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Friday, May 24, 2013

Spheres can form squares

May 23, 2013 ? Everybody who has tried to stack oranges in a box knows that a regular packing of spheres in a flat layer naturally leads to a hexagonal pattern, where each sphere is surrounded by six neighbours in a honeycomb-like fashion. In an article just published on-line in PNAS, researchers from Wageningen University report an exception to this rule: when small, micrometer-sized particles are placed on a curved oil-water surface, they arrange in a square pattern, as on a chessboard.

Since a number of decades, scientists are looking for strategies to create ordered crystal structures of regularly arranged small particles. Such crystals are interesting, because they can be used to control, modulate, or steer visible light in applications like lasers or other optical devices. While creating hexagonal patterns is relatively easy -- this is the natural way in which the particles tend to order -- anything different from that is much more difficult.

The team from the Laboratory of Physical Chemistry and Colloid Science at Wageningen University, part of Wageningen UR, has now found a way to create square particle arrays. To do this, they make use of the surface tension of the underlying oil-water surface, that is the tendency of the surface to minimize its area. When a particle sticks to the liquid surface it deforms the surface somewhat, and thereby increases the total area. The surface tension acts to minimize these deformations, which can be done by clustering all the particles together.

This effect is also responsible for the clumping of breakfast cereals in a bowl of milk or of bubbles at the surface of a soft drink. The researchers have found that this effective attraction between particles resulting from the surface tension depends on how the liquid surface is curved. A slight curving of the surface already makes the interaction between particles highly dependent on their relative orientation, with attraction in two perpendicular directions and repulsion in the other directions. This is what causes the particles to arrange spontaneously in square patterns.

The researchers believe that their findings will lead to new bottom-up strategies for the design of structured materials, to be used in high-tech optical applications.

The research has been supported financially by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, NWO.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Wageningen University and Research Centre.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

D. Ershov, J. Sprakel, J. Appel, M. A. Cohen Stuart, J. van der Gucht. Capillarity-induced ordering of spherical colloids on an interface with anisotropic curvature. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1222196110

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/le2u5z_doJk/130523093147.htm

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Asia stocks extend losses after big sell-off

A man walks past an electronic stock indicator showing the Nikkei 225 index which nosedived 1,143.28 points, or 7.3 percent to close at 14,483.98 in Tokyo Thursday, May 23, 2013. Japanese stocks plummeted Thursday after a spike in government bond yields and unexpectedly weak Chinese manufacturing spooked investors sitting atop months of massive gains in share prices. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

People walk past an electronic stock indicator showing the global stock prices in Tokyo Thursday, May 23, 2013. Japanese stocks plummeted Thursday after a spike in government bond yields and unexpectedly weak Chinese manufacturing spooked investors sitting atop months of massive gains in share prices. The Nikkei 225, top center, nosedived 14,483.98, or 7.3 percent to close at 14,483.98. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

A TV crew reports the plunge of Japanese stocks in front of an electronic stock indicator in Tokyo Thursday, May 23, 2013. Japanese stocks plummeted Thursday after a spike in government bond yields and unexpectedly weak Chinese manufacturing spooked investors sitting atop months of massive gains in share prices. The Nikkei 225, top center, nosedived 14,483.98, or 7.3 percent to close at 14,483.98. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

People walk by an electronic stock indicator outside a securities firm in Tokyo, Thursday, May 23, 2013. Japanese stocks plummeted Thursday after a spike in government bond yields and unexpectedly weak Chinese manufacturing spooked investors sitting atop months of massive gains in share prices. The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo nosedived 7.3 percent to close at 14,483.98, its worst drop since the 2011 earthquake disaster. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

BANGKOK (AP) ? Asian stocks continued to retreat Friday after being routed the day before by unexpectedly weak Chinese manufacturing and fears the Federal Reserve will start withdrawing its monetary stimulus.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index, which plummeted more than 7 percent Thursday, reversed a big morning gain and shed 0.7 percent to 14,391.74 as the yen strengthened against the dollar. South Korea's Kospi gained 0.1 percent to 1,971.23.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng spent the morning bobbing between slight gains and losses before falling 0.5 percent to 22,553.60. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 tumbled 1.7 percent to 4,976, hit by losses in banking and mining shares. Benchmarks in the Philippines, Taiwan and New Zealand also fell.

The Nikkei's dramatic fall Thursday was attributed on the spike in the interest rate on the country's benchmark 10-year bond to above 1 percent for the first time in a year, which came after Fed meeting minutes showed some of its policy makers want the U.S. central bank to start scaling back its monetary stimulus.

The swing in Japanese bonds unnerved investors at a time when Japan's already overburdened government finances are vulnerable to rises in interest rates. The interest rate, or yield, later slipped back to about 0.9 percent.

The sell-off is a reminder of Japan's vulnerability as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tries to end two decades of stagnation with unprecedented monetary easing, increased government spending and reforms to make the world's No. 3 economy more competitive.

Abe reassured Japan's parliament Friday that the government was closely monitoring financial markets and would "proceed with measures to secure sustainable fiscal structure, and secure market confidence."

Mixed messages from the Federal Reserve about when it might start scaling back its bond-buying program also stirred investor anxiety.

The Fed is buying $85 billion worth of bonds every month as part of its stimulus program. That has kept interest rates low and encouraged investors to put money into stocks and other risky assets. If the Fed slows down its bond purchases, investors fear it could lead to an outpouring of money from stocks.

Among individual stocks, Australia's Westpac Banking tumbled 2.2 percent while market heavyweight Commonwealth Bank of Australia declined 1.6 percent.

The release Thursday by HSBC of a survey showing a decline in Chinese manufacturing for May hurt Australian miners, which have boomed on the back of raw material demand from the world's No. 2 economy. Mining giant BHP Billiton fell 1.6 percent. OZ Minerals lost 0.7 percent.

"The China data looking like it's hitting a soft patch is hitting resources," said Stan Shamu, market strategist at IG in Melbourne.

Benchmark oil for July delivery was down 43 cents to $93.82 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 3 cents to close at $94.25 per barrel on the Nymex on Thursday.

In currencies, the euro fell to $1.2922 from $1.2932 late Thursday in New York. The dollar weakened to 101.62 yen from 101.91 yen.

___

Follow Pamela Sampson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pamelasampson

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-05-24-World%20Markets/id-a45b6bb9db3a414792d9bee52c7a2f10

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Thursday, May 23, 2013

TrustPort Internet Security 2013

The 2012 edition of TrustPort's security suite packed a ton of status information and links to security functions into its light-colored main window. TrustPort Internet Security 2013 ($54.95 direct; $74.95 for three licenses) could hardly look more different. Seven large buttons dominate its dark-colored window, with just about everything else hidden until you need it. The effort to revamp this product's look might better have been spent upgrading some of its less effective components, I'm afraid.

It is true that the new layout is easier on the eyes, and easier for the average user to manage. Five of the seven buttons simply turn security components on and off. The Firewall button lets you choose between four protection levels, and the remaining button checks for updates. If you need to configure the suite's protection at a more detailed level, just click the link to the advanced configuration dialog.

Uneven Antivirus
The antivirus protection in this suit is identical to that of TrustPort Antivirus 2013, with one minor exception. For my detailed findings, read my review of the standalone antivirus; I'll summarize my findings here.

Installation went smoothly on ten of my twelve malware-infested virtual machines. On a clean test system, I followed tech support instructions to create a bootable Windows PE-based antivirus CD. A boot-time scan cleaned up those two systems and allowed me to install the product.

TrustPort detected more of the malware samples than ZoneAlarm Internet Security 2013 did. However, better cleanup by ZoneAlarm earned it 5.3 points while TrustPort got just 4.7, the second lowest score among products tested with my current malware collection. For a full explanation of my malware removal test methodology, see How We Test Malware Removal.

Installed on a clean system, TrustPort did a much better job of fending off new malware attacks. It detected 94 percent of the samples, tying with Ad-Aware Pro Security 10.5 for best detection. With 9.4 points, Ad-Aware has the best malware blocking score among products tested with the same malware collection. TrustPort and G Data InternetSecurity 2014 are tied for second place, with 9.0 points. To learn more about how I test malware blocking, see How We Test Malware Blocking.

Only a couple of the independent antivirus testing labs that I follow include TrustPort in their tests. It received VB100 certification from Virus Bulletin in eight of the last ten tests, and it got checkmark certification from West Coast Labs for virus detection and cleanup. The chart below summarizes recent tests, and the article How We Interpret Antivirus Lab Testsgoes into more detail about the labs.

The TrustPort suite includes a Web-based malware scanner not found in the standalone antivirus, but it didn't make a lot of difference when I tried to download my malware collection again. Web-based scanning blocked 28 percent of the samples at the URL level, and another 44 got whacked during the download, for a total of 72 percent. The standalone antivirus caught 65 percent without Web-based scanning.

Application Inspector
In addition to signature-based malware detection, TrustPort includes a behavior-based Application Inspector. Any time an application attempts specific risky behaviors, the Application Inspector pops up and asks whether to block the program, allow it, or let it run but restrict its access to sensitive areas. If you choose the blocking option, TrustPort terminates the programs and prevents it from launching again.

In testing, this feature did detect a few malicious files. The problem is, it also raised an alert for quite a few perfectly valid programs. Choosing the default block option prevented these programs from installing or running.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/DmFSiT_GBoY/0,2817,2419406,00.asp

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Google?s Impressive ?Conversational Search? Goes Live On Chrome

The ?conversational search? that Google demonstrated at last week?s Google I/O conference is now available to users of its Chrome browser, and it?s a significant leap in how we use search engines.

I?m 17 years now into writing about search, and I?ve seen all types of things that have promised to revolutionize the space, especially products that trot out words like ?natural language? and ?semantic search? but fail to deliver.

Conversational search has natural language, semantic search and more built into it, and while it?s far from perfect, this really is one of those?significant?changes that makes even a ?seen it all? person like me sit up and take notice.

What Google is doing is hard, and yet when it works, it feels natural, easy, like it should be. Let?s do some examples, and then I?ll cover some of the ?under the hood? stuff and how to get it, at the end.

Speak Your Search Gets Updated

If you have the latest version of Chrome, you can click on the microphone in the search box to speak your search.

Google Search By Voice

That?s not new. Google rolled that functionality out almost two years ago. The difference is that ?search by voice? now speaks back to you, similar to how the Google Search App works?for the iPhone or Android. Once you speak, you?ll see your words appear:

how old is barack obama

Then you?ll get your results:

how old is barack obama

Sometimes, especially for searches where Google can call upon its Knowledge Graph facts, the results will be topped by a direct answer, or an information ?card,? to use Google?s term for facts presented this way in Google Now.

In the example above, where I spoke ?how old is Barack Obama,? Google showed a card with the answer but also pulled Obama?s age out of the card in order to speak an answer to me: ?Barack Obama is 51 years old.?

Having A Conversation

That?s cool and impressive, speaking a search and getting an answer read back to you. But that?s not the real magic. What?s really special is that you can continue your search ?conversation? by asking further questions in a way you could never do with regular search, by making use of pronouns and other shortcuts that reference things in your previous query.

For example, after doing the search above, I asked, ?how tall is he? and got back this:

how tall is he

?Barack Obama is six feet one inch tall,? came back the spoken response, along with a text answer. But I hadn?t asked tall Barack Obama was. I?d asked, ?How tall is he.? Google smartly figured out the ?he? I was talking about was Barack Obama.

Humans understand this easily. We talk to each other, and we keep track of what we say to each other in a conversation, usually keeping all the antecedents ? pronouns and shortcut references to previous things ? straight. But search engines typically have no memory like this. They?ve generally treated each search we do as if it is unconnected to the previous one.

More Than ?Previous Query?

Actually, both Google and Bing do have some ?history smarts.? Google has been doing ?Previous Query? since 2008; Bing has been doing ?Adaptive Search? since 2011. With both, what you searched for before is sometimes effectively added to your subsequent search. For example, a search for ?new york? followed by a search for ?travel? might cause some of the searches for travel to be about New York travel.

Previous query refinement is helpful, but conversational search is a step beyond. It?s not about simply adding terms to your subsequent query. It?s about parsing the language you use so the search engine understands, really comprehends, what you?re talking about.

When the search for ?how old is Barack Obama? was done, Google had to understand that Barack Obama was an actual person, not just two words that it effectively is trying to character match. That?s smarts it gained as part of the Knowledge Graph that went live a year ago. Those smarts also helped it know that ?age? might be a specific fact it knows about Obama.

When the next search was done, Google had to understand that ?he? was a pronoun for someone, rather than again just trying to character match the word. Next, it had to think who the ?he? might be and look to the previous query to find a person that it might be referencing, Obama. Finally, it went back to the Knowledge Graph in order to find an exact fact that matched Obama?s height ? which meant understanding that ?tall? was an indirect request for height.

This is hard stuff. This is natural language processing,?the ability for a search engine to really understand what a sentence is about, coupled with semantic search, the idea that facts and pages are all connected together in ways that aren?t immediately visible but understood behind-the-scenes.

The Conversation Continues

Let?s keep going. Next, I asked Google, ?who is his wife,? and got back this:

obama's wife

?Barack Obama?s spouse is Michelle Obama since 1992,? Google spoke to me, now understanding that the ?his? was a reference to Barack Obama and ?wife? was a request for a fact it could look up from the Knowledge Graph.

Could you keep going? Sure. Next, I asked, ?how old is she,? and got back:

?Michelle Obama is 49 years old,? came the spoken response. To get this, Google kept up with my antecedents through three questions extending out from the original one.

I don?t have the right software installed at the moment to properly screen capture this in action, but you can try it for yourself, as I?ll explain more. However, the animated image below will give you a sense of it.

conversational search

Those are screenshots that I took last week at Google I/O, working with conversational search on a demo machine.

Not Perfect But Still Amazing

Conversational search doesn?t always work right. The further you go into a conversation, I?ve found, the more likely it will eventually stumble. Sometimes, it won?t even converse when you?d expect it to. The four-query-long example I?ve shown above took a couple of attempts to get right.

Google acknowledged this, when I spoke with people about it at Google I/O and tested it out directly. If the company formally announces the support in Chrome (so far, it hasn?t ? it was just quietly released), I wouldn?t be surprised if it warns to expect bumps.

But while the engineers and other product folks sometimes?visibly grimaced when I hit such bumps doing my testing in front of them, I was far more impressed by how often it worked ? and that it worked at all, as well as it did. I?m looking forward to seeing it grow.

Answers Based On Who You Are, Where You Are

Sometimes you can speak and get answers back from a single question that takes in more than what you explicitly said because Google knows where you?re at or you?ve given it access to some of your private information.

Weather is a good example. Here, I spoke, ?Will it rain tomorrow?? and got back:

newport beach weather

Google spoke to me, ?No, rain is not expected tomorrow in Newport Beach. The forecast is 70 degrees and cloudy? and displayed the weather forecast. I hadn?t told it where I was, or that I wanted a weather forecast explicitly. But it knew my location, knew rain was related to weather and delivered up a great answer.

If you?ve enabled Google to access personal information through the Gmail Field Trial?(a bad name since it now includes things beyond Gmail), speaking something like ?what?s happening today? can bring back your agenda:

calendar

It doesn?t speak your agenda to you, but it?s still pretty amazing ? assuming you?re comfortable using Google?s own services. If you don?t use Google Calendar or don?t use Gmail, the experience is far less compelling.

Beyond ?Cards? & Not Everything Is Spoken

Answers don?t always come from the info cards like those shown in the Obama queries. For example, when I asked, ?places to eat in San Francisco,? Google came back with:

restaurants

Google spoke back to me, ?There are several listings for restaurants near San Francisco,? then showed me local restaurant reviews. None of these actual reviews were spoken.

Similarly, when I spoke ?Newport Beach? to Google, it spoke back saying, ?Here is some information about Newport Beach? but didn?t read any of the actual results:

newport beach

Google didn?t even try to read more about Newport Beach using the description out of the Knowledge Graph box on the right, something it did do when I spoke a search for ?Barack Obama? to it.

Of course, on the desktop, it?s hard to say how useful having anything read back really will be. Indeed, speaking questions on the desktop when that was introduced two years ago seemed odd, especially for anyone who might be in an office. Getting responses read back is very cool but not necessarily that useful on a desktop, in the way it is with a mobile device.

Waiting For Voice Activation & OK Google!

Perhaps the usefulness may change when voice-activated conversational search happens. That?s not part of today?s rollout.

With voice-activated search, your computer would always be listening for you to say a ?hotword? ? likely to be ?OK Google,? as demoed last week, and then it would know you want to search.

So, if you were not at your keyboard for some reason but needed to do a search, you?d speak, ?OK Google, how old is Barack Obama,? and your computer would automatically do that search.

Always listening? Google told me it?s still figuring out exactly how all this would work, but it will likely involve an?extension?for your browser that would only listen when you were on the Google home page or on a search results page. And when it was listening, the only thing that would actually get sent to Google would be the words after the ?OK Google? command, Google said.

We?ll see how it all plays out. It may be that conversational search remains more a utility for mobile devices, with the desktop as a type of training area to help people better understand what they can do while mobile.

It may also be that conversational search will help encourage people to simply type their queries in a more conversational style, using?antecedents in a way they don?t now.

Typing? No ?Conversational? Mode That Way

Maybe that will come, but currently, conversational search does not work if you type. In fact, that?s an excellent way to see the immense difference that conversational search provides.

Try that series of Barack Obama-related queries I did above by typing them in, rather than speaking, and it falls apart when you ask, ?how tall is he,? as you can see:

how tall is he

Out of conversational search ?mode,? because you?re typing, Google makes no attempt to figure out who the ?he? is that you were referring to, so answers about Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp come up instead.

Try It Yourself

As I said, Google hasn?t posted officially about the availability of conversational search being out there, but it is live. Android Central noticed that it?s now out if you have the latest version of Chrome. So to enable it, update. You do that by going to Settings in Chrome, then selecting Help, then it should check if it?s up-to-date and prompt if not.

On my Mac, after updating, I was at version 27.0.1453.93. Oddly, on my Chromebook, I simply couldn?t get it to update out of version 26. I haven?t checked on my Windows 8 computer yet.

FYI, this is not Google Now for Chrome. It might look like that, and Google Now for Chrome and/or the desktop is expected, but this doesn?t provide any of the predictive search answers that Google Now provides.

Enjoy playing with it. For search marketers, it?s a glimpse into an entire new world where people might be seemingly finding you for very generic terms, because the queries no longer express all that was actually searched for.

Ironically, the much-hated ?Dark Google? world over the past year or so, where Google has been withholding search terms done by logged-in searchers (except from advertisers) may have been good training on how to cope?with what now will be withheld by searchers themselves ? exact terms, no longer necessary as they ?converse? with Google.

For searchers, it?s an advancement that may?fundamentally?change their search habits, where they get even more comfortable just talking to that ?best friend? they?ve already been turning to for ages for answers on all types of topics.

For Google?s competitors, it?s another challenge in keeping up. Google Now is already doing amazing things anticipating searches. Now Google?s conversational search is allowing searchers to get casual with the service, plus it sets things up to entice searchers to share more of their own information directly using Google?s other services, so they can speak things like ?what?s happening today? and very personal answers.

Source: http://searchengineland.com/googles-impressive-conversational-search-goes-live-on-chrome-160445

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Google Adds Monthly Top Charts To Google Trends, And A Beautiful New Search Trend Visualizer

Every year Google creates a summary Zeitgeist feature to sum up the year in search data, showing what has been the most popular among its users. Now, it's rolling out Top Charts, a new monthly series of lists similar to that year-end feature, available on Google Trends as of today. It's built on Google's Knowledge Graph, and provides a representation of the actual things people are interested in, rather than just keywords alone.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/avVTBnqXMqU/

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Boost Mobile Wallet app and prepaid Visa hands-on

Boost Mobile launched a Mobile Wallet app and service today at CTIA 2013 with an interesting twist in that it is tied to a Visa Prepaid card. Boost Mobile customers simply hit up a store to get signed up, download an app onto their handset and once funds are added to their account can use them in a wide variety of ways. From sending money via the app to people in 135 other countries, the ability to pay more that 3,500 billers nationwide, top up your prepaid account and using the included Visa debit card any money in your account can be accessed via that card as well. The app also makes use of your handset's camera with its Quick Check feature -- which is coming soon -- allowing an account holder to snap a photo of a check and submit it using the app to have the check's value added to your mobile wallet once approved -- which is nifty, if you don't use a bank we suppose. There are no month-to-month fees for the service but each bill you pay will cost some $2 and climbs depending on how quickly you need the payment made against the account. The service launches in Los Angeles, San Diego and parts of New Jersey today with rollout to all markets expected by the end of the year.

Gallery: Boost Mobile Wallet app and prepaid Visa hands-on

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/OO_7E8-5nx8/

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Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Google to begin inviting non-developers to become Glass Explorers

By now, all the developers who signed up to receive Glass prototypes should have the headgear in hand, so Google's ready to move on to the next phase. Over the next few weeks, the company will begin sending invitations to successful #ifihadglass applicants. Invites will come via Google+, so you'll need to have +Project Glass in your Circles in order to jump to the next step. Unfortunately, the Explorer program is closed, so it's a bit to late to submit an application now. Google's promised to keep you in the loop regarding future opportunities, though. Simply add your info at the source link below to sign up for updates.

Filed under: Displays, Wearables, Google