scientific

The physics buzz reached a frenzy in the past few days over the announcement that the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva is planning to release what is widely expected to be tantalizing--although not conclusive--evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson, the elementary particle hypothesized to be the origin of the mass of all matter.

Many physicists have already swung into action, swapping rumors about the contents of the announcement and proposing grand ideas about what those rumors would mean, if true. "It's impossible to be excited enough," says Gordon Kane, a theoretical physicist at the University … Read more

RealCalc gives your Android mobile device all the mathematical prowess of a traditional, physical scientific calculator. When you first use the app, you'll notice that it looks just like the real thing. The button layout and functions feel familiar, and the act of punching out calculations just seems natural. The bottom half of the screen is dedicated to number keys and common arithmetic operations (multiplication, addition, and so on), while the top half of the screen is dedicated to more complex operations like logarithms, radicals, roots, and trigonometric values. And similar to the scientific calculators we all know and … Read more

Scientific calculators are kind of like wildlife tags, clearly identifying certain individuals as nerds, who themselves view the tricorder-size devices as badges of honor and marks of distinction. While handheld scientific calculators will long find a cherished place on many a belt, smartphones and other powerful handheld devices are starting to target their lunch money, in part by ganging up with freeware like EasyFindSoft's Smart Scientific Calculator. It's a free, totally portable, fully featured scientific calculator for your desktop, laptop, or other Windows devices. It's HTML-based, uses Flash player, and offers a widget you can embed in … Read more

Scientific Conservation, a company that specializes in energy consumption forecasting, has received $15.65 million in Series B funding, the start-up announced Tuesday.

The company is just one example of the way traditional IT is now intersecting with green tech.

Scientific Conservation offers software as a service (SaaS) that allows the company to monitor a building's energy consumption in real-time, apply that data to energy management diagnostics and analytics, and then use that created knowledge to predict the building's energy consumption in the future.

The result is a customized energy plan for a building that is always being … Read more

Turning 20 next month, the World Wide Web has become a ubiquitous part of our lives. But the freedom and open nature of the Web that we sometimes take for granted are threatened, according to its creator.

In a long article published yesterday in Scientific American, Tim Berners-Lee writes that the Web as we know it is affected by elements that have "begun to chip away at its principles."

He points a finger at social-networking sites that he says are "walling off information posted by users from the rest of the Web." Though he acknowledges that … Read more

Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization tomorrow plans to unveil a breakthrough in wireless technology that will allow multiple users to upload content at the same time while maintaining a data transfer rate of 12 megabits per second (Mbps), all over their old analog TV aerial.

The technology, named Ngara, allows up to six users to occupy the equivalent spectrum space of one television channel (7 megahertz) and has a spectral efficiency of 20 bits per second per hertz. Ngara can handle up to three times that of similar technology and maintains a data rate more than 10 … Read more

Instead of heavy textbooks, your school backpack could one day carry equipment that instantly maps out your environment in 3D. The Air Force recently announced that a portable laser backpack for 3D mapping has been developed by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley.

While bulky, the prototype backpack has already been used to map out two stories of Cory Hall, an electrical engineering building on the UC Berkeley campus. It rapidly gathers data while the user walks around inside a building. The information can be put together into a detailed, photo-realistic 3D map.

The researchers include Avideh Zakhor, … Read more

As iPhone 4 hits seem to keep piling up, Apple finds a friend in an electromagnetic engineer and self-described "mobile topic expert" who claims that Consumer Reports failed to provide a truly scientific test of the antenna issues facing Apple's iPhone 4.

Bob Egan, now a technology blogger and global head of research & chief analyst at the TowerGroup, claims that the Consumer Reports study, which had the popular independent customer advocacy group unable to recommend purchasing the iPhone 4, has many inherent flaws and can barely be counted as scientific.

Egan writes, "Bottom line. From … Read more

Tvalx specializes in mathematical software; its Scientific Calculator Decimal is essentially a virtual version of the classic handheld scientific calculator optimized for calculating decimals. It's suitable for everyone from math students to scientists and engineers. It's precise up to 30 digits and includes trigonometric, hyperbolic, and inverse functions.

As with other calculating tools from Tvalx, Scientific Calculator Decimal has a clean, efficient, attractive layout that's largely based on the functional design of handheld scientific calculators, though you can customize the look, too. The layout strikes a good balance between busy and clean. File, Edit, Tools, and Help … Read more