to suspicious electronic communications. Instead of forcing tech companies like Facebook and Google to build backdoors into their software , the researchers suggested law enforcement simply exploit existing vulnerabilities in Web software to plant their digital wiretaps. [More]

Help Hunt Distant Galaxies at Home

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:48:08 EST

It takes a village to raise a child. Well, the same is true for finding what are called “space warps.” That’s according to astrophysicists who are calling for volunteers to aid in the search for gravitational lenses: astronomical objects so massive that they bend light around themselves, appearing to warp the fabric of space.

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How to Build a Smarter Internet (preview)

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 08:00:00 EST

The number of smartphones, tablets and other network-connected gadgets will outnumber humans by the end of the year. Perhaps more significantly, faster and more powerful mobile devices hitting the market are producing and consuming content at unprecedented levels. Global mobile data grew 70 percent in 2012, according to a recent report from Cisco, which makes much of the gear that runs the Internet. Yet the capacity of the world's networking infrastructure is finite, leaving many to wonder when we will reach the upper limit and what we will do when that happens.

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Bell Labs Lead Researcher Discusses the Edge of the Internet [Video]

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 08:00:00 EST

Apple introduces the latest “i”-gadget; Samsung takes the reins as the world’s leading smartphone provider; Blackberry mounts an all-or-nothing comeback.

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Searching for the True Sources of Crime

Wed, 29 May 2013 07:00:00 EST

In his best-selling essay entitled “Guns,” Stephen King contrasts a mass killer's school yearbook picture, “in which the guy pretty much looks like anybody,” and the police mug shot of someone who looks “like your worst nightmare.”

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Google CEO s Condition Spotlights Vocal Cord Paralysis and Its Treatment

Wed, 22 May 2013 07:30:00 EST

When Google CEO Larry Page blogged about his struggles speaking and, at times, breathing last week on his Google+ page he spotlighted a rare condition, bilateral vocal cord paralysis , which leaves sufferers short of breath and with few viable treatment options. This is likely to change in coming years. Page has deep pockets and has promised to fund research into the disorder via the Voice Health Institute . In the meantime scientists are experimenting with electrical stimulation technologies to enhance existing voice therapy as well as surgical treatments. [More]

Why Google Glass Is Creepy

Tue, 21 May 2013 07:15:00 EST

Every new technology causes initial public discomfort. It took society a long time to accept cell phones as commonplace. Before that, television. And before that, tractors.

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No-Kill, High-Resolution 3-D Movies of Cells Now Possible [Video & Infographic]

Tue, 21 May 2013 07:00:00 EST

Lillian Fritz-Laylin is observing a strain of leukemia cell that zips along at about 10 to 20 microns per minute. She’s looking for the motive secret of how these speed demons of the cellular world get around, and she’s doing it by making a high-resolution 3-D micro movie.

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Can Patents Keep Up with Technology?

Mon, 20 May 2013 07:00:00 EST

The U.S. patent system is a popular target. Recently we have heard that big portfolios of large companies pose a threat to small inventors, “patent trolls” who exist solely to sue real companies have hijacked the marketplace for new ideas and colossal lawsuits prove that America's patent system is broken.

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Very Fine Art: 6 Stunningly Beautiful Nanoscale Sculptures [Slide Show]

Sun, 19 May 2013 10:00:00 EST

Artists and material scientists alike bend, melt and mold materials into useful and aesthetically pleasing forms. But nothing human hands have made can match the intricacy of convoluted corals or the delicate and unique geometry of a snowflake. In a study published yesterday in Science researchers exploited nature’s sculpting methods to create visually stunning 3-D structures that may change the way nano- and micro-materials are made.

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Recommended: Probably Approximately Correct

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:30:00 EST

Probably Approximately Correct: Nature's Algorithms for Learning and Prospering in a Complex World [More]