Life

IBM launches Watson system for research, hopes for breakthroughs

(Reuters) – International Business Machines Corp on Wednesday launched a computer system that can quickly identify patterns in massive amounts of data, an ability that IBM said should hasten breakthroughs in science and medical research. The computer system, Watson Discovery Advisor, understands chemical compound interaction and human language and can visually map out connections in data, the company said in a statement. IBM will make the service available through the cloud. Some researchers and scientists have already been […]

Florida man caught killing, and eating, threatened tortoises

  (Reuters) – Wildlife authorities in Florida caught a man who killed and ate 15 gopher tortoises and planned to slaughter 11 more of the threatened reptiles, a spokeswoman said on Thursday. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said a tip-off led an officer to woods in Citrus County on Florida’s west coast where he found tire tracks and shells dumped on the ground. Returning the next day, he found a container holding 11 […]

Ebola outbreak reaches Senegal, riots break out in Guinea

(Reuters) – The West African state of Senegal became the fifth country to be touched by the world’s worst Ebola outbreak on Friday, while riots broke out in neighboring Guinea where infection rates are rising fast. The deadly virus has defied efforts by governments to control it, prompting the leading charity fighting the outbreak Medicines Sans Frontiers to call for the U.N. Security Council to take charge of efforts to stop the epidemic. At least […]

Samsung unveils smartwatch that can make calls

(Reuters) – Samsung Electronics Co Ltd on Thursday unveiled what it said was the first smartwatch capable of making and receiving calls without a mobile phone nearby, in the South Korean firm’s latest effort to find a new growth driver. The world’s biggest smartphone maker has been pushing hard to develop the wearable devices market as it looks to counter slowing earnings in its mobile division, which led to weaker-than-expected second-quarter earnings. Samsung is hardly alone in pushing wearables, […]

NASA says new heavy-lift rocket debut not likely until 2018

(Reuters) – NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, designed to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and eventually Mars, likely will not have its debut test flight until November 2018, nearly a year later than previous estimates, agency officials said on Wednesday. NASA is 70 percent confident of making a November 2018 launch date, given the technical, financial and management hurdles the Space Launch System faces on the road to development, NASA associate administrators Robert Lightfoot and […]

Senegalese WHO doctor with Ebola arrives for treatment in Germany

(Reuters) – A who contracted Ebola while working for the World Health Organisation (WHO)in Sierra Leone arrived in Hamburg on Wednesday for treatment at a tropical medicine unit, becoming Germany’s first patient with the disease. At a news conference on Wednesday the clinic’s tropical medicine specialist said the man would not be given new experimental drugs such as ZMapp but that his treatment would at first focus on managing his symptoms. The Senegalese doctor arrived […]