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"A new study by MIT scientists pinpoints areas of the brain used exclusively for language (PDF), providing a partial answer to a longstanding debate in cognitive science. According to the study, there are parts of our brain dedicated to language and only language. After having their subjects perform the initial language task, which they call a 'functional localizer,' they had each one do a subset of seven other experiments: one on exact arithmetic, two on working memory, three on cognitive control, and one on music; since these are the functions 'most commonly argued to share neural machinery with language.' The authors say the results don't imply that every cognitive function has its own dedicated piece of cortex; after all, we're able to learn new skills, so there must be some parts of the brain that are both high-level and functionally flexible."

A 'Spooks And Suits' Red Team Game Social media apps meet national security Jul 20, 2011 | 12:40 PM | 0 Comments By Kelly Jackson Higgins Dark Reading What if a former Navy SEAL petty officer were a member of Anonymous? Senior members of the U.S. intelligence agency, including Michael Chertoff, the former Secretary of Homeland Security, and a former SEAL officer, will participate in a red-team exercise in September where they'll play the role of Anonymous/LulzSec and APT attackers, as well as the defenders trying to fend off these adversaries. Sure, simulated cyberattack games are nothing new these days. But this one is part and parcel of the upcoming Spooks and Suits summit in Silicon Valley on Sept. 23 and 24, and it throws together intell officials and attendees. It's the brainchild of cybersecurity expert Jeffrey Carr, who wanted to bring together three-letter agencies, like the CIA, NSA, and DoD, with social media and Web 2.0 developers and start-ups to actually communicate one-on-one with each another and with general attendees. It works like this: Attendees will be randomly assigned to one of four teams of 25 to 30 people: Anarchist hackers (a la Anonymous and LulzSec), APT attackers, or one of two defending organizations. The teams then must observe all of the panel discussions -- which will cover threats against the intell community, as well as demonstrations of new and existing social media applications -- from the perspective of either adversary or defender, depending on which team they are assigned. "If one of the apps presented has to do with a game, the objective for the attendee is to say, 'How can I use that game as an adversary? Or how can I use it to uncover or defend against an adversary?'" says Carr, who is the founder and CEO of Taia Global, an executive cybersecurity firm, and author of "Inside Cyber Warfare." "During breaks, they can play with the apps with an eye to their mission." The teams will have a working lunch period for buildi

Spammers don't fit the life patterns of regular users.  "[Microsoft researchers]  are using studies of legitimate and malicious social networks to spot bogus email accounts that are used to push spam, malware, and otherwise malicious links."

The N12 bikini is the world's first ready-to-wear, completely 3D-printed article of clothing. All of the pieces, closures included, are made directly by 3D printing and snap together without any sewing. N12 represents the beginning of what is possible for the near future. The same process can be used to make shirts, dresses and suits that are custom fitted using body scanning. It is 0.7 millimeters (1/36th of a inch) thick nylon. 

Today we are publishing a report of the statistical results from the Panopticlick experiment on web browser fingerprintability. The results show that the overwhelming majority of Internet users could be uniquely fingerprinted and tracked using only the configuration and version information that their browsers make available to websites. These types of system information should be regarded as identifying, in much the same way that cookies, IP addresses, and supercookies are.

"Paradoxically, 'document-orientation' is both the main reason why Wikis are rare in the corporate world and the main reason why Wikis are great for the corporate world."

Explore object designs by choosing those you like. Evolution produces objects in the next generation that are variants of those you choose, similar to how animals are bred and naturally evolve (more). Either further evolve an object below or start evolving from scratch.

In this case, there are four key players. Two of them are a couple: a journalist who lives in New York and a social media specialist who lives in London. The other two have roots in Pakistan: a journalist and documentary filmmaker who recently moved to the U.S. and a political commentator in Islamabad. Each of them contributed to a chain of information that turned one man's offhand comments about a helicopter in the middle of the night into an internationally known work of citizen journalism.

Google's business customers, specifically users of Google Apps, have to wait a bit longer to try Google+. The Google Profiles service, a required component of Google+, has not been compatible with Google Apps for several months. Google engineers are working to remedy the situation but there are significant hurdles to overcome

iOS and Android are the only smartphone platforms that are growing. Android smartphones saw their marketshare increase to 38.1% (5.1% increase) and Apple increased to 26.6% (1.4%).  

Latest Pew research shows users of social networking sites are, in general, more connected in real life than are non-users.

But the presence of the police officers in the garage that Friday afternoon in July was anything but ordinary: They were directed to the parking structure by a computer program that had predicted that car burglaries were especially likely there that day. The program is part of an unusual experiment by the Santa Cruz Police Department in predictive policing - deploying officers in places where crimes are likely to occur in the future.

I had just mentioned to a colleague today that there should be a functional stylus for the iPad for art apps. Voila! (or...this is another example of how all my brilliant ideas are already invented)

"Although Facebook is by far the largest social network out there, the social network sphere is large and has a ton of players. We were curious about which of them are the most active. To find these sites, we decided to focus on the number of daily visitors to each site."

This app will scan shelves to find books that are out of order and provide a visual indication as to where they should go.  It will also generate an inventory of what is on the shelf.  

Nearly 80% of children between the ages of 0 and 5 who use the Internet in the United States, do so on at least a weekly basis, according to a report released Monday from education non-profit organizations Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Sesame Workshop. The report, which was assembled using data from seven recent studies, indicates that young children are increasingly consuming all types of digital media, in many cases consuming more than one type at once. Television use dwarfs internet use in both the number of children who surf the web and the amount of time they spend on it. The analysis found that during the week, most children spend at least three hours a day watching television, and that television use among preschoolers is the highest it has been in the past eight years. Of the time that children spend on all types of media, television accounts for a whopping 47%. Heavy television viewing may even be partially responsible for the rising number of children who use the Internet. Parents in one study indicated that more than 60% of children under age three watch video online. That percentage decreases as children get older (the report suggests this is because school-age children have less time at home), but even 8- to 18-year-old children reported in another study that they consume about 20% of their video content online, on cellphones, or on other portable devices like iPods. Internet and television use among children has become entwined in other ways as well. A 2010 Nielsen study suggests that 36% of children between the ages of 2 and 11 use both mediums simultaneously. Altogether, children between the ages of 8 and 10 spend about 5.5 hours each day using media - eight hours if you count the additional media consumed while multitasking. The report doesn't attempt to solve the more-than-decade-old debate of whether all of this screen time is good for children. Instead, it preaches balance: "My mother used to say that too much of anything isn't good fo

 Color lets you snap and share photos and videos. But instead of sharing them with people you specify, it shares them with people near you-and if those people are using the Color app to capture stuff, you can see it, too. It all happens in real time in one 

 Unbound is both a crowdfunding platform and a publisher. Authors pitch an idea and if enough readers support it, the book will go ahead with publishing. Like Kickstarter, if a book doesn't get sufficient backing, then supporters' pledges are refunded.