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With the goal of creating a more powerful “prediction engine,” for forecasting everything from the price of gas in the U.S. to the nuclear capabilities of Iran, Stone’s research team is looking for individuals to contribute their knowledge in topic areas such as politics, the military, economics, science and technology, and social affairs. “This kind of enhanced predictive analysis capability will help the intelligence community provide early warning and leading indicators of events,” said Stone, who has published studies on the nature of expertise and how to make well-calibrated, non-overconfident judgments. “The idea is to combine individual judgments from a lot of people who all know a little to provide a tremendous amount of information.  Unlike the current process, our procedure captures, shares and combines expert opinions in a manner to make forecasts as accurate as possible.” The ACES process provides opportunities for anonymous sharing and deliberating before making forecasts and will provide participants feedback on their contributions and predictive successes.

According to ACES Principal Investigator Dr. Dirk Warnaar, “Some people know important details that can make the future predictable in many cases. They often do not share their insight with others. Our project is designed to find out what people know, have them share this knowledge with others, and ask them to make a prediction based on what they and others know.”

UW researchers say this new type of transistor could one day understand or even control body functions.

Materials scientists are looking at these proton-based microscopic transistors for future advances in prosthetics and biological sensing.

In the body, protons activate “on” and “off” switches and are key players in biological energy transfer. Ions open and close channels in the cell membrane to pump things in and out of the cell. Animals, including humans, use ions to flex their muscles and transmit brain signals. A machine that was compatible with a living system in this way could, in the short term, monitor such processes. Someday it could generate proton currents to control certain functions directly.

The EPC network, using tiny RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags, will enable computers to automatically recognize and identify everyday objects, and then track, trace, monitor, trigger events, and perform actions on those objects. The technology will effectively create an "Internet of things." RFID will fundamentally impact the industries of manufacturing, retail, transportation, health care, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, and government, offering an unprecedented real-time view of assets and inventories throughout the global supply chain. And in the process, whole new vistas (and challenges) will open up to software developers.

Not long ago, we reported on a prototype thin, flexible smartphone known as the Paperphone. While it isn't actually made out of paper, the success of a research project at North Carolina State University indicates that phones in the future could be. Scientists there have been able to deposit conductive nanocoatings onto textiles, meaning that items such as pieces of paper or clothing could ultimately be used as electronic devices.

smart fabrics.

"Research like this has potential health and monitoring applications since we could potentially create a uniform with cloth sensors embedded in the actual material that could track heart rate, body temperature, movement and more in real time," said Dr. Jesse Jur, NCSU assistant professor of textile engineering, chemistry and science, and lead author of a paper on the technology. "To do this now, you would need to stick a bunch of wires throughout the fabric - which would make it bulky and uncomfortable."

The state of Ceará, in Northeast Brazil, contributes only to 2% of the Brazilian GDP. Yet, it will soon host the Brazil’s largest public broadband Internet network. The Cinturão Digital do Ceará (CDC), which translates as Ceará’s Digital Big Belt, will be inaugurated this Thursday by the governor Cid Gomes and the Science and Technology Minister Aloizio Mercadante. So why did the local authorities decide to invest around R$50m (US$28.6m) into this initiative?

Many people couldn’t afford faster speeds anyway – in Fortaleza, one third of the population lives in favelas (slums) filled with migrants who have left rural areas.

This situation led the state to develop its own public network, the CDC. It is a highly ambitious project; according to the government, it consists of a whopping 2,600 kilometers of optic fiber.