ScienceDaily: Computers & Math News

Is US immigration policy 'STEMming' innovation? Posted: 11 Mar 2015 01:04 PM PDT Foreign-born graduate students in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines who wish to pursue a career in industry or NGOs are much more likely to stay in the US than those who wish to pursue a career in academia or government concludes a new study.

'Visual' Turing test developed Posted: 11 Mar 2015 09:47 AM PDT Computers are able to recognize objects in in photographs and other images, but how well can they 'understand' the relationships or implied activities between objects? Researchers have devised a 'visual Turing test' to evaluate how well computers perform at that task.

Face-to-face bullying worse than cyber-attacks, students say Posted: 11 Mar 2015 06:10 AM PDT Face-to-face bullying is more cruel and harsh than online attacks, a survey of school students found. The findings of this study indicate that significantly more victims perceived traditional bullying to be more harsh and cruel than cyberbullying. "It clearly indicates the feelings of the children and the very real threat they have of being physically harmed by another child," the lead investigator said.

Guarantees for online anonymity? Posted: 11 Mar 2015 05:15 AM PDT Anonymity on the Internet is possible only up to a certain degree. Therefore, it is possible that others may see who is visiting an online advice site on sexual abuse, or who frequently looks up information about a certain disease, for example. Seeing that this kind of private information can be linked to their identity, users will often resort to special online anonymization services.

Netradar: World's fastest mobile Internet in Denmark, Singapore and Switzerland Posted: 11 Mar 2015 05:15 AM PDT People have the fastest mobile Internet connections in the world in Denmark (22.3 Mbit/s), followed by Singapore (16.9 Mbit/s), Switzerland (16.6 Mbit/s), Norway (14.8 Mbit/s) and Korea (13.0 Mbit/s). The result is based on measurements by ordinary mobile phone users using Netradar, a free mobile application to analyze the quality of mobile connections and devices. When using the application, users are presented with data about the quality of their connectivity.

Computer model explains how brain learns to categorize Posted: 11 Mar 2015 05:12 AM PDT A computer model has been devised to explain how a neural circuit learns to classify sensory stimuli into discrete categories, such as "car vs. motorcycle." Their findings shed new light on the brain processes underpinning judgments we make on a daily basis.

'Nano-earthquakes' hold key to smarter electronics Posted: 10 Mar 2015 05:56 PM PDT The performance of mobile phone cameras and solar cells could be boosted by "nano-earthquakes," researchers have found.