World's smallest magnetic data storage unit. It consists of just 12 iron atoms ordered in an anti-ferromagnetic structure (Photo: Sebastian Loth/CFEL)

Researchers at International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) create the world’s smallest magnetic data storage unit is made of just 12 atoms, a significant shrinkage in the world of information storage. They have stored and retrieved digital 1s and 0s from an array of just 12 atoms, pushing the boundaries of the magnetic storage of information to the edge of what is possible.

Traditional storage methods apparently need millions of atoms to storage the bits and bytes that make up our data. The new IBM breakthrough can store that data with only 12 little atoms needed. Until now, it was unclear how many (or how few) atoms would be needed to build a reliable, lasting memory bit, the basic piece of information that a computer understands. IBM has now found that magic number. The new technique uses ferromagnetism and might lead to smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient devices in the future.

The advance could lead to tiny hard drives able to store 200 to 300 times more information than they can today. Just imagine an iPod Touch that held 12.8 terabytes of music.

IBM’s 12-atom bit-keeper uses an antiferromagnetic structure, however, meaning that the atoms point in opposite directions. This keeps the atoms from interfering with each other, an important feature when you’re storing data just 12 atoms at a time. “In a ferromagnet all of these atoms add together to make a big spin and that big spin interacts with the neighboring big spin. And so you cannot control these independently anymore,” Heinrich says. “But in an antiferromagnet there is no big spin, and so you can put these guys very close together”

The team assembled the tiny hard drive from the atom up, using a special tool known as scanning tunneling microscope, or STM. They carefully placed atoms into rows of six atoms each. Two rows were enough to store one bit of information. Eight pairs of rows amounted to one byte of data.

Data was written into and read out of the bits using the STM, an impractical and slow method for manufacturing and the storage of the information — the magnetic state — is only stable at very cold temperatures, about 5 degrees above absolute zero. Warmer than that and the spins of the atoms get jostled. So it’s not like this type of bit will be integrated into hard disks anytime soon. Researchers said, ‘finding a material that works at room temperature isn’t impossible. What material will work, however, remains to be seen.’

But it answers some fundamental questions about the nature of classical mechanical systems, said Andreas Heinrich, the lead investigator into atomic storage at IBM Research.

Tech Magazine by PrimeNews24.com - Serving the Technologist

Researchers discovered new species of shrimp that lives in the world’s deepest known volcanic vents where the water is warmer than 450 degrees Celsius (842 degree Fahrenheit) – hot enough to melt lead.

The seafloor vents are located 5km below the surface of the Caribbean, in the Cayman Trough, south of the Cayman Islands. Some 5,000 metres down, in a rift in the seafloor, exists a volcanic spring known as a ‘black smoker’, which shoots jets of mineral-rich water more than a kilometre into the ocean above.

Newly discovered shrimp Rimicaris hybisae (Photo: AFP/GETTY Image)

The researchers unveiled a remarkable list of discoveries: a new found species of (mostly) eyeless shrimp which has a light-sensing organ on its back, evidence that the deepest vent may also be the hottest on the planet. The pale shrimp congregate in hordes – up to 2,000 shrimp per square metre – around the six-metre tall mineral spires of the vents. The researchers have named the shrimp Rimicaris hybisae, after the deep-sea vehicle that they used to collect them. The newly discovered shrimp is related to a species called Rimicaris exoculata, found at other deep-sea vents 4,000 kilometres away on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Researchers from the UK’s National Oceanography Centre in Southampton first investigated the vents in April 2010. The new discoveries announcement comes nearly two years after a team lead by marine geochemist Doug Connelly of Britain’s National Oceanography Centre and University of Southampton biologist Dr Jon Copley used a deep-diving robot submarine to became the first humans to glimpse an extraordinary sight 3 miles (5 kilometers) below them, at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. Details of the research have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Although the scientists were not able to measure the temperature of the vents directly, these two features indicate that the world’s deepest known vents may be hotter than 450C, according to the researchers.

Dr Jon Copley, one of the leader of this research said, ‘Studying the creatures at these vents, and comparing them with species at other vents around the world will help us to understand how animals disperse and evolve in the deep ocean.’

Tech Magazine by PrimeNews24.com - Serving the Technologist

A new version of widely prevalent SpyEye Trojan horse not only steals money from bank accounts — it also covers its tracks by offering false Bank statements. That means when you visit your online bank, there will be no trace of the transactions that the cyber-criminals have undertaken to steal your money. Worse, your balance will also be adjusted on screen so it looks as if nothing is happening.

You can only realize that you have been hit when your bank starts chasing you because of an overdraft or your credit card is rejected. Trusteer, the security company which detected the attack, says, ‘The next time the victim visits their online banking site, the malware hides the fraudulent transactions, as well as artificially changing the total balance.’

‘SpyEye is a tweak of the Zeus crimeware kit that grabs web form data within browsers,’ says the Naked Security blog at web security experts Sophos. ‘This year, right before the recent holiday season, Trusteer found a hopped-up version of SpyEye attacking banks in the U.S. and U.K.

The new Trojan, instead of intercepting or diverting email messages, hides bogus transactions even after users have logged out and then logged back into their accounts.

The Trojan horse employs a powerful two-step process to commit the electronic crime. First, the virus lies in wait until a customer with an infected computer visits an online banking site, steals their login credentials and tricks the victim into divulging additional personal information such as debit card information.  Then, after the stolen card number is used for a fraudulent purchase, the virus intercepts any further visits to the victim’s banking site and scrubs transaction records clean of any fraud.  That prevents — or at least delays — consumers from discovering fraud and reporting it to the bank, buying the fraudster critical extra time to complete the crime.

“Most banks ‘let the first transaction through,’ because if they stopped everything that was potentially fraud, consumers would get annoyed,” said Avivah Litan, a financial fraud analyst at consulting firm Gartner. In some cases, fraud-checking tools kick in only after initial reports, so this version of SpyEye could buy criminals important time as they try to turn stolen data into cash.

Victim account holders who check their balance at an ATM — or even at a second uninfected computer — would be able to spot the fraudulent transactions. The virus doesn’t impact bank systems, merely the characters that are displayed within the infected system’s Web browser.  That means paper statements would reveal the fraud, too.

SpyEye trojan horse builder software kit

The new version of SpyEye has targeted banks in the U.S. and the UK. The attack – on Windows PCs – has already been detected in the U.S. and the UK. With hi-tech cyber attacks such as SpyEye, there are few visible signs that anything is wrong.

There are defences, though – ensure your browser is up to date, manually updating it if necessary. You should also ensure that the ‘anti-phishing’ option is switched to ‘on’ in Firefox, Chrome or Internet Explorer, which will check for ‘blacklisted’ websites and prevent your browser being directed to the ‘fake’ version that delivers your bank statement.

Tech Magazine by PrimeNews24.com - Serving the Technologist

A tsunami warning has been issued after a powerful 7.3 magnitude quake hit 423km (262 miles) south-west of Banda Aceh, Sumatra. An official with Indonesia’s geological agency confirmed this. US Geological Survey (USGS) said today’s quake was centered 18 miles beneath the ocean floor.

Indonesia’s geological agency’s technical chief Suharjono told that, “The quake was in the sea and a tsunami warning is in force, but so far we have no reports of casualties or damage.”

Residents in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, and other cities along the coast fled their homes and waited in the streets. Patients were evacuated from at least one hospital as a precaution.

The quake struck shortly after midnight on Wednesday local time (18:37GMT Tuesday), the USGS said.

A giant quake off the country on Dec. 26, 2004, triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed 230,000 people, half of them in Aceh.

Tech Magazine by PrimeNews24.com - Serving the Technologist

India on Tuesday denied a claim that its military intelligence had intercepted into emails of U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) that monitors economic and security matters with China. This issue surfaced when USCC has asked for an investigation after hackers posted online a memo purportedly from India’s military, which claimed that the country had intercepted emails of USCC officials with the help of Nokia, Research In Motion, and Apple.

The memo, allegedly from the Directorate General of Military Intelligence, Foreign Division, in New Delhi, said that as India did not have access to the USCC local area network, which was a prime target in connection with arch-rival People’s Republic of China, India had signed an agreement with mobile manufacturers in return for giving these companies access to the Indian market. The memo stated that the military used “backdoors” provided by RIM, Nokia, Apple and unspecified others.

“The documents shown in the memo doing rounds on the internet are forged and don’t belong to us”, Indian Army sources said to Times of India. However, the US has already ordered an investigation into these claims.

“We are aware of these reports and have contacted relevant authorities to investigate the matter,” said US-China Economic and Security Review Commission spokesman Jonathan Weston.

“We are unable to make further comments at this time,” said Weston, who was responding to questions about the alleged memo.

Tech Magazine by PrimeNews24.com - Serving the Technologist

On Tuesday, Google Inc. introduced a revamp version of its flagship search engine, dubbed ‘Search, Plus Your World’, which will add a twist to Web searches by enabling users to search private content of them and their friends have posted and made available to each other privately through the Google+ social network and the Picasa Web photo upload and sharing site in addition to the normal search. Users will have the option to toggle between searching their own personal data and searching the Web as a whole.

Over the next few days, users will notice a couple of small icons appear on their search results, if they choose to opt in. On the upper right, Google will show a pair of buttons. Users that toggle the right-hand globe will be able to search as normal, with search results that leverage Google’s normal search algorithm.

Google official said that the new tool redefines search by incorporating users’ personal information into everyday search queries. This is most obvious in the personalized Image Search, which allows users to look through their own pictures that have been shared with them on Google’s other programs, such as social media and sharing sites. An image search for “Hawaii” you are likely to see pictures of your trip to Hawaii from your own albums, or from a friend’s album. You may also see travel tips and recommendations that your friends may have posted on Google+.

Generic searches for broad topics will now also include profiles and pages from Google+ for people who are relevant and important to that topic. A search for “music” may suggest the profiles of Britney Spears or Snoop Dogg to the right of search results.

Google isn’t the first to do this. Microsoft’s Bing search engine has been mining some of the preferences and other information shared on Facebook since May. But Google’s emphasis on more personal results figures to attract more attention because its search engine is so dominant. It handles about two-thirds of the Internet search requests made in the U.S. while Bing processes less than one-third, including the activity that it comes through a partnership with Yahoo Inc.

Users who do not want personalized content will be able to turn it off easily, the Google said.

Tech Magazine by PrimeNews24.com - Serving the Technologist

At its 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) press event on January 9, Samsung’s president of consumer electronics, Boo-keun Yoon, unveiled the firm’s flagship voice and motion-controlled upgradeable LED television which allows customers to buy and insert “evolution kit” chips into a slot on the back of the TV to augment its hardware profile.

Samsung’s LED smart TV, the ES8000 allows you to control the TV by simply waving your hands or by your voice command, instead of having to use a remote control or touch any buttons. Samsung’s new LED smart TV has a slot at which allows new kit to be added to boost processing performance and add new features. This innovation may help reassure shoppers concerned about their screen becoming outdated.

Samsung’s ES8000 LED TV  is equipped with a dual-core processor which allow users multitask between regular TV, a Web browser and apps like Netflix — all at the same time, without being forced to close down a program.

The ES8000 will have an integrated camera and microphone to allow control by gestures and voice commands. The camera will also make use of facial recognition, logging recognizable users into their own profiles on the TV. It will come in sizes up to 75 inches.

Samsung plans on further developing the selection of apps available for its smart TVs, and noted that there are 25,000 developers working on apps for the platform. Samsung’s ES8000 smart TV supports Samsung’s new service AllShare Play, a cloud service for media that, for example, allows users to upload photos from a phone to a computer that can then be accessed from other devices, including a smart TV.

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s biggest TV maker by shipments, also voiced commitment to its 3D TVs at the CES press event in Las Vegas. ‘Samsung is still investing heavily in 3D,’ said Boo-Keun Yoon, president of the company.

The company also unveiled a device called the InTouch on Sunday, which converts regular TVs into smart TVs. The $199 converter is a low-cost option for customers to add Internet browsing, Skype voice calling and a keyboard remote, without having to buy a new TV.

Tech Magazine by PrimeNews24.com - Serving the Technologist

United States Department of Justice redefines the FBI’s 83 years old definition of rape Friday to count men as victims for the first time and drop the requirement that victims must have physically resisted their attackers. Justice Department officials said The new definition will provide a better understanding of the crime and to broaden protections.

Since 1929, the FBI’s Uniform Crime report used a guideline from 1927 that defined rape as “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will.” That definition, which included only men having sex with women without their consent, excluded other forms of sexual assault, such as oral penetration and rape of men.

The new definition is: “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without consent of the victim.”

Revised definition will increase the number of reported rapes nationwide in FBI statistics as it counts several forms of sexual assault as rape other than vaginal sex.

The expansion was long awaited because the FBI’s reports are often synonymous in the public mind with crime rates. The FBI data are also used by policymakers to analyze crime and propose anti-crime initiatives.

“The revised definition includes any gender of victim or perpetrator, and includes instances in which the victim is incapable of giving consent because of temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity, including due to the influence of drugs or alcohol or because of age,” the Department of Justice pointed out in a statement sent to reporters early Friday. “The ability of the victim to give consent must be determined in accordance with state statute. Physical resistance from the victim is not required to demonstrate lack of consent.”

The new definition applies to the way the FBI tracks reports of sexual violence and rape in it’s Uniform Crime Report Summary Reporting System. It does not change Federal or state criminal cods or affect the way law enforcement responds to the crimes. (Many local police departments already use a broader definition of rape than the 1927 one used by the FBI.)

Nearly 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men in the U.S. have been raped at some time in their lives, according to a 2010 survey by the National Center for Injury Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which used a broader definition.

Tech Magazine by PrimeNews24.com - Serving the Technologist

Facebook isn’t such a friendly place for the majority of women, according to a new survey conducted by Eversave, a company that offers daily deals for restaurants, activities and more.

A study of 400 women for daily deals company Eversave unexpectedly uncovered more information about participants’ distaste for their friends’ online behavior than about the impact social networking has on saving money (although for the curious, 45% of those taking part in the survey said they found out about online deals from their friends, compared with 79% who admitted also discovering bargains through deal companies’ social network ads).

The results also uncovered the love-hate relationship women have with Facebook. These bothersome behaviors topped the list:

• Complaining all the time (63 percent)
• Sharing unsolicited political views (42 percent)
• Bragging about seemingly perfect lives (32 percent)

The data also uncovered some interesting things about Facebook friendships. While women use Facebook to keep their friends informed about what they are up to (79 percent) as well as share interesting and/or funny links and videos (64 percent), they have little tolerance for friends who use the site to brag or overshare. Survey respondents were asked if they were friends with certain online personalities, and here are the results:

• The documentarian – they update their status with their every move (65 percent)
• The drama queen – everything’s a crisis with this friend (61 percent)
• The proud mama – they think Junior’s every move is newsworthy (57 percent)
• The incessant liker – they “like” every post (46 percent)
• The slactivist – don’t they know Facebook can’t cure cancer? (40 percent)
• The poser – they project an image of life so perfect, and it’s not true (40 percent)

Women (and men) may want to think twice before accepting a friend request. As for the friends that you already have, if you feel uncomfortable unfriending them, remember there are alternatives: you can always hide their updates or limit what content of yours they can see on the site.

Still, 91 percent of women like checking out their friends’ videos and photos on Facebook and 76 percent like the fact that they can search for long-lost friends on the site.

Tech Magazine by PrimeNews24.com - Serving the Technologist

Post-sex blues is not a sexual behaviour commonly discussed, but one in three women have experienced post-sex blues at some point, a study shows, but researchers still don’t understand why.

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) study of more than 200 young women has found one in three (32.9 per cent) had experienced the phenomenon at some point. QUT Associate Professor Robert Schweitzer’s research, published in the latest International Journal of Sexual Health, looked at the prevalence of postcoital dysphoria or the experience of negative feelings following otherwise satisfactory intercourse.

The period immediately after sex normally results in feelings of well-being, and mental and physical relaxation. But the study of more than 200 young women reveals many have experienced the reverse, including feelings of melancholy, anxiety and tearfulness.

Professor Schweitzer said the cause of such negative feelings was unknown – but it was clear women wanted more information about the phenomenon. ”Research on the prevalence and causes of post-coital dysphoria has been virtually silent but internet searches reveal information on the subject is widely sought,” he said.

”It has generally been thought that women who have experienced sexual abuse associate later sexual encounters with the trauma of the abuse along with sensations of shame, guilt, punishment and loss.

”This association is then purported to lead to sexual problems and the avoidance of sex.”

But Professor Schweitzer said his study had found only limited correlation between sexual abuse and postcoital dysphoria.

”Psychological distress was also found to be only modestly associated with post-coital dysphoria,” he said. ”This suggests other factors such as biological predisposition may be more important in understanding the phenomenon and identifying women at risk of experiencing post-coital dysphoria.”

The next stage of Professor Schweitzer’s research will look at emotional characteristics of women who experience post-sex blues.

”I want to look at how women view their ‘sense of self’. Whether they are fragile or whether they are strong women, and investigate whether this leads to their post-coital dysphoria,” he said.

The study, published in the International Journal of Sexual Health, was co-written by Professor Schweitzer, postgraduate psychology researcher Brian Bird and the University of Utah’s Professor Donald Strassberg.

Tech Magazine by PrimeNews24.com - Serving the Technologist