Brittany Ransom The artist created the “cockroach Twitter”, an insect that can be controlled by the messages you receive in your account, @TweetRoach . Just send a message with a command to instruct the cockroach.

The cockroach is equipped with a mini-backpack electronic RoboRoach called that stimulates nerves in the antennae of the cockroach, allowing the insect to make a left or right by pressing a button. Ransom worked with this device, besides adding an Arduino and its own software for the cockroach to join Twitter.

Thus, just send a message mentioning @TweetRoach indicating # # TweetRoachRight TweetRoachLeft or to make a left or right.

The cockroach is not connected all day, but use the backpack for short periods of time during which it is available for users of Twitter, Ransom explained to CNET . To not go crazy with the cockroach, the system is also scheduled to receive a single command every 30 seconds.

Ransom’s plan with this strange project is to see if the cockroach can learn to adapt and ignore the effect of the backpack, paralleling the digital overstimulation in which humans live today.

Link: Tap Twitter, cockroach control (Crave-CNET)

(C) Stéphane Guisard

People from Space.com collected all major astronomical events we can expect for next year. Something perfect to mark your calendar now for the 2013 to expect the following milestones:

1. January 21: Today the Moon, with a 78% light, will pass within one degree south of Jupiter, being the closest conjunction between our natural satellite and the largest planet in the solar system until 2026.
2. 2 to 23 February: During this period, the smallest planet in our solar system (Pluto fly high!) Will travel far enough from the sun to be visible in the SKY a little after dark.
3. 24 to 10 March: It is expected that in those days the comet PANSTARRS , only discovered in 2011, showing a beautiful sight with its tail when it will pass closer to the Sun, “only” about 45 million miles.
4. April 25: A small partial lunar eclipse will be visible from the Eastern Hemisphere (Europe, Africa, Australia and much of Asia), where the shadow of the Earth will plug a little less than 2% of the diameter of the moon (which further demonstrate empirically that the Earth is round for shade).
5. May 9: This day will occur Annular solar eclipse, when the long shadow cone of the moon fails to reach Earth, so we will see only 4.5% smaller than the disk of the Sun , so the effect is like a beautiful ‘ ring of fire ‘.
6. 24 to 30 May: Mercury, Venus and Jupiter will dance in the sky for all those days markedly changing their positions from one night to the next.
7. June 23: At exactly 11:32 GMT will be full moon, but 32 minutes before our natural satellite will be about as close to Earth in 2013 (about 356,991 km.). This means it will be a ‘superluna’, so it will take heavy seas during the following days.
8. August 12: Annual event will occur most envied by those who reside reside in the southern hemisphere (where we can not observe), the Perseid meteor shower, popularly known as the Tears of San Lorenzo, where rocks fall at a rate that can reach 90 meteors per hour.
9. October 18: Another lunar eclipse, penumbral this time (when the Moon passes through the Earth’s shadow, but by its penumbra). In its culminating moment, 76% of the lunar surface will be immersed in the dark, so we will see a bit darker than usual.
10. November 3: There will be a solar eclipse that will travel around 13,600 kilometers of the earth’s surface, which change quickly nullify total, so it is called a “hybrid eclipse ‘.
11. From mid-November to December: Comet ISON (only discovered this 2012 by two amateur astronomers Russians) will only 1.2 million kilometers of the Sun on November 28, where it will be possible to observe the day. In fact since it is estimated that it could be one of the most observed comets in history.
12. All December: Venus, the brightest planet in our system, as will be clear that you can see up to three hours after sunrise earlier this month, and an hour and a half and for the coming new year eve. The ‘Morning Star’ will not be as bright until 2021.
13. 13 to 14 December: Occur Geminid meteor shower, which is thought to be brighter than the Perseids which is estimated to be able to observe about 120 meteors per hour.

Link: Look Up! 13 Must-See Events Stargazing in 2013 (Space.com)

A few weeks ago confirmed that AMD will launch their Temash and Kabini APU during the first six months of 2013 , and since Fudzilla trade names bring us some of the Kabini apu from AMD.

The Kabini APU will be based on the micro-architecture Jaguar , which promises a yield per cycle between 10-15% higher than its current micro-architecture for low-power amd Bobcat, plus Radeon HD 8000 graphics incorporated Series DirectX 11.1 based on graphics architecture AMD Graphics Core Next. Among the filtered models are:

• AMD X4 5110 (exponent X Series, has Turbo Core technology, AMD Radeon HD 8310G graphics and a TDP of 25W).
• AMD X4 4110 (has Turbo Core technology, AMD Radeon 8000 graphics and a TDP of 15W).
• E1 AMD 3310 (Maximum exponent E series “dual core”, AMD Radeon HD graphics has 8240G and a TDP of 15W).
• E1 AMD 2210 (dual-core APU, AMD Radeon HD graphics has 8000 and a TDP of 15W).

The Kabini APU bga FT3 and contacts will be compatible with future chipsets Yangtze. APUs are expected to be released between March and April next year, the first ultrathins based on them should arrive a little later.

Links:
– Top Kabini Kabini is 28nm APU X4 5110 (Fudzilla)
– AMD’s top E-series 3310 Kabini is E1 (Fudzilla)

In one year the launch of its Penwell SoC (Medfield platform), intel is now showing the first signs of life for its successor, the new platform Merrifield , and from SlashGear comes the first benchmark of Merrifield.

Intel has not revealed the name atom soc code that will give life to the Merrifield platform, but we know it will be based on the new micro-architecture Silvermont . New data suggest that Intel still keep using PowerVR graphics on its new platform for smartphones, being elected the Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX graphics 544MP (PowerVR SGX graphics Penwell has 540).

The SmartPhone tested corresponds to the reference Intel Redhookbay. Without further ado, here the filtering test:

The specimen tested is a dual core model running at 1.6GHz (2.0GHz Turbo Mode) and based on the Android operating system 4.2.1 Jelly Beam, among its other features are: screen resolution 1280 X 720 and 4G/LTE modem. We also test its performance under AnTuTu: 31,612.

Intel is expected that more details of its future platform Merrifield during the Mobile World Congress 2013, which will be held from 25 to 28 February next year.

Link: Intel Redhookbay surface benchmarks, show dual-core processor Merrifield (SlashGear)

For several months it was rumored that AMD FirePro readying their new APU for tablets , rumor that amd confirms itself by showing a Tablet based on its future apu for Tablets running FirePro professional graphics applications.

In an event held at Dassault’s 3D Experience Forum Europe 2012, AMD gave a demonstration of a Tablet based on APU FirePro, running a 3D modeling application under the operating system Microsoft Windows 8.

AMD also showed a Fujitsu Celsius C620 1U server, which is equipped with AMD FirePro W7000 graphics, 3D modeling applications running in multi-monitor Eyefinity, and also showed their abilities Remote Graphics (GPU accelerated remote desktop).

AMD has not revealed when the first tablets will be available based on the FirePro APU.

Link: AMD FirePro 3D Experience at Dassault Forum Europe 2012 – Eyefinity FirePro APU, Remote Graphics (FireUser)

Phil Plait, American astronomer and Science writer-is responsible for the interesting blog about the latest news in astronomy and Space ” Bad Astronomy “(which this year moved to Slate.com), and also led the Discovery Channel program Bad Universe whose episode about asteroids was indispensable to our special article on the destruction of Earth .

As 2012 ends, Plait made a huge article in your blog with the most beautiful images related to astronomy that have taken this year. It is clear that the article includes Photographs of events ‘land’ as northern lights or even the classic photograph of himself Curiosity. Of all the images of Plait, we selected eight that took our breath away:

1. – The Sun roars

On August 31, 2012 the Sun’s magnetic field up a lot of superheated plasma into space at 1,400 kilometers per second. The plasma arced than 300,000 kilometers, about 25 times larger than Earth. Expect more activities like this in the coming months.

2. – Venus crossing in front of the Sun

The orbit of Venus was aligned to pass exactly opposite the Sun on June 5, 2012. This type of event will occur in December 2117.

3. – A galaxy as we all recognize

We introduce NGC 5033, a beautiful spiral galaxy located 50 million light years from Earth is also the ideal angle to take a picture with a total exposure of 13 hours and enjoy a galaxy whose shape is the most recognized for all.

4. – The giant eye of Saturn

Definitely a strange planet Saturn, as well as its giant ring, and quite near the North Pole, is a strange, huge hexagonal storm (yes, hexagonal ) of 25,000 kilometers in diameter (twice the size of Earth) in whose center is the dubbed ‘eye of Saturn’, which we can see in the photo taken by the Cassini spacecraft (the eye has 2,000 miles across).

5. – A forming star expelling material which can

Sharpless 2-106 is a star, baby, like many stars in training, has a circumstellar disk of material that rotates around it (which is hard to see in the picture), and expelling matter and energy as if the light from a lighthouse. This material hits expelled gas and dust clouds generated by the blue regions of the image. The process is quite complex and not yet well understood how it works, but it’s nice, it’s nice.

6. – Do not anger a black hole

In the center of the galaxy Hercules is a supermassive black hole that absorbs large amounts of material, and forms a rotating disk with a temperature so high that it wants to expand and explode violently. Among the magnetic forces, friction and other, the material is strongly driven by two rays that come from the ‘poles’ of the disk so fast that travel hundreds of light years before settling down in speed and the two red clouds observed in the image.

The overall structure has more than a million light years from end to end, but what you would expect from an object whose main engine is a black hole with 2,500 million times the mass of the sun?

7. – Deep, deep well

The image is striking for a number of reasons, among which is the fact that it is the combination of two thousand photos taken by the Hubble telescope, which accounted for a total exposure of two million seconds, or 23 days.

Virtually every one of the objects in the image correspond to a galaxy with billions of stars. However, this is a region of sky that was specifically chosen because it was thought to be relatively empty, so the Hubble telescope shows us that no matter where you look in the universe, there will always be something there. In fact, the current record for the farthest galaxy ever detected was through this picture.

Link: The Best Astronomy Images of 2012

Since last year, has been rumored that the netbook market could disappear , rumor that has been gathering momentum with the elapse of months, thanks to various notebook Manufacturers like Lenovo , Samsung and Toshiba stopped making them.

Rumors about the death of Netbooks are about to become a harsh reality for ASUS netbooks now discontinued from September this year, Acer temporarily leaving as the only manufacturer of netbooks industry, but although the company makes few month announced it would continue making netbooks , as new information will soon cease to manufacture because of low demand.

Apparently the tablets are gaining increasing popularity, displacing netbooks and take their place in the market , it is not surprising that both intel and amd are giving more emphasis to recent microprocessors to tablets (Cloverview and Hondo respectively).

Finally, on December 21 was not the end of the world, but 2013 could be the end of the world for notebooks. We’ll see how it evolves this new rumor fatal for netbooks.

Link: Netbooks to leave us at the turn of the year? (Hardware.Info)

Last week it was rumored that AMD would start marketing in the retail market of AMD FX-8300 microprocessor , microprocessor initially released exclusively for the OEM market (brand equipment manufacturers) .

From Xtreview report that as rumored, amd has already begun marketing the AMD FX-8300 microprocessor (CPU module quad “core eightfold” running at 3.3GHz “4.2GHz Turbo Mode” with a 95W TDP) in the Japanese market at a price of approximately U.S. $ 197, price is expected to be somewhat lower than in the rest of the world.

Unfortunately have not yet come to light showing the performance reviews of the new microprocessor, but we will be the inforaremos properly as soon be available at all, in the coming hours / days.

Link: FX-8300 PROCESSOR ALREADY IN STORES (Xtreview)

Can you imagine waking up in your own spaceship? The dream of every Child is what does each morning the little Finn, just five years, who is in his room an old television panel that allows you to make your imagination. The work exists because Jeremiah Gorman, his proud father.

The panel of the ship was made from a video mixer Grass Valley, which was picked up by a friend of Gorman behind a local television station. Despite the size, it was not impediment to fit inside the room with some imagination.

Due to the age of the unit, Gorman decided to make some small modifications, adding a few meters in areas damaged or blank, also illuminated parts of the room to be handled by the panel when the child wants. Nevertheless, most of the parts had good mobility.

If you could choose something special to have in your room what would it be?

Link: Old TV panel kid’s bed transforms into awesome spaceship (dvice.com)

(Cc) SJ photography

Are you ready to shout Happy New Year? Might want to greet all your friends on social networks, but at midnight you’re busy giving hugs, watching fireworks and drinking champagne. No need to worry! Here we give some alternatives to send greetings without having to be with the smartphone in hand when they give the 12.

Facebook

• Anticipating the situation described above, the social network Mark Zuckerberg created his own tool to send messages at midnight called “Midnight Message Delivery” . The app lets you choose the people you want to send a message, and write your wishes for 2013 and may even add photos. The message will be published at 00:00.

• Another alternative is to use IFTTT , it may be more practical because it allows you to program the New Year greeting for all the years to come in the future, and so no need to worry anymore. This recipe allows you to choose your time zone, and the message want to put on your wall. The greeting is less customizable than the delivery option that Facebook itself because you can not choose people to quote in the message, but still practical.

Twitter

• Although Twitter has not released anything special for New Year schedule tweets, a possibility we have is to use TweetDeck to leave a post prepared for the 12 midnight. Just click on the clock icon, and you can choose the time you want to send our message to greet the followers.

• As with Facebook, we can use IFTTT to send scheduled messages on Twitter. This recipe send a message whenever January 1 for the years to come, so you can leave a message and stop worrying over the coming years new to send salutations.