Discover Sigalon Valley - Where the Tags are the Topics

For serious typing sessions (or if you just can't get the hang of the iPad's onscreen keyboard), an external keyboard is a great iPad accessory. Here's our guide to the different types, along with recommendations for each.

The rumors are true. In mid-March, word arrived by way of a publication called FCW that Amazon, the king of cloud computing, had inked a contract with the Central Intelligence Agency to provide $600 million in cloud services over the next decade,...

Donald Rumsfeld, former U.S. Secretary of Defense on his book “Known and Unknown”

Researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) say an artificial sweetener could be a potential treatment for Parkinson’s disease.

According to findings reported in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, mannitol, a common component of sugar-free gum and candy, helps prevent clumps of the protein a-synuclein from forming in the brain, which is a process that is characteristic of Parkinson’s disease. The artificial sweetener has been approved by the FDA as a diuretic to flush out excess fluids and is used during surgery as a substance that opens the blood/brain barrier to ease the passage of other drugs.

TAU researchers said mannitol could be a novel therapy for the treatment of Parkinson’s and otherneurodegenerative diseases. After the team identified the structural characteristics that facilitate the development of clumps of a-synuclein, they began searching for a compound that could inhibit the proteins’ ability to bind together. They found mannitol was among the most effective agents in preventing aggregation of the protein in test tubes.

Gizmag compares the specs (and other features) of the new 11-inch MacBook Air, and the Microsoft Surface Pro.

Mobile devices have turned the traditional PC market upside down. While Apple's "post PC" strategy is all about the iPad, the Mac still gives it a horse in the traditional PC race. Microsoft's strategy is more convergent: it wants hybrid devices like the Surface Pro to become our primary computers. How do the two measure up? Let's find out, as we compare the specs (and other features) of the 2013 MacBook Air to the Microsoft Surface Pro.

This species is almost never seen alive, so to see it alive and capture it on video is a phenomenal feat!

Sometimes, the diversity of life we have yet to explore and understand in our oceans is too much to comprehend. But when you look at a species like the oarfish -- strange, beautiful, unknown -- the reality of all we don't know hits like a ton of bricks.

Oarfish have been found washed up, or sometimes caught by fishermen by accident. They are not commonly seen and because they can reach over 50 feet in length, it is thought that these are the creatures behind sea serpent legends. And seeing them alive in their watery habitat is a very rare event indeed. Even more rare is capturing them on film -- in fact, this is the very first footage of a live oarfish swimming around the deep blue sea. It is incredible.

China's Kandi Technologies has started building charging stations as part of a plan to sell 5,000-10,000 electric vehicles in the next year.

Pure music education here! Swedish Jazz History!

Compilation that focuses on the rare swedish jazz between years 1960 - 1969, which was released on Caprice label...I bought it yesterday... so why to be selfish?

Share our extensive collection of famous quotes by authors, celebrities, newsmakers, and more. Enjoy our Quotes of the Day on the web, Facebook, and blogs.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Google filed a legal challenge today against gag orders that come with the FISA court orders it receives from the FBI and NSA, on grounds that the silence orders impinge on the company’s First Amendment rights to speak freely about the data requests it receives for user data.

Google is seeking permission to publish the number of requests for data (.pdf) that it receives from the government, as well as the number of user accounts affect by the requests, according to the motion it filed in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington, D.C.

“We have long pushed for transparency so users can better understand the extent to which governments request their data–and Google was the first company to release numbers for National Security Letters,” Google said in a statement. “However, greater transparency is needed, so today we have petitioned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow us to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately. Lumping national security requests together with criminal requests — as some companies have been permitted to do — would be a backward step for our users.”

President Barack Obama sits down with Charlie Rose for an exclusive 45-minute interview at the White House, the President shares his thoughts on Syria, Iran, the NSA leaks controversy and more Read the transcript: [here](http://www.charlierose.com/download/transcript/12981)...

Google just added a new service to Google Cloud Storage that will allow developers tosend their hard drives to Google to import very large data sets that would otherwise be too expensive and time-consuming to import. For a flat fee of $80 per hard drive, Google will take the drive and upload the data into a Cloud Storage bucket. This, Google says, can be “faster or less expensive than transferring data over the Internet.” The service is now in limited preview for users with a U.S.-based return address.

Platforms like AWS and Google’s Cloud Platform are obviously great for analyzing large data sets. As Google software engineer Lamia Youseff notes in today’s announcement, however, “transferring large data sets (in the hundreds of terabytes and beyond) can be expensive and time-consuming over the public network.” Uploading 5 terabytes of data over a 100Mbps line could easily take a day or two and most developers may not even have these kinds of connections.

Amazon, it’s worth noting, already offers a very similar service. It, too, charges $80 per hard drive, but in typical Amazon fashion, the company also charges a per-hour fee for importing the data. Importing a 5 terabyte hard drive to S3, Amazon calculates, will cost an additional $45 for an eSATA drive, which makes Google’s flat-fee service significantly cheaper. While Amazon also allows you to export your data, though, Google doesn’t currently offer this service.

Using 3D printing technology, MIT scientists have developed a process that allows them to turn designs into physical fracture-resistant, bone-like structures within just a few hours.

Instead of looking to simply replace natural structures through artificial means, a group of MIT materials scientists are looking to create nature-inspired structures that actually outperform the original.

Using 3D printing technology, MIT scientists have developed a process that allows them to turn designs into physical fracture-resistant, bone-like structures within just a few hours, according to their report in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

While some of physical samples created by the team fracture similar to bones, one of the synthetic structures hierarchical design was changed such that it is 22 times more fracture-resistant than its strongest component material.

We’ve been working on getting more details on a press event that Facebook is having this week. Earlier, we wrote it could launch a news-reading app, but we have since heard more details that point to something else entirely. On June 20, a source says Facebook will unveil that Instagram, its popular photo-sharing app, will begin to let people also take and share short videos. Call it the Vine effect.

We are still looking for more information because we understand that Facebook has not wanted the details of June 20 to leak out — so this could be an intentional blind alley. But if the Instagram video report is true, you could say the event invite itself — sent by snail mail, coffee cup stain charmingly in one corner — is a red herring of its own.

Could become the biggest electric car sharing service in the U.S.Many are familiar with Vélib, the huge bike-sharing program in Paris (18,000 bicycles and 1,200 stations!), but not everyone knows about Autolib, Paris' other shared transportation service. Instead of bikes, Autolib gives its members access to electric cars: There's currently about 1,750 of them (allBolloré Bluecars), though the goal is to increase that number to 3,000 shortly.

The Bolloré Group has announced plans to launch a similar carsharing service in Lyon and Bordeaux... and now Indianapolis.

A bit unexpected, no?

International entrepreneurs in international waters Blueseed is creating the world's most amazing startup community for entrepreneurs, on a cruise ship 12 nautical miles from the coast of San Francisco, in international waters.

Facebook fully explanied.

Summer vibes with the feeling of a cool breeze in my Smooth Jazz Lounge set. Bold choice of a title (and cover art :-) - but what better name for a smooth jazz mix than the album that started the whole genre!