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The American Journalism Review has just published a searing condemnation by Washington Post contributor Paul Farhi of the state of education journalism, much of which, it contends, reinforces a narrative that the U.S. school system is failing -- a narrative supported by "self-styled education reformers," but refuted by the experiences of many parents asked to rate their local schools. I've railed against this before in the context of tech blogs' treatment of education, and while the AJR piece doesn't address technology specifically, I would argue that the narratives of failing schools certainly fuel much of the growing business of ed-tech.

Say goodbye to your mouse and keyboard. Leap represents an entirely new way to interact with your computers. It's more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard and more sensitive than a touchscreen.  For the first time, you can control a computer in three dimensions with your natural hand and finger movements. This isn't a game system that roughly maps your hand movements.  The Leap technology is 200 times more accurate than anything else on the market - at any price point. Just about the size of a flash drive, the Leap can distinguish your individual fingers and track your movements down to a 1/100th of a millimeter. This is like day one of the mouse.  Except, no one needs an instruction manual for their hands.

A refrain running through the debate over global warming suggests we need to nothing to slow it, because after all, the climate science predicting more warming could turn out to be wrong. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake, and Galileo almost was, for objecting to the scientific doctrine that the Sun revolves around the Earth. For two thousand years people believed in systems of physics and astronomy that turned out to be incorrect. And for a few more centuries after that they held to a new celestial mechanics only to see it displaced by relativity theory.

US experts have developed what they say are the most biologically-accurate robotic legs yet. Writing in the Journal of Neural Engineering, they said the work could help understanding of how babies learn to walk - and spinal-injury treatment. They created a version of the message system that generates the rhythmic muscle signals that control walking. A UK expert said the work was exciting because the robot mimics control and not just movement.

This is an army of 'Chef Cui' noodle-shaving robots designed and manufactured by Cui Runquan. The robots were designed to cut noodles from a block of dough cheaper and more efficiently than humans can. Plus today's youth don't want to work as noodle cutters. Kids! I spent two summers as a teen peeling potatoes at summer camp, and do you hear me complaining? Hell no, I got that out of my system a long time ago. It really did suck though.

What could be better than the solar system set to music in a near-perpetual homage to Bach? Little, but a three-movement choral suite inspired by Carl Sagan might be it - a magnificent mashup of Sagan's timeless words set to harmonizing voices and an awe-inspiring montage of space exploration footage. Here's to cosmic goosebumps, courtesy of Canadian composer and teacher Kenley Kristofferson.

Inquire is an iPad app that combines the popular Campbell Biology textbook with a knowledge representation and reasoning system that answers questions. The transition to digital textbooks should be more than a superficial change in medium, and Inquire is an example of how AI technology can help ensure the transition to digital textbooks leads to improved learning for students.

Louisville's hackerspace LVL1 is working on a home automation setup for the space, and they call it MOTHER. Using open-source home automation software called HOLOS, the capabilities include: * Monitoring of LVL1 Space Occupancy & Zone Occupancy * Measuring of "Hacktivity Levels" of each Zone * Monitoring of individual member occupancy * INSTANT WOMP MODE! (dubstep everywhere at the press of a button) * Notifications of "Abnormal" hacktivity levels * Monitoring of various websites and notifications of LVL1 mentions * Various "Nagging" (Take out the trash, It's cold please shut the door, I haven't seen you in 3 days, please come visit your mother, etc…) * "Member Scenes" - Auto setting of audio, lights, etc.. based on specific members present * Logging and Graphing of ALL data * Voice recognition and communication * Control of Lighting and appliances * Security System monitoring and notification of alerts * Phone calls and emails based notifications * Google Talk communication with AIML chat integration

Secretariat was famous for coming up from behind in a race to win, and the same may be true for the U.S. in the global push to build exascale technologies. Because for now, when it comes to delivering the needed funding to build these systems, the U.S. is just getting out of the gate.

During the GNSS Vulnerability 2012 event at the UK's National Physical Laboratory on Wednesday, experts discussed the threat posed by a growing number of GPS jamming and spoofing devices. The increasing popularity of the jammers is troubling, according to conference organizer Bob Cockshott, because even low-power GPS jammers pose a significant threat to cell phone systems, parts of the electrical grid, and the safety of drivers.

In our most recent Scientific Reports paper, we show how the visual pattern recognition ability of humans combined with the high processing speed of computers leads to a visual analytics method for discovering groups of nodes characterized by common network properties.

A way to print Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips right onto paper has been discovered by a team of scientists from University of Montpellier.