Hasta La Gadget!

The human brain is one crazy computer, and while it’s been around for ages, there’s still a lot to learn about how it works. To that end, the Obama Administration is revving up to announce at ten-year plan to create a comprehensive map of the human brain, just like the one we have of the human genome. To know thyself, right? More »

The thought of a computer that never crashes is incredibly appealing to anyone who has ever used a computer. Researchers from the University College London have created a computer system that they call a “systemic” computer that is able to self-repair and instantly recover from crashes. The researchers believe that their systemic computer could have many uses including the ability to help military drones reprogram themselves to cope with damage sustained in combat.

The researchers also believe that their systemic computer could help create more realistic models of the human brain. Computers today work through a list of instructions one at a time in sequential order. Instructions are extracted from the memory, executed, and the result is again placed into memory. The computer creation that researchers Peter Bentley and Christos Sakellariou have created that combines the data and the instructions on what to do with the data into systems.

The researchers give the example of the computer being able to monitor the temperature outside along with instructions on what to do if the temperature falls outside of a specific range. Each of the systems contains context sensitive data allowing the data to only interact with other similar systems. Unlike traditional computers that use a program counter, the systems in the systemic computer are executed at times chosen by a pseudorandom number generator designed to mimic the randomness in nature.

This means that the system is able to carry out instructions simultaneously with no one system taking precedence over the others. In the system, the researchers say that the results of a computation emerges from the interaction between systems that interact in parallel and randomly. The system also contains multiple copies of its instructions distributed across the many systems so if one system is corrupted the computer is able to access another clean copy to repair its code eliminating operating system crashes because a single bit of memory can’t be accessed.

[via New Scientist]

Systemic computer can rebuild corrupted data and never crashes is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple’s iOS 6.1 passcode bypass exploit has been receiving a lot of attention since it was stumbled upon earlier this week with a fix planned for early next week.

According to a new research published yesterday by Germany’s Erlangen University, passcodes may not be a match for freezing temperatures as researchers were able to bypass a Galaxy Nexus’ security settings to read the phone’s memory simply by sticking it in the freezer for a while. The method is called a “cold boot” attack and was first demonstrated on PCs in 2008.

The cold boot attack was performed, but through an approach that differs from how it’s done to PCs. The Galaxy Nexus retains information after a shutdown for up to two seconds, which researchers were able to extend it to a five or six second retention window. Once researchers were able to have the phone reach that length of time, they were able to successfully pull data from the device with the help of a computer.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Latest HTC One Teaser Hints At Stereo Speakers, Vertu Looked At Windows Phone 8 Before The Vertu Ti,

A group of genetic researchers has announced that they have identified a mutation in a human gene as the source of some of the distinctive traits that differentiate East Asians from other races. According to the scientists, the genetic discovery accounts for traits such as thicker hair shafts, more sweat glands, characteristically identified teeth, and other differences. The scientists claim that the gene mutation occurred about 35,000 years ago.

The scientists say that DNA changes at 400 sites on the human genome market turning points in differentiating populations on each continent from one another. The researchers found that the first of those 400 sites of the human genome studied contains a gene known as EDAR. What the researchers call the standard version of the gene is carried by Africans and Europeans.

However, in East Asians the researchers say that one of the DNA units is mutated. One team of researchers on the project studying thicker hair in East Asians led by Yana G. Kamberov and Pardis C. Sabeti were researching the gene in mice where its effects can be more easily explored. Researchers say that mice have the EDAR gene already.

The researchers studied a strain of mice where the EDAR gene has the same DNA change as East Asian human genetic material. The researchers found that when the mice grew up they did have thicker hair shafts confirming that the genetic mutation was the cause of thicker hair in East Asians. The researchers also discovered that mice with the mutated gene also had extra sweat glands. Another discovery with the mice with the modified gene was that they had less breast tissue than mice with the unmutated version of the gene.

[via NYT]

Researchers say they have identified genetic mutation linked to East Asian physical traits is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Back in November, I talked a bit about a team of scientists that were claiming to have verified using DNA study that Bigfoot does exist. The team promised that they would have a paper outlining their findings published to allow others to look at their work. The paper has finally been published and apparently, it took some significant doing to publish.

A significant doing involves the fact that the team involved in the publishing of the paper had to purchase their own online scientific journal to get the paper published at all. The paper was published on an online journal called De Novo and perhaps unsurprisingly the scientists are trying to charge $30 to anyone wanting to view their research paper. Ars Technica was able to get their hands on a free sample of the paper and turned it over to someone who actually has a background in DNA and genetic research to peruse.

The researchers involved in the project are predominantly forensic experts and collected a number of samples from across North America. However, the expert that Ars has interpreting the results of scientific study says that the results from the genetic testing he sees comes to a different result than what the writers of the paper argue. The scientists who authored the paper believe that the data points to Bigfoot being a recent hybridization between modern humans and an unknown primate species.

Ars’ expert says that the mitochondrial DNA in the samples clusters with that of modern humans. He also notes that the DNA sequences come from a variety of different humans, 16 different to be exact. Most of the species were either European or Middle Eastern region with some being African and American Indian. The expert says that given the timing of the interbreeding only Native American sequences should be seen.

The expert also notes that the nuclear genome has concerning results. He says that sometimes the tests performed picked up human DNA and other times the tests did not. He also notes the tests failed entirely at times. He says that the product resulting from the DNA amplification that was performed on samples look like test results that you would expect when the reaction didn’t amplify the intended sequence. He also notes that some results show patches of both double and single stranded DNA intermixed, which would be expected if two distantly related species had their DNA mixed. The expert says the results point to modern human DNA intermingled with some sort of contaminant. Bigfoot is apparently not so scientifically identified after all. My eight-year-old daughter will be crushed.

[via Ars Technica]

Bigfoot genome paper finally published is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.