Overnight newspapers online 01-15-2014 | Scie

Scientists behind RoboEarth will put it through its paces at Eindhoven University in a mocked-up hospital room.

Four robots will use the system to complete a series of tasks, including serving drinks to patients.

It is the culmination of a four-year project, funded by the European Union.

The eventual aim is that both robots and humans will be able to upload information to the cloud-based database, which would act as a kind of common brain for machines.

Common brain The system has been developed by research scientists from Philips and five European universities including Eindhoven.

"At its core RoboEarth is a world wide web for robots: a giant network and database repository where robots can share information and learn from each other," said Rene van de Molengraft, the RoboEarth project leader.

The four robots selected to test the system in a public demonstration will "work collaboratively" to help patients, he told the BBC.

One robot will upload a map of the room so that others can find their way around it, others will attempt to serve drinks to patients.

"The problem right now is that robots are often developed specifically for one task," he said.

"Everyday changes that happen all the time in our environment make all the programmed actions unusable."

The aim of the system is to create a kind of ever-changing common brain for robots.

"A task like opening a box of pills can be shared on RoboEarth, so other robots can also do it without having to be programmed for that specific type of box," he added.

Home robots The cloud-based system will also mean that some of the robot's computing or thinking tasks can be offloaded, meaning that a robot wouldn't need so much onboard computing or battery power.

Robot assistants are likely to be available in homes within 10 years, experts believe.

It is already possible to buy robot vacuum cleaners, robots that wash the windows and robot lawnmowers.

More humanoid robots, able to assist disabled or elderly people, are now being developed.

Author James Barrat, who has written extensively about the dangers of robots gaining their own intelligence, thinks there need to be safeguards.

"In the short term, RoboEarth adds security by building in a single point of failure for all participating robots," he said.

Nest will continue to operate as its own distinct brand after the all-cash deal closes, Google said on Monday.

The deal is the second largest in Google's history after the $12.5 billion acquisition of mobile phone maker Motorola in 2012.

Like the Motorola deal, which marked Google's first major foray into hardware, the Nest acquisition gives Google a stepping stone into an important new market at a time when consumer appliances and Internet services are increasingly merging.

"Nest Labs appears to be focused on thermostats and smoke alarms, but it's not far-fetched to see Google expanding this technology into other devices over time," said Shyam Patil, an analyst at Wedbush.

"Home automation is one of the bigger opportunities when you talk about the Internet of everything and connecting everything. This acquisition furthers their strategy around that," he said.

Shares of Google were up 0.5 percent at $1,128.49 in extended trading on Monday.

Nest gained a large following with its first thermostat - a round, brushed-metal device with a convex glass screen that displays temperature and changes hue to match the color of the wall it attaches to. It also tracks usage and employs that data to automatically set heating and cooling temperatures.

With the acquisition, Google gets Tony Fadell, a well-connected and well-respected Silicon Valley entrepreneur credited with creating Apple Inc's iconic iPod music player, along with co-founder Matt Rogers and a host of talented engineers and designers.

According to a search on professional network LinkedIn, roughly 100 of Nest's 300 employees have worked at Apple in the past.

Google, the world's largest online search engine, is increasingly expanding into new markets, with efforts ranging from a high-speed Internet access business to advanced research on self-driving cars and robotics.

But while Google's engineering expertise has generated major advances in technology, the company has at times struggled to create hardware products that resonate with consumers as much as Apple's products do.

Yandex leads the world's biggest search engine Google in Russia with a market share of more than 60 percent and derives the bulk of its revenues from text search-based advertising.

In a statement on Tuesday, Yandex said it would get full access to public data from Facebook users in Russia, CIS countries including Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, and in Turkey. Apart from the users' posts, its search results will soon also display other users' comments on them.

The agreement is non-cash and is based on mutual benefits with Yandex improving the quality of its search results and Facebook getting more traffic, a Yandex spokeswoman said.

Russia's social networking landscape is dominated by local players such as Vkontakte, part-owned by internet holding company Mail.ru, while Facebook is ranked an estimated fourth most popular site.

Yandex raised $1.4 billion in an oversubscribed initial public offering in New York in May 2011 that was priced at $25 per share. The stock has since risen by around 70 percent as Yandex benefited from booming online advertising in the country which has become Europe's largest internet market by audience.

The day Brooks was first quizzed by police and before her home was searched, her husband, racehorse trainer Charlie, hid a laptop and a bag behind a bin in an underground car park of their plush London apartment block where it was picked up by the Brooks's security team, prosecutors say.

After the police completed a search, the security team returned with a bag and left it in the car park. Prosecutors say the plan went awry for the Brooks because a cleaner then found the material and it was given to the police.

The alleged intrigue took place in 2011 when News International, the British newspaper division of Murdoch's News Corp, became engulfed in a media firestorm and a police inquiry after it was alleged journalists had hacked the phone of a murdered schoolgirl amongst others.

Both Charlie and Rebekah Brooks deny conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by hiding material from detectives. Brooks also denies conspiracy to hack phones and authorizing illegal payments to public officials.

Closed circuit television (CCTV) footage shown to the jury at London's Old Bailey court showed Charlie Brooks emerging from a doorway clutching a bag and a laptop on the morning of July 17, 2011, at about the same time his wife was heading to a police station where she would be arrested.

After looking around, he disappeared from view and less than a minute later, the CCTV film showed him returning empty-handed.

On Tuesday, the jury saw Mark Hanna, the ex-head of security at News International, arriving at the car park about two hours later and phone records indicated he had been in regular contact with Charlie Brooks, the court heard.

He disappeared out of camera shot, to the same area where Brooks had been earlier, returning with a brown bag and other material, before driving away. Hanna also denies a charge of perverting the course of justice.

At about 3 p.m., seven detectives arrived and after a search of the apartment lasting some two hours, they left holding sealed bags with computers and other possessions.

Sales of the top U.S. automaker hit 9,714,652 cars and light trucks, an increase of more than 417,000 vehicles, as demand surged 11 percent to a record high in China and rose 7 percent in the United States.

"A healthy auto market in the United States and China, and very successful product launches at all of our brands worldwide drove GM's growth in 2013 and helped us navigate difficult conditions in Europe and parts of South America and Asia," GM Chief Financial Officer Dan Ammann said in a statement.

Ammann will become GM's president this week.

German automaker Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) said last week its sales rose 5 percent to more than 9.7 million vehicles, but did not provide details. The company's results include its Scania and MAN brands.

VW has pledged to surpass GM and Japan's Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) to become the world's largest automaker by 2018.

Toyota, the largest automaker in terms of sales through the first nine months of 2013, will report full-year sales later this month.

The Japanese automaker regained the global sales crown in 2012, after slipping to third place behind GM and Volkswagen in 2011, following natural disasters in Japan and Thailand. Previously, Toyota had been on top from 2008 through 2010.

GM said its sales in Brazil inched up 1 percent and in the United Kingdom 11 percent. They fell 11 percent in Russia. Regionally, sales rose 7 percent in both North America and the company's International Operations, which include China and the rest of Asia.

Sales fell 3 percent in Europe and 1 percent in South America, GM said.

Ammann said Sunday at the Detroit auto show that the European market had bottomed out, but it was unclear how fast it would rebound.

The bank, which agreed last week to pay $2.6 billion to settle government and private claims over its handling of accounts of fraudster Bernie Madoff, said fourth-quarter net income fell 7.3 percent to $5.28 billion, or $1.30 per share.

Adjusted for special items, the company earned $1.40 per share, beating the average analyst estimate of $1.35, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The results took into account gains from the sale of Visa Inc shares and One Chase Manhattan Plaza and legal expenses related to the Madoff settlements.

JPMorgan, which agreed to pay nearly $20 billion in 2013 to settle assorted legal claims, had estimated that settlement of the Madoff claims would subtract $850 million from fourth-quarter earnings.

"It was in the best interests of our company and shareholders for us to accept responsibility, resolve these issues and move forward," Chairman and Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said in a statement on Tuesday.

JPMorgan shares, which have been trading this month at their highest levels since 2000, were up 0.5 percent at $58 before the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange.

The stock rose 33 percent in 2013, in line with the 35 percent rise in the KBW Bank index and slightly ahead of the 29 percent gain in Standard & Poor's 500 stock index.

Special items highlighted by the bank subtracted 10 cents per share from fourth-quarter earnings, compared with a two-cent boost in the same quarter of 2012.

The special items included a benefit of 21 cents per share from the sale of Visa shares and 8 cents from the sale of One Chase Manhattan Plaza and an expense of 27 cents per share from legal bills, including the Madoff settlements.

Three months ago, JPMorgan reported its first quarterly loss under Dimon after recording after-tax expenses of $7.2 billion to settle government and private investigations.

The allegations involved, among other things, shoddy dealing in mortgage instruments before the financial crisis, derivatives trading in London and pricing in electric power markets, as well as failing to report suspicions of wrongdoing by Madoff.

Investors have been looking for reassurance from the company that the worst of its legal expenses are behind it.

ASSETS SHRINK

With a deadline looming at midnight Wednesday for new spending authority, lawmakers will still need a three-day stop-gap funding extension to ensure enough time for passage of the spending bill this week.

The measure eases across-the-board spending cuts by providing an extra $45 billion for military and domestic discretionary programs for fiscal 2014, to a total of $1.012 trillion. It also provides an additional $85.2 billion for Afghanistan war funding that is typically handled off-budget.

The spending measure fills in the details of a budget agreement passed in December in the aftermath of a 16-day shutdown of many government agencies in October. The shutdown was prompted largely by disputes over funding for "Obamacare" health insurance reforms.

Although many programs will get a slight increase over 2013 levels and avoid steep cuts previously slated for this year, the proposed bill does not provide any increase for implementation of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's signature healthcare reform law.

According to a House Republican summary, a public health fund will be reduced by $1 billion to prevent Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from "raiding" these funds to spend on Obamacare insurance exchanges.

The chairs of the Senate and House of Representatives Appropriations Committees said in a joint statement that the deal will eliminate the economic instability caused by Congress' recent funding battles.

"As with any compromise, not everyone will like everything in this bill, but in this divided government a critical bill such as this simply cannot reflect the wants of only one party," Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Republican Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky said in a statement.

White House Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell said the measure will help fund critical investments in education and infrastructure.

"This legislation adheres to the funding levels in the budget agreement enacted in December, unwinds some of the damaging cuts caused by sequestration," she said in a statement.

Horsup works in northern hairy nosed wombat conservation, which at the time involved holding a piece of wombat excrement between his index finger and thumb. According to scientists, the stacking of the animal’s dung could be a sign of status.

In central Queensland’s Epping Forest National Park, far from the beaches of a typical tropical holiday, I had volunteered to spend my time off helping scientists conduct population monitoring to determine how many northern hairy nosed wombats still exist.

Related article: Escaping the heat in Far North Queensland Scientists believe the number left in the world is about 200 – a slight increase from the mid 1980s when there were only 35 – but the northern hairy nosed wombats remain critically endangered, largely because of competition with cattle and sheep for food, as well as drought and dingo and feral dog attacks.

Today, approximately 185 northern hairy nosed wombats reside at Epping Forest and another 15 live in the 105-hectare Richard Underwood Nature Refuge nearby, making these the only northern hairy nosed colonies in the world. Northern hairy nosed wombats can only be found in the wild; their shy natures making the nocturnal marsupials ill-prepared to cope with the stress of captivity.

There are two other species of wombat, the common (or bare-nosed) wombat, which is not endangered and is found on the southeastern coast of Australia (in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania) and the southern hairy nosed wombat, which is endangered and is found in arid, sandy pockets in the southern part of Australia (in South Australia and Western Australia). The Northern hairy nosed wombat is the largest of all the three species, weighing up to 40kg and measuring about 1m long (the females are slightly heavier than the males).

Originally hailing from the coast city of Sydney, I was unused to the dry, tropical landscape of central Queensland. Although it was only about 10 am, it was already hot, hitting about 30C and it would head to 38C by midday.

Foreign firms have long sought to launch and expand operations in China, in the hope of capitalizing on rapid growth in the world's second-largest economy. But many have faltered because they don't take the time to understand the complexities of the market, Li said.

"Companies need to know how to connect to the ground," Li said. "If you don't understand the local market environment, it will be very difficult to succeed." Related story: Tencent: China's hottest tech company Li cited Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), one of his major global competitors, as an example of a firm that stumbled after expanding to China.

The U.S. company met significant resistance from the Chinese government -- especially on the issue of censorship. After repeatedly running afoul of regulators, Google chose to exit mainland China in 2010 and redirect its web traffic through Hong Kong.

Li's firm was the direct beneficiary of Google's woes, and thus far has been able to navigate China's regulatory and political intricacies with comparative ease. Baidu now holds a commanding market share in China.

Although the new iPhone app is meant to be funny, its creators are hoping it will take off and people will use it to leave jobs.

The Quit Your Job app takes users through a series of steps to determine why they are leaving and then crafts a text message that is sent directly to their boss.

"Despite all the advances in technology we still quit our jobs the same way we did hundreds of year ago," said Alex Douzet, chief executive officer of TheLadders, a New York-based employment company that produces the app.

"There's a lot of anxiety around the resignation process, so we used technology to ease the pain in that moment and make it seamless to breakup with your boss," he added.

About 2.3 million Americans left their jobs last October, citing reasons such as dissatisfaction with career growth, compensation or simply feeling unrecognized, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Department of Labor.

Douzet said the first few months of a new year are the busiest time for job searches. Many people wait for their end-of-year bonuses before making a move to a new position.

"It always correlates with New Year's resolutions. People think ‘I'm not happy and want to make a move'" he said.

Quit Your Job was inspired by another app called BreakupText. Its designers teamed up with the TheLadders to create the new app.

BreakupText, which lets users leave their significant others via a text message, costs 99 cents and is available for the iPhone.

With Quit Your Job, after sending their resignation users can browse open positions on another app called, Job Search by TheLadders, which targets positions based on the user's job profile and career goals. The free app was launched as an iPhone app in July and released on Android last week.

"This is unchartered territory," he said of the Quit Your Job app. "It's an experiment to see if people will actually use it seriously. If thousands of people download the app and only one ends up using it seriously, that's interesting because it's changing behaviors," he said.

Douzet added that before leaving a job people should have another one lined up.

The closely watched case involved the online shopping site Newegg Inc, which specializes in computer products, and software company Soverain Software LLC, which had accused Newegg of infringing three patents known as the "shopping cart patents," which describe a way to buy products online and pay for them.

Chicago-based Soverain had filed similar lawsuits against a long list of companies, including J. Crew Group, Macy's Inc and Williams-Sonoma.

Against Newegg, Soverain won in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas but lost at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which ruled that the three online shopping patents were invalid because they were obvious.

In its filing to the Supreme Court, Newegg argued that the Federal Circuit decision should be upheld. "Petitioner's notorious 'shopping cart' patent merely applies the common sense concept of a shopping cart to the Internet," Newegg said.

Newegg's chief legal officer, Lee Cheng, applauded the decision.

"The witch is dead, hurray," he said. "We are very, very pleased that the Supreme Court has recognized ... these patents should never have been granted in the first place. What we have showed in the Soverain case is the fighting back works."

Soverain President Katharine Wolanyk said, "We're obviously disappointed that the court denied our petition," said Wolanyk. "It's a really tough time to be a patent owner."

There are a variety of bills before Congress aimed at reining in what many tech companies complain is frivolous patent litigation.

Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has sponsored legislation aimed at targeting patent assertion entities (PAEs) - companies often known derisively as "patent trolls" - which buy or license patents and then extract licensing fees or file infringement lawsuits seen as frivolous.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill in December that would encourage judges to award fees to the winner of an infringement lawsuit if the judge deems the lawsuit unfounded.

Stores and card processing companies have reported a steady stream of security breaches for years without a major backlash from consumers, such as those disclosed by TJX Cos in 2007 and by Heartland Payment Systems Inc in 2009.

But the latest thefts - including attacks on Target Corp and Neiman Marcus - have involved a broad set of merchants and could mark a watershed moment for security standards as calls grow for changes in the protection of consumer information.

One sign of the change is a new enthusiasm for payment cards that store customer information on computer chips and require users to type in personal identification numbers.

Mallory Duncan, general counsel of the National Retail Federation that represents Target, Wal-Mart and other big stores, said in an interview on Sunday that the trade group encouraged its members to upgrade to the higher-security cards even though they cost more than old systems that store data on magnetic stripes.

The breaches are "unfortunate but we're not entirely surprised," Duncan said at his organization's annual convention now being held in New York.

"The technology that exists in cards out there is 20th-century technology and we've got 21st-century hackers," he said.

Duncan said the trade group had only made its backing for the higher-security cards public since the Target breach. Banks have quietly begun to offer the cards but mainly for customers to use while traveling. Big U.S. card networks led by Visa Inc will not require the higher security until next year at the earliest.

It is not clear the new "Chip-and-PIN" cards would have prevented the breaches at Target and elsewhere. At the very least they make stolen data harder to re-use, a reason the technology has caught on widely in Europe and Asia.

They have met with much less enthusiasm in the United States, in part because losses to fraud - just 5 cents for every $100 spent via plastic - have been manageable for merchants and their banks. But rising fraud rates, and the risk of identity theft, could change the calculation.