Posted 11/21/08 at 03:15:16 PM by Paul Lilly

As it turns out, teens might have a legitimate beef with parental controls limiting the time they spend online, as doing so could hurt their development. Or at least that's the pitch teenagers will soon be making to their parents while they quote findings from a new study released this week by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation at the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting.

The study, which observed teens for 5,000 hours over the course of three years, comes as part of a $50 million initiative to find out what effects digital media might be having on teenagers, specifically how they learn and socialize.

"When adults look at teens today, they think what they are doing is different and seem to be wasting a lot of time online hanging out with their friends or playing video games, and these are activities that can seem quite foreign," said Mizuko Ito, the report's lead author and a researcher at the University of California Irvine. "But when we look closely at what kids are doing, it's not much different than what their parents did. They are hanging out with their friends, finding romantic partners, and trying to identify their status and identity."

It took a 58-page report to note a generation gap in how parents and teens view online activities, with the parents viewing their teen's online time as a distraction, whereas teens are finding value with the time they spend online. The report also noted that while teens are honing their social skills, they're also not taking full advantage of what the internet has to offer.

Do you agree with the study's suggestion that, for the most part, teens' time spent online has a positive effect? Hit the jump and post your thoughts.

Read More

Comments 

3

TAGS 

online, Research, study

Posted 10/27/08 at 09:07:14 AM by Pulkit Chandna

 Researchers at Singapore’s Nanyang Technology University (NTU) and Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech) have developed a low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) antenna for use in the unlicensed 57 - 64 GHz millimeter-wave bands. The development has paved the way for instantaneous wireless USB file transfers. It has the potential to replace Bluetooth as the preferred technology for nearby remote data exchanges.

SIMTech’s AIP (antenna in package) is not only economical but also practical per se. IEEE (Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers, Inc.) is busy devising standards for applications for the unlicensed 60 GHz band.

Read More

Comments 

0

TAGS 

standards, hardware, IEEE, Wireless USB, Research, antenna in a package, aip, singapore, high-speed lan, solutions, 60 ghz band, SIMTech, ntu

Posted 10/09/08 at 06:29:49 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Wi-Fi is fast emerging as the most popular technology for wireless communication between disparate gadgets, but security remains a major concern. However, researchers at Boston University’s College of Engineering are working on an alternative way of connecting devices that will be innately more secure than Wi-Fi.

They intend to use LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) for wireless communications. If they are able to develop an optical communication technology, LEDs could then be used in the same manner as Wi-Fi access points. These LEDs could also be used as a low-power source of light.

Moreover, an LED-based communication technology will enjoy a distinct security advantage. It will be more secure compared to Wi-Fi due to the inability of light to penetrate through opaque surfaces like walls.

“Imagine if your computer, iPhone, TV, radio and thermostat could all communicate with you when you walked in a room just by flipping the wall light switch and without the usual cluster of wires,” said an ebullient Thomas Little, a BU engineering professor, about the idea. Soon, our networks will quite literally “light up”.

Read More

Comments 

2

TAGS 

network, wireless, wi-fi, hardware, led, Research, light, communication

Posted 10/07/08 at 04:51:44 PM by Pulkit Chandna

A study by market research firm In-Stat has found that our dependence on wires is rapidly waning with the rise in the sales of embedded Wi-Fi devices. The study pegged the sale of embedded Wi-Fi devices around the world at 294 million units in 2007. It expects the figure to leapfrog to 1 billion by 2012.

According to the study, Wi-Fi enabled cell phones will usurp PCs as the most popular (largest) category of Wi-Fi devices. Even digital TVs are expected to interact with a wide gamut of devices using Wi-Fi in the imminent future. As Wi-Fi marches towards ubiquity, there are some compatibility and security issues that need to be addressed urgently.

Read More

Comments 

1

TAGS 

wireless, wi-fi, hardware, consumer electronics, Research, study, in-stat

Posted 09/30/08 at 06:15:09 PM by Andy Salisbury

We may or may not recognize it, but fluid is a very integral part of our everyday lives. It decides everything from our fuel economy to (in some cases) how cool our computer runs. Until now, there was only one key way of deciphering the mechanics of fluids, and that was the Prandtl equation, developed in 1904. Sadly though, the Prandtl equation has many limitations, including only having the ability to calculate only two-dimensional problems, and a steady flow (such as that of a car traveling slowly). Thanks to a breakthrough by MIT’s George Haller, that’s all about to change.

A recently developed new equation, which is a product of four years of work by Professor Haller, will apply to three-dimensional and unsteady flows. This was confirmed with the aid of Thomas Peacock, the Atlantic Richfield Career Development Associate Professor at MIT, who lead experiments in order to validate the equation. Professor Peacock states, “This is the tip of the iceberg, but we’ve shown that this theory works.” The new work will probably go down as one of the greatest scientific advances of the decade, if it survives the peer review that will come.

This innovation in the mechanics of liquids will have an overwhelming influence on many industries, including aerospace, automotive and even computers. With these breakthroughs in calculating how liquids will act and perform in different environments, there’s no doubt that your PC’s liquid cooling system will soon get an overhaul.

Read More

Comments 

3

TAGS 

water cooling, liquid cooling, Research, MIT, breakthrough

Posted 08/19/08 at 12:18:40 PM by Pulkit Chandna

The most popular game in the social activist fraternity and political circles currently happens to be “blame the videogames.” However, there are ardent gamers and researchers galore to even out the scales. Once again, fresh studies have reinforced the value of games in enhancing cognitive and perceptual skills among children; creating a breed of hyper-dexterous surgeons; and bolstering scientific reasoning capabilities in gamers. All said, there is a slight blemish with one of the studies having found that violent games lead to more violent behavior among gamers. Make the "jump" for all the justification you need to keep playing games.

Read More

Comments 

0

TAGS 

Software, violence, Videogames, Research, kids, study, pc games, console games, surgery, violent games

Posted 07/27/08 at 11:01:13 PM by Paul Lilly

In what would typically be a publishing nightmare (and might still be), Wikipedia announced it will attempt to make history in print publishing by creating a book with about 90,000 authors, which would rank as the most credited individual authors ever. To help them do that, the online encyclopedia has partnered with German publisher Bertelsmann, and the two of them will set out to create a single-volume print encyclopedia containing 25,000 of German Wikipedia's most popular articles.

Set to go on sale in September for around $32 USD, The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia will have a credits page that runs 27 pages "in a dense layout -- it's a page full of names, separated by commas." One of those names will be Theodore Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber. All 25,000 articles will be short in length running no more than a few paragraphs each. But will they be factually correct?

Read More

Comments 

3

TAGS 

windows, Software, wikipedia, Research, book, publish

Posted 07/09/08 at 04:15:04 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Internet research and security firm Netcraft has released the findings of its June 2008 Web Server Survey. Netcraft pegged the number of websites at a shade over 172 million, an increase of 3.9 million from the preceding month. Although the main objective of this survey wasn’t to perform a headcount of websites but to size up web server usage trends, it still gives a fair idea of the website population.

Click through to find out how accurate Netcraft's census is and whether you need to make a beeline for that proverbial pinch of salt.

Read More

Comments 

1

TAGS 

Software, Internet, Research, survey, web server, apache, websites, microsoft iis, web hosting