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If you miss those great 1990s movies in which cyberspace runs amok, you'll get a kick out of this video of a real-life system for monitoring cyber-attacks. The new DAEDALUS (Direct Alert Environment for Darknet And Livenet Unified Security) cyber-alert system has been in the making for several years, but now the developer has posted a cute video, to show you what it looks like.If you miss those great 1990s movies in which cyberspace runs amok, you'll get a kick out of this video of a real-life system for monitoring cyber-attacks. The new DAEDALUS (Direct Alert Environment for Darknet And Livenet Unified Security) cyber-alert system has been in the making for several years, but now the developer has posted a cute video, to show you what it looks like.

DARPA is unveiling a portable laser weapons system, HELLADS, which seems like something out of a sci-fi movie. The new laser application, created by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems with a custom power system from Saft Batteries, will help change the way the American military fights future wars. Current military laser systems are bulky contraptions which are mainly the size of a passenger jet, while the proposed DARPA weapon can fit on the back of a flatbed truck. The 150-kilowatt, solid state laser weapon is strong enough to take down drones or other aerial targets; a prototype is expected to be available by the end of 2012.

Synthesis is a think-tank devoted to using the emerging paradigm of complex networks in the social sciences to tackle social and public policy concerns. Over the past 20 years or so, social scientists have increasingly made use of advances in the natural sciences to make better sense of social systems. Fields such as network theory, non-linear mathematics and systems theory, which we refer to as the study of complex networks, give us much greater insights that help us make sense of social systems. Armed with a greater understanding, this collection of paradigm-changing toolboxes can help us to make better policy decisions, in the public, private, and "third" sectors.

"A Swiss study appears to have uncovered what anti-capitalist activists have been claiming for years -- that the global economy is controlled by a small group of deeply interconnected entities. But don't grab a pitchfork and head to the nearest Occupy protest just yet. Systems researchers say this isn't the result of an Illuminati-type global conspiracy, but rather a natural force to be expected. "Such structures are common in nature," complex systems expert George Sudihara told NewScientist."

CAVE2™, the next-generation large-scale virtual-reality environment, is a hybrid system that combines the benefits of both scalable-resolution display walls and virtual-reality systems to create a seamless 2D/3D environment that supports both information-rich analysis as well as virtual-reality simulation exploration at a resolution matching human visual acuity.

The 2013 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings2013): These conferences will provide a high-profile, leading-edge forum for researchers, engineers and practitioners to present state-of-art advances and innovations in theoretical foundations, systems, infrastructure, tools, testbeds, and applications for the internet of things, cyber, physical and social computing, green communications and computing, as well as to identify emerging research topics and define the future.    This is a good chance which aims at exchanging research experience in such fields. It will bring together experts from the areas of computational intelligence, communications, networks, distributed systems, and computer science. 

Store, Share and Test your System Configurations

Did you know everything important about your personality, morality and worldview can be defined into one of nine categories? It's true… at least if you're a Dungeons & Dragons character from the first to third editions. Not every tabletop role-player has been a a fan of D&D's Alignment system, which help players define their characters' behavior, but now that Wizards of the Coast is hard at work on D&D's fifth edition, I'd like to make an earnest plea for them to bring it back in its original, nine-aspect glory by showcasing the Alignments from best to worst.

"Salman Khan's dream college looks very different from the typical four-year institution. The founder of Khan Academy, a popular site that offers free online video lectures about a variety of subjects, lays out his thoughts on the future of education in his book, The One World School House: Education Reimagined, released last month. Though most of the work describes Mr. Khan's experiences with Khan Academy and his suggestions for changing elementary- and secondary-school systems, he does devote a few chapters to higher education."

"A brain-to-brain interface (BTBI) enabled a real-time transfer of behaviorally meaningful sensorimotor information between the brains of two rats. In this BTBI, an "encoder" rat performed sensorimotor tasks that required it to select from two choices of tactile or visual stimuli. While the encoder rat performed the task, samples of its cortical activity were transmitted to matching cortical areas of a "decoder" rat using intracortical microstimulation (ICMS). The decoder rat learned to make similar behavioral selections, guided solely by the information provided by the encoder rat's brain. These results demonstrated that a complex system was formed by coupling the animals' brains, suggesting that BTBIs can enable dyads or networks of animal's brains to exchange, process, and store information and, hence, serve as the basis for studies of novel types of social interaction and for biological computing devices."

"In recent years, researchers in the messy world of biology have been able to build systems that function like the clean, binary switches on computer chips-and we've covered a number of reports in this area. Unfortunately, most of these share a significant limitation: they rely on proteins from bacteria that act as switches to turn genes on and off under specific conditions. We know about only a limited number of these genetic switches, which may set a severe limit on the number of logical operations we can string together inside a cell."

It's easy to get lost in CAVE2. The next-generation virtual reality platform is one of the most advanced visualization environments on Earth. It combines 320 degrees of panoramic, floor-to-ceiling LCD displays with an optical tracking interface that gives rise to a "hybrid reality system" capable of rendering remarkably immersive 3D environments - whether you wish to explore the labyrinthine vasculature of the human brain, or soar swiftly over the vast canyons of Mars.

As if 3D printers weren't mind-blowing enough, iRobot (yes, the company responsible for the Roomba) has just filed a patent for a robot-assisted all-in-one fabricator that can print, mill, drill, and finish a final product - and all without human intervention. Called the "Robotic Fabricator," the system is a precursor to machines that will eventually be able to autonomously construct other machines from scratch - including itself.

The Shared Learning Collaborative, a Gates Foundation-funded initiative, rebranded itself this week. There's a new name - inBloom, Inc. - but the mission and plans remain the same, the new non-profit insists. That mission is to build an open source, cloud-based education data infrastructure in the hopes of addressing a number of problems schools face: the lack of data interoperability between the various databases and software systems that they utilize and the merits of spending money to update outdated administrative IT (versus, say, buying instructional - or other - tech and/or versus spending money on something altogether non-tech).

"This system of burners, pipes, flasks and gauges looks like it came straight out of a laboratory. In fact, though, it's a prototype coffee machine-and it could satisfy the technical desires of even the biggest coffee nerd. The Laboratory Espresso Machine was dreamt up by israeli designers David Budzik and Adi Schlesinger. Its design aesthetic is clearly inspired by the contents of a chemistry lab, but it also uses science in the coffee-making process, too: it uses the Venturi effect to adjust pressures and relies on a bunch of complex thermodynamics to ensure water temperature and pressure are consistent."

Scientists are pioneering the use of 3D printers to create drugs and other chemicals at the University of Glasgow. Researchers have used a £1,250 system to create a range of organic compounds and inorganic clusters - some of which are used to create cancer treatments. Longer term, the scientists say the process could be used to make customised medicines.

Today, Dr. Kaku addresses this question: MIT researchers have created a new imaging system that can acquire visual data at a rate of one trillion exposures per second. What can this super camera enable us to see?

If you pay for web hosting in order to run any kind of web-based application-from your WordPress blog to a nameplate site to a file-sharing service to a social media data archive-you need to back up your web server's data the same way you back up your computer's data. On database-driven web sites, there are two kinds of data you want to preserve and restore in case of disaster: the files that make up your site (the PHP/Perl/Python, JavaScript, CSS files, etc), and the contents of your database. Further, any good backup system should make both a local copy and a remote copy of the backed-up data.

The aim of the Askemos project is to enable reliable and justiciable data processing, with the goal of producing "Software that can last 200 years." The first implementations of an Askemos peer can be obtained from ball.askemos.org. The Askemos web site itself is served from the Askemos/BALL development network. Follow here for more details. Note that Askemos concerns the abstract specification exclusively; including data formats, protocols, service interfaces etc. - not the actual implementations. Askemos combines incorruptible privilege delegation and non-repudiable replication of communicating processes into a trustworthy network. Physical machines under control of their operators execute applications processes under permanent multilateral audit. The network's honest majority of hosts provides users with exclusive control, and thus real ownership of processes. Askemos models a kind of "virtual constitutional state" where physical hosts bear witness to the interactions of virtual agents (akin to citizens). Self verifying identifiers can confirm that original documents have not beentampered with. The real potential for using Askemos is for identity and time stamp services, informationmanagement in public administration and libraries attaching metadata and archives, with the goal of establishing robust systems that can endure for centuries. German tax law, for instance, has storage requirements, which makes Askemos interesting even for private, individual use. Also Activist groups, non-profits and people who desire privacy and reliability in a chaotic and unpredictable world have much to gain from this software.

The Horto Domi combines vermiculture, geodesic domes, moisture sensors, and Arduino open hardware controllers in an automated backyard food growing system for the everyperson. The project team is looking for supporters on Kickstarter so they can do more R&D and make the plans available to the public for free. Soon you could have a pod of robotic food growing domes in your backyard turning out bushels of fresh veg. Then again, maybe a food growing robot takes the joy out of growing your own?