Science has a poor track record when it comes to comparing our brains to the technology of the day. Many neuroscientists today would add to the list of failed comparisons the idea that the brain is a computer — just another analogy without a lot of substance. Some of them actively deny that there is much useful in the idea; most simply ignore it.

For the first time, three humanoid robots showed a glimmer of self-consciousness by solving a classic philosophical problem. The robotic trio was composed of three old Nao models, but the experiment that was conducted on them was extremely novel — and so were the results. The robots were programmed to think that two of them had been given a “dumbing pill” that would make them unable to speak. However, they didn't know exactly which two of them had been silenced. When the robots were asked to answer which two had been given the pill, all of them tried to respond: “I don’t know.” Since only one was actually able to utter the words, it heard its own voice and recognized it wasn't among the two who had been silenced.

Inside every cell that makes up a diminutive fruit fly is a vast, dynamic network of information -- the genome whose 15,000 genes allow that cell to function. In a new study, computer scientists and molecular biologists demonstrated the utility of a novel approach to deciphering how networks of genes are regulated.

Women computer science majors at Rutgers University in New Brunswick are doing their part to inspire young girls to follow them into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. The Rutgers students worked one-on-one with girls at Theodore Schor Middle School in Piscataway this past school year to coach them in programming, game design, robotics and fundamentals of computing such as binary numbers. The aim is to show girls computer technology can be understandable and fun. Learning and applying the basics early, they say, paves the way for success in later years.

MIT computer scientists and Adobe engineers came together to try to solve a major problem that many companies face: bit-rot. Enter Helium, a CSAIL system that revamps and fine-tunes code without ever needing the original source, in a matter of hours or even minutes. The team started with a simple building block of programming that’s nevertheless extremely difficult to analyze: binary code that has been stripped of debug symbols. With Helium, the researchers are able to lift these kernels from a stripped binary and restructure them as high-level representations that are readable in Halide.

According to industry experts, we're on the cusp of the "third era" of computing, one of cognitive computing. In the age of tabulating machines, vacuum systems and the first calculators, we fed data directly into computers on punch cards. Later on, in the programmable era, we learnt how to take processes and put them into the machine, controlled by the programming we inflict on the system. But in the forthcoming era of cognitive computing, computers will work directly with humans "in a synergetic association" where relationships between human and computer blur.

Are black holes the ruthless killers we’ve made them out to be? Samir Mathur says no. According to the professor of physics at Ohio State University, the recently proposed idea that black holes have “firewalls” that destroy all they touch has a loophole. In a paper posted online to the arXiv preprint server, Mathur takes issue with the firewall theory and proves mathematically that black holes are not necessarily arbiters of doom. In fact, he says the world could be captured by a black hole, and we wouldn’t even notice.

The Arduino is an awesome programmable prototyping platform. It’s a little computer that acts like a brain for robots, sensors, or other machines that connect to the real world. It’s pretty inexpensive, too! For less than the cost of a tank of gas, you can get yourself this little blue open-source brain board and start creating something incredible. With just a little bit of code (that you don’t even have to write), it can do almost any crazy thing you want. Not to mention, Arduino boards now come in all shapes and sizes (some of them are shown above) with tons more processing power, and a variety of inputs and outputs.

Tom Lange, Procter & Gamble’s top expert on modeling and simulation R&D for more than a decade, now is bringing his business and technology savvy from the retail sector to help drive industrial engagement efforts at the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC). "I believe we are a country of makers and innovators; we make things to better our world," said Lange. "Modeling and simulation (M&S) has helped companies improve what we make and how we make it. Why should only large companies use these advanced capabilities? M&S using high performance computing has changed science and engineering as much as aviation changed travel – and we are only in the early days of M&S adoption."

A UT-related project exploring the role that neutrinos and dark matter particles can play in the formation of the universe has received a prestigious award from the US Department of Energy. The federal government has recognized the leadership of the NovA neutrino experiment—which includes UT physicists—for exceptional results in completing a project within budget and on schedule and gave it the DOE Secretary’s Award of Excellence. The NOvA experiment is based at the Fermilab, in Batavia, Illinois. It is the flagship experiment of Fermilab and the largest particle physics experiment in the United States. The project, through the use of particle detectors, examines how the abundant subatomic particles known as neutrinos helped in the evolution of the universe.

Large data is coming up everywhere within science these days. The problem is, the data sets are growing in size faster than our computing technology is growing. Further, the use of computational modeling as a technique to investigate the world around us has become a critical third leg of science, after experimentation and analysis. As a result, computational science has developed into a discipline in its own right. So what is computational science? I like to say, tongue-in-cheek, that it’s when pen and paper are no longer the right way to go; so we bring computing in to help analyze the problem.

The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) has named Ariel Procaccia, assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, as the recipient of its prestigious Computers and Thought Award for 2015. The award, presented every other year since 1971, recognizes outstanding young scientists in artificial intelligence. The judges cited Procaccia for his contributions to the fields of computational social choice and computational economics, and for efforts to make advanced fair division techniques more widely accessible. Procaccia's studies in artificial intelligence focus on the use of social choice and game theory for resource allocation and collective decision-making.

The Office of Science and Technology Policy announced $200 million in funding for new investments in big data research and development projects with the announcement of its Big Data initiative. With support of the National Science Foundation, and to achieve their goals of leveraging data-intensive tools to aid in the country’s research, defense and economic programs, the White House and the OSTP are bringing together six federal agencies or departments. Guided by industry representatives, PACE will lead collaborative and coordinated nationwide education and training efforts to build a competitive workforce in data management and analysis.

Research projects featuring a wide range of scientific interests, such as electron microscopy, pesticides and polymers, were featured at the first-ever poster session and flash talk competition at the Ohio Supercomputer Center Statewide Users Group (SUG) Meeting. SUG is a volunteer group comprised of the scientists and engineers who provide OSC’s executive director with program and policy advice and direction "to ensure a productive environment for research."

Caterpillar Inc. announced it will collaborate with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to conduct high-performance computing (HPC) projects focused on more realistic simulations that can lead to improved product designs. Through the expanded partnership, NCSA will host Caterpillar's simulation research on iForge supercomputer over a three-year period. By conducting these simulations in NCSA's HPC environment, Caterpillar will increase its dedicated computing resources, enhancing its product modeling and enabling rapid exploration of large design areas.

When a deadly heat wave lingers for an especially long time; when a hurricane makes landfall with particular ferocity; or when droughts, winter storms or cold snaps break records, the public is increasingly interested in knowing if human-induced climate change played a role. Attributing individual extreme weather events to a warming climate is difficult work. Even so, scientists have been making an effort in recent years to determine when a connection can be detected. In a new "Perspective" piece published in Nature Climate Change, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Reading argue that many researchers looking for links between the two have been asking the wrong question.

Type Ia supernovae are famous for their consistency. Ironically, new observations suggest that their origins may not be uniform at all. Using a “roadmap” of theoretical calculations and supercomputer simulations, astronomers observed for the first time a flash of light caused by a supernova slamming into a nearby star, allowing them to determine the stellar system from which the supernova was born. This finding confirms one of two competing theories about the birth of Type Ia supernovae. But taken with other observations, the results imply that there could be two distinct populations of these objects.

Electrical engineers have broken key barriers that limit the distance information can travel in fiber optic cables and still be accurately deciphered by a receiver. Photonics researchers at the University of California, San Diego have increased the maximum power — and therefore distance — at which optical signals can be sent through optical fibers. This advance has the potential to increase the data transmission rates for the fiber optic cables that serve as the backbone of the internet, cable, wireless and landline networks. The research is published in the June 26 issue of the journal Science.

Launching a major national effort to dramatically improve teacher preparation and to help teaching and learning practices evolve for the 21st century, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation announced the establishment of a new graduate school, the Woodrow Wilson Academy of Teaching and Learning (WW Academy). The WW Academy is designed to transform teacher education as well as school leadership policy and practice nationally by providing competency-based master’s degree programs in teaching and school leadership.

Lego wants kids of the future to continue having fun with its toy building blocks, but not at the expense of the environment. To that end, the Denmark-based Lego Group has announced a plan to find "sustainable" materials to replace the plastic used in its bricks by 2030. The company says it will invest more than $150 million to establish a Lego Sustainable Materials Center and staff it with more than 100 employees. "Our mission is to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow. We believe that our main contribution to this is through the creative play experiences we provide to children," Lego Group owner Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen said in a statement.

When SpaceX's resupply craft blasts off to the International Space Station on Sunday, a key part of Microsoft's future strategy will be riding along. Two pairs of HoloLens augmented reality glasses are hitching a lift to the station. NASA has opted to use the devices, which overlay holograms on top of real objects, for astronaut training and tasks in space. Called Project Sidekick, it's part of a larger partnership between HoloLens and NASA, which also said in January that it will use the devices for its Mars Rover program.

New research from NowSecure indicates a critical flaw in Samsung handsets that’s left an estimated 600 million devices vulnerable to simple man-in-the-middle-style hacks. The problem results from nonexistent encryption practices and poor security measures. In this case, Samsung shipped its own version of SwiftKey, an Android keyboard. SwiftKey’s developers have stated that the bug is not present in their own version of the code, meaning Samsung is responsible for creating and distributing the flaw.

I've been doing some research on R, Ggplot2 and visualization in general for a lecture so I want to share my thoughts about this question. I will start with my conclusions then I'll try to rationalize them. Conclusion #1: R is great for creating plots for exploratory data analysis but not very good for final product data visualization. Conclusion #2: Ggplot is a great as a set of tools you can use and not so great as a generic graphing language or a language grammar as it is supposed to be.

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, and CSTA, the Computer Science Teachers Association, announced a new award, the ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing to recognize talented high school students in computer science. The program seeks to promote and encourage the field of computer science as well as to empower young and aspiring learners to pursue computing challenges outside of the traditional classroom environment.

Purdue University Information Assurance and Security group researchers have developed ErsatzPasswords, a security system that makes it much harder for hackers to obtain usable passwords from a leaked database. Hackers "will still be able to crack that file, however the passwords they will get back are fake passwords or decoy passwords," says Purdue doctoral student Mohammed H. Almeshekah. ErsatzPasswords adds an additional step to traditional encryption methods. With the new system, a password is run through a hardware-dependent function, such as one generated by a hardware security module, before it is encrypted. Almeshekah says the extra step adds a characteristic to a password that makes it impossible to restore it to its accurate plain text without access to the module.