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Astronomers more accurately calculate the Milky Way's mass
It's impossible to arrive at an exact measurement for the billions of stars and other objects that make up the Milky Way. However, a group of astronomers say they have calculated the most accurate estimate to date. In a paper that will be published in The Astrophysics Journal, the scientists estimate the mass of the Milky Way to be 9.5 x 1041 kilograms or 95 followed by 40 zeros. For reference, that's 4.8 x 1011 times the mass of the sun. Astronomers use the so-called "solar masses" as a standard unit of measure, comparing other objects and formations to the sun.
Researchers out faux product review groups with a lot of math and some help from Google
Ever consulted a crowdsourced review for a product or service before committing your hard-earned funds to the cause? Have you wondered how legit the opinions you read really are? Well, it seems that help is on the way to uncover paid opinion spamming and KIRF reviews. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have released detailed calculations in the report Spotting Fake Reviewer Groups in Consumer Reviews -- an effort aided by a Google Faculty Research Award. Exactly how does this work, you ask? Using the GSRank (Group Spam Rank) algorithm, behaviors of both individuals and a group as a whole are used to gather data on the suspected spammers. Factors such as content similarity, reviewing products early (to be most effective), ratio of the group size to total reviewers and the number of products the group has been in cahoots on are a few bits of data that go into the analysis. The report states, "Experimental results showed that GSRank significantly outperformed the state-of-the-art supervised classification, regression, and learning to rank algorithms." Here's to hoping this research gets wrapped into a nice software application, but for now, review mods may want to brush up on their advanced math skills. If you're curious about the full explanation, hit the source link for the full-text PDF.
Fujitsu K supercomputer now ranked fastest in the world, dethrones China's Tianhe-1A
Remember the K -- the Fujitsu supercomputer that promised to do a whopping ten petaflops by the year 2012? Well, it hasn't reached that threshold just yet, but according to the latest Top 500 supercomputer list, it's still faster than any other machine on Earth. In fact, the top-ranked beast is more powerful than the next five supercomputers combined, consumes enough electricity to power about 10,000 homes for a full year, and is capable of churning out about 8.2 quadrillion calculations per second -- three times as many as what runner-up (and former number-one) Tianhe-1A can process. Today's announcement marks the first time since 2004 that a Japanese creation sits atop Top500.org's rankings, but Fujitsu isn't exactly resting on its laurels. Before deploying it next year, engineers at the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science are aiming to add about 100,000 cores to the K's collection of 548,352, which would provide it with even more computational muscle, and likely spell doom for all of humanity. Find out more in the PR after the break.
GPS notification software informs managers of your tardiness
If you're the type who seems to run late for meetings more often than actually arriving on time, we'd probably recommend improving your promptness before purchasing another band-aid for the chronic problem. Nevertheless, those insistent on being late now have an amazingly easy way to notify their peers that traffic is being unkind, as the Oops I'm Late! application enables your GPS-equipped mobile to calculate your estimated arrival time and then notify your team members of your impending lateness. So rather than investing in time management courses, you can throw down $69.99 for the standard version, or $99.99 for the "Professional" (does it generate legitimate excuses on the fly or something?) iteration.
