Scientific American

An Emotionally Intelligent GPS System

Sun, 12 May 2013 12:00:00 EST

Human emotion metrics for navigation plans and maps: Imagine choosing not just the quickest path to your destination but the one that is most likely to lift your mood. Patent no. 8,364,395 fuses advances in mapping and traffic data with those in mood detection to form an emotionally intelligent navigation system.

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High-Powered Computing Heralds Digital Industrial Revolution (preview)

Fri, 10 May 2013 07:00:00 EST

When Thomas Edison invented a practical electric lightbulb more than 130 years ago, he performed thousands of experiments on prototypes, and we still marvel at his methodical patience today. A modern inventor proposing a similar approach, however, would more likely elicit laughter than praise. Product research and development more and more lives in the realm of bits and bytes, with engineers designing, testing, tweaking and even demonstrating new ideas via computer before any physical version exists.

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Now Hear This! Most People Stink at Listening [Excerpt]

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:00:00 EST

Editor's note: This excerpt of a chapter from The Plateau Effect describes a study that authors Bob Sullivan and Hugh Thompson conducted with Carnegie Mellon University into the nature of “digital distractions.” Listeners in general are terrible at comprehension, but the authors found that the mere possibility that one’s phone may ring diminishes a person’s cognition skills up to 20 percent. The authors’ research adds to a growing body of work that suggests attention is becoming an increasingly rare commodity, thanks to the proliferation of gadgets, not to mention people, vying for our limited time. [More]

Spear Phishers Want Your Info

Thu, 02 May 2013 14:31:08 EST

You’ve got a few minutes between meetings, so you run through some of the e-mail in your in-box. You quickly notice an urgent message from a colleague telling you to check out an important article on the Web. You dutifully click on the link supplied and enter your login credentials when asked.

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When Will Smartglasses and Other Wearable Computers Hit the Mainstream?

Wed, 01 May 2013 11:30:00 EST

Google has stoked our collective imagination via relentless promotion of its Google Glass wearable computer in recent months. Thanks to a campaign of Web videos, trade show appearances and blog posts, the search giant has positioned its smartglasses as a hands-free augmented reality gadget that will allow us to share our personal experiences in real time, whether we are skydiving, skiing or handling snakes . [More]

Cool It: The Internet May Be Too Hot For Data Centers to Handle

Wed, 01 May 2013 01:00:00 EST

The Internet may not consume nearly as much environmentally unfriendly fossil fuel as airplanes or automobiles, but the growth of cloud-based services offered by Apple, Netflix and others is forcing data centers to provide greater speed and more storage capacity. All of this size and speed comes at a price. Data centers generate a lot of heat that has to be whisked away by power-hungry air- and liquid-cooling systems to keep the Internet's engines from burning themselves out.

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Future of Substance: New Materials Promise Better Batteries, Stronger Steel (preview)

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 07:00:00 EST

Space Suit Stuffing [More]

When Everybody Starts Wearing Smartglasses, Google Won t Be the Only Player

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 07:00:00 EST

Google Glass is just the beginning. The search giant’s smartglasses are in the headlines, but numerous other players are also looking to cash in on what’s expected to be a boom in eyewear that puts virtual and augmented reality face-front. [More]

9 Materials That Will Change the Future of Manufacturing [Slide Show]

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:00:00 EST

The future of manufacturing depends on a number of technological breakthroughs in robotics, sensors and high-performance computing, to name a few. But nothing will impact how things are made, and what they are capable of, more than the materials manufacturers use to make those things . New materials change both the manufacturing process and the end result. [More]

Getting 3-D Printing and Next-Generation Manufacturing to the Factory Floor [Video]

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 07:00:00 EST

"Additive manufacturing" offers manufacturers a powerful set of tools for making any number of products cost-effectively and with little waste, a groundbreaking development that promises to help revitalize the U.S. manufacturing sector . But what will it take to get the process out of the lab and onto the factory floor? A generous cash infusion, perhaps unsurprisingly, will help--and it is now in the offing. [More]

Controlling Some Devices Will Be a Snap

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 15:21:08 EST

The future will likely bring two main ways of telling our computers, tablets and smartphones what to do: voice commands and hand gestures . Voice is already off and running with technology like Apple’s Siri. Now HP says that within a few months you’ll be able to control its gadgets using hand signals .

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Making the Future with Manufacturing Advances

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:00:00 EST

In its first issue, dated Thursday, August 28, 1845, under the elaborate woodcut illustrating its logo, Scientific American summed up its mission: “The Advocate of Industry and Enterprise, and Journal of Mechanical and Other Improvements.”

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Recommended: The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:00:00 EST

The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business [More]

The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 07:30:00 EST

In a viral YouTube video from October 2011 a one-year-old girl sweeps her fingers across an iPad's touchscreen, shuffling groups of icons. In the following scenes she appears to pinch, swipe and prod the pages of paper magazines as though they too were screens. When nothing happens, she pushes against her leg, confirming that her finger works just fine--or so a title card would have us believe. [More]

Why Retina Displays and 4K TVs May Not Be Worth the Trouble

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 07:31:00 EST

When Apple unveiled its Retina screen on the iPhone 4, the world gasped. “There has never been a more detailed, clear, or viewable screen,” read a review on the tech Web site Engadget. “Staring at that screen is addictive,” said Wired magazine.

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Why Hi-Res Isn't Always Better

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 07:30:00 EST

Smaller pixels + more pixels = greater resolution. This is the dominant theme of electronics these days. Apple has its Retina displays on phones, tablets and laptops. Samsung, Nokia and the others are leapfrogging even the iPhone's resolution. The big buzz in televisions is 4K: screens with four times the resolution of HDTV.

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Home Is Where the Health Is: Obamacare Positions Telehealth Tech as a Remedy for Chronic Hospital Readmissions

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 07:00:00 EST

Chances are, when patients check out of a hospital for home or another health care facility, they will end up back in the hospital within a month if they have not worked out the details and logistics for ongoing care. Too often such planning falls by the wayside, resulting in frequent hospital readmissions . [More]

Amazon X-Ray Aims to End Unidentified Actor Angst

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 23:32:08 EST

You’re watching something when what’s-his-name comes onto the screen. That guy...who was in that thing . Why do you know that actor? The obsession doesn’t end until you find the answer in your brain or on the Internet Movie Database app, IMDB.

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Cool It: Is the Internet Too Hot for Data Centers to Handle?

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 07:00:00 EST

The Internet may not consume nearly as much environmentally unfriendly fossil fuel as airplanes or automobiles, but the growth of cloud-based services offered by Apple , Netflix and others is forcing data centers to provide greater speed and more storage capacity. All of this size and speed comes at a price. Data centers generate a lot of heat that has to be whisked away by power-hungry air and liquid-cooling systems to keep the Internet’s engines from burning themselves out. [More]

China s Twitter Revolution is Slow in Coming

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 06:00:00 EST

Barely two months after Xi Jinping was named China's new leader, the Twitter generation seemed to be gaining the upper hand over the nation's status quo regime. Ham-handed censors rewrote an editorial in the newspaper Southern Weekend without notifying the editors--and even managed to add a glaring historical error. Censorship is routine in China, especially for liberal periodicals such as Southern Weekend , but this time the editors went ballistic. They cried foul on Sina Weibo, the country's popular microblogging platform, and wrote an open letter calling for the removal of the provincial propaganda chief. Voices of Netizens joined in support with signature petitions online. Protesters appeared in the streets of Guangzhou.

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