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Homes on the internet delivered over fibre could run multiple bandwidth-hungry applications without them interfering with each other.
"Mum and Dad can sit in the living room and watch a movie or a sports programme while somebody sitting in another room plays an interactive game, and somebody else listens to online music."
He recommended owners of web-capable devices consult the often-ignored instruction manual to get connected, or they could call in the professionals.
"A lot of the retailers have got their own geeks who will come in and install your PC or your TV or your home theatre so that it will actually work the way it's intended to."
Teenagers, particularly gamers, were often pretty clued up at connecting devices to the internet, Linstrom said.
"So one of the other options is ask your teenager." Fairfax NZ
A team led by postdoctoral associate John Heron of Cornell University has developed a room-temperature magnetoelectric memory design that replaces power-hungry electric currents with an electric field. It could lead to low-power, instant-on computing devices.
“The advantage here is low energy consumption,” Heron said. “It requires a low voltage, without current, to switch it. Devices that use currents consume more energy and dissipate a significant amount of that energy in the form of heat. That is what’s heating up your computer and draining your batteries.”
The researchers made their device out of bismuth ferrite, which is both magnetic and ferroelectric, meaning it’s always electrically polarized; and that polarization can be switched by applying an electric field.
This rare combination makes it a “multiferroic” material, allowing for it to be used for nonvolatile memory devices with relatively simple geometries. Other scientists have demonstrated similar results with competing materials, but at impractical cold temperatures, like 4 Kelvin (-452 Fahrenheit).
Their results were published online Dec. 17 in Nature, along with an associated “News and Views” article.
Collaborators from the University of Connecticut; University of California, Berkeley; Tsinghua University; and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich where also involved in the research, which was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science.
Abstract of Deterministic switching of ferromagnetism at room temperature using an electric field
The technological appeal of multiferroics is the ability to control magnetism with electric field1, 2, 3. For devices to be useful, such control must be achieved at room temperature. The only single-phase multiferroic material exhibiting unambiguous magnetoelectric coupling at room temperature is BiFeO3 (refs 4 and 5). Its weak ferromagnetism arises from the canting of the antiferromagnetically aligned spins by the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya (DM) interaction6, 7, 8, 9. Prior theory considered the symmetry of the thermodynamic ground state and concluded that direct 180-degree switching of the DM vector by the ferroelectric polarization was forbidden10, 11. Instead, we examined the kinetics of the switching process, something not considered previously in theoretical work10, 11, 12. Here we show a deterministic reversal of the DM vector and canted moment using an electric field at room temperature. First-principles calculations reveal that the switching kinetics favours a two-step switching process. In each step the DM vector and polarization are coupled and 180-degree deterministic switching of magnetization hence becomes possible, in agreement with experimental observation. We exploit this switching to demonstrate energy-efficient control of a spin-valve device at room temperature. The energy per unit area required is approximately an order of magnitude less than that needed for spin-transfer torque switching13, 14. Given that the DM interaction is fundamental to single-phase multiferroics and magnetoelectrics3, 9, our results suggest ways to engineer magnetoelectric switching and tailor technologically pertinent functionality for nanometre-scale, low-energy-consumption, non-volatile magnetoelectronics.
NINTENDO Australia fears it could be swamped by requests for freebies after a cute story of goodwill went viral on the internet.
11-year-old Victorian schoolgirl Helen last month wrote to the company as part of her Year 6 class project.
"The reason I'm writting (sic) to your company is because at school we are learning how to write letters to companies," Helen wrote.
"We have 25 students in our class and we have 25 companies. I chose your company because I'm a big fan of yours."
In fact Helen was such a big fan of Nintendo she couldn't resist asking for a DS gaming console after her parents "refused" to buy her one.
"I also have a request to make. My request is quite big. I would like a DS please for those many reasons," Helen wrote.
Nintendo obliged and sent a new DS to Helen's school along with a letter of reply to the young girl.
"Thank you for your letter — we were very impressed. I really hope you and your classmates enjoy playing the DS," wrote a Nintendo staff member.
Now the exchange — including Helen's letter and Nintendo's reply — has gone viral on the internet.
Just two days after being posted online, the exchange has been viewed more than 330,000 times on image-sharing site imgur.
It has also attracted thousands of votes on link-sharing websites like Reddit and Digg.
But for every reader that responded with a "daaaaw", there's another who has joked about trying it out for themselves.
"So I can just send any company a letter and they will give me a product?" asked one reader on Digg.
"I'm going to send a letter to Steve for a certain pad," said another.
However if you're thinking about writing to Nintendo under the pretence of a school project, be warned — they verify all requests.
"Nintendo always calls the school, hospital, retirement home, or whatever it may be to ensure the letter is legitimate," said Nintendo Australia's Heather Murphy.
"In this particular case, Nintendo called the school and spoke to the school principal."
After talking to the principal to make sure the gaming console would be well used, Nintendo sent a DS and a "game suitable for children to play" to the school.
Ms Murphy said it wasn't common practice to give away free consoles — or even reply — to everyone who wrote to the company. She said it received "hundreds" of letters per day.
"Nintendo does not routinely give away products in response to letters. From time to time, we may donate product to schools, hospitals or retirement villages," she said.
"We receive a high number of letters on a daily basis, and unfortunately we are not able to respond to every one.
"So therefore we hope we do not receive an influx as we simply would not be able to respond."
However Ms Murphy said Nintendo would like to thank everyone who had written to the company already.
"Especially those letters that tell Nintendo about their experiences with our products and how and why they enjoy them so much," she said.
Stuart, a 66-year-old man with diabetes, felt lousy—constantly fatigued, nauseated, and short of breath after just the slightest exertion. His daughter, worried by his increasing frailty, took him to the emergency room at the local hospital. Her concern was amply justified: Stuart was suffering from heart failure. Like 5.1 million other Americans each year who suffer from heart failure, he was admitted to the hospital to treat this serious, often life-threatening condition. The caring medical team stabilized his condition, and Stuart left the hospital after 10 days, glad to be home with words of advice and a few medications. Within a month he was back, once again fatigued, and facing a second episode.
Stuart’s story is far from rare. Hospital readmissions for chronic conditions such as diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and congestive heart failure (CHF) are both common and very costly. Studies conducted in the United States indicate that nearly 20% of Medicare patients who are hospitalized for chronic conditions are often readmitted within 30 days. Experts at Edifecs indicate that it costs Medicare—and US taxpayers—about $26 billion a year, and often a large majority of these readmissions are actually considered avoidable with accurate prioritization and personalized care protocols. Readmission-related costs have become so onerous that the Affordable Care Act includes financial rewards and penalties to deal with the readmission problem. Hospitals that reduce their readmission rates receive financial incentives; those that do not, lose reimbursement and get penalized.
Holistic tools that can reliably predict heart-failure readmissions—taking into account all aspects of each patient’s condition and risk factors—would significantly help patients and hospitals. The growth in the use of electronic patient records has recently offered the potential for such analysis, but little had been done to harness the collective intelligence contained in hospital patient records augmented with other data sources.
By introducing cloud computing technology and applying some of the latest advances in machine learning techniques, researchers are rapidly changing this situation.
One leading example of this is RaaS (Readmission Score as a Service), a platform that was developed by the University of Washington (UW) Tacoma’s Center for Data Science. RaaS compares a patient’s medical information to a database of heart-failure outcomes, using advanced machine learning techniques to arrive at a risk-of-readmission factor as well as corresponding actionable guidelines for the patient-provider team. Those patients identified with a high risk receive additional treatment: the goal is to reduce their likelihood of readmission and produce overall healthier outcomes across all stages of the patient care continuum.
The hundreds of machine learning models of RaaS are developed by using both the R machine learning language, and Microsoft Azure Machine Learning. This chronic care management predictive platform relies on historical patient data from multiple sources. These sources include anonymized electronic medical records, claims, labs, medications, and psycho-social factors, all labeled with observed outcomes that the machine learning models access and share in sync to provide continuous monitoring for personalized patient alerts.
RaaS is available as an on-premises service as well as via the cloud by using Azure Machine Learning web services and the Azure-based Zementis Adapa scoring engine to make predictions for patients. When deployed using Azure Cloud Services, RaaS performs data preparation at scale.
The UW Center for Data Science team began developing initial models in collaboration with MultiCare Health System in March 2012, using just two on-premises servers. The maintenance, frequent updates, and down times of these on-premises servers posed an ongoing problem, and scalability issues limited the scope of the project by affecting the speed of data exploration and machine learning.
About a year and a half ago, the team applied for and was awarded an Azure for Research grant, taking advantage of the Microsoft Research program that offers training and awards of computing resources to qualified institutions that use the cloud to advance scientific discovery. The award enabled the Center for Data Science team to scale up the project and create a robust prediction engine that generates a readmission risk factor score for patients at every stage of their hospital care: post-admission, pre-discharge, and post-discharge.
The RaaS platform at MultiCare Health enables the care management team to view an electronic dashboard that shows heart-failure patients’ risks of readmission. UW Medicine Cardiology is now collaborating with the Center for Data Science team to study the efficacy of predictive models for augmenting care management guidelines by using machine learning.
—Daron Green, Deputy Managing Director, Microsoft Research
—Gregory Wood, MD, UW Medicine Cardiology
Learn more
As federal authorities continue to investigate Anthony Weiner's sexually charged online chats with an underage girl, DailyMail.com has learned that a grand jury could hear the case against the ex-congressman as soon as the end of the month.
The FBI, the New York Police Department, and US attorneys in New York and North Carolina opened investigations into Weiner's conduct in late September, after DailyMail.com reported that the former politician carried on a months-long online relationship with a 15-year-old high school girl.
Weiner has already been hit with a federal subpoena for his cell phone, CNN reported last month.
The feds are apparently looking to move quickly - a federal grand jury is expected to hear allegations against Weiner in the next few weeks, sources tell DailyMail.com.
A federal grand jury is expected to hear allegations against disgraced Anthony Weiner in the next few weeks, sources tell DailyMail.com
The DailyMail.com first reported on Weiner's conversations with the 15-year-old girl (pictured), who he traded photos and sexy messages with for several months starting in January
In the messages, which were obtained by the Dailymail.com, Weiner repeatedly complimented the girl's body, told her that she made him 'hard'
The timing of the potential hearing - shortly before the US presidential election - could cause a political headache for Hillary Clinton, whose top aide Huma Abedin is still officially married to Weiner, 52.
Abedin announced in August that she was separating from Weiner, after he was caught sending a suggestive photo of himself to another woman with his four-year-old son in the background.
Abedin and Weiner continue to share an apartment, and Clinton's political opponents have sought to tie the presidential candidate to the scandal-plagued former congressman.
After DailyMail.com reported on Weiner's conversations with the 15-year-old girl, Donald Trump called on Clinton to return any campaign donations from Weiner.
Legal experts say there are several possible avenues prosecutors might pursue if they are looking to build a case against Weiner under either New York State or federal laws.
Celebrity lawyer Joe Tacopina told DailyMail.com that Weiner could potentially face a misdemeanour of endangering the welfare of a child, which could carry up to a year in jail.
Hillary Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin (pictured on October 15 with her son), is still officially married to Weiner, 52
Abedin announced in August that she was separating from Weiner, though they continue to share an apartment
'All you really have to do is look at the messages there to substantiate 90 per cent of her story,' said Tacopina.
Other legal experts said he could have violated federal laws against sending obscene materials to minors.
Weiner's conversations with the girl also drew criticism from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said during a press conference: 'If the reports are true, it's possibly criminal and it's sick.'
The DailyMail.com first reported on Weiner's conversations with the 15-year-old girl, who he traded photos and sexy messages with for several months starting in January.
In the messages, which were obtained by the Dailymail.com, Weiner repeatedly complimented the girl's body, told her that she made him 'hard', and invited her to chat with him on the video-messaging application Skype.
One message said: 'I would bust that tight p***y so hard and so often that you would leak and limp for a week.'
Weiner and the girl used several anonymous messaging apps, like the one pictured above, where every line of text - and the sender's name - disappear after the message is opened. In one message he told he would 'bust that tight p***y so hard'
The message continues, and Weiner says he would bust that tight p***y so hard and so often that you would leak and limp for a week'. Weiner began talking to the girl in January, after she messaged him on Twitter
The girl told DailyMail.com in an interview that she and Weiner also spoke over Skype, where the ex-congressman asked her to get undressed and masturbate in front of him
Weiner began talking to the girl in January, after she messaged him on Twitter.
In the messages, the girl told Weiner she was in high school and discussed her school activities and newly acquired learner's permit.
The girl told DailyMail.com in an interview that she and Weiner also spoke over Skype, where the ex-congressman asked her to get undressed and masturbate in front of him and engage in teacher-student 'roleplaying' scenarios.
In a statement to DailyMail.com, Weiner said that he was sorry for having poor judgment with his online conversations and said he might have been the victim of a 'hoax' in this scenario.
This is far from the first time Weiner has been entangled in a sexting scandal.
He resigned from congress in 2011 after he was caught sending photos of his crotch to a female college student, and admitted to sexting with several other women during his marriage.
In 2013, he ran for New York City mayor, but his campaign tanked after it came out that he had been exchanging sexual messages with yet another college student.
This past summer, Abedin announced that she was separating from Weiner after the New York Post reported that he had sent shirtless photos to another woman, including one that showed his four-year-old son in the background.
Cyclist maimed in random shooting gets $15K in donations Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Alonso Solis gets donation check at the Mexican Consulate. June 29, 2017 (KXAN Photo/Alyssa Goard) [ + - ] Video
AUSTIN (KXAN) -- The cyclist attacked on East Riverside Drive by a random passenger shooting out of a car received a large donation Thursday from Austin community members. These community members -- most of whom had never met 42-year-old Alonso Solis before -- came together to offer him care and financial support as he faces medical costs that seemed insurmountable.
On June 7, Solis was biking back from the store late at night when he was hit in the back, neck, head and face with pellets from a shotgun blast. Police arrested 19-year-old Merrick Isaacks for shooting Solis. A police affidavit showed that Isaacks was looking to "blow off steam" and held an acquaintance who was driving a car at gunpoint.
Isaacks then fired out of his car window around Austin. He is still being held in the Travis County Jail on two charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. His bond totals $250,000.
After that incident, Solis was unconscious for nearly two days, before waking up in the hospital.
When KXAN visited with Solis at his home weeks ago, he could barely sleep or eat because of his pain. He has to take several months off from his job laying carpet because he can no longer lift his arm due to his injuries. He does not speak English or have many friends in Central Texas; his wife and four children live in Mexico. Solis had no insurance and no idea how he would pay for all of the medications.
That is, until people from all around Austin stepped forward to help him.
Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Alonso Solis of Austin was hit in the face while cycling by a shotgun blast from a random shooter. KXAN Photo/ Frank Martinez.
Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Alonso Solis of Austin was hit in the face while cycling by a shotgun blast from a random shooter. KXAN Photo/ Frank Martinez.
After KXAN's initial story, our station was overwhelmed with requests from people who'd watched our report and wanted to help. Rich and Anne Barger of Leander were two of those people. The two immediately set up a GoFundMe page for Solis.
"As we were just reading that story my wife and I said, 'Hey we have to do something, no one has set up a GoFundMe,'" Rich Barger explained.
Barger got in touch with others who'd seen the KXAN story, including Sasha Knight of Austin. "Once I saw Alonso's story that evening and of course being so heartbroken about it, I reached out to KXAN immediately afterward," Knight said. "That's when I started thinking OK this is something we need to start."
Knight's friend, an immigration attorney, began communicating with Solis about his limitations and medical needs. Knight and the Bargers decided to set their fundraising goal to $25,000. As of Thursday morning, the page has raised nearly $15,000 with almost 400 people donating.
To keep the fundraising transparent, the people behind this GoFundMe have been working with the Mexican Consulate in Austin to coordinate these donations. The Consulate helped Solis to set up a bank account where his donations will be sent to, Knight explained that the first donation of $13,450 was transferred to him Wednesday.
Solis was notified of this donation at a formal presentation at the Mexican Consulate on Thursday.
"I'd like to thank the people here for helping out very much, these people, even without knowing me, they've come forward to help out and again I want to thank you for what you have done," Alonso said with the help of a translator.
"We get together to recognize the compassion, the charity, the good character of people who helped one of our nationals, Alonso Solis," said Consul General Carlos González Gutiérrez. "People who, in the face of tragedy, have shown solidarity to another human being regardless of ethnic or national origin."

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