research

Academia and Silicon Valley are in a race to see who can solve life's most important problems first.

Currently, the Valley is ahead, having shown you how to make pictures that look like they were taken 40 years ago.

However, academia is catching up, by bringing conclusions to life's most pressing questions.

I am, therefore, moved beyond safe levels of self-expression on hearing of a piece of research from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.… Read more

Research In Motion says it's hearing all the right things about BlackBerry 10.

Carriers and Fortune 500 companies that have played with RIM's next-generation operating system are enthusiastic about its prospects, Chief Operating Officer Kristian Tear told CNET today. More importantly, the carriers have promised their full support, he said.

"We will put our full effort into this launch," he said. "The carriers will do the same thing."

Tear was light on details when it came to launch, preferring to save a larger reveal for closer to BlackBerry 10's unveiling, scheduled for January 30. … Read more

After several delays, Research in Motion wants to move quickly in the final stretch before the launch of BlackBerry 10.

RIM said yesterday that it plans to unveil the phones at global launch events on January 30. The company is aiming to make the phones available by February, according to Bloomberg.

RIM doesn't expect the phones to hit the various carriers simultaneously, but the launches should occur within 30 days of the unveiling, Bloomberg reported based on an interview with Chief Operating Officer Kristian Tear.

RIM has long delayed the release of BlackBerry 10, which has been talked about … Read more

If you're a parent, you're probably already panicking about how to satisfy your children during the season of goodwill hunting for material goods.

I am here to help. For I have just been given the results of a survey conducted for online cashback shopping site Ebates.

It's a survey that delved deep into the complicated covetous minds of kiddies and emerged with fascinating results.

It seems that older kids and younger kids have very different ideas about what Santa should shove in their stockings.

Among the 16- to 18-year-olds, there seems considerable consensus that their one heart'… Read more

Research In Motion has finally set the date for the launch of its next-generation BlackBerry 10 smartphones.

The embattled smartphone manufacturer said today it would release its newest BlackBerrys on January 30 with multiple events in a global launch. The company will unveil its first two BlackBerry 10 smartphones -- a full touch-screen device and one resembling its current Bold flagship line -- as well as provide more details on the platform.

BlackBerry 10 represents the company's last, best shot at a turnaround. The once high-flying company was a major player in the smartphone world, but in recent years … Read more

America may not design world-class cars anymore. We don't build TVs, phones, tablets, cameras, or all that much consumer technology, but we're still at the top of the heap in high-end audio! That's why the White House should have an American engineered and built hi-fi system for use by the president and his invited guests.

I'll volunteer my services to coordinate and help assemble such a system (presumably donated by the manufacturers). On a leap of faith, I'm assuming the president still plays LPs, so I'd recommend the Spiral Groove turntable and tonearm from … Read more

Microsoft has a new translation technology that increases accuracy with help from your voice.

Discussed yesterday in a blog post by Microsoft chief research officer Rick Rashid, the company's translation technology is capable of taking a user's spoken English word and then translating that into Mandarin Chinese. The kicker is that the Chinese translation is pumped through speakers in the user's own voice.

Microsoft's technology is based on a new translation technique called Deep Neural Networks (DNN). Rather than use the "hidden Markov modeling" technique, which is widely used and bases translation on training … Read more

Mental discomfort often has irrational roots.

There are those who walk into art galleries and feel intimidated by all the serious faces. There are those who stare at menus written in a foreign language and wish they weren't on vacation.

And there are those who look at math problems and wish they had some Xanax.

If you're one of those who is pained by your mathophobia, please let me mop your brow. For the discomfort you feel is, scientifically speaking, little different from physical pain.… Read more

In the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, researchers are discovering the damage the done to one of New York University's research facilities and mourning the loss of lab animals and of scientific data that could take years to rebuild.

After the New York Daily News reported on Tuesday that flooding and power loss claimed the lives of thousands of lab mice as well as wiping out enzymes, antibodies, and DNA used in cancer and other research, the NYU Langone Medical Center confirmed in a statement released yesterday that its Smilow building was "adversely impacted" by the speed and severity of the flood surge.… Read more